It Grows Perhaps the Greater by Arveldis  

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Chapter 1

Written for the prompt "character study" for Gen Work June 2024 on Tumblr.

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October 21, 3018

“And Elrond won’t tell me a thing except to not put my nose where it doesn’t belong, and to let Frodo heal without causing him any more excitement than he’s already had,” Bilbo cried. “Pah! As if the boy wouldn’t benefit from seeing the face of someone he knows.” He shook his head and thumped his walking stick in frustration.

Glorfindel walked in thoughtful silence for a moment, and the rushing of distant waterfalls filled the silence. The golden light of the setting sun filtered through the crowns of the trees above and dappled the pathway before them.

“Frodo is strong, stronger than he knows,” Glorfindel said at last. “But it has taken all of his strength to endure his injury.”

“You are measuring your words. I have known you long enough to know when you are not telling me everything.” Bilbo peered up at the Elf walking beside him. “Don’t deny it.” He studied Glorfindel, whose features remained inscrutable. Even after living among Elves for the past sixteen years, they were difficult to read. 

But he knew Glorfindel. He had sat with him in the library for many mornings and afternoons, poring over accounts of the First Age. Glorfindel would offer his perspective of the events, and he would correct inaccuracies in Bilbo’s work and help him with the wording of his poems. Bilbo knew him better than any other Elf in Rivendell, except for Elrond. 

And so Bilbo knew that his friend was loath to admit how desperate the situation must truly be.

“He will be forever marked, in body and in spirit,” Glorfindel said at length. “One who has entered the spirit realm does not leave it unchanged.” Bilbo thought then of the white light that seemed at times to shine through Glorfindel, as if spilling from a glass or from behind a thin veil. And he thought of Frodo, lying pale and wan in his bed in the infirmary, looking as insubstantial as a wisp of air.

“But he will recover?” Bilbo peered up at Glorfindel.

“In time. Elrond has healed his body as none other on these shores could. But he will be susceptible to afflictions of the spirit, I deem. He came very near to becoming a wraith, and the memory of such torment endures. His injury will be a thorn in his flesh, a constant reminder of the moment of wounding and the horrors that followed it. Should he ever face such a foe again, it will be a great trial to his spirit.” 

“He’s made of strong stuff,” Bilbo said, more to convince himself than Glorfindel. “He’s a Baggins, after all. We can do a great deal more than run off into the blue, you know.” He thumped his walking stick for emphasis.

“He will need such resilience in the days ahead. But he is strong indeed. Many would have already succumbed and passed into the spirit realm before I found him.”

Bilbo looked away, feeling the old, familiar grip of guilt seize upon his heart, as it had often in the long days he had spent travelling to Rivendell, remembering the mania that had overcome him that last evening in Bag End. He had been able to see the events of that evening more clearly as the leagues between him and the Shire lengthened, and had felt his guilt sharpen ever more keenly with each step. 

“I wish it hadn’t come to this,” he murmured, half to himself. “If only I’d known what I truly found in the goblin tunnels.”

“Would knowing have kept you from picking it up?” Glorfindel glanced at him, and Bilbo felt for half a moment as if he had been laid bare, bone, sinew, and soul. The Elf’s gaze could be infuriatingly, uncomfortably piercing at times.

“Well, yes.” He paused, and the memory of his last evening in Bag End fluttered through his mind again in a chiding whisper. “Maybe. Oh, I don’t know,” he spluttered at last. “I wouldn’t have escaped that dratted Gollum without it. But perhaps that would have been better. It would never have left the goblin tunnels then and would have been forgotten there beneath the roots of the mountains once old Gollum died.”

“Such things are never forgotten—certainly its maker never forgot it. And such things often have wills of their own. Whether by your hand or another’s, it would have made its escape from the forgotten corners of the world. There are greater wills in this world than your own, Bilbo.”

“Typical Elf speech,” Bilbo muttered.

A trace of a smile tugged at Glorfindel’s lips. “You are learned in the history of the Elves. So it has always been with objects of such power, and so it ever will be, unless they be destroyed wholly.”

“What will happen to it, do you think? My Ring?” Bilbo asked suddenly. Disquiet had come over him, and the old worry that had gnawed at him every time he was parted from the Ring began to gnaw at him again. It had reawakened since Frodo’s arrival. Leaving Frodo’s side had become increasingly difficult—and it was not only, if he were truthful with himself, because of his concern for his nephew.

Glorfindel looked at him strangely, and Bilbo felt again as if he were being laid bare beneath the Elf’s gaze. “It is no longer yours, Bilbo,” Glorfindel said, and the tone of caution—or was it chastisement?—in his voice set Bilbo’s nerves on edge, and a hot spike of anger stabbed through him. First Gandalf, then Elrond, and now Glorfindel reminding him that he was too old and that his time was over. Did they think him doddering and infirm, in need of endless reminding, an old hobbit gone out of his wits?

“Yes, yes, I know,” Bilbo said testily. “But I think I should have a say in what happens to it.”

“It cannot stay here.” Glorfindel’s voice was firm, edged in sharp warning. “Elrond will soon say the same. It must be taken away from here, lest it draw the Enemy’s eye here and threaten all who find peace and shelter in this valley. The Nazgûl have already come too close; they know it is here, and they will not be put off forever by Elrond’s work with the river, though we have some time yet before they regroup. But there is not the strength in this valley to defend an assault by all Nine.”

As he spoke, Bilbo’s anger subsided as quickly as it had surfaced, and he saw the reason in the Elf’s words. “Will you take it? You are the mightiest of Elrond’s household. If anyone could see it safely away from here, it would be you.”

Glorfindel was silent, and when Bilbo looked up at him, his face was drawn and grim, and Bilbo could no more name the emotions he read there than jump over the moon. “I will do whatever Elrond asks of me,” Glorfindel said at last. “But even I cannot stand against all Nine. And I would attract many more evil things besides, for just as the Ring calls to them, so do I. Were I to carry the Ring, I fear I would attract even more. It may be that my task is to guard the one entrusted to the Ring, but even then, the danger my presence would cause may be too great. Elrond will decide, and perhaps Mithrandir, too. He has much wisdom about such matters.”

Bilbo huffed. “Danger or no, I think if I were carrying the Ring now, I should like to have you with me. Nasty business, those Ringwraiths. I shouldn’t like to meet them alone. I can’t believe the boy made it here whilst being hounded by them.”

Glorfindel smiled. “He has more friends than he knows. Or do you think that Aragorn and I were the only ones guarding him?”

“And there you speak in riddles again!” Bilbo exclaimed with fond exasperation.

Glorfindel merely smiled again.

“Well, if you wish for riddles, I have some you might help me solve. I am working on a song of Eärendil, and I am unclear on several details. But you knew him and moreover have walked in the Blessed Realm, and so you might help me beat my way through the thickets, as it were.”

"Ai! Have I not said that I am no poet?" Glorfindel cried.

"Yes, yes, but neither Elrond nor Aragorn are at my disposal, so you must suffice." Bilbo tsked and flapped his hand. “Come, come. I haven’t got all day. Elrond means to hold a feast in Frodo’s honor when he wakes, and I must finish this song before it. Time draws short, if Elrond guesses right, and I don’t have the vigor I once did. We are not all ageless and tireless!”

Laughing, Glorfindel followed Bilbo down the path.

 

 

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“What terrible business this Ring has become!” Bilbo stumped his walking stick on the path, restless. Ever since the council had ended, he had been restive and anxious. Lunch, followed by tea, had done little to soothe his nerves. “It got me out of many narrow escapes, mind you. But now I wish I had never found it in the goblin tunnels. Yes, never.”

Glorfindel walked beside him, his arms behind his back. The afternoon sun slanted over his face and glimmered upon his hair. “So might many wish, but there are many wills in this world, and even greater ones outside it. Do not give yourself too much credit for finding it.”

Bilbo glanced up, watching the sunlight play upon the leaves of the trees that arched overhead. “You know, each time I thought of leaving it, something held me back. Some will overtook mine, and I thought if I left it, it would be like cutting off my own arm. I don’t wish for Frodo to experience that. It should be my burden to bear, not his.”

Glorfindel glanced sidelong at him. “It is no longer your burden, Bilbo. You have borne it long enough. It is now the burden of all who would stand against the Dark Lord, whether they know of it or not. But for one, yes, it will be a heavy burden.”

Bilbo shook his head. “It was a brave thing Frodo did, and I’m proud of the boy for doing it. But I wish it hadn’t come to this—that this–this thing was not his burden. I wish I had been able to protect him, and that he had been able to choose his adventure, little as like one as it probably feels to him now. Adventures rarely feel like adventures when they are happening and you are bouncing from one nasty scrape to another.” He glanced wistfully at the mountains to the east, rising above the marches of steep-climbing pines and capped with glistening snow.

“He’s not like me, Glorfindel. He thinks he is, and at times he seems he is, but he is not half so foolhardy as I was, running out my door without my pocket handkerchief on the promise of a wizard.” A small smile flitted over Bilbo’s face. “At times I thought I saw the thirst for adventure in him, and at others I thought he may never wish to leave the borders of the Shire, for he loved the lands within them dearly.”

Glorfindel listened silently, his gaze fixed ahead. The light of the low autumn sun slanted through the trees, kindling their yellow leaves to living gold. Rays of sunlight struck the waterfalls in flashes of glittering light, falling like jewels down the cataracts of water.

Bilbo stopped. He drew breath, paused, let it out. “Adventures have a way of changing you, and perhaps it’s selfish of me to say it, but I don’t want to see him changed. I am not the same hobbit who left without a handkerchief. I don’t want to see him become something different. Already, he seems an entirely different hobbit than the young nephew I left to take up the mantle of master of Bag End—distant and remote, as if already he walks in places where I cannot go.”

“He will walk in many more in truth soon,” Glorfindel said, not unkindly. “He has chosen this burden, or else perhaps it was chosen for him, and he has simply stepped onto the path set out for him. It is his doom to take this thing, just as it was yours to find it.”

“Don’t adventures ever have an end,” Bilbo murmured to himself. He looked up suddenly at Glorfindel from under his eyebrows. “You know, if it had fallen to me, I would have asked for you to come with me, whatever Elrond and the others may have said.”

Glorfindel laughed. “And I would have gone with you.”