Chapter Nine: Time with New Friends

The next morning, Sam lingered in the dark room. Frodo sat with him a while in silent prayer, then left. Galian remained also, sitting a space away from Sam.

"It’s wonderful, isn’t it, Mr. Galian?" the hobbit said softly as he looked up at the light. "I can’t even describe it."

"No one can, not adequately," the Elf agreed. "We sing our songs and say our prayers and still we know we don’t have the words to respond to Iluvatar the way we really want to. Sometimes the best responses are the ones we make in the silence of our hearts. Iluvatar reached Iorhael that way and he responded that way. The Creator also reached you that way, without you even knowing it, giving you such a heart as I have heard so much about it."

"Frodo told me as much, that I was really serving the One when I was serving him. I still don’t understand it all, but I want to keep doing that, serving them both, I mean. I want to be worthy of receiving the lembas in the proper fashion, if you understand."

"You will be, if you continue to follow the path you are on. It is one Iorhael has been traveling since even before he came here and one you have been even though you knew not where your feet were taking you. Your heart knew, though. Iorhael was a lomear when he came here, a child of gloom. But even then his light shone more brightly than any we Elves here had seen in a mortal and it’s even more brilliant now. He was meant to come here, to be healed here, among, I would almost dare say, his own kind."

"He was always like that, bright, I mean. So bright and beautiful, I always believed there was something Elven about him. And he was for a long time, just as you say, wrapped in darkness and pain and sorrow, but even then, even then..." Sam trailed off.

He looked back up at the light. "I thought it was the Lady that helped us, but it was Him, wasn’t it?"

"She is a servant and child of Iluvatar, just as you are, Sam. He often chooses to work through His creatures. It was His help, through her, just as He helped Iorhael directly and through you. Iorhael wouldn’t have made it without both your help."

"I just wanted to keep my promise to keep him safe. You have no idea, Mr. Galian, how horrible it was, how dark and terrible, how hard it was to try to keep his heart safe at the same time as his body. I could protect him with my arms and my body, but there was no way I could protect his heart. That was eaten out of him and I was helpless to stop it."

"From all that Iorhael has told me and all I know of how the Creator works, I know and you know that’s not true. For Iluvatar gave him that heart, just as He gave you yours. Both of them were necessary to get you two to the fire. You were sustained by his heart, just as he was sustained by yours and both of you sustained by Iluvatar’s in a way we Elves stand in awe in. We could not have done what you did. The One fashioned just you two for that."

"And Stinker. Couldn’t have done it without him, after the Ring took them both."

Galian laughed softly. "Iorhael told me about your names for your guide. Yes, Iluvatar worked through even that child of His. He had to show that nothing had power over Him, that He could still work His will through whatever instruments He chose, whether those vessels said ‘yes’ like you and Iorhael did or whether they were just chosen by Him, even those enslaved to evil."

"I still don’t understand why we, he, had to suffer so much. Mr. Gandalf has told me and Frodo and I must be just the worst ninnyhammer not to understand, but I just don’t."

There was another ripple of laughter from Galian’s throat. "You are not a ninnyhammer as you say. Iorhael told me about that word and it was no more true when he used it against himself than it is now. Let me try to explain. We Elves are no strangers to suffering, like you hobbits were before the Shadow touched you. There was no suffering that either of you endured that was not without merit. The Dark Enemy that was thrown out of the World long before still had influence through his servants and in the very fabric of the Song that he had helped fashion. Iluvatar allowed that music to continue, not to harm us, but to show it had no power over Him. His children were still His children, though many could and did, through the Enemy’s snares, wander far from the path set out for them. Some returned, some did not. The path of Light and Freedom and Love is a very narrow one and laborious to walk on and it is easy, far too easy, to get lost in the brambles that grow alongside it, that appear instead so attractive and it is only after we are caught that we realize how wrong we have been and some, alas, never realize it or choose not to. I would dare say the true path ran through the Shire and your feet have always been on it. That was the way your heart could not be touched by the Ring. Alas for Iorhael, the torment of carrying it against his heart was too much for him, as it would have been for anyone who held it so long, but it also taught him much, the elements of pity and mercy and compassion. That was why Iluvatar allowed it so. Suffering is not an evil if you respond to it in the right way. Even when Iorhael was overcome at the last, he was not forever lost as Sauron and his master chose to be. No, Panthael, you need not worry over the protection of his heart. It was in the custody of the One he had given it to, though at the time he barely knew Who that was, just as it was in yours. He trusted you both implicitly to protect him and that trust was not placed in vain."

"Begging your pardon, but if Iluvatar loved Frodo so much, why did He still allow his heart to be broken? I just can’t understand that, no matter how anyone puts it."

"It was not out of lack of love that Iluvatar allowed Iorhael to suffer. He loves all His children, especially those He calls for great things. It is that Love that sustains them and brings them through their torments if they but love Him back and accept pain from His hand as bravely as we gladly accept His other gifts, knowing that they are both wrapped in His Love."

"It was Iluvatar’s Light that was sustaining him then, that makes him so beautiful it can take your breath away?"

Galian smiled. "Yes."

"Then that’s why the darkness could never conquer it. It tried. It tried so hard, so very hard."

"Iluvatar allowed the torment to show that he had power even over that.  Nothing deterred you or your beloved brother from making it to the Fire, did it?"

"No. He was crawling at the end, so weak but so determined."  Sam smiled as he shook his head.  "There’s nothing more stubborn than a Baggins."

Galian smiled. "I have learned that myself. And how much he praised your stubbornness and endurance and love and loyalty."

Sam blushed. "It weren’t nothing but what I had given him practically all my life. Nothing more than he deserved and I wanted to give. He’s special, Mr. Galian, he’s just that special."

Sam looked back up at the light. Thank you for creating him, for loving him, for letting me know and love him, for healing him, he said in the silence of his heart and in that silence, he heard a Voice, and realized it was One he had heard before, on the Quest, urging him on, giving him hope and sustenance so he could give the same to one he so loved, the one they both loved.