Chapter Text
Epilogue - April 8. “And then Merry fainted clean away right there in my arms,” said Pippin, “and I had to get Gandalf to drag him up to the Houses of Healing!”
“It was not a faint,” objected Merry crossly. “I was merely tired. You were imagining it, as usual.”
“A likely story,” retorted Pippin. “And then I came to visit him later after Strider called him back, and the very first thing he did was complain about how hungry he was. Quite a fellow, this Meriadoc. Knight of the Mark, indeed!”
Merry patted his leather vambrace proudly. “But my stuff looks much nicer than Pippin’s gloomy black tunic, doesn’t it, Sam?”
“I haven’t got any armour of my own, so there’s not much as I can say, begging your pardon.”
The four hobbits were reclining in a small green clearing nestled within the forest, recounting their adventures. Sam was lying on a cool patch of grass by a knotted tree-root, very much like the one he had uncomfortably slept on back in the Woody End, when their journey was just beginning. He was still amazed that he was alive to see it reach its end.
“Here now, Mr. Frodo, what do you think?” he said finally, feeling that Merry and Pippin deserved an authoritative answer.
Frodo was on his back as well, with the white moonlight shining on his clean face. “They are both excellent,” he said, laughing. “For myself I am surprised that you can fit into those mail-shirts.”
“You’ve grown a fair bit,” said Sam. “A good three or four inches by my reckoning, though I can’t understand how that would be--seeing as you both have reached your coming of age, or are about to. Why, you must be taller than me and Mr. Frodo!”
He got up and stood back to back with Merry and Pippin, and then had Frodo do the same. Indeed, the younger hobbits towered over him and his master. “Four foot two, I’d say, and it don’t seem that you’re finished yet. If this goes on you two will be riding the Men's horses soon, and no mistake!”
“We’ll have old Bullroarer Took rolling in his grave in no time,” said Pippin, flopping back onto the sweet-smelling grass. He and Merry continued to argue over whose armour had the better look. Their bright voices receded into the mists, and Sam found himself gazing up at the great dome of the heavens and its raiment of glimmering stars. Clear they seemed now after all the weeks of shadow and doubt, and his heart swelled at the sight of them, twinkling like white jewels in the boughs of the trees.
He pointed upward. “Look, Mr. Frodo,” he said. “It’s the Star of Eärendil.” A single point of white light shone just above the branches, larger and brighter than any other. “D’you think he’s up there in his sky-ship with the Silmaril? Watching us here?”
“Perhaps he was watching us from the moment we left home,” replied Frodo, “but the clouds obscured his gaze. Yet he can see us now, and know that our trials are at an end.” Thinking for a moment, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the Phial of Galadriel. Its glow waxed in his hand until it shone as if it were a star itself. “And we, for our part, may see him as well.”
Merry lifted his hand to shield his eyes. “Goodness, Frodo, that glass of yours is blinding,” he said. “Did you ever get to use it?”
Frodo and Sam shared a glance. “Yes, we did,” replied Frodo wistfully, “and it was a help in many needs, just as the Lady said. Wasn’t it, Sam?”
“It certainly was, sir,” said Sam. “Scared off that monster spider quick enough, I daresay.”
Pippin gave him an alarmed look. “Did I hear monster spider? Was that right? Because I am very much hoping that was not right.”
Later Gandalf and Legolas and Gimli came to join them under the whispering boughs, and they shared more stories of all that had happened after that dreadful parting on the shores of the Anduin. But at last Frodo and Sam grew weary and were led back to their soft beds under the beech-trees, where they lay for a while as sleep crept ever nearer. The land was silent save for the rustling of the wind in the leaves. “Mr. Frodo?” said Sam quietly.
“What is it, Sam?”
“I can hardly believe we’re here, and Gandalf is here, and everyone else as well, and the War’s won. It seems like a dream that’s about to end, if you take my meaning.”
In the darkness he could see Frodo’s silhouette shifting under the covers. “I do, Sam, and sometimes I feel that way as well. But the Tale is finished, or nearly so, and it’s a happy-ending one after all.”
Sam thought back to the evil days they had spent wandering the Emyn Muil, cold and tired and alone. It seemed like it had been years ago. “I’m glad they’re here,” he said haltingly at last. “The Fellowship, I mean, or what’s left of it after poor Boromir. I can’t think how hard it must have been to wait and worry about us lying here all bloody and blistered for days on end.”
“Then don’t think of it,” said Frodo consolingly. “They are none the worse for it, and neither are we.” He yawned. “Good night, Sam.”
“Good night, Mr. Frodo,” Sam answered without thinking. His master’s breathing soon became slow and regular, but Sam still lay awake, absently rubbing a small scar on his cheek. The glad events of today were fresh in his mind - the feasts, the reunions, the endless bliss. Praise them with great praise, the men had cried, and Sam blushed even now thinking of it. He was a servant, a plain-spoken gardener of humble means, and nothing he had done, in his eyes, was praiseworthy. “But I’ll warrant we hobbits are more than any of those Big People were looking for,” he said to no one in particular, and even as the last words left his mouth, he sighed and fell asleep.
The days that followed were golden, and Spring and Summer joined and made revel together in the fields of Gondor. So it was written in the Red Book, and retold in later days when the Great Years were no more than a far-off memory.
But the Glittering Caves were celebrated in Rohan and Erebor and beyond in distant lands,
and the Wood-elves of Eryn Lasgalen sang of Ithilien and the glory of the White City,
and the Thain, the Mayor, and the Master of Buckland were remembered from Hardbottle to Pincup and in many places besides,
and all Middle-earth remembered the Ring-bearer's courage through years that lengthened even beyond count.
And though these thirteen days may have seemed but little beside the great deeds that came before them, they were woven all the same into the Tale of the Ring, and told by a thousand firesides.