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Part One
Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known
as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more
obscene for the vague resemblance.
~ Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream
Someone was about to make Nettle very angry.
Two someones from the looks of it. She stood in the round doorway of her lovely riverbank hole, her thin arms folded over her chest, and watched the small figures approaching. It was those boys from the south, she could never remember their names, a whole passel of boys that all looked alike had been born to her second eldest and least interesting daughter. They were laughing and whistling and looking markedly shifty about the eyes. They were pulling a big old wagon.
It was a downright idyllic day, the River glittering in the morning sun and all of that. A good day to be angry, yes, she thought. Ulmo forbid I enjoys a nice day.
Here came the boys. They looked nervous now, their facade gone under Nettle's stare. And now there was some sort of caterwauling coming from the wagon.
"What's that then?" she asked right away. "Did you steals something? I said no more cats."
One of the boys tipped his hat to her. He swallowed. "Mornin, Gran."
"I knows it's mornin'."
"We-" the other boy started. "We went down to check on ol' Beeg, we did."
Her daft son? "O, has he left his wife, or what?"
The boys looked at each other for a moment. They steeled themselves up and said in unison: "Both dead. Fire."
Dead? That was something she had been braced for, for a long time. Béagol had been a greedy idiot. He had married a crazy woman from the settlement just downstream, who would go from laughing to sobbing in the span of a minute and paddled around in the River in full skirts like a child. When asked why, he had said that her wide, pale eyes had moonlight in them. That was stupid. Then he had admitted she'd had a large dowry. That was better.
It made sense that the two would end up dead after trying to move out on their own. They were not smart enough to survive on their own. But fire? All fisherfolk were careful with fire and all of them had buckets of water handy at all time for various reasons. Had someone meddled with them? Had her child and his bad choice of a spouse been murdered? Torched by wandering orcs or something like that? That she could not tolerate.
"Something else," one of the boys said.
The wailing from the cart had turned to sobbing.
"O no," Nettle said. "She was so thin. I thought they wouldn't have none."
The older, taller boy took out a cloth sack from the wagon. His face was grim. And when Nettle opened the sack, a child fell out of it. Seemingly none too hurt, it scrambled under the nearest shelter, which happened to be an overturned boat in front of Nettle's doorstep. There it burst into passionate sobs.
"Here now, here now," Nettle said stiffly, reaching for it. She was bitten for her trouble.
The boys were heading away already. "Stop there," Nettle called. "Don't just hare off fishing, go and tell your mam her brother's dead, and go and tell Lily and Iris to come an' help me with this thing."
She peered under the boat. A thin, dirty face glared back at her. She had had no contact with her least favorite son in six years. Perhaps the others had kept up a secret correspondence and could fill her in. That had been the way with Nettle's other exiled children.
They had kept up a secret correspondence and could fill her in. The child was a boy, his name was Sméagol- this annoyed Iris, who had named a boy Déagol at about the same time, and that was too similar. Let alone that half the men in the village had -éagol names, although there was something particularly unpleasant sounding about 'Sméagol', and it meant 'someone who creeps into holes', which sounded like a moniker for a troublemaker. This proved that not only had the late Béagol had bad taste in wives, he had had bad taste in names. It remained to be seen if he had bad taste in sons.
Sméagol was a remarkably mobile three years old, and when tempted out by food he proved to be thin and dirty and terrified. He had his mother's eyes. How unfortunate.
He did not like being touched. He would not speak. After he was fed, he curled up on the floor and went to sleep. His hair was matted.
"How often did ye visit his da?" Nettle asked.
Lily and Iris looked uncomfortable. "Once a year, or so," Iris volunteered. "If that. No one liked Béagol so much, no."
The men in the family tended to be... Nettle would call them 'inferior'. That was why she was in charge.
"How long has he been dead?" Nettle asked.
Lily shrugged.
"How long," Nettle asked, "has Sméagol been crawling about like he's some animal over in the woods them two fools wanted to live in?"
"Can't've been long," Iris said. "He's alive. Child his age won't know where to get drinking water and he'd die without it in a week, wouldn't he?"
Nettle nodded slowly. "Sense in that," she said.
"I'm pregnant," Lily said suddenly.
"Ah," said Nettle, "You're telling me now because you're saying there's no room in your place for the boy, I takes it." She glanced at Iris.
Iris slowly shook her head. "I have three boys already. Mam, I can't handle another one." She looked faintly traumatized. "And I've got an orphan too, that poor Foxglove girl." The men of the riverfolk could be a reckless lot. Sméagol and Foxglove were not the only children in the village who had ended up in homes not originally their own.
Nettle glanced at the sleeping waif. "I'll take him, I guess."
"O but," Iris said, "you doesn't like babies, Mam."
"He isn't a baby anymore. Bit older than that."
"You doesn't like toddlers either, Mam." Or children. Or most adults.
"I'll take him," Nettle said again. "Near bit off my finger, he did. None of you can handle him."
Sméagol slept quietly on the floor. He looked sickly pale and filthy and just as bedraggled and tragic an orphan as you'd wish.
He was going to need a good bit of looking after.
Gollum was weak yet, very weak. Men had to take care of him. They picked up Sméagol and moved him around like a poppet. This was not something he remotely enjoyed, but he knew he would not be able to keep himself alive without help, and supposedly these were friends of the Master. He had always been understanding, he thought quite reasonably so, of the need to co-operate when he was getting a fair deal. At least until there was a better deal to be had.
And the Men did not hurt him, except when they accidentally jostled some tender place, and they would stop jostling when he shrieked and cursed. They even apologized to him for hurting him, even though they had not meant to. Overall they were very gentle. They spoke in quiet voices. They gave him water to drink, and nice fishes, and meats! And they did not drop hunks of flesh near by him and walk away while he lay there weeping and too injured and sick to drag himself over to the food; they cut his food up into small pieces and held it out to him even though he sometimes got a bit confused and tried to eat the hands that the meat was held in. And they never once showed him the food and then ate it in front of him. In short, they were much nicer than orcs, or at least these Men were. They did not stink of flowers and things the way Elves did either, and nothing they used or had made froze or burned his skin at a touch. And they did not look as disapproving as Elves. And they kept him in a bedroom, not a filthy cell- nor a clean cell, not any kind of cell, and they even gave him baths.
"Hold still," one of the Men said.
"In a minute, in a minute!" They wanted to scrub his skin, they said something about it having a 'residue' on it, but Sméagol wanted to turn and twist like an otter, and not be pinned down by hands. What he could not achieve by strength he could achieve by becoming very slippery and not being where the Men expected him to be at any point. There were two of them, wearing thick gloves, and after a while they gave up trying to hold him or do anything to him and just let him wriggle about. He wriggled, and splashed, and laughed- lovely cool water!
"Does the Men like riddles?" he asked.
"No," said one of the Men.
"Then they needn't try to guess it, precious!
I carry with no hands
I mutter with no voices
I goes down to the Sea
Without any choices."
He had made that up on the spot and he thought it good, but the Men did not seem impressed. And they did not try to guess it.
After a time he realized there was hardly any water left because he had splashed it all out. He peered over the side at the puddles on the floor. Gollum was accustomed to water in pools and streams and rivers where he could not possibly splash all of it out, or even puddles where if it was splashed out it just became a new puddle next to where the old one had been.
"Perhaps you will allow us to finish our task now," one of the Men said calmly.
"O but, I will have to go back to bed when they finishes," said Gollum. He had reached the point of recovery where the mind is alert enough to know that being in bed is boring, but there is no energy or strength in the body to get up and do anything. In fact he had worn himself out and now lay slumped against the side of the tub.
"Nevertheless the task must be done." The big hands began to scrub at him. He became limp, fluid dead weight in their hands, and even more difficult to hold on to than ever, though not by choice now.
Aside from giving him commands, which he often ignored, the Men did not speak to him unless he tried to speak to them first, so the room was now quiet aside from the gentle sounds of sloshing water. Nice, homey sounds.
Then voices began to intrude from outside. "Hullo, why's this door locked? 'No Admittance... Keep Clear'?"
Another voice answered mildly: "That usually means to stay away, Pip."
"I'm not going to break in, by any means! I am merely curious what's in there that wasn't there yesterday."
"As am I," his companion returned, "but I'm more curious about what's for supper."
One of the Men took Gollum into a firm, not uncomfortable hold. The other approached the door and politely bowed towards it. "We are bathing one of your subjects, Prince of Halflings; the door is closed because he is delirious and easy to frighten."
"One of my subjects?" An aside, clearly directed away from the door and towards his companion: "Oh don't laugh, Merry, I have asked them not to." Addressing the Men in the Room: "Who do you mean? Delirious? What is the matter with him?"
Gollum was quite lucid, actually. "Halfling? Is it hobbitses? Is it?"
"I do believe that is Gollum," said one of the voices- Merry, apparently.
The other hobbit was trying to whisper, it seemed, but Gollum's sharp ears, at least, could hear him quite well. "It must be! He sounds just like Bilbo used to make him sound when he told the riddle story!" He sounded intrigued.
"Will the hobbits come inside and see us, will they?" He had not seen any hobbits since Frodo had come to speak to him, only Men, big thundering Men who did not know how to walk softly. "Yes, yes, the nice hobbits should come inside and talk to Sméagol, instead of standing outside and talking about him, precious!"
One of the Men addressed him. "If you wish to meet them, would you not prefer a more comfortable meeting-place, or to be clothed first?"
"No, don't want clothes, hobbits now," said Gollum, who thought that they would probably find some reason not to let him see the hobbits at all if he agreed to wait. He was hunkered down in the tub anyway, no one could see anything of him but his eyes peering over the side. (Except for the Men who were tall enough to look down in at him but that was different, they were Men.)
"I don't mind coming in now," said the hobbit on the other side of the door. "I shall be careful where I look." The Men shrugged a bit and went to let him in. Two hobbits bustled inside.
Gollum stared at them. "Such fine, big hobbits," he muttered. Or had he shrunk? Anything was possible at this point. But they did look quite large, these hobbits. They were also dressed well, and they were clean and fit, not wanderers in the Shadow-lands. They were the first hobbits he'd seen to not have the pinch of fear, irritation, pain, weariness, thirst, or all of the above in their little faces. They seemed almost to glow.
They looked at him with interest and pity. One face had more interest than pity, the other had more pity than interest.
"So you're Gollum!" the more pitying one said. "We've heard a lot about you. My name is Meriadoc Brandybuck, but I'm always called Merry."
Meriadoc! Now, that was a proper name, not a bit of nothing like 'Samwise'. "And our name is Sméagol," he said politely. "My name is Sméagol. Sméagol sounds nicer, eh, it does. Doesn't it?"
"I suppose it does," said Merry, also quite polite, "I beg your pardon. Sméagol, then. I'm used to the other name, but I don't suppose I would let anyone call me a name like Gollum."
"O no! A hobbit that size musst be called whatever he'd like, we thinks. And what has they heard about Sméagol, hmmm, if they have heard so much?" He rested his chin on the edge of the tub. "Nassty things, I guess." Especially if Baggins had been talking about him!
The other hobbit who had not given his name, the one called a Prince, laughed abashedly. "It was not all complimentary, I must admit, I am sure you know it wasn't. But I've also heard that you're very clever at finding your way, and that you helped Sam and Frodo end the War. That seems to have made a lot of people willing to forget some of the other things."
"O yes," said Gollum. "They tell us we have done something important, and that is why we are here talking to hobbitses now, and are not hungry, and do not have to stalk about this fine big place staying out of sight and stealing our meats and fishes. It is all very strange for us, gollum! Sméagol does not understand it, he was only doing what he promised. It is strange for us to be seen. They no longer kicks us into corners and says 'vile, horrid' when they sees Sméagol, now Sméagol is petted and given nice things and hobbits comes to say hello. Is he not so ugly and nasty anymore?" And, of course, the real question was, when would they revert to their former opinions of him and start kicking him into corners again?
"Well," said the hobbit. "I suppose Big People are confusing to me too sometimes. I have told them I'm not a prince, but they don't seem to believe me." He eyed the Men standing on either side of the tub, Men who respectfully said nothing.
"Why, that is because the hobbit is so fine and big, precious," Gollum muttered, "yes, and he is dressed like a prince, he is." In fact he was not convinced that Pippin was not actually royalty, even though he had never heard of hobbits having any sort of princes or kings among them.
"Am I really?" Pippin laughed. "I suppose that's a compliment." It was just an observation, Gollum meant neither flattery nor insult. "And I'm Pippin, by the way. Pippin Took."
"Pippin Took?"
"Yes. Do you have a last name? While we are making introductions is a good time to tell us, if you do."
"A last name?"
"A family name," said Pippin.
"No," said Gollum. "If we did we have losst it."
"That's dreadful," said Pippin. His eyes went wide. "Without a family name how do you know your geneaology?"
"Don't know it," Gollum grunted.
"You don't know who you're related to?" Merry asked.
"Gran," said Gollum, beginning to feel sorry for himself but not quite understanding why.
"Your grandmother?"
"Gran and..." And Déagol. "We do not have family any longer," said Gollum. "They, we..." He did not know that he was expecting something to happen until it didn't happen- the little nudge at the back of his mind that sent an already sensitive temper absolutely raging over, over something or other, to smother to death the still small voice of I did something horrible that can never be undone, and perhaps to only exile me was an act of kindness. This nudge did not happen. He was left with only the knowledge that he had done wrong, and his natural inclination to self-pity. "We are bad, so we have no family," he said, "and, we are old, so very old they would have died by now anyhow, we guess, yes, even the littlest cousins... no family, no name... gollum!"
PIppin looked abashed. "That must be very unpleasant, Sméagol, however it came about. I am sorry I brought it up, I think."
"I am happy to move on to something else," said Merry. "I see you're having a bath, why in this room, and in a laundry washtub?"
"Is that not how it is done?" Gollum lazily sloshed one foot around in the water. "We do not know how Men takes baths."
One of the Men interceded quietly: "He must be kept in the dark, and he is sized for this tub."
The other added: "He must be bathed in a room that contains nothing in it that can be ruined by water."
Merry nodded. "As long as you don't scrub him with a washboard. So how have you been feeling, Sméagol? I heard you were ill."
Gollum was caught between two very powerful instincts: the desire to complain, which was ingrained into his nature, and the desire to not give off any signs of weakness, which had served him so well as a creature in the wild. But he was not in the wild, and they could already see that he was in such a state that he was being carted around and given baths by strange people twice his size. What's more, they were very big hobbits that could have taken him on even at the peak of his powers, so there was no point in pretending. "O yes," he said, "very sick we were, it was wretched, and now we can hardly move, poor Sméagol." He rested his cheek on the edge of the tub and looked at them sadly.
"I am sorry to hear it," said Pippin politely. "Are you enjoying your bath?"
"Yes! It is nice, it is lovely, but it is almost over," Gollum replied, "and then we will go back to our room and be dry again." He sighed.
"You, er, don't like being dry?" Pippin asked.
"It is nice to be in rivers, streams and pools, and cool places underground," Gollum murmured, half to himself. "Yes, yes, caves and lakes and riverses."
"Why, Sméagol, you sound a bit homesick."
"No home anymore to be sick for, no, not for Sméagol. No family. No Precious..."
"I did not mean to bring up another sore point," said Pippin, looking at his friend.
Merry leaned one shoulder casually against the wall. Gollum noticed for the first time a scar across the big hobbit's brow. What kind of nasty creature was able to hurt a hobbit that big? he wondered, and shuddered. "I've got a question," he asked. "Mr. Bilbo said you had a little boat in that cave you used to live in."
"Yes," said Gollum, looking at him warily.
"How'd you get a boat? From the goblins?"
"They did not have any boat. We made ours," said Gollum. "Used to make them from reedses... none underground. Took things from the goblins, yes, clothes, sticks, things. Made our boat. Boat fell apart. Made a new one. Yes, yes. Many times. Boats do not last as long as I have." At least, not boats that were in daily use and constructed from sub-optimal materials.
Merry nodded. "Do you still know how to make a reed boat?"
"O yes," Gollum said. He assumed he did, anyway.
"I should like to see that, someday, if you're willing."
Aha! He had known that if he stayed here long enough, someone would require something from him in return. Making a reed boat would be an easy enough task. "Of course!" he said. "Good Sméagol helps hobbits however he can. But hobbit musst give us reeds." Or at least show him where to find them. He was not against harvesting the reeds himself if pressed but he wasn't going to volunteer.
"Of course," said Merry. "But we should go on our way, I think, there are some people waiting for us to turn up who will wonder where we've been, and besides, you need to finish up your bath."
"They are going, the nice hobbits? They have only jusst arrived," said Gollum. "They are too busy, too busy for us, we guess."
"We simply weren't planning to talk to you today," said Pippin. "We can make a luncheon date if you'd like. You seem rather lonely."
"A luncheon date, what is that?"
"We may come and talk to you another time, he means," said Merry. "But we have a promise to go and talk to someone else right now."
"You know promises shouldn't be broken, Sméagol," Pippin said brightly. "Especially to Frodo, and that is who we are going to see!"
"Then why are they talking to Sméagol?" he cried with an alarm that surprised even himself. "The nice Master is waiting! Go to him, go to him, gollum!"
"Will do." The hobbits vanished, with the speed and silence with which hobbits could vanish. Gollum would have vanished after them if he could. He wondered what had possessed him to tell them to leave faster.
"Who were the nice hobbits?" Gollum demanded of his keepers, as they finished their work. They could not be convinced that he did not need to be scrubbed.
"They are the Prince of Halflings and the Esquire of Rohan," said the Man.
That meant absolutely nothing to Gollum, who muttered under his breath and when approached with a towel said "O no! We do not need that, nice Man."
"You must be dried."
"Sméagol does not want that!"
"We can't bring you back to your quarters soaking wet," said the Man, who wrapped Gollum in the towel and walked off with him held tightly to his chest, while he growled like a cat. Once in the room he was toweled off, despite his protests, and then dressed, and then placed in bed, where he was tucked in like a little girl's plaything. He was still not used to being made so warm and it made him intensely drowsy- in fact he promptly fell asleep before the Men could feed him.
Someone was near.
Gollum could plainly see that the room was empty, and he could not smell or hear anyone, but he still felt certain that he was not as alone as he would have liked to be. His thin, fleshless limbs had become heavy and were all but beyond his power to move after the minor exertions of the day, and whatever was there had him at its mercy.
"O," he cried, "who is there?" This was a sure sign that he was getting spoiled, because he knew one ought never to alert a mysterious presence that one had caught on to it- orcs had given themselves away to him that way too often for him not to know better! He chided himself at once.
There was an answer given, however, in a small voice that sounded as if it was trying to make itself deeper and more impressive than it was. "I am the voice of your evil past, Gollum." The voice came from the other side of the closed door.
Gollum blinked. He knew that voice, it was indeed the voice of his evil past, though perhaps not in the way the speaker had intended. He was quite at a loss for how to answer.
At length, "it is, eh, it is Sméagol," he said.
"Oh, well, if you're going to be like that about it, perhaps I've decided you don't deserve a proper name," the voice sniffed. "I'll call you what I like. In any case I don't think you're in any place to make demands at the moment."
Gollum had only pointed out what his real name was. He hadn't even asked to be referred to by it. That was not a demand. "Is this Baggins?" he asked. He was certain it was, but equally certain that it shouldn't be. How could Bilbo be here? Where had he come from? Of course, Gollum had not expected to see Gandalf or Aragorn either and yet they were about somewhere.
"Call me Ringwinner, if you like, or Luckwearer."
Gollum sat bolt upright, bracing his hands on his legs when his head spun. "Ssss! Ringwinner? Ringwinner?" Why- the joke was on Baggins. Now no one could have the Precious, and for a moment Gollum was sneakingly glad he'd destroyed it, however much he missed it. "Riddle-cheater, it is! Tresspasser. Burglar!"
"I didn't cheat."
His hands formed bony fists. "You did, you did! How dare you?"
"I did not."
Gollum eyed the closed door. "O, he says he didn't cheat!" Baggins, Baggins, it really was, after all this time. His heart pounded, and his stomach trilled the way it did when he found the scent of some particularly juicy prey. "He didn't cheat, did he? Then he will play again, yes."
"No!" Bilbo cried, scandalized.
"I carry with no hands
I mutter with no voices
I goes down to the Sea
Without any choices."
Now that Bilbo was the one hearing it and not Men whose named he had never learned, the little rhyme sounded like it could use a great deal more work. And when Bilbo spoke he sounded truly offended. "Absolutely not! How dare you?"
"That's not the answer," Gollum said.
"That was not any answer. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Riddles, indeed!"
"Knows it cheated, we guess, we guess, can't cheat now so it won't answer. He is afraid of Sméagol!"
"Oh, come off it."
"He is afraid," said Gollum, "and that is why he won't come in and see us!"
"I'm staying out here because I don't want to go where I can smell you, but maybe you're afraid, since I don't see you coming out to me, either."
"That is not fair! We are too sick! Can't get up," said Gollum. "Should be sleeping. Baggins woke us. Not nice! Not nice Baggins!"
The answer was a loud wordless scoff, followed by: "I've been hearing an awful lot about you, you know."
"O yes, and he's been telling about us, too. Talking behind poor Sméagol's back so his friends won't like us! Sss!" All he had heard, so far, was that Bilbo had told Merry that Gollum had at one point owned a boat.
"Perhaps you can set the record straight about a few things, then, if you think I'm not being fair. How many hobbits have you eaten? I've been giving the figure at seventy-five."
Oh so the Baggins did want to play games but he wouldn't play riddles. Very well, very well! "We has lost count, precious!" The true answer was: none. Not for lack of trying. But Bilbo clearly thought him tricksy and cunning enough to eat many hobbits, so Gollum would not correct him, no!
"Disgusting. How many goblins?"
Gollum chortled. He really had lost count, somewhere after one thousand and ninety-seven. "A few, a few. They have a beautiful taste, yes, they are tangy, and crunchy."
"Impressive! How many children of the Wood-men?"
Gollum went quiet. This confused him more than anything.
"Oh," said Bilbo. "You don't like that particular little riddle."
"That was a question," said Gollum. "Not a riddle."
"What's the answer?"
"Why, Sméagol does not know. Why do you ask him?"
There was a long silence before Bilbo spoke again.
"You've caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people, you know, and worse than trouble. Aragorn is a particular friend of mine."
"Aragorn," Gollum sneered. "Aragorn has caused troubles himself, he has. We suppose he thinks if he were set upon like poor rabbit caught by a hawk, and bound and gagged and put on a rope, eh, and dragged, he wouldn't bite, he wouldn't struggle, the Baggins who wouldn't even play fair at riddles, precious."
"You know," said Bilbo, "Smeedol, or whatever your name is, I seem to recall that I offered you three guesses at what was in my pocket and you made four. If you couldn't fathom that perhaps the one valuable thing you owned in that wretched place was what was in my pocket, after three legal chances and an illegal fourth, maybe you deserved to have me carry it off for your carelessness. You did drop it where I could find it, too, you know."
"Ssss! That is very nice, o very nice!" Gollum whined. "We have worn ourselfs to the bone because of what he did, and gone all over this cold cruel world, and been tormented with hunger and thirsst and jailed and beaten and now he comes to insult us, I don't want to hear any more. Has he come looking for his Precious back? It is gone, it is gone, don't bother Sméagol."
"Bother you? You have some nerve, I must say. You went all that way trying to kill me!"
Gollum plucked at the blankets. "Yes. Didn't!"
"Didn't?"
"He would have killed us, precious. But he didn't." Gollum blinked at the closed door.
Bilbo sounded utterly disbelieving. "I chose to spare you. You couldn't find me! That is not the same thing! I'm alive because you're not only in want of a moral compass, but the other variety. You don't know west from south!"
"O yes we do," Gollum cried. "Ach! Don't talk about things you know nothing about. I was dragged to that place like a worm on a hook, and it was misery, misery! I knows west from ssouth. Ask the other Baggins. Master knows."
"So you didn't give up killing me at all."
"We won't do anything nasty now," said Gollum. "Come in, come in where we can see you. Not nice lurking outside."
A pitying sigh issued from behind the door, but he never found out if Bilbo planned to come in and join him, because-
"BILBO BAGGINS, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
It was Gandalf! Gollum cringed and trembled. But for once he was not the target of the wizard's rage.
"Oh dear," Bilbo squeaked.
"I have never been so disappointed in you," Gandalf thundered. "If you had wholesome intentions, you would have asked for an audience, and you instead took it upon yourself to discover where this wretch was being housed and snuck off to him like a thief in the night. Are you satisfied with yourself?"
"No," Bilbo admitted. "He's very talented, I must say, to be able to do what he's done and somehow make you feel like the one who's in the wrong for chiding him. I must come back sometime and ask him how he does it!" This was a skill, not a talent, and Gollum had been working at it for years. Many, many years.
"You will not come back here if you wish to keep your eyebrows unsinged. Get away from there at once," Gandalf fumed, and the voices mercifully receded as Bilbo said:
"I would look rather dreadful with no eyebrows, so on those terms I'd better stay away... but at least I had the sense not to go in, Gandalf..."
Gollum huddled in bed and whimpered. He suspected that this was not over, and surely enough, Gandalf returned alone, opening the door and stalking up to his bedside to glower down at him.
"As for you," said Gandalf, "asking riddles, of all things! I have quite by accident begun a research study- how far beyond a hobbit's natural lifespan must one live before he behaves like an adult? Bilbo has not managed it and neither will you. I wonder if another span of centuries would teach you good sense."
"He came to me, he did," Gollum whinged. "And, I had such a nice riddle, and no one will guess it, they won't..." He faltered.
"Is that so." Gandalf's eyes were terrifying. Gollum tried to find something, anything else to look at. "Riddles indeed," he said, "at your age," and he stormed out, shutting the door loudly behind him.
Gandalf didn't even ask if I needed anything, Gollum thought. He should ask, I'm not able to get up and get anything for myself or fetch anyone, and I'm hungry. Wait. That is ridiculous, we hates each other, of course he didn't ask...
He was quite unable to get back to sleep.