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Racing With The Devil
Author: Aratlithiel Summary: One last dance Rating: PG
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October 4, 2004
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A/N: Sincerest thanks to Willow-wode for the pony tips.
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RACING WITH THE DEVIL
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Slower now, his steps, and more considered than they once were; more careful. Still, they keep on just quick enough - only just but the slender gap between his heels and the daemon that dogs them remains. For how much longer he can guess, if he only lets himself. But of course, he doesn’t. Rather, he snaps his heels in the quickstep of the dance and the daemon slathers its contempt, snarls its longing for what he yet clings to in his waning grasp.
He knows its face, has seen it in the ghost-pallor of tall phantasms, in the pale light of lust-kindled flame in noble grey eyes, in the soulless smile through cragged teeth and ancient, hissing insanity. Only now it knows his face as well.
It has looked into his heart with its coal-black eyes, deep and pitch as tar pits and infinitely more noisome. It has made a place for itself within and even in death it holds to him still. Not satisfied with all he had to give, oh no; this daemon will not be sated with what he was. Its greed is ancient, its grasp insistent and all too fierce and it will have all that he is and ever could have been.
And if he falters in his steps, stumbles for even a moment…
“Not yet,” he tells the stars, though it was a near thing this last time. He has lived through March but only just and the remnants still prickle at his bones, spark cold and sharp in his blood. He knows that to linger past Autumn is to court death and worse than death.
But this challenge he will not turn from, for if death comes of it, it will, at least, be a noble one. He will race this daemon one last time.
Frodo approaches the shed, lantern bobbing only slightly with each deliberate step. A risk, this small light against the star-spattered canvas of twilight, for careworn eyes now dog him as surely as any daemon. Too many times has he been torn from his purpose by low fear kindling beneath too much concern within speckled hazel. But this risk he knows he must bear, for his steps are not so sure as they once were, his gait irregular at best, stumbling and erratic at worst. A broken bone would be a small betrayal by comparison to those who have taken his care upon themselves. But still a betrayal nonetheless and he thinks he would do well to spare himself the added weight of small guilts. There are so many more worthy of his attention, after all. And so he trusts his eyes and his steps not to the wraith-light of the stars that once served him so well but to the earth-bound glow of the lamp in his hand and he wills his pace steady.
There is danger, certainly, in this jaunt but he can’t seem to call it foolish. One slip of hoofs on frozen grass, one misstep on broken terrain hidden by darkness and his betrayal is complete.
Still, a smaller betrayal than the larger one that awaits at that distant, salt-misted quay and he wonders if perhaps this wouldn’t be kinder after all. It seems… more complete, somehow. A door firmly shut, rather than one left slightly ajar, with hope shining cruelly from between the cracks.
The cobbles of the walk are cragged and cold beneath his feet, with the barest bristle of frost-painted grass spiking up between them. Frodo shuffles carefully, keeps the small circle of yellow light thrown by the lantern trained on his feet as they plod cautiously along. He keeps his eyes on his steps, concentrates and so is a little surprised when he nearly sails headlong into the door of the shed. He pulls up short, allows himself a wry smile. So careful he’s been on his little sojourn thus far and wouldn’t it be just the very definition of irony if he’d managed to knock himself senseless upon the very door of his destination.
He shakes his head, amused and rueful at once then reaches out for the latch; the iron where the catch slips home is rippled and bent just a little. One who had not seen it hanging cocked and lank on its hinges would most likely never notice. But Frodo pauses to run a fingertip over the hitch in line, the crook where the weak spot of the simple mechanism has been turned upon itself, the flaw that was almost its ruin.
Sam would see the pocks of the small hammer he had used to reform and remake… to repair what was bent and broken. But Frodo sees the bow and buckle, knows that no matter how hard Sam swung his hammer, no matter how carefully he filed away the jags and stress barbs…
He closes his eyes, squares his shoulders. Ah, well. It hardly matters now, does it?
The handle is icy in his already cold grip. Funny, how he hardly feels the chill these days. Of all the things he would wish to have back, of all the things he is no longer and wishes he’d not lost, he thinks the sensation of warmth is what he would wish most to hold again. But warm hands are as much a thing of the past as sound bones. And a warm heart? Well… no real point in pondering that one, is there?
A small gust of warmth slithers past him as he swings the door open but it’s as much out of his reach as too many other things that he will not consider. Cold ash is his lot now but there is small satisfaction to be found even in that; at least he can still watch the fires burn bright in the faces of those he loves. Small recompense, another might say but Frodo is grateful for it.
He lifts the lamp into the quiet-dark. A quick smile fleets over his face as his eyes meet the soulful, liquid-brown of Strider’s. The pony nods his head gently, whickers softly in greeting and Frodo crosses the straw-strewn boards to the stall and scratches him between his ears.
“Hullo, old son,” he murmurs and the pony lips at his coat. Frodo leans in, rests his head against the great expanse of muscled neck, closes his eyes and breathes in the earthy smell of hay and sweat and oats. “How about one last jaunt, you and I?”
Not the last, he knows. Not really. But the last where the race will mean something, the last that he might yet win.
He has beaten it before; too many times to count has he outrun fate and death at its hands. And certainly it has had its victories as well. But none given willingly and that’s something he can keep, something he can hold close when seduction creeps in on a slithering sigh. He may have handed it his soul when that was all that would sate its hunger but never his heart. Blackened and shriveled though it may be, that at least he still owns.
He gives the pony a soft pat, pulls the thick blanket from where it’s been draped over the low wall of the stall and guides Strider out onto the main floor of the narrow shed. Bill whickers a small protest but Frodo soothes him with the last of the winter carrots, nicked from Rose’s stash in the pantry. He’ll catch some fond scowls as a result, he is sure but only that and he thinks the sly, secret smile that always follows will be worth the price.
He slings the saddle-blanket over Strider’s broad back, not at all surprised that he barely manages it. The wool is thick and heavy and he is not the hobbit he once was. His muscles tremble with sickness and wear. He has no illusions that he will be able to saddle the pony properly and so casts the blanket aside. He’d learned to ride bareback, after all – had never even used a saddle until Bilbo’s introduction to the more genteel life of Hobbiton. Perhaps it would be for the best.
With some effort, he fits the bridle over the pony’s head. Strider endures the process patiently, dipping his head to accommodate, as though aware of the tremors that work through the arms with even so small a task as this. Frodo’s fingers are stiff and cold and the fingertips bleed a little as they work the buckles. It takes much longer than it should but he manages.
With one last pat to Bill, he takes up Strider’s reins and leads him out of the shed. The pony grunts a little as the cold air hits his sensitive nostrils, tosses his head but gentles at Frodo’s stroke along his neck. They walk together, slow and steady, down the path to the gate; Frodo unlatches it and leads the pony through. He stops to close it again then, using Strider for leverage and balance, climbs atop the low stone wall. He knows better than to try to hoist himself onto the pony without this convenient aid.
Carefully and with the stretch and protest of under-used muscles, he seats himself while Strider waits. He adjusts himself, reins in hand then pauses to examine the stars. Old friends they are and he’s listened to them sing their secrets for years he can no longer even remember, spent countless nights wrapped in their embrace. But he thinks now he understands their song. And he knows they do not sing for him. They never have, not really, and he wonders why this small wisdom does not make him sad.
It has its hooks in him well and truly this time and he feels it as a splinter in his mind’s eye. Festering. A crawling itch within his mind that brooks no rest, accords not even the smallest measure of stillness. The remnants of March still creep beneath his skin and it seems all he can do to stay one precious step ahead of the darkness. He will not survive another October.
North, he thinks. He’s been to the South only a few months past, when his cheeks shone ruddy enough to satisfy Sam that a jaunt alone to Green Hill Country wasn’t the worst possible idea. Close enough but even Sam must relax his watch now and again.
He will see the East again come May, when Merry and Pippin will host him in the house that was briefly his and where they have now made a home. He wonders how difficult it will be to say goodbye without truly saying it. He shakes his head; he will dwell on that at another time.
West… Well, he will certainly see the West again, won’t he?
And so he steers Strider north. Cross the bridge and then on toward Bindbale. He won’t go so far as Bindbale, of course, won’t even go as far as the North Farthing’s border, for engaging in the dance is one thing but he knows his limitations. Four leagues is more than enough risk.
The pony’s hoofs clatter against the boards in the velvet quiet. Frodo peers over the bridge to the water below, watches the stars mimic themselves on its rippling surface, wonders if he dare open his heart and learn if their song still lingers within…
He shakes his head, pulls his gaze away and trains it to the expanse of frozen landscape that stretches before him. He fears that song almost as much as he fears the whispers of the daemon. And worse, he fears its absence. Better he not risk it, better he not know just now whether he has been well and truly abandoned. Those answers will come in time at any rate, whether he wants them or no.
The night has changed, become darker, closer. A sharp breeze lifts his hair from his brow and he pulls his coat tighter, nudges his heels into Strider’s barrel and quickens their pace. He shifts his legs, flexes his frozen toes. He rotates his shoulder, kneads at the joint through his coat.
He’s not sure when October began to bleed into March and then into October again. The seasons have lost their meaning, save for the days when he can struggle from the grey-black and wake to light and know that he has won the race one more time. Time is now counted in pain and darkness and the scratch of pen to parchment.
With the Spring comes shadows, curling and snaking within. Thunder rolls slow as dry, leaden bones across the plains of his mind and storms of fire gather beneath his brow. All he wants is water then; water and to once, just once, close his eyes against the savage flame that wheels and burns before them. Cold, grey fire lingers, smokes and smoulders ‘til October when it blossoms to black flame, pounds through his veins and it is then that he understands that the breath on his nape tingles closer, that the seasons have drifted one into another while his attention was elsewhere within.
He turns his gaze to the starlit hills, frost glittering cold and bright as far as his eyes can see. An echo, ‘Shall I ever look upon these hills again?’ and a hissing voice answers low and aloof:
Nevermore.
He shuts his eyes tight, clenches the reins in white-knuckled fists. “It doesn’t matter,” he tells himself. “It’s done.”
Then again…
Perhaps not quite.
Strider slows, as though sensing that they have reached one limit and now straddle another, balance precariously on the razor-edged cusp between perdition and deliverance. It strikes Frodo as just a little bit curious that he’s not quite so sure which might be more painful in the end.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says again. Strider answers with a small grunt and Frodo pats his thick neck, steers him in a turn-about. He can feel the pony’s muscles bunch and tense, can feel the tremor of excitement that ripples beneath him and Strider snaps at the reins, paws at the ground. “Soon,” Frodo whispers.
He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath then opens them to look again upon the living soul of his country. He bides in a bowl of sparkling grass, blue-black and crystalline-silver beneath the enormity of night. It stretches out and up, hills small by the reckoning of many he’s seen but greater in their own way. Muted slopes roll gentle into the breath of star-pocked sable skies, shadows folded tender at their feet. The very air, though rimy and weighted with silence, swathes these lands in mortal embrace, whispers to them of earthly treasures and lovers’ kisses spent in their long grasses. The stars are far away from these hills and the lands are content with the distance.
Frodo’s chin trembles a little, his eyes burn. His bones ache, cold fire races down his arm and his vision wavers.
Shall I ever…
Nevermore.
He closes his eyes. He turns his face to the stars and cold breath skitters down his spine.
“It doesn’t…” and his rasping voice is lost to the capering chuckles that shiver over his skin. He closes his hands into fists, clenches his teeth, grates, “It doesn’t matter! It’s done!”
He could shake his fists at the sky – scream, beg, plead to the stars. Just let me be, just let me… let me stay. He could shriek his rage at their silence and cold betrayal.
“It doesn’t matter,” he tells himself, calmer now. “It’s done,” hardly even a whisper on the wind and he wonders, if he says it enough, if he makes of it a promise, will it then become truth? Will it then become his truth?
Ghost-fingers scrape at his shoulder, chafe cold beneath his skin. Warbles in his ear, thin and keening and filled with cruel glee: It isn’t right, it isn’t fair. Can’t you see?
He snarls, grips the reins ‘til the bones in his fingers creak. He kicks his heels into Strider’s ribs and the pony rears up a little.
“Hai!”
A slackening of the reins, a quickstep of hoofs to hard, frozen ground and then… wind in his face, sharp and cold. His hair flies back and whips at his nape, the air slashes bitter at his cheeks, his eyes water with the jagged wind and tears stream unheeded into the hair at his temples. For a moment or two he can’t breathe.
Fair and right and just – what do these words mean? He knew once, he’s sure of it. There was a time when these words were as clear and straightforward in his mind and heart as pen-strokes on a page. What reason had there ever been to ponder them, doubt them? Pen-strokes turned to pages and pages to chapters and chapters to stories – a moral always, always worked its way clear before the pages ran out and fair was in the eye of the storyteller.
They are his own pen-strokes on the page now but he doesn’t fool himself that he is the storyteller. Those truths he puts to paper are not his own, yet he holds obdurately to the hope that, before the last word has been etched into vellum, the Storyteller’s voice may yet whisper to him, acknowledge him, tell him… what?
You have done well.
The daemon snarls behind him, gnashes its teeth, nips at his heels. Nevermore, it gurgles through razor teeth.
“Hai! Hai!”
Frodo kicks at the pony’s muscled ribs, slaps the reins against its neck. Strider dips his head, snorts thick and low and runs faster.
Has he done well? Those wiser than himself tell him so and they’ve paid their own price to buy his confessions. And oh, he wants to believe, needs to believe. But the daemon’s jibbering tongue laughs and shrieks and wails and sometimes…
Sometimes he is its creature and he has no choice but to listen, to hear.
Strider runs fluid over small dips and rises in frozen terrain. Frodo leans and sways with the rhythm of each powerful stride, adjusts his bearing and binds his motion to the agile grace that pulses beneath him. The pony froths and Frodo curves his back, grips with his knees and curls his frozen fingers into the rough mane that lashes in the wind.
The stars sing above him, the daemon snarls behind him and he hovers between them. Ugly and brutal yet achingly seductive, this daemon and he knows it and it knows him. He is not fool enough to pretend that wretched familiarity does not still beckon with the sweetness of siren-song.
But oh, the stars… ever the cruel, cold lovers; aloof and remote but at least in their song is Truth. A Truth that perhaps he does not wish to be so but what else can there be, after all, when all is said and done? They sing this Truth and care not how it unwinds him, how it tears at his heart as the faces of those he loves flicker then fade before his eyes. They only watch the race from their distant cradle and alter the notes of the melody with each step of the dance.
The night curls about him and it lives; the beat of its heart throbs through his veins, its breath coils smooth in his throat. Pinpoints of cold fire burn against the jet of its skin and sear his soul, flay him to bone and spare not a glance to the broken child their song has birthed. They only watch in callous disregard as he races once more for all he has left to save.
Not the friends he once thought, no… but at least they do not hunt him.
Faster now, he whips through the cold-black of night and Strider needs no urging now. They move together, one spirit; melded, shaped in shadows and made whole in the dance.
No choices left now, no second chances and no turning back. All choices are made, all chances spent. Only this one thing is left to him and he will live or die, fly or burn by its aftermath. Frodo races with his daemon, lays hold of the last of his courage and opens his weary heart to the song of the stars.
They sing not for him, no but for themselves and each other and for the sky above his head. They sing for joy and for grief and things so much greater than he, things far too high for his mortal mind to ken and it should make him feel small, it should make him feel irrelevant, unimportant.
But a part of their song belongs to the earth and the earth answers; a low, simple melody of blood and bone, soil and leaf. This song he hears with his heart… this one, he understands. It lifts and sways and twines with the ephemeral harmony and yet is somehow not lost to it. And even if it’s just for now, for just this one small moment in time, he is a part of the earth, he is a part of that song and the stars do sing for him and for everyone and everything that he loves but cannot hold.
Frodo leans over the pony’s neck, its mane lashing coarse against his cheeks, worn leather biting into his palms. He digs his knees into muscle and tendon and moves his body in rhythm to the gather and lurch that pulses beneath him. His thighs flex in cadence, his calves cling and clutch and his heels dig sharper, deeper and he is smiling now, his teeth bared in a maniacal grin.
“Hai!”
The landscape whistles by him, a blur of silver-blue and it’s beautiful and it’s precious and it’s all he’d ever wanted. And he is a part of it now; small and fleeting, yes but still undeniably so and just the fact that it’s here and alive and will hold all that he loves is…
Enough, please just let it be enough.
Fair and right and just – it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, only what is. ‘What Was’ and ‘What Could Be’ are only bastard children of Despair and Hope but ‘What Is’ is right now, right this moment and here. It’s the mist billowing from the pony’s nostrils, it’s the sharp, cold scent of frozen pine, it’s the thump of hoofs to frosted earth. It’s real and it’s now and it has its own power and he can feel that power thrumming through him, can feel it sinking into his bones, warming them, pulsing through him with every mighty stride of the pony beneath him, with every cold draught of air he sucks into his aching lungs.
He feels the daemon at his back, can almost imagine the tails of his coat flapping against its grey, scaly skin. Regrets and may-have-beens and bitterness are what it offers him and he throws his head back and laughs to the stars.
He has given it too much already, has fed it his memories and bits of his soul, piece by piece, when it would accept nothing less. He is done with handing it pieces of himself, the losses so swift and hard upon each other that the mourning of each lesser sacrifice has become too small to matter. What is left he will keep because he chooses to fight for it, to race for it. And if fighting means retreat…
Frodo laughs, loud and free. “So be it!”
Tears spatter at his temples, freeze in his hair. “It doesn’t matter!” he screams and laughs harder still and it is enough – it’s all that matters and warmth blossoms through him and he lets go the reins, throws his arms out and…
Flies.
He soars through the vast-deep of night, at one with earth and stars and sky and smooth muscle and it’s all of home and home is here and it is enough – enough to hold to and enough to take with him. Nevermore, but it doesn’t matter because this part of him, this being that flies through the night on finespun wings of defiant laughter, this will remain. When his eyes are filled with high beauty and his nose is filled with the scent of the sea and his ears are filled with unearthly song, still he will ride these hills and his laughter will ring to the heavens, for it is enough!
His blood races hot through his veins, his bones move fluid and strong, muscles glide smooth over bone. He is alive and he may not belong to this here anymore but this part of him can never be stolen from these hills, this earth. And this he can take with him and he laughs and he weeps because it really is enough.
He has won the race one more time, out-danced the daemon and he laughs as it slinks away in sullen fury. It has been left far behind and has taken the pain and darkness with it. It won’t be left for long - it knows him and it will find him again but for this one moment, this one brief space of time, he is only alive and laughing and flying like an arrow through the stars and he just is. And this… this it will not have.
This he will fight for, race for. This he will keep.
This part of him will ride laughing beneath the stars for evermore. And this bit of home he will take with him.
~*~
END
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