AUTHOR'S NOTES -


CHAPTER 30: LETTERS AND LECTURES

Frodo’s Letter:

Oh, Sam, my dear Sam,

What can I write that will make this any better, any easier for you or for me? I must go, and you must stay, and only the prospect of your following me one day allows me to hold this pen with a hand steady enough to form these inadequate words. Yet you are not bound to following me when your time comes, and if you are unable to - for any reason - do not hold yourself in guilt. I know there are many chances that would mean you remain here, and none of them signify you do not love me.

And if you come, and I am not there to greet you? Will you believe that I have failed in my love for you? Or will you know that if love alone could have kept me drawing breath, then I would have been there at your coming, to welcome you with words of love and hold you to me with joy?

There, that is all I will say of the failure of my dream, for dream I have, my Sam. I dream that you and I will meet again upon a distant shore, and dwell for a time in a far green country. Even as I write these words, the hope I feel dries my tears, and my breath comes more easily.

I love you, Sam.

Maybe this is all I have to say. I know you know this. I write it so that you may hold a small token of my love within your hand.

I love you, Sam, and my thoughts wander as I try to capture what it is about you that stole my heart, and I the willing victim of the theft. Your devotion and care have been your gifts to me from almost the first moment we met. Before I knew of our love, you entered each of my days with as much of my notice as the rising sun: always welcome, but accepted as the rightful order of the world. I basked in the sweetness of your smile and never noticed you had left childhood behind. You stole my heart in tiny portions, each one unmissed, until you held me captive. Such a willing captive.

And still I have not found what it is about you, Samwise Gamgee, that makes me love you so, other than the fact that you are my own self. No mirror image, but something else entirely that completes me and makes me whole. I think of the many things I love about you, and yet none of them alone explains my love for you. I see the loving expression of your warm brown eyes, and your welcoming smile. I feel your arms around me and your breath warm against my skin, and I tremble at the depth of my feelings for you. Your body, naked against mine, is perfection in my eyes - and yet when you move against me, whispering words of love, I realise perfection is yet to come. But my joyful union with you is but a product of my love, not its cause, and were it absent I would still love my Sam.

For of all hobbits, you are the best. The most generous and the most wise. Do not smile in gentle disbelief; your wisdom is known to me and I value it, as I value your kindness and good humour, your loyalty and love. I count myself blessed above all others that you love me.

Yet in return, I have deceived you as to my intentions and broken your heart.

Forgive me, Sam. My silence was for my sake. Until recently, I believed this parting would be final, and if I had told you of it, I would either have had to leave at once... or never. I could not live, day after day, with your foreknowledge of the parting. I was going in despair, believing only that this was better for you than my dying in the Shire. But now? Now I go in hope, and I smile as I write the words.

And my other deceit? I should say deceits, since I encouraged Rosie to marry you, outside your knowledge, knowing even then (forgive me!) that this time would come. Hoping, even then, that a wife and child would keep you safe, keep you from letting go of your life as a burden to be rid of. Elanor was conceived in the hope that she would be a comfort to you, and that your care for my child would draw you from the dark. I know you love her, and for the rest I can only hope that it is so.

Hope is with me, my dear Sam.

You will find a letter for Elanor enclosed, sealed for her. I hope she will let you read the contents, but I wish her to know that my words come straight from me to her with no one to read them between. The time of the giving is yours to judge, my love.

You have my trust, Sam. You have always had my trust. Look after Rosie and Elanor, and come to me when you can without harm to your family. Remember I love you, now and forever.

Tenn’ enomentielva,

Frodo