Chapter Text
1. The passage seemed to go on for miles, and always the chill air flowed over them, rising as they went on to a bitter wind.
It was a June morning in 1420 of the Shire Reckoning, and the sunlight, which had been growing steadily with each passing hour, now burst over the treetops and through Frodo’s small study window, illuminating the tiny room with a cheery yellow glow. The sight of it nearly blinded an incautious Sam as he entered, and it took him a while to make out Frodo’s form, bent over his notes on the surprisingly tidy desk.
“Working on your book again, Mr. Frodo?” he said. “What part have you gotten to?”
Frodo started slightly - he’d become a bit jumpy ever since their return home, Sam noted with a touch of sadness - and sat up. “I’ve been making good headway. Right now we’re nearly into Shelob’s tunnels.”
Sam rubbed his knee absently, remembering how exhausting that stage of their journey had been. “I can see it as clear as yesterday, that’s for sure.”
“Well, that’s good, because I can barely recall anything.” Frodo stretched and glanced down at his scribblings. “My sight grew darker the further we went, and that’s no good to put in a book.” He shook his head as if clearing out old cobwebs. “I suppose now’s as good a time as any to ask what you remember.”
Sam looked outside. There was still time before he had to cook luncheon. “All right then, sir, but you have to promise me you’ll eat all the food I give you for the rest of the day. Your shirt is so loose now it hardly stays put on your skin.”
“I promise,” Frodo sighed. He lifted his quill. “Start at the top of the Stairs, then. That’s where my notes leave off.”
Closing his eyes, Sam willed himself back atop the Mountains of Shadow, tired and filthy. The memories drifting uneasily in his mind rose to the surface. “We’d just climbed the Winding Stair, and we were resting a bit afore the last lap. It was, I think, in this little space, just between two big rocks.”
“Yes, and I’d caught sight of the Orc-tower on the pass. You got rather angry. ‘I don’t like the look of that!’ you said, and then you rattled on to Gollum for a while.”
“Sounds familiar,” Sam said, laughing. “Anyway, we were eating some of Faramir’s food and the Elven-bread, and - and I was thinking it was surely the last meal we would ever take afore getting into Mordor.” They both grew solemn at the portentous name, though its danger had long since passed. “We talked a bit, too. About adventures and the old stories and those things. And I said, ‘I wonder if we’ll ever be in a story, and if people will ever read our tale out loud by the fireside,’ or something like that. Much more roundabout, I don’t doubt. And it made you laugh, and we both felt merry there for a while.
“Somehow we ended up talking about old Gollum. He’d gone off while we were talking, and the both of us were wary. You thought he wouldn’t go off fetching Orcs after all the climb, but I wasn’t so sure. And, well, it seems now he went to have a chat with dear little Shelob. Making sure the job got done right, or some such.” Sam stopped. “That’s not quite right, though. I saw him pawing at you while you slept, or so I thought it at the time, and - and I gave him harsh words. He mightn’t have been trying to throttle you, at least not right then. Maybe he was thinking of before.”
“Before? You mean when he lived by the Anduin?”
“Just so, sir. He saw that part of him - Slinker, as I say - in you. And he might’ve even turned over that new leaf, if it weren’t for me calling him sneak and dratted villain, and trying to hurt him.”
“I don’t think it was all your fault,” Frodo objected, “but I think you’ve hit near the truth, such as it is.” He scratched down some notes and paused, quill hovering in the air. “Don’t stop there, Sam. What happened next?”
So Sam talked for the next hour, going straight through the noisome airs of the tunnel and the webs blowing in the wind and the great dark eyes of Shelob, sometimes plunging forward in a torrent of words, sometimes wavering as he struggled to pin down a storm of emotion into a single phrase. “I sang, er, a bit of Elvish, I reckon, though I can’t recall why or how, seeing as I don’t know a word of it. And the Lady’s glass got brighter and brighter, till it lit up all the cleft, and Shelob staggered back into her hole. Then I got to you.” He realized that his voice was getting softer and softer until it trailed off completely. Frodo set his quill down. “Thank you, Sam,” he said at long last. “I think that’ll do for now.”
Sam breathed in and felt himself coming back to Bag End. The birds were chirping outside, and he could see the clouds moving across the endless blue sky. “It’s about time I started on luncheon,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”