Chapter Twelve: Another Adventure

"Hello, Frodo," came an unexpected voice.

Frodo straightened abruptly from his gardening and squinted into the sun. A tall figure robed in white holding a large staff stood before him. "Gandalf! What in the Shire are you doing here?"

The wizard smiled. "It’s time for another adventure, my dear hobbit," he said.

Frodo groaned. "I don’t want to have any more adventures, ever," he said as he looked back down and continued his weeding. The peace of the previous night had fled with the dawn or so it felt to him. "I’ve come to the conclusion that all my myriad relations that I’ve always thought to be sticks-in-the-mud actually had the right idea all along. It’s much better to not to have any adventures of any kind."

Wasn’t yesterday an adventure, dear?

"You won’t need to leave this time," Gandalf persisted. "It can take place right in your living room. Because where you are going to be traveling is deep inside yourself. You still haven’t forgiven yourself, have you? Even when you know everyone else has, even your Creator?"

Frodo looked back at his friend, very suspiciously. He also glanced around for Sam, expecting the revelation of another conspiracy and that Gandalf’s arrival was no coincidence. Sam smiled. Frodo sighed. He half-expected to see Merry and Pippin around also, beaming at how clever they had been in keeping their interfering busybodiness a secret from him.

"I’ve come to know myself already quite well," he told Gandalf while he turned the ground over with his hoe a bit more vigorously than called for, "and I don’t like what I see. No, Gandalf, no more adventures of any kind. This one you propose sounds just as painful as the last one."

The wizard was not easily put off. Frodo was sure he could see Sam smiling. "You’ve only come to know yourself in the twisted way of the Ring. You aren’t really that way, you know. Don’t you want to feel better?"

Frodo sighed. He put the hoe aside, then placed several plants in the hole he had made. "Yes, of course I do, very much so. But I don’t know if I can or even whether I should. I am living with such a hole in my heart, it’s a wonder I am still alive. I’ve been hollowed out, Gandalf."

"No, my boy, you are not hollow, but you need to be so you can be filled once more with all the love and light that you have been blessed with all your life. Right now I am afraid you are filled to the brim with too much darkness and guilt. You know how very much you are loved by so many, but you are only letting yourself feel the hatred of the only thing that could do nothing but hate. Why are you listening to that voice when there are so many others you could be listening to? It is not the loudest or the most unceasing, but you are paying the most attention to it. Why?"

"I have listened to each one, but the other is the only one that makes sense. It hasn’t forgiven the unforgivable."

Gandalf changed tactics. He well knew how stubborn a Baggins could be. It had served Frodo well on the Quest, but he knew it could be used by the Enemy as well. "What do you remember of the day Sam died, of the moments right before his death?"

Frodo looked back up at his friend, his expression accusatory. "This adventure has already begun, hasn’t it?"

Gandalf looked back innocently. "It can begin in a garden just as well as anywhere. What do you remember, Frodo?"

The troubled hobbit sighed. "Stubborn wizard. The last thing I remember was the Nazgul flying above us. They were calling to me and the Ring was calling to them. I was very frightened. Sam was saying something to me. I could see his lips moving, but I couldn’t hear him. All I could hear was them. I couldn’t resist. The next thing I remember is seeing Sam on the ground. I was straddling him and Sting was in my hand, dripping with his blood. He was already dead. I had killed him."

The memories were too much and Frodo sat down heavily on the bench that Sam had put out years before for his master’s benefit so he could comfortably read outside in the sunlight. Many a time, Frodo had done so, either to himself or more often out loud to Sam as his friend worked nearby. He felt Sam’s presence embrace him as he wept and Gandalf sat down near him as well and wrapped his arms around him. The erstwhile Ring-bearer buried his head in the wizard’s robes and held him tightly. His sobs broke the ancient Maia’s heart as he stroked Frodo’s curls and murmured what comforts he could until the hobbit calmed enough to sit silently in the sheltering embraces of two who loved him so dearly.

"Don’t you think, Frodo," Gandalf began softly, "that if you had truly willed this act, you would remember wanting it, doing it, glorying in it? That’s what evil does. Are you evil?"

"I didn’t want to do it, of course I didn’t," came the muffled answer, "but I am evil because I did do it."

Oh, my dear, don’t ever say such things, came Sam’s voice. You were a victim of evil, not evil itself. We were both victims, but it was you that suffered most. Don’t let it keep hurting you. Don’t give it that victory. Live again, dear. Live for me.

You should be living for yourself, dearest Sam. Living for Rosie and all the lads and lasses you and she will never have now.

Listen to Mr. Gandalf, dear. I know you don’t want to go on this adventure, but you are on the Road already and isn’t it nice to have someone else now traveling with us?

It’s so painful, though, Sam, to walk this Road. It’s full of thorns and brambles that cut at my hands and feet. I am leaving a trail of blood wherever I go.

You are making yourself anew, my dear. It’s like falling and hurting yourself. It’s painful at first, but then it begins to scab over. Sometimes you bump it or fall again and the scab falls off and you bleed again. But then you form a new scab and when that falls off, it’s all healed underneath, fresh, new skin without a scar.

But I didn’t hurt myself, my Sam. I hurt you; I killed you. There is no scabbing when the heart breaks. There is just bleeding that doesn’t stop for a very long time.

But it does stop, doesn’t it? And there are scabs. You just don’t see them, but you know when they are bleeding again and you know when they are healed and fall off. You helped me realize that myself when my mum died and you realized it yourself when you began to feel better after your parents passed. It’s going to happen this time if you let it. But you must want to feel better, dear. No more of this nonsense about listening to voices that only want your misery and destruction. Tolo dan na ngalad. Come back to the light.

Frodo looked up from Gandalf’s arms. For a moment, he thought he saw Sam’s bright figure smiling lovingly down at him, but then the vision vanished and all he saw was Gandalf’s tender eyes and smile. "I don’t want to be on this Road of pain, but I will travel where my feet have been set," the hobbit said, "for every Road must have an end, though it seems to stretch forever and I cannot see it all where it goes."

Gandalf’s smile widened. "It has indeed an end, my dear hobbit, and if you pursue it with steadfastness, you will be rewarded beyond anything you can imagine. I shall travel it with you as well as all those who love you. The narrow path is never so narrow it can’t hold another."

"I felt so wrapped in love last night. It was so beautiful, but I can’t feel it now."

Gandalf’s smile widened. "I am held that way myself and so is Sam. So are all the children of Ilúvatar. You have ever been so, even if you couldn’t always feel it."

A desperate hope came into Frodo’s eyes, shining through the pain. "Is that where the Road ends?"

"If you hold fast to it, my lad, yes." Gandalf’s eyes twinkled. "And you said you couldn’t see the end."

Frodo smiled tremulously, then settled deeper into Gandalf’s embrace and into Sam’s. A definite peace began to slowly seep into him. "It’s so far ahead I wonder if I will ever reach it. Maybe I didn’t know what I saw at first. But Sam is already there. I hope to be there myself one day."

"Your heart always knew. You will be there, if you do not turn away or if you do turn, then turn back."

"I won’t turn wrong. I’m already so weary I’m tripping over my own feet. I couldn’t bear to have to retrace my steps."

"Then rest, but not off the Road. This journey takes your whole life, Frodo. It can’t be accomplished any sooner by hurrying."

The hobbit groaned. Gandalf laughed softly and kissed his dear friend’s head. "That doesn’t mean it’s all pain. Our Creator does not allow evil and pain without good cause. Though the Road to Him is filled with perils that could daunt the hardiest soul, there is always His Light to guide us through them. You have been surrounded by that Light all your life."

"Sam, Bilbo, Merry and Pippin and Lord Elrond and Lady Galadriel and Aragorn and Faramir have been lights for me."

"They are all reflections of the One Light. We can all be such for each other along the Road. They haven’t just been lights for you, though. You have been a light for them."