The Choices of Mayor Samwise -- II Trees (j)
Most of the hobbits who didn’t stagger home very late that night left early next morning, for there was a great deal of farm-work to be done, and Tom Bombadil said he and Goldberry must be getting back to help the ents.Halladan too had other duties waiting, and Déorwine and his men stayed only long enough to help with taking down the pavilion, but once Legolas, Elladan, and Elrohir had learned of Whiteleaf’s offer to take witnesses to the silencing of Old Man Willow nothing could have dragged them away ; even Gimli, if still distinctly dubious about forests in general, was intrigued. Merry and Pippin also stayed, of course, and helped with the clearing up.
Sam was glad, for it meant Rose could get to know Legolas and Gimli better, without pre-wedding nerves or wedding crowds. With six of the Fellowship present all their memories were stirred, including things they avoided speaking of, but there was much happier and easier stuff that gave her a sense of how the experience of travelling together to places new to all of them, if not to Gandalf and Aragorn, as well as mutual reliance in danger, had forged unbreakable bonds and simple pleasure in one another’s companionship. There were also Gimli’s and Legolas’s experiences in searching Orthanc, with the discovery of the Elendilmir, its nature and history, and an interesting digression from Gimli about hidden doors, as well as copies of the correspondence Aragorn had found, which if full of unhappy revelations about Saruman’s long battening on the Shire interested them all.
In some ways Sam felt quite uneasy just sitting and talking, with so much to be done, but to be married at last to Rose was a wonder and an ease that held him still, and the Bag End gardens were right there when he had to be about something useful. Glorfindel spent long hours wandering the central Shire, and Elladan and Elrohir had become deeply intrigued both by the mallorn, which they said was already growing into quite a different tree than its parent in Lothlórien, and by the brick on which Gandalf had destroyed Saruman’s ring, set by Sam into a small pillar to mark the place, but all three sometimes joined the talk. And all were happy to help when Merry and Pippin conceived the idea of making a small memorial garden to Boromir. Sam chose the spot where the spring bubbled out, low on the north side of The Hill, and they fashioned it as a miniature valley with the rill burbling through sloped banks studded with plants the elves assured them grew in Anorien as well as Arnor. When it was done Merry and Pippin were delighted, but Sam had mixed emotions and an idea coiling in his mind, and the next morning, when he woke well before dawn, he eased out of bed without disturbing Rose.
He hadn’t been working long when the elves came to see what he was about, silently observing for a few moments before joining him. It took a swift trip to Bywater Pool on Asfaloth to collect the final touch, but by the time Frodo and the others were sufficiently awake and breakfasted to wander out into the sunshine and come to see, the rill fell from Boromir’s valley into a small, shaded pool surrounded by ferns in which little fish circled, nibbling at pondweed, and the water-lilies Tom Bombadil and Goldberry had brought floated. When Sam saw Frodo looking down on them with a puzzled expression he stood nervously from where he’d been rooting another fern.
“It’s for Stinker rather than Slinker, Mr Frodo. For what was lost, not what he came to. He’d just eat the fish, of course, but I reckon he’d be pleased to see the pool.” There was what seemed to Sam a long pause, while doubts sprouted in his head. “I hope you don’t mind, Mr Frodo, but it seemed right.”
“Mind? Anything but, Sam.”
But there were tears in Frodo’s eyes that gathered into a storm of weeping. The elves and Gimli were taken aback but Sam, Merry, and Pippin, and after a second’s hesitation Rose, just gathered him into a hobbit hug and rode it out with murmurs. When the fit passed and Frodo had been eased to a sitting position, supported by Pippin, Merry went to make athelas tea and Frodo looked up at Glorfindel, speaking Sindarin.
“You have seen the pattern that has me as the echo of Sauron and Gollum as that of Isildur?”
Glorfindel nodded gravely. “I have, Iorhael. Mithrandir, Elrond, and I were all struck by it.”
“And do you think Gollum a rebuke to Isildur?”
“More often than not. Yet I cannot in my heart blame Isildur. He was deeply griefstricken, and you of all beings know the Ring’s power.”
“Oh yes.” Frodo’s expression was unreadable. “But say rather that Isildur was a compliment to Gollum, as Elrond to Perhael.”
Glorfindel stared before giving a wide smile. “Wisdom enough to daunt the sages of the Noldor.” His face stilled. “But tell me how you think of your own echo?”
Frodo’s face was equally still but for once he held out his injured hand, spreading the remaining fingers. “I am rebuked in my foolish pride and left almost as diminished in my nature. So the echo is true, as my maiming attests.” He tucked the hand away again. “But I try to rejoice in what little light I can see and he hates both light and the darkness into which what remains of him is driven.”
“You sense him?”
“Only in dreams, craving it still as he does, gnawing himself and cursing Ilúvatar’s design.” Frodo’s voice was a whisper. “And behind his darkness, from beyond the Gates of Night, ever the echo of Morgoth.”
“Then you sense further than I, Iorhael Cormacolindo. But I have known the light of the Trees and the light of Aman, as well as the single light that burns in the Halls of Mandos, and I say to you that on Tol Eressëa even your dreams would be free of shadow, as of needless guilt.” Glorfindel switched to Westron. “For whatever the truth of your thought about compliments, do you not see how great a rebuke Frodo Baggins is to him? You and Bilbo and Samwise, and even Sméagol?”
“I see. I just don’t feel.” Frodo frowned. “How do you count poor Sméagol a rebuke to him?”
“Have you never tallied the löar of the Ring? Sauron held it a little more than eighteen hundred years, destroying Eregion and Númenor. Isildur held it less than two, Anduin for perhaps two-and-a-half-thousand. So far as Mithrandir could learn, the first finder held it but a moment, and Sméagol perhaps five hundred years, but though he used it for evil his deeds were slight by Sauron’s measure and many against orcs, turning evil against evil. In carrying it under Hithaeglir Sméagol also kept it from recovery as Sauron grew powerful again. Bilbo held it for sixty years, all but harmlessly. Last, you held it for eighteen years, and Sam for two days, neither using it for any evil though it was full awake and ever more powerful as it neared the place of its making. And with the aid of Sam and Sméagol you bore it to its destruction.” Glorfindel smiled again. “For nearly five thousand years it was the bane and great fear of the Wise, and Sauron rejoiced that it was so. Then hobbits find it, prevent its use for evil, and once it comes to you in little more than an eyeblink it is gone for ever. How chagrined he must be!”
“Chagrined?” Frodo shrugged slightly. “In the moment I wore it I knew only the force of his gaze and his rage that another claimed what was his. Then I was struggling with Sméagol.” He frowned. “I don’t think he had any ordinary feelings left.”
“Oh yes he did, Frodo.” Pippin was pale but definite. “I felt them through the Palantír. Puzzlement at what I was and an awful gloating satisfaction when he learned I was a hobbit.”
“More fool him, then.” Sam shook his head. “I don’t rightly know what to think about all these echoes and rebukes, but I do see as he didn’t take no account of hobbits, not when he made it, and it showed. I know it didn’t have much time to work on me, Mr Frodo, not like it did on you, but I know it didn’t understand me. Couldn’t think hobbit-sized at all.”
Frodo’s smile was ghostly, but it was a smile. “That’s true enough, Sam. It always wanted more of me than there ever was.”
“I know. But the thing is, Mr Frodo, despite everything, it just didn’t work, not like he meant it to. It hurt you something cruel, and wore you down to next to nothing, but it couldn’t rule you.”
Frodo dropped his gaze. “It did at the end, Sam. And once, even less forgiveably, at Cirith Ungol.”
“No, it didn’t.” Sam spoke flatly and Frodo looked up again. “In that tower you were ill and injured, and you thought it was gone. And at the end it just tried to save itself, pulling at everything.” Sam shivered despite the warmth of the day and Rosie took his hand, gripping fiercely. “I felt it right enough, and poor old Stinker ran right over me to get to it. It was stronger than you for a moment, stronger than anyone in its fear, but it didn’t ever rule you, nor me, nor Mr Bilbo. Not with a witch-knife in you, not with nine Nazgûl shouting at you, and not at the end neither.”
But he could see Frodo did not, perhaps could not, accept it, and sighed. Baggins stubbornness remained, whatever else was gone.
“Are you still thinking Stinker’s on your conscience as well?”
Frodo nodded tiredly. “He is, Sam. But this place lightens the load.”
“Why does Sméagol burden you, Frodo?” Glorfindel was frowning. “His path was set long before you were born.”
“He saved me, and everything, but I couldn’t save him.” His voice dropped. “And I cursed him to his fate.”
“No you didn’t.” Sam shook his head. “You told him in a voice that wasn’t your own that if he touched you again he’d be cast into the fire himself. And he did touch you, but he wasn’t cast, or not by you. He fell.”
Glorfindel sighed. “Even to prophesy is not to make happen, Iorhael. A debt of gratitude I can see, and regret for Sméagol’s fate, to which Sam gives living form and grace, honouring what he once was and might have been. But no burden of conscience for you.”
“For whom if not for me?”
“For Eru alone, for this was his design to achieve what Gil-galad and Elendil could not. Sméagol’s strength and endurance were used, even as yours and Sam’s were. And if he did not pass directly to Eru, I think Mandos will have received him gently.”
This time Frodo’s smile was stronger and he clasped Glorfindel’s hand. “Oh I hope so.”
Merry returned with the tea, and Frodo seemed eased, but soon said he thought he’d lie down for a bit and try to sleep. He refused company and went back to the smial, and the others moved away from the memorial garden to the dappled shade under an apple-tree.
“What did I miss?”
“Plenty, Merry, but I’ll tell you later.” Pippin’s gaze went to Sam. “Though you’ll have to ask Sam about the bit in Sindarin. Something about Isildur and Gollum, though putting those two together just makes my head hurt. And what was that stuff about the tower, Sam?”
Sam shrugged uncomfortably. “When I found him he was still feverish from the bite, as well as all bruised and beaten, and he thought the orcs had found it. Then when I told him I had it he got upset and said something as he shouldn’t, but he wasn’t himself and I knew it, so I paid it no never mind.”
“Huh. Poor you. And poor Frodo. When you say at the end you mean in the Sammath Naur? When he put it on and claimed it?”
“Yes. But he couldn’t no more have resisted it then than I could stop a tree falling on me, or one of us that balrog. He don’t see it like that, though, stubborn Baggins as he is. Thinks he should of saved the world all alone and been home in time for tea. But that’s it talking too, not hobbit sense.”
Elladan laughed softly. “You have the right of it, I think, Sam. So our Adar thinks, anyway. He believes Frodo’s will and conscience were both expanded by the Ring’s unceasing pull, and that he actually used the Ring’s own power to fuel his determination to destroy it.”
“But he is left with both ravaged, yet overgrown, claiming guilt where there is neither responsibility nor need.”
Sam nodded gloomily. “That sounds about right. It kept on getting bigger and heavier, and leaving less and less of him. And he knew it had been working on us all, or trying to. He’s never said anything about it but I think Mr Boromir tried to take it from him, to use, like he wanted at Mr Elrond’s council, and that’s why he ran when he did.”
“Is that what happened?” Legolas sat up. “Aragorn would never say what Boromir had told him ere he died. But I had wondered - certainly the Ring reached out to assail us all.”
Gimli growled agreement. “That it did, filth that it was. As if I’d wish to displace Durin.”
Sam found himself grinning, however blackly. “Told me I could make all Mordor a garden and be Head Gardener. I said it couldn’t think hobbit-size, nor dwarf-size neither seemingly.”
Merry frowned. “I can’t say I felt much.”
“Nor me.” Pippin shrugged. “But maybe Sam’s right and it just bounced off hobbits except Frodo, because he was carrying it.”
“But why didn’t it work on hobbits?” Rose was still holding Sam’s hand tightly. “There’s so much I don’t understand, except to know it was awful, but that’s a puzzle to me.”
“When Sauron made it, Rose, either hobbits had not yet woken under the sun, or were keeping themselves to themselves, so he knew nothing of them and could give them no thought in its making.” Glorfindel’s eyes had stars somewhere deep in them. “The Nine worked best for him, though his victims among Men could not hold their kingdoms, save Angmar. The Seven he had to seek out, painfully, to wrest from the Children of Aulë. The Three he never sullied, though resisting the One sapped their power. Hobbits were beyond him, for you are the children of Lady Yavanna, but he was of Aulë and Morgoth. The love of growing things was ever a mystery to him.”
“No Ring for the Hobbit Thain, in his field of green, And the One Ring could not rule all while they were yet unseen.” Sam grinned again, more lightly, at their startled looks. “I thought of that one in Mordor, trying to keep going across Gorgoroth. I had some other verses too - he didn’t make no rings for rabbits or frogs or taters, and none of them took a blind bit of notice of anything he did or said.”
Merry and Pippin spluttered, but all the elves and Gimli gave full-throated laughs, and so did Rosie.
“Rings for taters, Sam? That’s a good one.”
Elladan and Elrohir looked at one another before looking at Sam and Rose. “Indeed it is, and a marvellous game. There are so many more things for which he had never a thought, and all shall have their verse.”
“We shall rival even Halladan’s recitals of ancestry.”
Amid laughter and suggested couplets the mood eased, conversation drifting to happier things. Frodo rejoined them after lunch, apologising for his earlier gloom, and in the afternoon they walked to the Cottons’ before going to the Green Dragon for a memorable evening of song. But as the moon waxed and the time neared to leave for the Brandywine Bridge Frodo decided he should be back at work in the Town Hole.
“There’s a lot that still needs doing before I can hand it all back to Will at the Midsummer Fair. And I’ve no strength to ride so far, nor desire to see that willow again. You can tell me anything I need to know, and give my regards to Quickbeam and the others.”
He wouldn’t be budged, and on Sam’s advice no-one tried too hard. But the night before they were due to leave Sam found himself turning to face Rose as they lay in bed.
“Do you want to come with us, love?”
“Me? To the Old Forest and all?"
“Yes, you. It won’t be nice, I don’t suppose, but it should be safe enough, else I wouldn’t be going. You’ve had to put up with a lot of talk about odd things and I wondered if seeing one would help.”
“I don’t know, Sam. I’ve seen some odd things already and there’s a lot to do.”
“So there is, but it can wait a week, and this will only happen once.”
It took some more persuading but Rose wanted to understand as well as she could the wider world that had so affected Sam, so there were nine of them on the road early next morning. Rose’s new mare, Blossom, was as easy-gaited as she was well-mannered, and with food to eat on the move and only a brief stop at Frogmorton for lunch they made it to the Bridge Inn as the sun was setting. Master Saradoc and Mr Merimac were waiting and joined them for a very welcome supper. If they were surprised to see Rose they didn’t say so, and Sam saw with pleasure that she was much more at ease than she had been when she had first found herself meeting gentry.
She was more nervous next morning, leaving the Shire for the first time, but there was nothing to alarm on road or grasslands until they came to the forest eaves. Glorfindel was interested, saying the malice was already sapped, but the hobbits could all feel it still, though mixed with other things - a brooding suspense and excitement flickering within it, as well as creaks and groans as if the trees were jostling to see them pass. It grew steadily stronger as they went south, leaving everyone but elves uneasy and drawing dark glances from Gimli, and they were glad to reach Tom Bombadil’s house - quite visible but with no sign of its master until they heard him singing in the distance and he came stamping and smiling up the path that followed the Withywindle.
“Be welcome friends, though naught’s prepared, for we have all been working, and Goldberry yet helps the ents so you must bide my cooking.”
The hobbits didn’t think the threat was very serious but they were glad to help in the kitchen, while Gimli and the elves laid the table, and soon all sat to a simple but satisfying feast.
“The threat from the trees seems much worse on this side than by the Hay, Mr Bombadil.” Master Saradoc spoke as eating ebbed. “I don’t know how you stand it.”
“Old Tom fears no willowman, though he is mighty angry. You feel it as you near his bole, and will feel it more tomorrow, but nothing ill can pass my door so heed no nightly noises.”
He woke them at dawn, and over a hasty breakfast Legolas told them the other elves had gone ahead and teased Gimli about not leaving him to face a forest alone. But as they rode down the Withy path and entered the trees even he became silent, and for the others the sense of pressure and anger became almost tangible. Had it not been for Tom trotting ahead of them, waving his arms and singing in snatches, they would have turned back, and Sam rode close beside Rose when the path allowed. As the river widened and slowed its colour darkened and it seemed higher than the hobbits remembered, lapping at the path, and Tom fell silent though he seemed as unperturbed as ever. Rounding a bend they came to the first grove of willows, and pressure became still more intense. Asfaloth and the other elven horses were grazing in a mead, and they dismounted, unsaddling the ponies.
All was still but it was the stillness of great strain, not ease, and Sam held Rose’s hand tightly as Tom led them on. Much of their way, travelled only once in the other direction and in no state to observe anything, had seemed new, but when they came to it he recognised the stretch where he’d found the strayed ponies. Yet after another bend or two they came out into a space he didn’t remember at all. Glorfindel, Elladan, and Elrohir stood together and as they came up beside them Sam could see Old Man Willow now stood isolated. Six ents, including Quickbeam, surrounded him, and Longbranch with another that Merry whispered was Slowroot stood in the river itself - or where the river should have been, for against all nature the waters curved away from the bank there, rising on the further side so high that the narrow mead beyond was flooded. But the ground all around Old Man Willow was bone dry, flowers withered and the grass sere ; drooping leaves were lank and discoloured, moss on the cracked bole browned, and roots projecting from the bank shrivelled and cracked. Unassuageable malice thickened the air and Rosie was not the only one to gasp. Glorfindel looked down.
“Fear not. They have him fast.”
“I’d forgotten he was so big.” Sam shook his head. “If I’d remembered I’d have thought he couldn’t be no ent.”
“Your instinct was sound, Samwise, though it is true waking onodrim are rarely of this stature. But this one traded mobility for size and strength, growing fat on his prey, and cannot now flee the judgement of his peers.”
Sam knelt to feel the dusty earth. “They’re starving him of water?”
“Indeed. It weakens and keeps him still, nor could he otherwise be forced to drink the draft Whiteleaf is preparing. It will be ready quite soon now, I believe.”
Rosie was staring. “How can the river do that?”
“It must be Missus Goldberry, Rosie, though I’ve never seen nothing like it.”
Tom smiled. “Not for nothing is Tom’s love the Withy-woman’s daughter.”
“Those of Lord Ulmo command water as those of Lord Aulë command fire. But I have not seen such as this before either, in all my years.” A sudden grin lit Glorfindel’s face. “And I owe you thanks, Perhael, for that is not a thing I can often say, yet here is more than one new sight. Truly the Periannath have become an astonishment to Arda.”
Sam didn’t know what to say to that and was saved the trouble as an ent’s Hoom! sounded from somewhere and the four on the riverbank began a low rumbling sound, deeper than their usual voices, thrumming in the stomach as much as the ears. Tremors ran through the great tree and dry leaves rattled but for long minutes nothing seemed to happen ; then gradually earth began to move, dust rising as it piled into a ring and a hollow developed, deepening to expose a great tangle of roots that flinched and quivered as sunlight reached them. Gradually the noise died away and moments later Whiteleaf came into view, walking with slow care, carrying a great clay bowl. As he stood above the roots and began to trickle out its contents all the ents began to chant in their tongue, not with the overlapping rise and fall of conversation at the entmoot but in concerted command, a long phrase repeated over and over.
Old Man Willow shook again, leaves falling as cracks appeared in the great bole, and the air seemed to surge, but the chant was relentless, vivid with power, and Whiteleaf increased the flow. The draft looked like ordinary water, but the smell that rose had more than parched earth and rain in it, and as the clay bowl was emptied Sam could feel something stretching and stretching until with the last drops there was a single humming moment when all the Forest held its breath. And then, almost audibly, it snapped, ent voices dropped at once to a murmur and then silence, and the sense of malice faded swiftly away, dwindling into nothing. A great sigh ran through the trees and suddenly the sunlight seemed brighter and the air fresher, and they were all smiling, elves and hobbits and dwarf and whatever Tom Bombadil was. Sam breathed deeply and looked at Rosie before raising his voice in the hymn to Yavanna ; he had taught it to her and she joined him with the elves and Merry and Pippin. As the last note faded Whiteleaf came across to them, and after Tom had reached up to take the bowl from him and set it carefully down he looked at the hobbits.
“That was well sung. Hoom! So it is done, and with that one’s malice sleeping at last a great wrong can begin to mend. Let us but wash and drink ourselves, and we shall speak of what may happen now.”
The other ents were stretching out hands and fingers, and turning their heads as if to remove stiffness as Whiteleaf went back to join them, and he with the four on the bank climbed down into the river-bed. Water flowed back from its unnatural wall to lap their feet and then rise to their knees and waists, and for a moment Sam thought he saw faces shimmering in the water before the river flowed again as it should, slow and brown, the flooded mead on the opposite bank draining to reveal flattened grasses that began to steam as sunlight found them. Merimac was the first to shake himself, embracing the Master and then Merry and Pippin, before they all came to Sam and Master Saradoc offered a hand.
“Samwise. What an astonishing thing. Buckland owes you another debt beyond counting.”
Sam had taken his hand but almost dropped it as he flushed. “There’s no debt, Mas-”
“Oh yes there is. And don’t you Master or sir me again, please. Sara’s what friends call me.” He grinned. “Merry tells me you can be trained out of it with some effort, so I’m glad to start.”
“And Mac, by the same token.”
Elladan and Elrohir laughed. “We wish you luck with that.”
“And if you succeed, ask that you teach us and Halladan the way.”
“If it works for any who are not hobbits. Only Estel has avoided being mistered.”
“And that by being Strider.”
Sam thought about glaring but Rosie was dimpling at him so he drew on his dignity. “Strider don’t need it. And Mr Glorfindel’s right - you two can seem like tweens for all you’re pushing three thousand.”
They only laughed, and Glorfindel and Legolas grinned. Then everyone was laughing, even Sam, and Tom Bombadil was capering and throwing his hat up for the pleasure of catching it. The air was a thrill to breathe and the sheer sense of rightness a delightful, bursting roil in Sam’s chest. When the fit passed they sat in companionable silence, waiting on the ents who still stood in the river, swaying slightly and sometimes stretching their arms, until Sam remembered a question that had puzzled him and gave the twins a calculating look.
“So, if I drop the misters will you two give a straight question a straight answer?”
They looked at one another. “If you drop them permanently, Sam, we will answer two.”
“If we can, and may.”
“Right then. I’ll ask one now, and this ain’t it. Book I read said you were born in 130, Third Age, and your sister in 241. Is that right?”
Both nodded.
“So you’re eleventy-one years older than her.”
“To the day. Adar has never told us why he or Nana planned it so.”
“Our belief is that he wanted only one birthday to be bothered with.”
Sam waved this away, taking a breath, though others smiled. “Here’s the question, then, Elladan and Elrohir. Is it the same eleventy-one as Mr Bilbo was when he gave up the Ring and left for Rivendell? There’s been a lot of talk about echoes and suchlike, but not that one, so I’ve wondered.”
They had grinned at their bare names but now frowned, as did Glorfindel, each searching memory for other like intervals. Their discussion rapidly lapsed into Sindarin, drawing in Legolas, then Quenya, and the hobbits pulled away, forming their own circle with Tom Bombadil and Gimli, and fetching food and ale from their saddlebags as talk ranged freely, circling what they had witnessed. The Master spoke of his introduction to the Old Forest by his father Rorimac, and Merry and Pippin of first entering Fangorn Forest, making Gimli nod.
“Aye, I felt that too, when the elf took me in there. I’d left my axe with Arod at the eaves, and bowed deeply to the trees before I went in, but I knew I was there on sufferance, for his sake.” His hands stroked his beard. “I wouldn’t call it fear, not as I felt entering the darkness under the Dwimorberg, but an oppression, a pressure of being watched. It made my back itch, as stone never does unless it is so weak it may fall at any moment. And I felt it again yesterday and today, until it was gone in an eyeblink.”
“I think that’s how we felt in Moria.” Merry glanced at Pippin and Sam, who both nodded. “We’re used to smials and earth, but not stone. And in Fangorn at least there was sunlight. You ought to get some in to Aglarond, somehow, you know. It was beautiful in the torchlight, but it would be even better by sunlight.”
Gimli nodded again. “So I have thought. Moria had shafts bringing true light even to the deepest halls, and so shall Aglarond, though it will be no easy delving.”
“Will Moria be inhabited again?”
Gimli shook his head. “I do not think so. We are too few, and there must still be many orcs and trolls. But knowing Durin’s Bane is no more, thought is being given to an expedition to recover what we can from the deeps. Some mithril was found at Dol Guldur, and more at Orthanc - enough for the new gates of Minas Tirith but little more, and what Sauron stole must for the most part have been swallowed with Barad-dûr.” He looked at Sam and Rose with a smile. “Your rings came from a single ingot in the treasury of the Stewards.”
Explanations of mithril and its uses to Saradoc and Merimac were interrupted by the ents, who climbed out of the river, shaking water from long fingers and striding across. All the hobbits offered thanks but Whiteleaf held up a great hand.
“You are fair-spoken people, and that is good, but we act for our own reasons. Nor is our work finished. That one will drink many drafts yet ere I am done with him, and they will need to be renewed from time to time. Some of us at least will stay and see to it.”
That was cheering news to digest, but after a moment Sam frowned. “Will he heal, in his sleep?”
“Hoom! That is more than I can say. That one is deep in shadow. But he will no longer be able to brood on his malice, and free of it the forest will begin to heal.”
Quickbeam swayed. “The huorns will calm, and be able to think more clearly and for themselves again. Those that desire the dark of the deep wood and have been forced thence against their will can return, and those that desire otherwise may express it freely. It will take some time, and I would counsel you not to venture far from the tunnel-mouth for the next moon at least. If there is aught you need that lies deeper, sound the horn of which you told me, Merry, and one of us will come.” His green-flecked gaze rested on Sam. “Whether any will wish to leave the forest for the Shire we cannot yet say, Samwise. Those that had thought so may still think it, but I have yet to describe to them the places they might sink new roots, while they have no experience of the forest without that one’s webs of malice. And though you were right to think the gift of Lothlórien attracted them, they understand it is precious and agree saplings have first claim. Will there be enough to spare them a little?”
Sam nodded and caught himself just in time. “M- Elladan and Elrohir were good enough to bring a bit more, just for that.” He glanced up at the smiling twins. “Did the Lady see that it would be needed?”
“We do not know. She rarely speaks of what she may see in her mirror.”
“Yet we deem it likely. And she is deeply attuned to trees.”
Quickbeard swayed again. “It may be her gift will fulfil itself, for there are some, I deem, whose longing will bring them forth.”
The ents spoke among themselves for some minutes before Quickbeam turned back to Sam.
“Come to the Brandywine Bridge again at the full moon after next, and we will bring those who have decided.”
Then he and the other ents made their farewells and disappeared into the trees, Whiteleaf again bearing the bowl, and there was only a golden Thrimmidge noon, sunlight pouring down onto the lazy windings of the river and harmless groves of willows, and a faint, clean breeze stirring the trailing branches and the leaves of the taller trees beyond. Sam saw that Glorfindel was breathing deeply, smiling.
“Almost I might believe myself again in Nan-tasarion, ere the shadow fell on it.” He sighed. “Almost. The years lie long between. Yet again today periain have brought about a lifting of darkness, and you especially, Perhael. Cormacolindo is no more than fact, and Elvellon a title shared. Harthad Uluithiad, Mithrandir named you, Hope Unquenchable, and I will add Leithor i-Guruthos, Raiser of Shadow, here as elsewhere.”
Sam was far too surprised to say anything as Glorfindel walked away, singing, but Merry clapped him on the back.
“He has that right.”
Elladan and Elrohir smiled. “He does. But come now, your ponies grow restless. He will rejoin us in the evening. And as we go, Samwise of many names, we and Legolas will tell you what little answer we have to your question.”
* * * * *
In the event the coming of the huorns was almost an anti-climax, for they would travel only by night, and even then, as Merry and Pippin had seen in Rohan, were wrapped in a gloom that defied the sharpest eyes. But during the short Afterlithe and Wedmath nights groves of trees reappeared one by one along the East Road, on the west bank of the Brandywine, and then through the worst affected parts of all four Farthings. It took each grove a few days to settle and the ents had help from wonderstruck hobbits bringing barrels and barrels of water while roots were sunk ; then each began to put forth new leaves, and in the case of fruiting trees to flower with late blossom.
“You may take what falls, and in season fruit may fall if you ask, but you must neither climb nor pick.”
Sam had given the ents the extra box of earth the Lady had sent, and made sure the warning was made known to all. Signs were placed on each side of every grove to inform travellers that these were huorns, glad to offer shade but living things to whom all respect should be shown and who would at need defend themselves. Truth to tell, he didn’t really think it necessary - the groves had nothing of the Old Forest’s gloom or menace, but they were very treeish places indeed, their shade deeper than the spread of bough and leaves quite accounted for, and soon given to rustles of welcome when anyone entered. With amused permission from the ents, Sam also gave each a name - Quickbeam’s Grove, Slowroot’s, Whiteleaf’s, commemorating the ents’ aid and asking for more entish names. Hobbits approved, liking the simplicity as well as the meanings, but in more than one place it was common just to call the nearest one Sam’s Grove, and that was their general name everywhere.
In Hobbiton the thick stand of chestnuts that had stood just upstream from the mill, running along the road to the Old (or now New) Grange, whose loss had affected Sam more than any save the Party Tree, reappeared. When he woke to see them he all but ran out of the door in his nightshirt, and as he found Quickbeam and Silverbole sluicing them with barrels dipped from the Water, and promptly joined them with his biggest watering-cans, it was a long time before he got breakfast. When at last the ents were satisfied their charges were comfortable for the time being Quickbeam produced the box, depleted but not yet empty, and Sam dug a grain into the damp earth by each one, feeling the shiver of pleasure in the trees and a sense of gratitude. Afterwards the ents went to stand by the mallorn, and once he’d grabbed some food Sam went down to them with Rose.
“I can’t rightly say what this means to me, Mr Quickbeam. I was born here, and I played under those trees we lost as a faunt. First time Rosie and me ever kissed was there too.” They both blushed but only a little. “But we didn’t think our children would ever have the chance.”
Quickbeam laughed. “Ah, Samwise, it is well. Very well. Some of these were among those who first heard you and knew the truth of your words, and they are glad to be here. You will have many chestnuts in autumn. What will you call this grove?”
Sam thought for a moment. “Something different, I reckon. Eryn Edlothiad.”
Both ents laughed. “Flowering, certainly, but hardly a wood, Samwise.”
“It was to me as a faunt, and it will be to others.”
“Then that is well too.”
And it was, though as Rose predicted, shaking her head, the local hobbitry looked hard at the sign saying Eryn Edlothiad, asked what it meant, and without further ado took to calling it Sam’s Wood. Almost the only person who didn’t besides Sam and an amused Frodo was Hugo Bracegirdle, so enchanted to meet elves at Sam’s and Rose’s wedding that he was trying to teach himself Sindarin, and moved to tears by the groves that settled themselves along the Oatbarton road and round Hardbottle.
It was all a great wonder, and the hobbits knew it, but the whole of 1420 was a wonder, a golden summer and autumn floating in verdure and plenty after a silver spring, with more food grown (and eaten), more merriment, more weddings, and from Wedmath more births than anyone could remember. It was mostly relief from the year of Troubles with the great stir of events that had followed, but even the hardest-headed hobbit had to admit elven magic was also at work and, as Sam insisted, Lady Yavanna’s blessing also. Privately he rather thought the unexpectedly fair-haired newborns who began to accumulate as the year wore on suggested Galadriel’s influence, and a wondering Gildor, who visited Bag End again to deliver some books and papers to Frodo, agreed it was probable and the ways of the Vanyar often strange ; though as Frodo pointed out, so far as he knew no-one in Arda had any idea what colour Lady Yavanna’s hair might be, and it didn’t do to presume.
Marigold and Tom Cotton made their vows under the mallorn at the end of Wedmath, and if the guest-list was rather smaller than for Sam and Rose, the tables were even more laden and the laughter freer. Quickbeam, on his way back from the North Farthing, had been entreated to attend, and gave the couple a long and rumbling blessing in entish as well as brewing a draft that he laughingly assured them would not make them grow like Merry and Pippin but would bring health and strength to endure wind and weather. He was also fascinated and amused to see hobbits dancing, saying that even for so hasty an ent as he such intricate movement was bewildering, but the hobbits laughed, insisted slow and stately dances were possible too, and had the musicians play one to show him. And long after the festivities had ended and everyone else was abed, the Travellers with Rose beside Sam sat on the bench outside the front door of Bag End watching him gently and joyfully step and sway around the mallorn, every now and again holding out long-fingered hands to stroke its starlit green and gold.
Sam was glad, for it meant Rose could get to know Legolas and Gimli better, without pre-wedding nerves or wedding crowds. With six of the Fellowship present all their memories were stirred, including things they avoided speaking of, but there was much happier and easier stuff that gave her a sense of how the experience of travelling together to places new to all of them, if not to Gandalf and Aragorn, as well as mutual reliance in danger, had forged unbreakable bonds and simple pleasure in one another’s companionship. There were also Gimli’s and Legolas’s experiences in searching Orthanc, with the discovery of the Elendilmir, its nature and history, and an interesting digression from Gimli about hidden doors, as well as copies of the correspondence Aragorn had found, which if full of unhappy revelations about Saruman’s long battening on the Shire interested them all.
In some ways Sam felt quite uneasy just sitting and talking, with so much to be done, but to be married at last to Rose was a wonder and an ease that held him still, and the Bag End gardens were right there when he had to be about something useful. Glorfindel spent long hours wandering the central Shire, and Elladan and Elrohir had become deeply intrigued both by the mallorn, which they said was already growing into quite a different tree than its parent in Lothlórien, and by the brick on which Gandalf had destroyed Saruman’s ring, set by Sam into a small pillar to mark the place, but all three sometimes joined the talk. And all were happy to help when Merry and Pippin conceived the idea of making a small memorial garden to Boromir. Sam chose the spot where the spring bubbled out, low on the north side of The Hill, and they fashioned it as a miniature valley with the rill burbling through sloped banks studded with plants the elves assured them grew in Anorien as well as Arnor. When it was done Merry and Pippin were delighted, but Sam had mixed emotions and an idea coiling in his mind, and the next morning, when he woke well before dawn, he eased out of bed without disturbing Rose.
He hadn’t been working long when the elves came to see what he was about, silently observing for a few moments before joining him. It took a swift trip to Bywater Pool on Asfaloth to collect the final touch, but by the time Frodo and the others were sufficiently awake and breakfasted to wander out into the sunshine and come to see, the rill fell from Boromir’s valley into a small, shaded pool surrounded by ferns in which little fish circled, nibbling at pondweed, and the water-lilies Tom Bombadil and Goldberry had brought floated. When Sam saw Frodo looking down on them with a puzzled expression he stood nervously from where he’d been rooting another fern.
“It’s for Stinker rather than Slinker, Mr Frodo. For what was lost, not what he came to. He’d just eat the fish, of course, but I reckon he’d be pleased to see the pool.” There was what seemed to Sam a long pause, while doubts sprouted in his head. “I hope you don’t mind, Mr Frodo, but it seemed right.”
“Mind? Anything but, Sam.”
But there were tears in Frodo’s eyes that gathered into a storm of weeping. The elves and Gimli were taken aback but Sam, Merry, and Pippin, and after a second’s hesitation Rose, just gathered him into a hobbit hug and rode it out with murmurs. When the fit passed and Frodo had been eased to a sitting position, supported by Pippin, Merry went to make athelas tea and Frodo looked up at Glorfindel, speaking Sindarin.
“You have seen the pattern that has me as the echo of Sauron and Gollum as that of Isildur?”
Glorfindel nodded gravely. “I have, Iorhael. Mithrandir, Elrond, and I were all struck by it.”
“And do you think Gollum a rebuke to Isildur?”
“More often than not. Yet I cannot in my heart blame Isildur. He was deeply griefstricken, and you of all beings know the Ring’s power.”
“Oh yes.” Frodo’s expression was unreadable. “But say rather that Isildur was a compliment to Gollum, as Elrond to Perhael.”
Glorfindel stared before giving a wide smile. “Wisdom enough to daunt the sages of the Noldor.” His face stilled. “But tell me how you think of your own echo?”
Frodo’s face was equally still but for once he held out his injured hand, spreading the remaining fingers. “I am rebuked in my foolish pride and left almost as diminished in my nature. So the echo is true, as my maiming attests.” He tucked the hand away again. “But I try to rejoice in what little light I can see and he hates both light and the darkness into which what remains of him is driven.”
“You sense him?”
“Only in dreams, craving it still as he does, gnawing himself and cursing Ilúvatar’s design.” Frodo’s voice was a whisper. “And behind his darkness, from beyond the Gates of Night, ever the echo of Morgoth.”
“Then you sense further than I, Iorhael Cormacolindo. But I have known the light of the Trees and the light of Aman, as well as the single light that burns in the Halls of Mandos, and I say to you that on Tol Eressëa even your dreams would be free of shadow, as of needless guilt.” Glorfindel switched to Westron. “For whatever the truth of your thought about compliments, do you not see how great a rebuke Frodo Baggins is to him? You and Bilbo and Samwise, and even Sméagol?”
“I see. I just don’t feel.” Frodo frowned. “How do you count poor Sméagol a rebuke to him?”
“Have you never tallied the löar of the Ring? Sauron held it a little more than eighteen hundred years, destroying Eregion and Númenor. Isildur held it less than two, Anduin for perhaps two-and-a-half-thousand. So far as Mithrandir could learn, the first finder held it but a moment, and Sméagol perhaps five hundred years, but though he used it for evil his deeds were slight by Sauron’s measure and many against orcs, turning evil against evil. In carrying it under Hithaeglir Sméagol also kept it from recovery as Sauron grew powerful again. Bilbo held it for sixty years, all but harmlessly. Last, you held it for eighteen years, and Sam for two days, neither using it for any evil though it was full awake and ever more powerful as it neared the place of its making. And with the aid of Sam and Sméagol you bore it to its destruction.” Glorfindel smiled again. “For nearly five thousand years it was the bane and great fear of the Wise, and Sauron rejoiced that it was so. Then hobbits find it, prevent its use for evil, and once it comes to you in little more than an eyeblink it is gone for ever. How chagrined he must be!”
“Chagrined?” Frodo shrugged slightly. “In the moment I wore it I knew only the force of his gaze and his rage that another claimed what was his. Then I was struggling with Sméagol.” He frowned. “I don’t think he had any ordinary feelings left.”
“Oh yes he did, Frodo.” Pippin was pale but definite. “I felt them through the Palantír. Puzzlement at what I was and an awful gloating satisfaction when he learned I was a hobbit.”
“More fool him, then.” Sam shook his head. “I don’t rightly know what to think about all these echoes and rebukes, but I do see as he didn’t take no account of hobbits, not when he made it, and it showed. I know it didn’t have much time to work on me, Mr Frodo, not like it did on you, but I know it didn’t understand me. Couldn’t think hobbit-sized at all.”
Frodo’s smile was ghostly, but it was a smile. “That’s true enough, Sam. It always wanted more of me than there ever was.”
“I know. But the thing is, Mr Frodo, despite everything, it just didn’t work, not like he meant it to. It hurt you something cruel, and wore you down to next to nothing, but it couldn’t rule you.”
Frodo dropped his gaze. “It did at the end, Sam. And once, even less forgiveably, at Cirith Ungol.”
“No, it didn’t.” Sam spoke flatly and Frodo looked up again. “In that tower you were ill and injured, and you thought it was gone. And at the end it just tried to save itself, pulling at everything.” Sam shivered despite the warmth of the day and Rosie took his hand, gripping fiercely. “I felt it right enough, and poor old Stinker ran right over me to get to it. It was stronger than you for a moment, stronger than anyone in its fear, but it didn’t ever rule you, nor me, nor Mr Bilbo. Not with a witch-knife in you, not with nine Nazgûl shouting at you, and not at the end neither.”
But he could see Frodo did not, perhaps could not, accept it, and sighed. Baggins stubbornness remained, whatever else was gone.
“Are you still thinking Stinker’s on your conscience as well?”
Frodo nodded tiredly. “He is, Sam. But this place lightens the load.”
“Why does Sméagol burden you, Frodo?” Glorfindel was frowning. “His path was set long before you were born.”
“He saved me, and everything, but I couldn’t save him.” His voice dropped. “And I cursed him to his fate.”
“No you didn’t.” Sam shook his head. “You told him in a voice that wasn’t your own that if he touched you again he’d be cast into the fire himself. And he did touch you, but he wasn’t cast, or not by you. He fell.”
Glorfindel sighed. “Even to prophesy is not to make happen, Iorhael. A debt of gratitude I can see, and regret for Sméagol’s fate, to which Sam gives living form and grace, honouring what he once was and might have been. But no burden of conscience for you.”
“For whom if not for me?”
“For Eru alone, for this was his design to achieve what Gil-galad and Elendil could not. Sméagol’s strength and endurance were used, even as yours and Sam’s were. And if he did not pass directly to Eru, I think Mandos will have received him gently.”
This time Frodo’s smile was stronger and he clasped Glorfindel’s hand. “Oh I hope so.”
Merry returned with the tea, and Frodo seemed eased, but soon said he thought he’d lie down for a bit and try to sleep. He refused company and went back to the smial, and the others moved away from the memorial garden to the dappled shade under an apple-tree.
“What did I miss?”
“Plenty, Merry, but I’ll tell you later.” Pippin’s gaze went to Sam. “Though you’ll have to ask Sam about the bit in Sindarin. Something about Isildur and Gollum, though putting those two together just makes my head hurt. And what was that stuff about the tower, Sam?”
Sam shrugged uncomfortably. “When I found him he was still feverish from the bite, as well as all bruised and beaten, and he thought the orcs had found it. Then when I told him I had it he got upset and said something as he shouldn’t, but he wasn’t himself and I knew it, so I paid it no never mind.”
“Huh. Poor you. And poor Frodo. When you say at the end you mean in the Sammath Naur? When he put it on and claimed it?”
“Yes. But he couldn’t no more have resisted it then than I could stop a tree falling on me, or one of us that balrog. He don’t see it like that, though, stubborn Baggins as he is. Thinks he should of saved the world all alone and been home in time for tea. But that’s it talking too, not hobbit sense.”
Elladan laughed softly. “You have the right of it, I think, Sam. So our Adar thinks, anyway. He believes Frodo’s will and conscience were both expanded by the Ring’s unceasing pull, and that he actually used the Ring’s own power to fuel his determination to destroy it.”
“But he is left with both ravaged, yet overgrown, claiming guilt where there is neither responsibility nor need.”
Sam nodded gloomily. “That sounds about right. It kept on getting bigger and heavier, and leaving less and less of him. And he knew it had been working on us all, or trying to. He’s never said anything about it but I think Mr Boromir tried to take it from him, to use, like he wanted at Mr Elrond’s council, and that’s why he ran when he did.”
“Is that what happened?” Legolas sat up. “Aragorn would never say what Boromir had told him ere he died. But I had wondered - certainly the Ring reached out to assail us all.”
Gimli growled agreement. “That it did, filth that it was. As if I’d wish to displace Durin.”
Sam found himself grinning, however blackly. “Told me I could make all Mordor a garden and be Head Gardener. I said it couldn’t think hobbit-size, nor dwarf-size neither seemingly.”
Merry frowned. “I can’t say I felt much.”
“Nor me.” Pippin shrugged. “But maybe Sam’s right and it just bounced off hobbits except Frodo, because he was carrying it.”
“But why didn’t it work on hobbits?” Rose was still holding Sam’s hand tightly. “There’s so much I don’t understand, except to know it was awful, but that’s a puzzle to me.”
“When Sauron made it, Rose, either hobbits had not yet woken under the sun, or were keeping themselves to themselves, so he knew nothing of them and could give them no thought in its making.” Glorfindel’s eyes had stars somewhere deep in them. “The Nine worked best for him, though his victims among Men could not hold their kingdoms, save Angmar. The Seven he had to seek out, painfully, to wrest from the Children of Aulë. The Three he never sullied, though resisting the One sapped their power. Hobbits were beyond him, for you are the children of Lady Yavanna, but he was of Aulë and Morgoth. The love of growing things was ever a mystery to him.”
“No Ring for the Hobbit Thain, in his field of green, And the One Ring could not rule all while they were yet unseen.” Sam grinned again, more lightly, at their startled looks. “I thought of that one in Mordor, trying to keep going across Gorgoroth. I had some other verses too - he didn’t make no rings for rabbits or frogs or taters, and none of them took a blind bit of notice of anything he did or said.”
Merry and Pippin spluttered, but all the elves and Gimli gave full-throated laughs, and so did Rosie.
“Rings for taters, Sam? That’s a good one.”
Elladan and Elrohir looked at one another before looking at Sam and Rose. “Indeed it is, and a marvellous game. There are so many more things for which he had never a thought, and all shall have their verse.”
“We shall rival even Halladan’s recitals of ancestry.”
Amid laughter and suggested couplets the mood eased, conversation drifting to happier things. Frodo rejoined them after lunch, apologising for his earlier gloom, and in the afternoon they walked to the Cottons’ before going to the Green Dragon for a memorable evening of song. But as the moon waxed and the time neared to leave for the Brandywine Bridge Frodo decided he should be back at work in the Town Hole.
“There’s a lot that still needs doing before I can hand it all back to Will at the Midsummer Fair. And I’ve no strength to ride so far, nor desire to see that willow again. You can tell me anything I need to know, and give my regards to Quickbeam and the others.”
He wouldn’t be budged, and on Sam’s advice no-one tried too hard. But the night before they were due to leave Sam found himself turning to face Rose as they lay in bed.
“Do you want to come with us, love?”
“Me? To the Old Forest and all?"
“Yes, you. It won’t be nice, I don’t suppose, but it should be safe enough, else I wouldn’t be going. You’ve had to put up with a lot of talk about odd things and I wondered if seeing one would help.”
“I don’t know, Sam. I’ve seen some odd things already and there’s a lot to do.”
“So there is, but it can wait a week, and this will only happen once.”
It took some more persuading but Rose wanted to understand as well as she could the wider world that had so affected Sam, so there were nine of them on the road early next morning. Rose’s new mare, Blossom, was as easy-gaited as she was well-mannered, and with food to eat on the move and only a brief stop at Frogmorton for lunch they made it to the Bridge Inn as the sun was setting. Master Saradoc and Mr Merimac were waiting and joined them for a very welcome supper. If they were surprised to see Rose they didn’t say so, and Sam saw with pleasure that she was much more at ease than she had been when she had first found herself meeting gentry.
She was more nervous next morning, leaving the Shire for the first time, but there was nothing to alarm on road or grasslands until they came to the forest eaves. Glorfindel was interested, saying the malice was already sapped, but the hobbits could all feel it still, though mixed with other things - a brooding suspense and excitement flickering within it, as well as creaks and groans as if the trees were jostling to see them pass. It grew steadily stronger as they went south, leaving everyone but elves uneasy and drawing dark glances from Gimli, and they were glad to reach Tom Bombadil’s house - quite visible but with no sign of its master until they heard him singing in the distance and he came stamping and smiling up the path that followed the Withywindle.
“Be welcome friends, though naught’s prepared, for we have all been working, and Goldberry yet helps the ents so you must bide my cooking.”
The hobbits didn’t think the threat was very serious but they were glad to help in the kitchen, while Gimli and the elves laid the table, and soon all sat to a simple but satisfying feast.
“The threat from the trees seems much worse on this side than by the Hay, Mr Bombadil.” Master Saradoc spoke as eating ebbed. “I don’t know how you stand it.”
“Old Tom fears no willowman, though he is mighty angry. You feel it as you near his bole, and will feel it more tomorrow, but nothing ill can pass my door so heed no nightly noises.”
He woke them at dawn, and over a hasty breakfast Legolas told them the other elves had gone ahead and teased Gimli about not leaving him to face a forest alone. But as they rode down the Withy path and entered the trees even he became silent, and for the others the sense of pressure and anger became almost tangible. Had it not been for Tom trotting ahead of them, waving his arms and singing in snatches, they would have turned back, and Sam rode close beside Rose when the path allowed. As the river widened and slowed its colour darkened and it seemed higher than the hobbits remembered, lapping at the path, and Tom fell silent though he seemed as unperturbed as ever. Rounding a bend they came to the first grove of willows, and pressure became still more intense. Asfaloth and the other elven horses were grazing in a mead, and they dismounted, unsaddling the ponies.
All was still but it was the stillness of great strain, not ease, and Sam held Rose’s hand tightly as Tom led them on. Much of their way, travelled only once in the other direction and in no state to observe anything, had seemed new, but when they came to it he recognised the stretch where he’d found the strayed ponies. Yet after another bend or two they came out into a space he didn’t remember at all. Glorfindel, Elladan, and Elrohir stood together and as they came up beside them Sam could see Old Man Willow now stood isolated. Six ents, including Quickbeam, surrounded him, and Longbranch with another that Merry whispered was Slowroot stood in the river itself - or where the river should have been, for against all nature the waters curved away from the bank there, rising on the further side so high that the narrow mead beyond was flooded. But the ground all around Old Man Willow was bone dry, flowers withered and the grass sere ; drooping leaves were lank and discoloured, moss on the cracked bole browned, and roots projecting from the bank shrivelled and cracked. Unassuageable malice thickened the air and Rosie was not the only one to gasp. Glorfindel looked down.
“Fear not. They have him fast.”
“I’d forgotten he was so big.” Sam shook his head. “If I’d remembered I’d have thought he couldn’t be no ent.”
“Your instinct was sound, Samwise, though it is true waking onodrim are rarely of this stature. But this one traded mobility for size and strength, growing fat on his prey, and cannot now flee the judgement of his peers.”
Sam knelt to feel the dusty earth. “They’re starving him of water?”
“Indeed. It weakens and keeps him still, nor could he otherwise be forced to drink the draft Whiteleaf is preparing. It will be ready quite soon now, I believe.”
Rosie was staring. “How can the river do that?”
“It must be Missus Goldberry, Rosie, though I’ve never seen nothing like it.”
Tom smiled. “Not for nothing is Tom’s love the Withy-woman’s daughter.”
“Those of Lord Ulmo command water as those of Lord Aulë command fire. But I have not seen such as this before either, in all my years.” A sudden grin lit Glorfindel’s face. “And I owe you thanks, Perhael, for that is not a thing I can often say, yet here is more than one new sight. Truly the Periannath have become an astonishment to Arda.”
Sam didn’t know what to say to that and was saved the trouble as an ent’s Hoom! sounded from somewhere and the four on the riverbank began a low rumbling sound, deeper than their usual voices, thrumming in the stomach as much as the ears. Tremors ran through the great tree and dry leaves rattled but for long minutes nothing seemed to happen ; then gradually earth began to move, dust rising as it piled into a ring and a hollow developed, deepening to expose a great tangle of roots that flinched and quivered as sunlight reached them. Gradually the noise died away and moments later Whiteleaf came into view, walking with slow care, carrying a great clay bowl. As he stood above the roots and began to trickle out its contents all the ents began to chant in their tongue, not with the overlapping rise and fall of conversation at the entmoot but in concerted command, a long phrase repeated over and over.
Old Man Willow shook again, leaves falling as cracks appeared in the great bole, and the air seemed to surge, but the chant was relentless, vivid with power, and Whiteleaf increased the flow. The draft looked like ordinary water, but the smell that rose had more than parched earth and rain in it, and as the clay bowl was emptied Sam could feel something stretching and stretching until with the last drops there was a single humming moment when all the Forest held its breath. And then, almost audibly, it snapped, ent voices dropped at once to a murmur and then silence, and the sense of malice faded swiftly away, dwindling into nothing. A great sigh ran through the trees and suddenly the sunlight seemed brighter and the air fresher, and they were all smiling, elves and hobbits and dwarf and whatever Tom Bombadil was. Sam breathed deeply and looked at Rosie before raising his voice in the hymn to Yavanna ; he had taught it to her and she joined him with the elves and Merry and Pippin. As the last note faded Whiteleaf came across to them, and after Tom had reached up to take the bowl from him and set it carefully down he looked at the hobbits.
“That was well sung. Hoom! So it is done, and with that one’s malice sleeping at last a great wrong can begin to mend. Let us but wash and drink ourselves, and we shall speak of what may happen now.”
The other ents were stretching out hands and fingers, and turning their heads as if to remove stiffness as Whiteleaf went back to join them, and he with the four on the bank climbed down into the river-bed. Water flowed back from its unnatural wall to lap their feet and then rise to their knees and waists, and for a moment Sam thought he saw faces shimmering in the water before the river flowed again as it should, slow and brown, the flooded mead on the opposite bank draining to reveal flattened grasses that began to steam as sunlight found them. Merimac was the first to shake himself, embracing the Master and then Merry and Pippin, before they all came to Sam and Master Saradoc offered a hand.
“Samwise. What an astonishing thing. Buckland owes you another debt beyond counting.”
Sam had taken his hand but almost dropped it as he flushed. “There’s no debt, Mas-”
“Oh yes there is. And don’t you Master or sir me again, please. Sara’s what friends call me.” He grinned. “Merry tells me you can be trained out of it with some effort, so I’m glad to start.”
“And Mac, by the same token.”
Elladan and Elrohir laughed. “We wish you luck with that.”
“And if you succeed, ask that you teach us and Halladan the way.”
“If it works for any who are not hobbits. Only Estel has avoided being mistered.”
“And that by being Strider.”
Sam thought about glaring but Rosie was dimpling at him so he drew on his dignity. “Strider don’t need it. And Mr Glorfindel’s right - you two can seem like tweens for all you’re pushing three thousand.”
They only laughed, and Glorfindel and Legolas grinned. Then everyone was laughing, even Sam, and Tom Bombadil was capering and throwing his hat up for the pleasure of catching it. The air was a thrill to breathe and the sheer sense of rightness a delightful, bursting roil in Sam’s chest. When the fit passed they sat in companionable silence, waiting on the ents who still stood in the river, swaying slightly and sometimes stretching their arms, until Sam remembered a question that had puzzled him and gave the twins a calculating look.
“So, if I drop the misters will you two give a straight question a straight answer?”
They looked at one another. “If you drop them permanently, Sam, we will answer two.”
“If we can, and may.”
“Right then. I’ll ask one now, and this ain’t it. Book I read said you were born in 130, Third Age, and your sister in 241. Is that right?”
Both nodded.
“So you’re eleventy-one years older than her.”
“To the day. Adar has never told us why he or Nana planned it so.”
“Our belief is that he wanted only one birthday to be bothered with.”
Sam waved this away, taking a breath, though others smiled. “Here’s the question, then, Elladan and Elrohir. Is it the same eleventy-one as Mr Bilbo was when he gave up the Ring and left for Rivendell? There’s been a lot of talk about echoes and suchlike, but not that one, so I’ve wondered.”
They had grinned at their bare names but now frowned, as did Glorfindel, each searching memory for other like intervals. Their discussion rapidly lapsed into Sindarin, drawing in Legolas, then Quenya, and the hobbits pulled away, forming their own circle with Tom Bombadil and Gimli, and fetching food and ale from their saddlebags as talk ranged freely, circling what they had witnessed. The Master spoke of his introduction to the Old Forest by his father Rorimac, and Merry and Pippin of first entering Fangorn Forest, making Gimli nod.
“Aye, I felt that too, when the elf took me in there. I’d left my axe with Arod at the eaves, and bowed deeply to the trees before I went in, but I knew I was there on sufferance, for his sake.” His hands stroked his beard. “I wouldn’t call it fear, not as I felt entering the darkness under the Dwimorberg, but an oppression, a pressure of being watched. It made my back itch, as stone never does unless it is so weak it may fall at any moment. And I felt it again yesterday and today, until it was gone in an eyeblink.”
“I think that’s how we felt in Moria.” Merry glanced at Pippin and Sam, who both nodded. “We’re used to smials and earth, but not stone. And in Fangorn at least there was sunlight. You ought to get some in to Aglarond, somehow, you know. It was beautiful in the torchlight, but it would be even better by sunlight.”
Gimli nodded again. “So I have thought. Moria had shafts bringing true light even to the deepest halls, and so shall Aglarond, though it will be no easy delving.”
“Will Moria be inhabited again?”
Gimli shook his head. “I do not think so. We are too few, and there must still be many orcs and trolls. But knowing Durin’s Bane is no more, thought is being given to an expedition to recover what we can from the deeps. Some mithril was found at Dol Guldur, and more at Orthanc - enough for the new gates of Minas Tirith but little more, and what Sauron stole must for the most part have been swallowed with Barad-dûr.” He looked at Sam and Rose with a smile. “Your rings came from a single ingot in the treasury of the Stewards.”
Explanations of mithril and its uses to Saradoc and Merimac were interrupted by the ents, who climbed out of the river, shaking water from long fingers and striding across. All the hobbits offered thanks but Whiteleaf held up a great hand.
“You are fair-spoken people, and that is good, but we act for our own reasons. Nor is our work finished. That one will drink many drafts yet ere I am done with him, and they will need to be renewed from time to time. Some of us at least will stay and see to it.”
That was cheering news to digest, but after a moment Sam frowned. “Will he heal, in his sleep?”
“Hoom! That is more than I can say. That one is deep in shadow. But he will no longer be able to brood on his malice, and free of it the forest will begin to heal.”
Quickbeam swayed. “The huorns will calm, and be able to think more clearly and for themselves again. Those that desire the dark of the deep wood and have been forced thence against their will can return, and those that desire otherwise may express it freely. It will take some time, and I would counsel you not to venture far from the tunnel-mouth for the next moon at least. If there is aught you need that lies deeper, sound the horn of which you told me, Merry, and one of us will come.” His green-flecked gaze rested on Sam. “Whether any will wish to leave the forest for the Shire we cannot yet say, Samwise. Those that had thought so may still think it, but I have yet to describe to them the places they might sink new roots, while they have no experience of the forest without that one’s webs of malice. And though you were right to think the gift of Lothlórien attracted them, they understand it is precious and agree saplings have first claim. Will there be enough to spare them a little?”
Sam nodded and caught himself just in time. “M- Elladan and Elrohir were good enough to bring a bit more, just for that.” He glanced up at the smiling twins. “Did the Lady see that it would be needed?”
“We do not know. She rarely speaks of what she may see in her mirror.”
“Yet we deem it likely. And she is deeply attuned to trees.”
Quickbeard swayed again. “It may be her gift will fulfil itself, for there are some, I deem, whose longing will bring them forth.”
The ents spoke among themselves for some minutes before Quickbeam turned back to Sam.
“Come to the Brandywine Bridge again at the full moon after next, and we will bring those who have decided.”
Then he and the other ents made their farewells and disappeared into the trees, Whiteleaf again bearing the bowl, and there was only a golden Thrimmidge noon, sunlight pouring down onto the lazy windings of the river and harmless groves of willows, and a faint, clean breeze stirring the trailing branches and the leaves of the taller trees beyond. Sam saw that Glorfindel was breathing deeply, smiling.
“Almost I might believe myself again in Nan-tasarion, ere the shadow fell on it.” He sighed. “Almost. The years lie long between. Yet again today periain have brought about a lifting of darkness, and you especially, Perhael. Cormacolindo is no more than fact, and Elvellon a title shared. Harthad Uluithiad, Mithrandir named you, Hope Unquenchable, and I will add Leithor i-Guruthos, Raiser of Shadow, here as elsewhere.”
Sam was far too surprised to say anything as Glorfindel walked away, singing, but Merry clapped him on the back.
“He has that right.”
Elladan and Elrohir smiled. “He does. But come now, your ponies grow restless. He will rejoin us in the evening. And as we go, Samwise of many names, we and Legolas will tell you what little answer we have to your question.”
* * * * *
In the event the coming of the huorns was almost an anti-climax, for they would travel only by night, and even then, as Merry and Pippin had seen in Rohan, were wrapped in a gloom that defied the sharpest eyes. But during the short Afterlithe and Wedmath nights groves of trees reappeared one by one along the East Road, on the west bank of the Brandywine, and then through the worst affected parts of all four Farthings. It took each grove a few days to settle and the ents had help from wonderstruck hobbits bringing barrels and barrels of water while roots were sunk ; then each began to put forth new leaves, and in the case of fruiting trees to flower with late blossom.
“You may take what falls, and in season fruit may fall if you ask, but you must neither climb nor pick.”
Sam had given the ents the extra box of earth the Lady had sent, and made sure the warning was made known to all. Signs were placed on each side of every grove to inform travellers that these were huorns, glad to offer shade but living things to whom all respect should be shown and who would at need defend themselves. Truth to tell, he didn’t really think it necessary - the groves had nothing of the Old Forest’s gloom or menace, but they were very treeish places indeed, their shade deeper than the spread of bough and leaves quite accounted for, and soon given to rustles of welcome when anyone entered. With amused permission from the ents, Sam also gave each a name - Quickbeam’s Grove, Slowroot’s, Whiteleaf’s, commemorating the ents’ aid and asking for more entish names. Hobbits approved, liking the simplicity as well as the meanings, but in more than one place it was common just to call the nearest one Sam’s Grove, and that was their general name everywhere.
In Hobbiton the thick stand of chestnuts that had stood just upstream from the mill, running along the road to the Old (or now New) Grange, whose loss had affected Sam more than any save the Party Tree, reappeared. When he woke to see them he all but ran out of the door in his nightshirt, and as he found Quickbeam and Silverbole sluicing them with barrels dipped from the Water, and promptly joined them with his biggest watering-cans, it was a long time before he got breakfast. When at last the ents were satisfied their charges were comfortable for the time being Quickbeam produced the box, depleted but not yet empty, and Sam dug a grain into the damp earth by each one, feeling the shiver of pleasure in the trees and a sense of gratitude. Afterwards the ents went to stand by the mallorn, and once he’d grabbed some food Sam went down to them with Rose.
“I can’t rightly say what this means to me, Mr Quickbeam. I was born here, and I played under those trees we lost as a faunt. First time Rosie and me ever kissed was there too.” They both blushed but only a little. “But we didn’t think our children would ever have the chance.”
Quickbeam laughed. “Ah, Samwise, it is well. Very well. Some of these were among those who first heard you and knew the truth of your words, and they are glad to be here. You will have many chestnuts in autumn. What will you call this grove?”
Sam thought for a moment. “Something different, I reckon. Eryn Edlothiad.”
Both ents laughed. “Flowering, certainly, but hardly a wood, Samwise.”
“It was to me as a faunt, and it will be to others.”
“Then that is well too.”
And it was, though as Rose predicted, shaking her head, the local hobbitry looked hard at the sign saying Eryn Edlothiad, asked what it meant, and without further ado took to calling it Sam’s Wood. Almost the only person who didn’t besides Sam and an amused Frodo was Hugo Bracegirdle, so enchanted to meet elves at Sam’s and Rose’s wedding that he was trying to teach himself Sindarin, and moved to tears by the groves that settled themselves along the Oatbarton road and round Hardbottle.
It was all a great wonder, and the hobbits knew it, but the whole of 1420 was a wonder, a golden summer and autumn floating in verdure and plenty after a silver spring, with more food grown (and eaten), more merriment, more weddings, and from Wedmath more births than anyone could remember. It was mostly relief from the year of Troubles with the great stir of events that had followed, but even the hardest-headed hobbit had to admit elven magic was also at work and, as Sam insisted, Lady Yavanna’s blessing also. Privately he rather thought the unexpectedly fair-haired newborns who began to accumulate as the year wore on suggested Galadriel’s influence, and a wondering Gildor, who visited Bag End again to deliver some books and papers to Frodo, agreed it was probable and the ways of the Vanyar often strange ; though as Frodo pointed out, so far as he knew no-one in Arda had any idea what colour Lady Yavanna’s hair might be, and it didn’t do to presume.
Marigold and Tom Cotton made their vows under the mallorn at the end of Wedmath, and if the guest-list was rather smaller than for Sam and Rose, the tables were even more laden and the laughter freer. Quickbeam, on his way back from the North Farthing, had been entreated to attend, and gave the couple a long and rumbling blessing in entish as well as brewing a draft that he laughingly assured them would not make them grow like Merry and Pippin but would bring health and strength to endure wind and weather. He was also fascinated and amused to see hobbits dancing, saying that even for so hasty an ent as he such intricate movement was bewildering, but the hobbits laughed, insisted slow and stately dances were possible too, and had the musicians play one to show him. And long after the festivities had ended and everyone else was abed, the Travellers with Rose beside Sam sat on the bench outside the front door of Bag End watching him gently and joyfully step and sway around the mallorn, every now and again holding out long-fingered hands to stroke its starlit green and gold.