Sam’s pulse quickened and his skin went clammy and cold.  The silence in the tunnel was absolute.  He knew the opening was narrow and low because of the way his laboured breathing sounded, coming back at him from the walls and ceiling.  Waiting until the dim light that still seeped through the vent above dispelled some of the complete blackness around him, he began to discern steps into the darkness below him and could see the passage curving away into shadow.

His heart began pounding even harder than it had been.  What kind of fool was he, thinking he could do this?  He had forgotten it would be so dark and so close. 

Feeling his way carefully down each step, Sam put his hands on the walls and stooped over into the cramped passage.  He knew he would eventually come out in Bag End's cold room or wine cellar -- perhaps even a secret storeroom, further and deeper under The Hill than those, but sooner or later he would come out in Bag End somewhere -- sooner or later.

As he moved forward, sliding his hands along the walls, he shivered with the chill in the stone and in the air.  It stayed this way nearly all year long.  Sam had to keep reminding himself of where he was or he began imagining all kinds of things -- horrible smelly things that hung down out of the blackness and brushed your face and made slithering sounds in your darkest dreams.  Shutting his eyes, he tried desperately to remember how delightful it felt on a hot summer day to come down into the cellars to get eggs or cheese or milk or to top off a mug with ale or to get Mister Bilbo another bottle of Old Winyards.  But his whole body was trembling.  He could feel the blackness pushing in on him.  Cold and clammy and--

Sam had been just old enough to be ashamed of his fear of the dark, but still young enough to be defeated by it.  Daisy had been mad about something.  Something about the wash, he couldn’t remember what.  But she had locked him into the cellar of their smials -- into the dark, cramped cellar, and left him.  And he had heard it, the slithering sounds from his bad dreams -- back in the depths of the cellar, crawling toward him.  He had pressed himself up against the crack in the door, trying to breathe -- alternately sobbing and sniffling, begging Daisy to let him out. 

He hadn’t heard Frodo come to the door or heard exactly what he said to Daisy, although he had heard Daisy’s side of that story -- how Master Frodo had pushed his way into the smials and been very impolite to her.  Of course, Daisy and Frodo had not gotten along very well since that day, but all Sam could really remember was a very loud, very firm voice just outside the cellar door.  Then the door had opened and Frodo had pulled him up off the floor, dusting him off quickly and telling him that he had an important errand for him.  They had walked out of the smials together, hand in hand, and Frodo had never said one thing about the tears on Sam’s face. And after that day, Frodo had tried hard to make sure Sam never ended up in a dark place, leastways not alone.

Now here he was, in a very dark place.  Alone. 

Sam suddenly found himself hoping that Frodo had gone to Brandy Hall.  Even though the very thought made his head pound and his stomach go sour, he would rather Frodo be there with Mister Merry and his kin than here in the dark, alone, and hurt.  Please let those rumours be just rumours.  Just idle gossip of nasty minds. Let Mister Frodo be off down the road with his kin. 

After stumbling along with his hands on the wall of the low passage, Sam came up hard against some kind of barrier and opened his eyes, but it was still absolutely dark around him.  Running his hands around on the obstacle, he realized it was smooth wood and he searched desperately for a latch or a handle.  Clearly, there were the seams of a round door, but it was all of one piece and so smooth and tight he could not get his fingers into the edge anywhere along it.  And there was no latch, or handle -- nothing.  He hunkered down next to it and nearly groaned in frustration.

Maybe Mister Bilbo hadn’t used this entry in a long while.  Maybe the passage wasn’t safe and would fall in on him and he would be buried down here and no one would know and he wouldn’t be able to breathe-- Sam suddenly realized that he was gulping in air and beginning to whine like some animal in a trap.  Shutting his eyes, he clasped his hands together and dug his fingernails hard into his palms. 

“Samwise Gamgee!  You are not doing Mister Frodo any good at all sitting here in the cold dark shaking like a coney in a snare.  Wake up!  Mister Bilbo got in this way so you can too.  Try again.”

With his eyes closed, Sam rose to his knees and slowly ran his hands over the wood surface, feeling his way across every bit of it.  It seemed a long time before his fingers found, on the left side of what appeared to be the door, an area that felt smooth and silky, as if it had been touched again and again by other fingers.  Tempted to open his eyes, he squeezed them shut, continuing to trace the smooth part with his fingertips.  He was rewarded to find seams there, almost undetectable.  He pushed in.  Nothing.  He pushed harder, and a fist-sized piece sunk into the wood with a resounding click.  The round door swung open soundlessly toward him, almost knocking him over.  Those dwarves of Mister Bilbo’s had done a good bit of work under Bag End, seemingly. 

Scrabbling backward, he peered into the blackness beyond the door -- if it were possible, it was even darker.  No grey light from the vent seeped beyond the door.  Only blackness. 

“Just dark, dark and more dark,” he whispered to himself.  “Well, there’s nothin’ for it but to go on.”

Sam crept in on his hands and knees, and found himself in a round wooden tunnel. Before he had crawled forward very far, he had run right into the end of it -- yet another wood partition.  He took a deep breath, but somehow, the feeling of wood all around him reassured him.  There was no movement of air and no possibility of anything brushing across his face.  Reaching forward, he found that the end of the tunnel was yet another door of wood.  Sliding his hand to the left, he found a handle of the smooth, silky wood this time.  He tugged at it and heard that same resounding click and a smooth silent swing of the door outward into blackness. 

Inky complete blackness. 

Confronted with endless black space just in front of his face, Sam hung there in the opening for only a moment.  He suddenly remembered that, as far as he knew, he could be perched on the edge of some great cliff over nothingness and scrabbled backwards into more darkness, a sound rising in his throat as he gulped in great breaths of air.  Then he realized that the air he was gulping in smelled familiar -- very familiar.

Closing his eyes, he took another deep breath.  The cold cellar!  It was the scent of the Bag End cold cellar -- unmistakable.  Leaning forward again, Sam was more certain now, but could not figure out exactly where he was.  He tried to picture the room in his mind -- he had been in there so many times.  It must be the barrel -- that huge barrel that he had always wondered about that lay on braces at the back of the cellar.  Sam had often studied on what it might hold, but had never dared to ask about it.  That must be where he was -- sitting in that barrel right there at the end of the cold cellar.  And if he was right, Mister Bilbo always kept a lantern and tinder right there on the shelves to his left -- and now he knew why.

But how far off the ground was that barrel?  Sam tried to picture the height of the braces.  Not far -- if he was right.  But what if he was wrong?  What if he slid out of the barrel end and went tumbling end over end forever into nothing?  Sam scrambled back into the barrel again and sat there for a moment.

“Samwise Gamgee, you're ten times a fool.  Just hang off the edge.  If there's no floor, you can pull yourself back in!”  

Turning around cautiously, Sam sidled backward, sliding over the edge with one foot, holding on desperately with his arms and reaching for the floor with his toes.  There!  Cold stone met his toes and he breathed a sigh of absolute relief, lowering himself down onto the floor.  Gingerly, Sam swept his hands around him -- the stone flooring in the Bag End cold cellar, and it was very cold. 

Crawling carefully on hands and knees to where he thought the shelves were, he felt out in front of him.  Something wobbled as he touched it and hit the floor with a clatter.  Likely he had knocked the very thing he was looking for off the shelf -- the tinderbox.  He found himself scrabbling around desperately trying to find where it fell and breathing a sign of relief when his hand struck it.  With shaking hands he barely managed to open it, much less find the flint and steel and strike it, but after taking a few deep breaths, he managed to strike a spark and light the tender.

Sam breathed a sigh of absolute relief as the light bloomed in the dark, throwing strange shadows against the cold room's shelves and barrels.  He lit the lamp, putting the tinderbox back as he stood up on shaky legs.  There were no more obstacles now -- the door into the main cellar and the corridor both had latches on the inside and outside.  Mister Bilbo had done that after Frodo locked himself in the cellar once.

Going up the two steps and through the door, Sam found the main cellar quiet and the door into the corridor and the kitchen beyond shut tightly.  Both the bathing room and the wine cellar were dark as well.  He started for the door but then stopped in dismay in front of the awful pile of dirt and rock from the interrupted digging of Sancho Proudfoot.  For a young one, he had made a substantial-sized hole in the wall of the main cellar. 

“Ninnyhammer!” he whispered to himself, “You should’ve had that cleaned up and repaired when it happened.  Frodo don’t need reminding of those goings-on.”    

Sam approached the door into the corridor quietly.  There was no light or sound in the corridor beyond, as far as he could tell.  Turning down the flame on the lamp, he pulled the door open slowly and carefully.

The smials seemed to be completely quiet, but he could see faint light, as if from one candle in a distant room, far down the left side of the corridor where Mister Frodo’s rooms were.  Sam breathed a sigh of relief.  If it was Frodo, at least he had been well enough to light a candle in the last few hours.  But he had to make sure it was Frodo and that he was all right -- then he would leave as quietly as he came.  Sam would give Frodo his privacy and his space, as Frodo seemed to be wanting it.

Sam padded quickly down the corridor toward Mister Frodo’s rooms.  The faint light, not enough to be seen outside through the tight shutters, flickered from Frodo’s bedroom.  There was no sound from inside at all, as far as he could tell.  Slowing, he approached the door carefully and listened.  It was completely quiet, and that worried him even more.  He couldn’t even hear Frodo breathing, and even if he was asleep he would hear him breathing.  Sam stuck his head around the doorframe slowly.  At the sight that greeted him there, he stepped out into the doorway completely, gaping in disbelief. 

Frodo’s wardrobe was empty, the doors standing open into the room.  And the table next to his bed was emptied of books and papers.  Everything that marked the room as Frodo’s was gone.  A trunk stood open on the floor, filled halfway with odds and ends of clothing.   A candle flickered on the floor next to the trunk. 

And worst of all, Frodo’s filled pack was sitting on Frodo’s bed, and the bed had been completely stripped of sheets and blankets and all.

Something in Sam’s chest tightened and started to ache hollowly.  Frodo was leaving.  Leaving Bag End.  Leaving Sam.  Leaving. 

***

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