AUTHOR'S NOTES -

CHAPTER ONE: DEMONS AND DRAGONS

“Now he looked around the wreck of the room. It was going to be some time before he was waking Frodo in here again.”
There is no doubt that one part of Sam’s duties was to wake Frodo. From The Return of the King, The Tower of Cirith Ungol: “‘Come! Wake up, Mr. Frodo!’ he said, trying to sound as cheerful as he had when he drew back the curtains at Bag End on a summer’s morning.”

His mind wandered to a different waking, last midsummer's day...
‘Oh, yes. The wedding. Why didn’t you wake me earlier?’
The wedding here is, of course, Aragorn and Arwen’s. From The Return of the King, The Steward and the King: “And Aragorn the King Elessar married Arwen Undómiel in the City of the Kings upon the day of Midsummer...”

Frogmore island.
The name is an invention, but there is indeed a large island in the river (The Water) near Frogmorton. -ton is usually a contraction of town, and so I reasoned that Frogmore Island was near Frogmor(e) Town.

Bindbole Wood.
This is a real place on Tolkien’s map of the Shire, I have simply added a green lane from Underhill to the wood.

‘And then there’s Saruman’s parting words, poison and malice they were, if you ask me.’
When I first read the excellent essay by Karyn Milos, called “Too Deeply Hurt: Understanding Frodo's Decision to Depart” I found many of my own feelings about Frodo’s depression and post traumatic stress disorder were extremely well set out. I had not considered the role of Saruman’s words. To quote Karyn Milos: “On the surface, this seems to have been but a foretelling that was borne out by later events. However, a closer analysis strongly suggests that it was actually Saruman's last act of vengeance, an attempt to destroy Frodo by planting seeds of doubt that would grow and choke off what little hope Frodo yet clung to... Saruman's claim to be "merely foretelling" seems distinctly disingenuous: Far more likely is that he perceived Frodo's unspoken fears and griefs as a point of weakness and shaped his deception accordingly”


“‘Will you be by tomorrow, to help me move my bits of things in?’”
The Fellowship of the Ring, The Mirror of Galadriel: “‘They’ve dug up Bagshot Row, and there’s the poor old Gaffer going down the Hill with his bits of things on a barrow...’”

‘Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. It’s just... we nearly walked in on you... when you first...’ He wiped tears from his eyes. ‘It’s a good thing Gandalf had more sense than Merry and I.’
A reference to my story The Field of Cormallen.

They were in a large open space where the trees, mostly sweet chestnut, had been coppiced two or three years ago. New green shoots had grown from the stumps and were nearly as tall as the hobbits. Another ten years, and the coppicers would move in again and repeat the cycle. The opportunity, provided by the opening up to sunlight of the woodland floor, had been seized upon by seeds lying dormant amongst the leaf mould. Dried seed heads on dead, brown stems, spoke of a profusion of summer flowers: rosebay willowherb and knapweed, tansy and evening primrose. Dunnocks flitted between the seed heads, and a charm of goldfinches twittered and fluted over a clump of teasel.

Coppiced woodland.

Goldfinch on teasel seed head.

‘Penny for your thoughts, Sam,’ he said, quietly.
There are several references to pennies in The Fellowship of the Ring. In A Long Expected Party “When the old man, helped by Bilbo and some dwarves, had finished unloading, Bilbo gave a few pennies away...” and in A Knife in the Dark: “Bill Ferny’s price was twelve silver pennies; and that was indeed at least three times the pony’s value in those parts.”

I infer from this that the pennies given out by Bilbo (and by Pippin - All That I Had, Chapter 15) were likely to have been copper, not silver.

South Farm.
The Return of the King, The Scouring of the Shire: “‘I’ve an idea,’ said Sam. ‘Let’s go to old Tom Cotton’s down South Lane!’”

The names of farms in the England often lack any imagination, so North Farm, South Farm, Church Farm etc. are commonplace. Since the Cotton’s farm is down South Lane, I have given it the name “South Farm.”