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The Letter  by Antane

Chapter Seven: Voices

The voice came to him as it had for months, tormenting him out of the dark, surrounding him until it was all he could hear. He tried not to listen, tried to shut it out with his hands over his ears, pleading with it to let him go, but it was of no avail. It was inside him and he could not make it leave on his own. Only Sam could do that. If he clutched the gem the Queen gave him, it grew quiet, but he could always sense it waiting for him. And here in the terrible dark, it had him.

It promised freedom and rest, an opportunity to lay down his burden. Freedom. The very idea of it filled him with longing. He did so want to be free. A shining sword appeared in the black.

No, not that way, Frodo told the voice as it continued to taunt and tempt in the most vile language, the worst perversion of the Elvish he so loved to listen to.

He held his hands to his ears tighter. "No!" His own voice frightened him. It was a moan, the same one he tried to keep inside him all the time from Sam while they had made their terrible journey, but he knew sometimes Sam had heard for then he would take Frodo into his arms and rock him and look at him with such tender love that it would save him for that moment from drowning in the terrible darkness that was overwhelming him. A kiss to the head one moment allowed him to endure the next.

But Sam was not with him now, only the terrible voice. Frodo shook his head. "No...no...let me be...leave me alone..please..."

The cruel mockery of laughter filled his ears and stabbed into his lacerated soul.

Frodo writhed, trying to escape. Sam....Sam!

He is gone away. He cannot hear you now.

Frodo tumbled down further into the darkness and the voice followed him. "Sam!" he cried out again and he was not aware that this time it was aloud.

The door opened and he heard a distant voice. "Frodo?"

The Ring-bearer’s eyes opened and he looked up through a haze, waking with a gasp. He pulled free from the night terrors’ cloying webs and rushed toward Faramir with a cry.

The Steward barely kept the cup of tea he was carrying from spilling onto his friend. He quickly put it aside and knelt to collect Frodo in his arms. The man felt the hammering of the little one’s great heart as they sat there on the floor and Frodo sobbed into his chest. When finally the troubled hobbit look up at the man and heard the silence in his own head that meant the voice had been temporarily subdued, he tried to apologize for his outburst, but Faramir would have none of it

"Were you having a nightmare?" he asked as he wiped Frodo’s tears away.

Frodo did not answer and looked away. The man gently touched the hobbit’s chin and brought him back to face him. His face was tender and filled with sympathy and perhaps even a bit of understanding.

"I have them still sometimes myself," Faramir said. "It is impossible to be touched by such evil and not be scarred by it. But the light is greater. You must keep holding onto that to turn back the terrible night."

Frodo still did not answer him and so Faramir switched tactics and looked about the study. "You have so many wonderful books here. I could be very happy for quite some time and herer I don’t have to worry that I will be dragged away like I was so many times at home!"

He had hoped that would elicit a smile, but he was not rewarded, so he continued on. How much this little one was like him he thought in a burst of love he had only ever thought before when thinking of his brother. Perhaps I have found another one.

"My mother was the only one who truly understood how much I loved the old stories," he continued "and how I longed for the king to return. Boromir tried to understand but couldn’t quite. My father never tried."

"Your wish for that has come true," Frodo said.

Faramir smiled at his friend. "Because you helped it to come so. It could not have been accomplished without you."

"I had nothing to do with that," the troubled Ring-bearer said. "If Sam and Smeagol had not been with me, then Sauron would be king, not Aragorn."

Faramir smiled at Frodo again and held him a little tighter. "Yet they could not have done what they did, had you not done what you did, my stubborn friend. I have heard from Sam all about your terrible journey and how you endured your trials with such courage."

"I could not fulfill my task at the end," Frodo said. "Did he mention that? It was too much. Everyone trusted me and I failed them."

"So I felt when my father chastised me for letting you go and for not protecting Osgiliath well enough," Faramir replied. "But that does not mean it’s the truth or that we didn’t do the best we could. I fought an enemy lesser than the one you struggled against for much longer and much more successfully. The Black Breath of one who was merely servant to the terrible power you strove against was nearly enough to kill me. How can you consider yourself a failure if you succumbed at last to a power and will greater than yours, that no mortal could withstand forever?"

Frodo did not respond or look at him. He knew the man was well meaning, but he had not been there. He did not know of the burden that Frodo had carried for so long and was still being crushed by.

"I know I was not at your side as Sam was," Faramir said, reading that dear heart. "And I know the powers I fought are not anything like you have had to struggle with, but for the Nazgul who wounded us both. I am humbled and awed that you had such strength to battle so hard and long against him and his dark master. I wish I had been as strong for perhaps I would have gained the stature in the eyes of my father that I have longed for all his life. I always wanted his love, but he was rarely granted it. I was a terrible disappointment to him when I loved books and learning far more than he did the arts of a warrior and when I more readily gave my heart to Mithrandir and my brother than to him. Boromir was much closer to his martial heart than I was and I was much closer to my mother’s heart."

Faramir’s eyes misted, but he kept his voice steady. "I learned to fight because I had to, because I wanted to please my father, so he could love me and so I could be ready when the king came again. That was another thing that he hated about me, that he felt I shared my heart with others he considered rivals. I longed to give him my whole heart, but I didn’t have any hope that such a gift would be accepted. He had long given up hope or even desire for any king to return. He hated to be considered just steward. How many more generations would have to pass until he could be considered king indeed as he so wanted to be? He considered my longing for the king to return to be an affront to his own dignity and power, for he knew if so happened, his power would be over. But I still had hope that the king would even after so long and it was love for that unseen man that I held dear and close to his heart since my own father was so cold. I trained for that man as much as I did for my father, for someone I knew may not even come in my lifetime, but who I hoped would come one day. I do not know why I felt so strongly that he would come and I would see him. And now he has and he has acknowledged before all his realm that you are partly responsible for that."

Frodo looked up at the man now and there are tears in his eyes and he reached to wipe away those in his friend’s. "I am so sorry for you, Faramir, that you were so long bereft of the love of your father. I cannot even imagine such a thing. My parents both died when I was very young, but they loved me very much. All hobbit children are very dearly loved. I am so sorry."

Faramir wiped at Frodo’s tears as well and there was tender love in his gentle eyes. "Children are loved greatly in Gondor as well. Do not grieve overly for me. It is an old, sore pain, but my father was not an evil man. He had burdens that I am glad not to have had to carry myself and griefs deeper than mine. I can barely remember my mother, but I can still remember her love and his for me before she died and his heart withered. That is another thing we have sorrowfully in common. We are both now orphans. But we are also surrounded by those who love us and though this war has been terrible and we have all suffered grievous losses, there is much good and joy that has come from it as well, for would I have met you or Sam or Eowyn or our king any other way? From the ashes, a new life will spring for us both."

"‘From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring,’" Frodo said in a wistful voice, remembering the words of Gandalf. "I hope that will be true, but all I see is the fire of the mountain and the terrible red Eye of the Enemy."

"And I the pyre of my father that he lit himself," Faramir replied, "but we shall not always see such things. Our hearts will heal in the right soil."

Frodo’s hope stirred against the blackness that beset it and he desperately sought to believe in the man’s words. "I have grown closer to Sam because of all that happened than I have all our time together before. And you are right, we would not have met otherwise. I am very glad that we have. I am also so glad your gentle heart was not torn apart by the terrible evil of the Ring."

"As yours was?"

"It was the price I agreed to pay when I took the Ring."

"Even before you knew the true cost?"

"I do not think I would have been able to make the journey if I had known."

"It is better not to know," the Steward agreed. "Before the War, my brother and father were still alive. Would I have been able to bear it if I had known that I wouldn’t be seeing Boromir again when he rode out seeking the answer to the riddle that you stood in the midst of? Would I have tried to stop him or make him take me with him or go in his stead? Should I have stayed here in the Citadel instead of going to Osgiliath and so tried to prevent my father’s death if I had known he was so steeped in despair? But I knew none of this and now I am all that is left of my house. I miss them both so much sometimes I wonder how I will go on, how I will even take the next breath."

Those words struck Frodo at his core for such was often his own wondering. The man’s next words struck also and he held onto them as desperately as he had the others. "But I do and I will keep doing so."

Faramir looked deeply into Frodo’s eyes and saw the terrible pain there. "The road does not end here for either of us, my brother. Somehow it was fated to be the way it is. All of it."

Frodo looked up at the Steward with a mix of awe and gratitude so deep tears gathered once more. Brother. Perhap they understood each other better than he thought for they were both carrying terrible wounds to their hearts. Faramir’s gentle one may have been spared the ravages of the Ring, but the other wounds he carried were just as deep and inflicted over a much longer period. Yet, he was able to forgive and mourn his father, as Frodo was able to forgive and mourn for Smeagol, and Sam was able to forgive him. Love surrounded them and sustained them.

As Frodo lay his head against Faramir’s chest, not even the echoes of the voice of their Enemy was within him and he felt at peace in such a way that he rarely had when he was not in the arms of his Sam. "Your land is very blessed, Faramir," he said, "because you are in it. But I must say once more you make a wonderful hobbit."

Faramir laughed softly and the sound soothed the Ring-bearer’s heart, just as the man’s voice did. The Steward kissed his head and continued to hold him close. "And I am honored once more that you would think so," he said and felt within himself a peace that he has not felt since his mother and now his brother had died. It was the peace of being completely and unconditionally loved. "Your land is blessed because you are within it as well."

Frodo smiled faintly as the peace spread through them both.

"You have a beautiful smile," Faramir said.

The Ring-bearer smiled further. If it helped Faramir heal a little from his own wounds, then he was glad. He looked up at his new brother and the man was smiling. The dark shadows dispersed for a moment for both of us and for a moment Frodo saw the light beyond them. "You said when we parted last, that if there was any hope of meeting again, we would sit by a wall in the sun and laugh at old grief. I did not think there was any hope for that, yet here we are."

"Yes, here we are. We hobbits have to stick together."

When Sam, Merry and Pippin returned an hour later with the others, their eyes locked on Frodo immediately and they were surprised and concerned to see Faramir holding him on the floor. But wonder filled them when Frodo gave them a genuine smile. To see them return the smiles and the concern fade for a moment from their eyes was a wonderful treat for him. Yes, he was very blessed.





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