There, Not Back Again by eris_of_imladris

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Chapter 6

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“Do you really think it’ll taste better to him coming from this far down?” Drogo asked, approaching the boat slowly. “The water by Brandy Hall seemed to make fish good enough for him so far.”

“I want to try it,” Primula said, but what she didn’t say was that Asphodel was visiting, and for the first time in years she had approached Drogo in the hope of some sort of reconciliation. It had surprised him, but he acquiesced, leaving Primula with a suddenly strong need to get out of there.

“I understand,” Drogo said quietly, and Primula truly hoped he did. It was nearly fourteen years since they were married, and she hoped it hadn’t all been too much for him, especially this new development. He’d had to learn what it was to be thought of as weird, and sometimes when she looked up at the ceiling in bed she wondered if it was too much.

The boat was borrowed from some fisherman up the lane, and they left when the sky was slightly cloudy, but they were fluffy and white and how was she supposed to know anything was going to happen?

Nevertheless, the fishing rods went in, and she and Drogo talked politely of the weather, of his work, of the new book she had given Frodo that he had promptly taken with him into a thicket to read.

“He takes after you,” Drogo said.

“He looks like you,” Primula replied. “He’s got your face exactly, and your hair.”

“He has your spirit,” Drogo said back, hesitating as he thought he felt a tug on the line.

“Is that a problem?”

“No,” he hastily replied, but then he spoke up again. “It’s just that he will need to go to school with the other lads and learn how to manage his household one day. Don’t you think it’s past time?”

“I’ve been teaching him out of my father’s books,” Primula said. It was a familiar argument, but Drogo had never asked so directly.

“I know, but… you know how it was for you,” he said softly. “You know how hard it was, even with your family and your connections, and Frodo doesn’t have any of that. He has his name, of course, but he doesn’t have a big family to rely on.”

“Which is not my fault,” Primula said. “I’ve tried so hard.” True, she had been too afraid to try to have another child right after Frodo was born, the memory of the pain still fresh in her mind, but she had tried to soften her recollection of the pain later and had done everything she could, only to end up looking strange yet again for having only one child. Only one precious child who she cherished, and now he had to leave….

“You did, but he can’t be a little boy forever. He needs to start growing up.” Drogo plucked a fish from the end of his line, handing it over.

Primula was afraid of change. She would lose her boy to the fine society people who he would meet, and she would have no children to come after, no little girls to show how to make her mother’s bread, no little boys with thumbs in their mouths to follow her as she picked tomatoes. All she would have was her memories and her imagination that she now knew she could never indulge.

“I know it’s hard for you, but we need to do this,” Drogo said. “He needs to learn to be a proper lad.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Primula begged. “What if he can be like us? You and I are happy, we don’t need to be a big impressive family. We can just love each other and be happy.”

“Have you been happy all these years, knowing how others looked at you?” Drogo asked, and Primula sniffed.

“It’s not the same,” she said.

“It will be,” he said. “He will be like us and that won’t be a good thing. He must break free and I understand that it’s hard, but he needs to start going to tutors and meeting more friends. He needs to, or he’ll be….”

“Strange like me,” Primula replied. “Like Bilbo.”

And that old resentment, the old idea of the one who had once introduced them but had also come between them, darkened Drogo’s eyes. “You’ve always wanted adventure like your beloved Bilbo, but look where it’s gotten you, Primula – ostracized, unable to help your child have a good life. Why are you so strange, Primula? Why can’t this life be enough for you?”

Primula took several steps back, bracing herself against the side of the boat after dropping the fish in the lunchbox for her boy. The look on her face must have said everything, because Drogo’s face softened and he came over, reaching out for her.

“I’m sorry,” Drogo said, and he wrapped his arms around her, but Primula, in her anger, broke free of his embrace, not sure if the water on her face was tears or drops from the darkening clouds, and then it all happened too fast. Drogo fell back against the side of the boat, tipping it over, and Primula rushed forward, reaching out in panic as her feet slid on the wet boat, and she grabbed on as tightly as she could to whatever she could hold, leaning over and praying that her hand had found Drogo’s and that they would resurface and it would be enough, but the storm only grew, along with her panic, and she was swept along, digging her hand into whatever she held so tightly as water filled her nose and her mouth and carried her away….

 

“It was enough,” Primula sobbed as the fish roasted on the fire, staring up at her with its dead eye, imploring her to do anything to keep the truth hidden. No one could know what had happened on the boat that day but she was such an open book and the others were so good at getting her to talk, and she knew as well as anything that the questions would never stop.

She would never have the freedom to raise her son in the way he deserved to be raised, a carefree hobbit lad with nothing on his mind except for his next meal and his friends. She had seen what happened to Bilbo, where the thought of him returning from an adventure was enough to alienate him entirely. She loved him too much to go, but then again, she loved him too much to stay and doom him to a fate where he was the son of the crazy widow who had survived something impossible after pushing her husband in. He would be better off without that. Without her.

And yet, how was she supposed to leave him? All she had ever wanted was an adventure, but this certainly didn’t seem like a way to take one, leaving everything behind and having the others assume that she was dead (and perhaps even where she belonged) at the altogether-too-young age of sixty.

But this wasn’t an adventure, at least not in the traditional sense. She was not going off for her own sake, indulging in her own passions. It was all for Frodo, whose face she conjured in her mind, imagining him as the man she would never see. She knew he would be sad and quiet at first, perhaps for a long time, but she remembered Amaranth at her side when she gave birth and knew he would have some Took cousins to play with, if he got over their being girls, and he would have Rorimac at Brandy Hall to teach him what he needed to know, and of course Drogo’s relatives, and maybe even Milo Burrows if Asphodel truly had a change of heart… he would have so much more of a family than if he had her, and the thought broke her heart again as she tried to summon her resolve.

Primula stayed quiet for a very long time, watching the embers in the fire pop. Then she turned to the elf when her sniffles finally petered out.

“Are there really tree people?” Primula asked, red-rimmed eyes brimming with determination. It was her last hope, and she tried to cling onto her childhood dreams. She might not even make it – there were some who came out of the water and died the next day – but if she was going to do this, she was going to go all the way, not even chancing a farewell glance.

“Yes,” said Maglor, who could say nothing else in the face of the painful, all-too-familiar determination.

“I will find them,” she said, determinedly turning her head away from where she came. “I will go and find them.”

“Some say they live to the east in the Old Forest, or Fangorn to the south,” Maglor said.

“Thank you,” she turned to him. “For telling me about your boys… I hope Frodo will be better off for it. I hope he will learn to be strong.”

“If he has your strength, he will,” Maglor replied, and Primula tried to smile.

“I hope you find the Onodrim,” said Maglor as he watched the hobbit slowly walk away. She looked like he had when Maedhros had dragged him away from the site where they left Elrond and Elros, but still her feet moved forward, alone but powerful.

[i]If she has this strength,[/i] he thought, [i]I can only imagine what her son will do.[/i]