return

the land of shadow 1205
‘This is where we turn aside, Sam,’ said Frodo. ‘And we
must turn east.’ He sighed as he looked at the gloomy ridges
across the valley. ‘I have just about enough strength left to
find some hole away up there. And then I must rest a little.’
The river-bed was now some way below the path. They
scrambled down to it, and began to cross it. To their surprise
they came upon dark pools fed by threads of water trickling
down from some source higher up the valley. Upon its outer
marges under the westward mountains Mordor was a dying
land, but it was not yet dead. And here things still grew,
harsh, twisted, bitter, struggling for life. In the glens of the
Morgai on the other side of the valley low scrubby trees
lurked and clung, coarse grey grass-tussocks fought with the
stones, and withered mosses crawled on them; and everywhere
great writhing, tangled brambles sprawled. Some had
long stabbing thorns, some hooked barbs that rent like knives.
The sullen shrivelled leaves of a past year hung on them,
grating and rattling in the sad airs, but their maggot-ridden
buds were only just opening. Flies, dun or grey, or black,
marked like orcs with a red eye-shaped blotch, buzzed and
stung; and above the briar-thickets clouds of hungry midges
danced and reeled.
‘Orc-gear’s no good,’ said Sam waving his arms. ‘I wish
I’d got an orc’s hide!’
At last Frodo could go no further. They had climbed up a
narrow shelving ravine, but they still had a long way to go
before they could even come in sight of the last craggy ridge.
‘I must rest now, Sam, and sleep if I can,’ said Frodo. He
looked about, but there seemed nowhere even for an animal
to crawl into in this dismal country. At length, tired out, they
slunk under a curtain of brambles that hung down like a mat
over a low rock-face.
There they sat and made such a meal as they could. Keeping
back the precious lembas for the evil days ahead, they ate
the half of what remained in Sam’s bag of Faramir’s provision:
some dried fruit, and a small slip of cured meat; and