Chapter 6: Indelible Ink

A knock on the door.

"Sméagol is busy!" Gollum snapped.

He had asked to see Frodo a day ago, and he had been told Frodo was quite occupied with things Gollum didn't understand. Something to do with the King- if Pippin was a prince, was the nice Master secretly a king? That theory would require some follow-up, but in any case Gollum thought it quite natural that someone with such an air of authority as Frodo had would have business with the King if he were not royalty himself. At any rate he could not see Frodo, but they had told him he might write a note.

Gran had been a powerful person, a matriarch, and one who held her descendants to a high standard. Sméagol had been taught to read and write, yes!

Over five hundred years ago.

He had not held a pen since leaving his village. He had had few opportunities to read anything, either.

He did not want to say so. He merely said, o yes, Sméagol would like to be given writing things. And now he was occupied in trying to recall how to use them. He could now eat on his own, and bathe when provided with washing-water (although for some reason the Men often still tried to help- something about a 'residue' on his skin), and walk about as well as he ever could, and climb a great deal better than he could walk, and dress himself when given clothing even if the clothing was itchy and hot and he did not like it. He didn't want someone to write letters for him, particularly since what he wanted to write was not anyone's business but his own! Although he sometimes allowed the Men to carry him up the stairs. They held him tight like a thing that was wanted, and they had strong steady heartbeats, and- and the stairs were steep. Climbing down the sheer wall to the ground from his window was relatively easy... but the stairs were steep.

But writing practice had somehow devolved into Sméagol drawing endless circles. Circles upon circles. A nice shape, the circle...

These Men are o so clever, perhaps they could lend a poor creature some golden ink, he thought absent-mindedly, having already forgotten the knock at the door, but then:

"It's me," a soft voice said through the door. "I was told you wanted to see me."

"Master?"

Gollum pulled the door open with a cheerful cry. "Master! He has come, he has come to us!"

He nuzzled Frodo's knees until Frodo took his shoulders and gently pushed him away. "Let me in, please."

Gollum moved aside, and Frodo entered the room, his Sam following. They looked about the room. Aside from Gollum's bed and the table, there was a wardrobe that had his clothes in it, which he sometimes perched on top of, as he could surveil both the door and the window from there, and also see if anything came out from under the bed. Of course nothing was likely to enter the room without warning from any of those places. He knew that! But he liked to be able to see anyway. And- of course- if he was up there and very quiet and tucked into the corner, anyone who entered the room could not see him, which was an enjoyable thought. Once he had hidden up there while one of the younger Men who looked after him was searching the room for him, and then casually reached out to tap him on the shoulder. Faelon, his name was. How he'd shrieked! But then instead of running or fighting he had laughed merrily and called Gollum 'incorrigible', and Gollum was still not sure how he felt about that.

Some of Gollum's clothes that had been worn were on the floor or shoved out of the way; he had been told he must take them off because they had become 'slimy'. Apparently 'slimy' clothes ought not to go into the wardrobe with the clean clothes or they would make everything slimy.

There was also a mirror in the room. Gollum had taken one look into it and turned it to the wall. Frodo was looking at the mirror now, but he said nothing about it.

"Master was busy, eh?" Gollum asked him. "What was he doing?"

"I have been whisked off my feet with merriment I did not request and I have been both asked for and given more advice than any hobbit need ever hear," Frodo said, quickly and with a touch of impatience, though the impatience seemed not to be aimed at Gollum.

Gollum did not know exactly what he was talking about but he understood what it was to be impatient and irritable, perhaps because one's mind was chafed raw by something one could never really explain. "Poor Master," he said, and if his attempt at sounding comforting was overdone, and sounded disingenuous, well- it was the same tone Gollum used to comfort his own precious self, and he knew no better. "He is tired."

"I am more tired than you know," said Frodo, with an edge of so don't be presumptuous. 

Gollum was a trifle hurt by his tone, but then a thought came to him that he would not have been able to have not so very long ago, which was that the Master was such a young hobbit. Being told that Frodo was actually fifty years old would have done nothing to make him think otherwise, quite the opposite. Fifty years was so short a span! Nowhere near long enough to come to terms with being drained, and eaten, and empty.

So instead of getting angry, he said: "Sméagol is tired sometimes too, Master. He might knows a bit, just a bit, yes?" His tone was painstakingly polite, with the faintest hint of a quaver in it that meant If you use that tone with me again I will not take it well.

Frodo said nothing, and looked as if he was lost in thought. He glanced over at Sam, who had noticed Gollum's writings and drawings, which caused Frodo to notice them.

Sam was looking at the circles. Gollum had run out of space on the paper, and started drawing circles on the table.

"They are nice," Gollum told him. "Very round. Clever Sméagol to make such beautiful circles when he has not held a pen in so long."

Sam gave him a look that he could not interpret, and turned to studying the bit of the paper where Sméagol had been trying to remember how to write things.

Gollum was not sure he liked that, but he was distracted from it when Frodo cleared his throat politely and said: "Why were you asking for me, Sméagol? I have no doubt that you like to see me, but Boromir made it sound rather urgent. Are you well?"

"Yes, yes, it is nice of him to ask, precious," said Gollum, "and Master smells healthy too. Nice master." If he had been better acquainted with Frodo he might have thought Frodo seemed subdued and thin, but Gollum had only recently gotten to know him- and very few people looked thin to Gollum. At any rate the way Frodo looked now was quite an improvement over the way Frodo had looked on Mount Doom.

"Why did you need me?" Frodo asked.

"O," said Gollum. "The Men wants us to go into orc-tunnels, nasty places, yes, and we are frightened; but we will go if Master wishes it. What should we do?"

"Why- it is not my place to tell you whether to go or not."

Gollum wrung his hands. Frodo was entirely responsible for his being here, and alive, and still Sméagol; was it not his business?

I get tired too, he thought, so dreadfully tired. But I am only Gollum, yes, a creature who lurks in corners, that must be it. Nothing like you at all. Sméagol is being presumptuous again.

"But," said Frodo, upon looking into his face, "I suppose you want my advice. These Men are all friends of mine and they would not ask you to do anything without a good purpose. They want to clear away the orcs so that they can do no more evil to the world. But you have done all I asked of you and more, and you do not need to do any more work if you do not wish it. It does sound as if it may be dangerous, and I suppose the purpose is for you to go in where Men can't, which would mean they can't go in to help you if you are in danger."

Gollum gave him a sideways glance. "He is saying that Sméagol ought to do it, but they will let him say no. Yes, precious."

"I am not saying that," said Frodo. "I do not think you ought or ought not to do it, I cannot tell you that. You know best whether you are able to do what they're asking of you, and if it is something you should do. Your promise to me is fulfilled and the thing that enslaved you is destroyed. Now you are a free creature, and your affairs are only my business if you make them my business. If you do things that help the Men, that will please me, but if you are hurt or killed in the process that will grieve me. Either way I cannot command you as to what you will do."

Gollum didn't want to be hurt or killed either.

"Are you trying to remember your letters, Gollum?" Sam asked.

"Ssss." Sam didn't even look like he realized he had done anything wrong, which was worse than an intentional slight. But at least Sam made sense. "It has been a long time, since we needed to write anything..."

"Well, if you want help remembering, I'm here," said Sam, putting his hands in his pockets. "In fact I can write some things down for you to try and copy, right now, if you'd like. It'll give you something to do." He glanced at the circles.

Gollum peered at him. Perhaps Sam did not make sense after all.

"I think that is a wonderful idea, Sam," said Frodo, so it must be a wonderful idea. "And I think we can find a book for him to look at, too."

"Here's some blank space." Sam picked up the pen. "I don't suppose the Men'll be too pleased that this table's covered in ink, but Sméagol's already done a fair number on it."

"Sss! Why cannot I write on the table?"

"'Can't' isn't the right word seeing as you've already done it," said Sam. "I just don't think they'll be too happy."

"Then they ought to have given Sméagol more paper!" He leaned in for a better look at what Sam was writing. It already looked familiar.

Soon he became so interested in the letters that he forgot Sam was the one teaching him (it helped that Frodo stepped in, to show him the right way to hold a pen), and soon he was creating reasonable facsimiles of Sam's letters and even scrawling his own name.

Frodo was watching his hand move. He and Sam gave each other a look, and Sam said: "Let's see your hand, Sméagol. Give it here."

Gollum hesitated, and hissed, but a sense of helplessness overcame him and he gave Sam his hand, after letting go of the pen. His fingers trembled.

Sam did not take his hand. "I just want a look," he said.

"Why?" Gollum demanded.

"Just in case." Sam held up his own hand. "Try doing this." He did a series of hand motions, which Gollum mimicked. He could do almost all of them. "That's all right, then," said Sam, "you should be able to hold a pen. Just wanted to see."

"We thought your hands might not be quite like ours since you walk on them so much," said Frodo.

"No, no, they are nice handses," said Gollum, returning to his scrawling, only this time he shifted the pen into his left hand without thinking about it, and suddenly things became easier.

Frodo laughed.  Frodo had such a nice laugh, he did, clear like a bell. It sounded, somehow, almost... Gollum would not say Elvesesish, because that would be an insult to his nice Master, but that was all he could think of, even though the voices of Elves hurt his ears and his mind, and Frodo's laugh did not. "So that was the trouble! I should have thought of it."

"What? What is the trouble?" Gollum did not think he had done anything amusing.

"There is no trouble. You are left-handed."

"Left-handed? Why, yes," said Gollum, a bit startled. "Sméagol is left-handed." He could use both hands almost equally well for most things, having learned out of necessity, but Gran had also been left-handed and had taught him to write that way. He had never had to teach his right hand to use a pen and so it was clumsy. He, too, should have thought of it, but Sam and Frodo had been using their right hands, so he had tried to do the same.

A cramp tightened up the base of his thumb. He dropped the pen by reflex and started licking the place until it relaxed again. Gollum had dexterous hands (as well as sinister hands) that were used to all sorts of tasks, very quick and nimble- but they were not used to writing and were beginning to protest.

But after a moment he picked the pen back up anyway.

Frodo studied him. "I think you have enough to do for now, Sméagol, and we will take our leave- no doubt you only recently woke and breakfasted but Sam and I prefer to sleep at night."

"That is a shame," said Gollum. "The night is much nicer than day! The hobbits should try it. But they must do what they like." He almost mentioned that Bilbo was obviously fond of night- but perhaps he wouldn't get into that.

"We shall leave you now. Good luck."

"G'night," said Sam.

Gollum waved them away and went back to writing.

Galil rounded the corner, holding a tray with a plate of meat on it. It was the meat from a whole chicken, with organs included, carefully diced up into small pieces but completely raw. The tray was heavy.

A serving-woman was coming down the stairs, someone she did not know- Galil usually did not work in this guest house, but she had had the honor to be put forward for a certain important assignment that required discretion, compassion and a strong stomach.

The woman eyed the plate. "Are you bringing that to the monster?" she said in low tones of awe and horror.

"Tis no monster in these quarters," said Galil, sternly. "Hold thy tongue." She swept past. She had not forgotten an incident when she had not checked the tongue of someone else making such talk, and had entered Sméagol's room to find him staring at the wall with his jaw tight and his face flushed, with oddly greasy-looking tears smearing his face. He would not admit it, but plainly he had overheard, and he had been in a poisonous mood for several days afterward.

Right now they were two floors down from his room, but she did not know how keen his hearing might be and did not want to risk any gossip. She felt no desire to gossip about him in the first place.

When she reached his room and knocked on his door, the answer was: "Sméagol is busy."

He had never claimed to be busy before. There seemed to be nothing in the room for him to be busy with. "I have brought your dinner," she said.

"That is different! Come in! Come in!"

She entered the room and found the creature sitting hunched up on the table, hugging his knees to his chest and staring at what he had been busy with. She now recalled that Eardwulf had mentioned offering writing implements. She had been quite surprised that Sméagol claimed to be able to read and write, but perhaps she did not know enough about him to claim that anything he did was too surprising. Looking at what he had done to the table, however, she was not at all sure he could read or write. Giving him so much paper seemed extravagant, but he'd plainly used all of it, and beyond.

"Sméagol," she scolded, "you ought not to have made marks on the table."

He raised his face to her, wide-eyed.  "Why not? There was not enough paper." He was stripped to the braies- he often said the room was stuffy. It felt pleasant enough to her. His parchment-colored skin had been smudged here and there with ink, even in improbable places, such as along his ribs.

"We will have to clean the table, and it will cost us work."

He blinked. "You do not need to clean the table. This is Sméagol's room. He likes the table this way. The Men needn't clean it."

"If you needed more paper, you ought to have asked for it."

"Then we asks, we wants more paper! And more ink, we have used ours."

His request for ink might not be granted, but that gladly was not her decision to make. "I will tell them you said so."

She set down the plate of food. He immediately moved it- she had apparently covered up some drawings he wanted to look at. Looking at his scribbles, she now thought she could identify some letters, or something that was intended to be letters- but mainly he had drawn circles. Lots of circles.

"They are very nice circles," he said, apparently following her gaze.

She noticed also a drawing of fish bones, next to a series of lines she could not identify. Sméagol pointed to it. "Roots."

"Roots?"

"Trees roots. Has she ever dug into trees roots?"

"I have not," she said.

"They are interesting," said Sméagol. He did not say more, and there was a look of reticence on his face- almost shyness. He had not yet touched his food, which was unusual for him, but he seemed alert and healthy. She had noticed that he seemed not to like being observed eating. There was no reason to watch him, as there was no reason to think he might need assistance, and she did not want to watch him for it was an unpleasant sight. She turned away to check the room, and soon heard slavering noises from the table.

Sméagol had left dirty clothes scattered all over. It was not one of her duties to tidy the room- she had only volunteered to bring him food and report if while she was present he did anything alarming, seemed unwell or gave the impression that he was planning something. But she had nothing to occupy herself with until he finished eating, so she usually brought a stick with her and used it to arrange the discarded clothing into a pile in the corner so that it would be more easily dealt with later. Surely, whoever had to clean up Sméagol's space had enough to contend with by tackling the odd residue he left on surfaces. She began to move the clothes now.

"Why is she moving our clotheses?" Sméagol muttered.

Galil did not reply. Sméagol was smart enough to know that he ought to ask questions directly, and it did him no good to reward him for speaking improperly.

Sure enough, after a moment he asked: "Why are you moving my clothes?"

"So they can more easily be taken away and washed."

"Wash them! Why does you always wash them? Let us wear them when we take our baths, and then they will be washed. The Men needn't wash them."

"Neither you nor the clothes would become clean enough that way."

"Yes we would. It was good enough for us before." Sméagol sounded utterly baffled.

His discarded clothes were slimy and had a strange odor, which was why she used the stick to move them (even though Sméagol drew away and eyed her warily when it was in her hand). Perhaps she, too, would think him a monster if she was in charge of cleaning these things and had to scrub the slime away, but Sméagol had not chosen to have seeping skin.

Something was missing from the room. A few items had been removed, she had heard- she could not recall which things or why, but it was plain that Sméagol was not an ordinary guest. She looked around to try to figure out what was missing from the last time she'd been inside, and infer from that why it had needed to be removed and what Sméagol had done or threatened to do. She realized nothing was missing at all. The mirror had been turned to face the wall, so that at first glance it seemed to be gone.

It had been moved awkwardly and there were smudges as if it had been touched with wet or greasy hands- and quite low down, at Sméagol's height. "Why did you move the mirror?" she asked, glancing up at him. She saw a thin, twisted back with whip-scarred skin stretched over a jagged ridge of spine, shoulder blades turned at improbable angles.

Aside from what could be inferred by what he looked like and how he was cared for, and that his safety and comfort were important to the King- safety more important than comfort- she knew almost nothing about Sméagol. In general, Galil was not one to ask about more than she was told, which was part of why she had been put forward to attend on the creature, but at times she wondered if she might not be able to do her job better if she knew a little more.

"Don't want mirror," Sméagol said curtly. "Don't put it back."

"It could help you with dressing." Her voice was neutral. To her eyes it was plain why Sméagol may not enjoy the sight of his reflection, but she could not know if he saw himself as unlovely.

A sallow, suspicious face looked over his shoulder, with blood smeared on the cheek. "Don't want mirror." His eyes said Surely you can see why not.

"Very well," she said. She could think of no way to say 'Indeed, you are hideous' in a kind manner, so she would not say it. Yet a mirror was not a cheap thing and it seemed a shame for it to be here if it would not be used. "Would you consent to have it removed?"

"Yes, take it, take it!" He turned back to his food.

She would ask if it could be put to better use elsewhere. She did not have the authority to remove it right away.

The bed was unmade. Even if it had fallen to her to do so, there was no point in making it now, as the morning was about to dawn and the creature slept in the daylight hours.

"We has been writing things," said Sméagol.

"So I see. What have you been writing?"

"Read it, read it!" Sméagol squirmed in his seat. "We've already written it, we needn't say it all again."

"Very well." She made a great show of studying his letters. Galil was literate, being of a station to serve the Houses of the Stewards- and the King, now. But Sméagol was... less literate. Ah! Here was a recognizable word. "You've written your name." Her words came more slowly as the rest of what he had written became clear. "And the name of the Ringbearer, and his servant. And you've drawn a circle around them..."

She had heard that he had once been a halfling- allegedly, Mithrandir himself had said so- and that he had had some important part to play in the War of the Ring. 

"Yes, those are their names, they are," said Sméagol, and, grumbling: "There should be one other name, precious, but we don't know how to spells it yet."

"Why are they in a circle?"

His voice was far away. "Because circles is beautiful." Sméagol tilted his head on his long neck and stared at the surface of the table. "Eh, why does they call Master the Ringbearer?"

The Ringbearer? Sméagol had mentioned his 'Master' before, but she had not realized whom he referred to.

She decided that this really was none of her business. She would just answer the question, since the answer was public knowledge. "Because he took the Ring to the place of its destruction."

"O, he did. He did indeed." The creature shook his head. "Boromir has not asked for us," he said.

His familiarity of speech boggled the mind. She had mentioned it once to Eardwulf, who had said- almost with a straight face- that no doubt it was because Sméagol was the ultimate authority among his own people, as there was only one of him in existence. "No, the Lord Boromir has not requested your presence recently, at least not in my hearing." She placed a gentle emphasis on the Lord Boromir's title, not that that would make very much of an impression on Sméagol.

"Has we made him angry?" His long fingers flexed.

"I know not of such matters. Why do you think you have made him angry, Sméagol?"

"I don't know," Sméagol whined. "But people gets angry with me... and we wants to see Boromir, but he will not ask for us."

"It is not my place or yours to request an audience with him. He is a very important person, and he is very busy."

"It is important business! His business," Sméagol insisted, squirming. He had finished his food but now held the empty plate tightly in his hands instead of offering it up, which meant he did not want her to leave yet, as she always left the room when she cleared the dishes. "We will look for orcses for him. Tell him!"

"If I can get a message to him I will."

Sméagol did not look pleased, but he sighed and handed her the empty plate. "And we wants paper and ink," he groused, dabbling his hands in the washing-up bowl.

Galil looked at him impassively for a moment.

"Please," he added darkly, and folded his arms on the table, and rested his chin on his arms.

"I shall ask." She took a rag from her pocket and leaned closer. He sat up, his eyes fearful. "There is a smudge on your face," she said.

"Ach. Careless, careless!" He took the rag from her and wiped at his face, then handed it back. He seemed abashed and even fearful if she pointed out anything of the kind, but she was not going to leave him with blood on his hollow cheek and no mirror to note it in.

"Good night, Sméagol," she said.

He said nothing as she left.

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