Hello, and welcome to the NataCast podcast, the podcast that usually goes through a song of ice and fire one chapter a week, but not here.

I'm one of your hosts Emmett, also known as Poor Quentin. My co-host, Jeff, also known as Brendan Befish, is taking a couple months off the podcast for work.

Soon as he's back, we'll restart the regular podcast with a Storm of Swords, Sansa 3. While he's away,

I'm going to be doing a number of episodes on my own and with guest hosts, including picking up

where I left off last time with J.R.R.R. Tolkien's, the Lord of the Rings. Last week, we covered

Chapter 1 of Book 4, the teaming of Smeagle, in which Frodo and Sam wander the labyrinth of the M. M. M.U. E.L. Before running into their new best friend and guide through hell, Ghalm., aka. Smeagle.

Now we're moving on to Chapter 2 of Book 4, The Passage of the Marshes.

In the last chapter, Frodo struck a bargain with Gullum to get them to Mordor.

It's a fragile piece between rivals who have more in common

than they would care to admit. So, how's that piece holding up? Ghalom seems trustworthy. As he leads

them out of the Emil, Tolkien writes, he would turn and wait for them every time they get too far behind.

So he's not trying to abandon them. He's not trying to run off and tell the orcs about them. He refers to himself as Smeagel and I, an assertion of a whole identity, which he wasn't doing before.

But is this genuine or just play acting until he can get his hands on the ring?

Right away in this chapter, we get the presence of water, something desperately missing from the previous chapter, freezing rain aside.

Gallum is delighted to be in it, the source of life, the joy of nature he experienced as Smeagle,

before he was cut off from it in the misty mountains. He even has a little song about it.

Songs are important in the Lord of the Rings, the process by which experience is transformed

into legend, history, and myth, tying all the circles of

story and road together and inspiring us to keep going. That's what Ghalem's song is about,

leaving the cold, hard land behind to play in the water. It seems to indicate that his conversion

was real. He's back to his old self. But then he interrupts his own song. Gives us a little commentary

track to remind us of the context. What's he going to sing about next? He asks, can the hobbits guess?

...