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queenlucythevaliant · 1 year

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The Things They Carried to Mordor (with apologies to Tim O’Brien)

When the Fellowship left Rivendell, Frodo Baggins carried an unadorned gold ring on a chain round his neck. The ring was not heavy; it weighed only three ounces, but he was always aware of it.

Frodo also carried a sword called Sting that his uncle Bilbo had given him which glowed blue when Orcs were nearby. It was not a sentimental gift, but it came with a kind of Sentiment all the same. He kept Sting it in a shabby leather scabbard which he had also gotten from Bilbo. Sting weighted nineteen ounces and the scabbard four more.

The scabbard was Sentimental to Frodo, much more so than the sword was, for it was worn in places where Frodo was certain that his uncle must have rubbed it. Bilbo did not come with him on the journey to Mount Doom, and though Frodo was glad of it, sometimes he would run his fingers over those worn places and imagine that his uncle’s fingers were there too; that their fingertips were touching through time across that piece of leather.

The things they carried were determined by necessity, but not exclusively. Frodo’s cousin Peregrin Took carried two pipes and an overstuffed pouch of pipe-weed. All of the hobbits carried pipe-weed, and so did Gandalf the wizard and Aragorn the ranger, but Peregrin Took carried the most of anyone. Each of his two pipes weighed three ounces, for a total of six, but to Pippin it was worth it if it meant that he was in no danger of being bereft of his most important luxury.

Many miles later, he would give his second pipe to Gimli the dwarf and they would smoke together on the edge of ruin. The gesture was a repayment of a debt, and it made Pippin's pack a little lighter. He had only one pipe with him when he journeyed to Minas Tirith.

Merriadoc Brandybuck carried a conspiracy, even after the whole company had embarked; it had been months since he’d explained himself to Frodo, but he couldn't put the conspiracy down. The conspiracy was Loyalty and Courage in the face of terrible Fear. It was heavy and not.

Merry carried maps and the knowledge of maps. He carried Pippin, who was still only a tweenager and could be a right danger to himself and others, who was his younger cousin and his responsibility; he carried Pippin until he couldn't anymore, until Pippin rode south with Gandalf and Merry remained in Rohan. He also bore a knife weighing thirteen ounces which he would one day use to smite the Witch King of Angmar. It didn’t seem very heavy to him until Pelennor, when Éowyn unveiled herself to Death and Merry realized that he had a sword too.

Samwise Gamgee carried the most out of anyone in proportion to the size of his small body. After they abandoned their pony at the gates of Moria, he carried all his cooking gear, which consisted of a small tinder box, two small shallow pans (the smaller fitting into the larger), a wooden spoon and a short, two-pronged fork, some skewers, and a little box of salt that he always carried and refilled when he could. Together, all of these items weighed about eighteen pounds. He also carried his own supply of pipe-weed, flint and tinder, woolen hose, linen, and various small belongings of Frodo’s that Sam had stored away on his behalf. He did not carry any rope with him at that time, a fact which frequently vexed him. He really ought to have remembered to bring some rope.

They all carried gifts from the Lady Galadriel: Boromir, Merry, and Pippin each bore a silver belt weighing between one and three pounds depending on the girth of the waist for which it was made. Boromir's was the heaviest, and it traveled with him down Rauros in the end.

Until he was killed, Boromir of Gondor carried a long sword and a shield, three and four pounds respectively, and his war horn, which he still would have carried if it had weighed a ton. He carried his father’s suspicions and his brother’s hopes and all the glories of Gondor. Boromir was trying very hard to be a good man.

Aragorn carried, in order from lightest to heaviest, the Elfstone, Arwen’s love, and his own lineage. He hauled Arwen’s love up the hills and across the plains until at last she sent him a banner to carry. He carried his lineage in the form of a sword called Andúril, which did not seem heavy to him anymore, having borne it for so long.

Legolas bore a new bow from the Lady Galadriel and Gimli three strands of hair. The hair weighed almost nothing, but Gimli carried it like he might have carried a silmaril, which everyone knows were very heavy. Gimli was the sort of person who could assign precious things their whole worth: maybe this came from being a Dwarf and from growing up surrounded by treasures, but Legolas didn’t think so. He thought Gimli could see what things were worth just by the kind of person he was.

Because the nights were cold, each member of the Fellowship wore an elven cloak, which could be used as a raincoat or a groundsheet or as camouflage or a makeshift tent. Sometimes, when they were afraid, they would all pull their cloaks tighter around their too-small-for-this shoulders and try to feel a little warmer. It would have been easy to succumb to the cold. Sometimes, the strongest thing in the world is simply to keep warm on a cold night.

Frodo bore a phial of starlight, which came from a silmaril but which he carried like a shield. Along with the phial, he carried words of Quenya that he had learned long ago from his uncle Bilbo: “Aiya Eärendil elenion ancalima!” The words weren’t magic, not from Frodo’s ordinary hobbit-lips; but they pushed back the dark a little when he held his silmaril-light aloft. He carried elvish prayers, stories and the hopes of stories, "They cannot conquer forever" and "I can manage it, I must." When a person is desperate, survival is 98% mantras.

After they broke with the rest of the Fellowship, Sam carried less and less. The food was finite and gradually it ran out. Eventually, even the salt ran out. He carried rope (finally) and a box of soil and seed from the Lady Galadriel. After a while, he forgot about the box of soil sitting in the bottom of his pack, but he never lost sight of what it represented. The only thing that Sam wanted really was to return home with his master and plant seeds in the ground. He was a gardener, after all.

For a short time, Sam carried the ring; he took up what Frodo could no longer bear, and he found that it was every bit as Heavy as he’d imagined. The ring weighed only three ounces, but that wasn’t true at all.

Frodo and Sam carried the Black Land itself: Mordor, the place, the ash and dry dust that clung to the soles of their feet, their hair, their nostrils. They carried it inside them after a while and they never got rid of it. They carried the world. All of Middle Earth, they carried it: Gandalf’s foolish hope, Aragorn’s destiny, Faramir’s kindness. They moved like aged pack mules, picking their way across the desolate wastes. Sometimes, they walked until they were numb to it and all they could do was walk for the sake of walking in the knowledge that someday they would get There or die in the attempt. They plodded along slowly, dumbly, one step and then the next, toiling up hills and across marshes and down ravines, up and down and up again, because they were fighting a war and war is entirely a matter of posture and carriage, a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire. They carried their hopes in their feet.

Frodo carried Gollum’s oath and Smeagol’s soul. He carried his own soul too, slowly coming loose from his body with the growing burden of the Ring. He carried gravity. He carried the whole sky The ring was very Heavy now. It weighed more than anything he’d ever had to carry before. It weighed 216.09 pounds per square inch: weight multiplied by weight.

Sam carried music and wonderment. He carried duty to his master, the image of Rosie Cotton dancing, starlight and songs about starlight. These things were all intangible, but for Samwise Gamgee they all had their specific lengths and masses and tangible weight. They were hard to hold onto, always trying to slip off his tired back and fall by the wayside. Each time, Sam picked them back up and carried on.

Sam carried Frodo, in the end.

Frodo weighed forty-two pounds; he was heavier than all the cooking gear, but he weighed a great deal less than he had at the start of the journey. When Sam staggered to his feet, he was amazed at the lightness of his burden. His master was no heavier than a child carried piggy-back on a summer's day in the Shire.

Hope carried them all and they all carried Hope. This is not a paradox. When the Eagles carried Frodo away from Mount Doom, his hand was a little bit lighter.

#i keep seeing all these comparisons between lotr and all's quiet on the western front #which does make sense because tolkien served in ww1 #but i read The Things They Carried on a plane when i was sixteen and it's haunted me ever since #so here's this #leah stories #i will not say the day is done #tolkien legendarium #pontifications and creations

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