Cries in the Dark

The sound, though muffled and distant, was plainly a cry for help. Sméagol paused mid-step, with his head alert and ears pricked, as a cat will pause in its stride to hearken to the bark of a dog, and in much the same manner, acting on reflex, he put his head back down and hurried away from the sound at a trot. 

A moment later he had an automatic thought: A helpless little lost thing? Won’t be missed? Is it soft? He was peckish.

This paused him again. The foul impulse from his past life was not worthy of entertaining, but it had gotten his attention: the cry signified someone in trouble, a child, from the sound of it.

Sméagol began to fidget with a knot in his hair. Someone ought to do something, and no one else was around. Therefore it was Sméagol who ought to do something. He might at least start by finding out who was making that noise and why.

The cry was coming from an old well, which Sméagol had investigated before, only to find out that it was dry and therefore not very useful to his purposes. There was a sign on it marked 'danger', with a simple drawing of a person falling to warn those who could not read. Sméagol eyed this sign now, a little dubiously, because the call was coming again and it was plainly coming from inside the well. 

It was raining- raining curtains and buckets. Sméagol enjoyed the rain a great deal, but Men as a rule did not. He fiddled with a frayed bit of his sleeve as he considered the ‘danger’ sign and the sheeting rain. What would possess a Man- or a child of Man- to enter the old well? “Hello?” he ventured. 

“Help!”

“Help, help with what?”

“Help!”

“With what?” Sméagol asked, louder.

“Help!”

He sighed to himself and hoisted his lean body onto the edge of the well. “Hello?”

There was no answer. Sméagol lowered himself into the well with much grumbling. Inside were plentiful handholds, but they were slippery. His progress was slow and rough.

“It is a long way to go for a nassty little joke,” he muttered, “a very long way, so I suppose it is not a joke. But if it is- gollum! Might be his last joke.” 

Towards the bottom the sound of crying floated up to him, echoing all around the round chamber of the well. “Hello?” Sméagol called again. “Someone’s coming- someone’s coming, gollum, there is no need to cry, none at all!”

At the end of his climb he found that the rain had begun to re-fill the well. About a hand’s-length of water stood in the bottom, frigid water. In the water was a small boy, whimpering and shaking. He looked Sméagol in the eye, because Sméagol’s eyes shone in the dark; all he could see, no doubt, was that pair of eyes, floating points of light attached to something invisible that wheezed in the dark and scrabbled on the stones of the well. Sméagol could see clearly, even better than he could see up above with the covered flickering torchlights lining the King’s streets. The boy was muddy and wretched. One of his legs was bent badly.

“Hello, hello! Whatever is he down here for? Not a nice place,” Sméagol said. He stepped down into the water, in order to rest his limbs for a moment. The child jerked back from his closeness, but he did answer.

“I, I fell in.”

“You fell in, eh? Can’t get back out again?” 

“N-no.”

There was no way out of the well but to climb back up the wall. Sméagol could do so easily, if not happily. The child plainly could not have done it even with two sound legs.

The boy was flattened against the far wall of the well, as far away from Sméagol as he could get, which under the circumstances was mere inches.

“Are you going to eat me?”

“No.” Sméagol’s back was protesting from making the climb down here, and he thought perhaps he would leave, and tell a guard what had happened, and consider his job done. After all, the boy did not want him here. 

Water dripped onto his head. Rain was coming in steadily from above, which meant the well would continue to fill, and the boy might drown before a guard could return to help him- even if a guard could help. Sméagol knew from the feel of the climb and the closeness of the walls all around him that a grown Man could never fit inside the well in order to retrieve the little boy, even if that Man was as clever a climber as Sméagol, which was not likely. It did not occur to him to lower down a rope, because Sméagol himself never used ropes in that manner; if he had thought of it he would have dismissed it in any case because the boy did not look strong enough to hold onto a rope or calm enough to tie it securely about himself. 

The boy was large enough to give Sméagol a bit of a drubbing, though, if hauled bodily up the well without his say-so. And perhaps he would shake himself loose and get himself killed, in the process. 

“Sss, sss,” said Sméagol. “I can bring you out of here nice and quick, just as quick as I got in, if you let me. Yes, if you let me.”

“You can take me home?”

“Of course we can! Climb onto our back, and we will take you back up.”

“But what if you eat me on the way up?”

Sméagol flipped one hand in an involuntary gesture, whether of frustration or supplication he did not know. It made a splash in the rising water. “If I wanted to eat you,” he said, “I would eat you down here, at the bottom of the well, where no one would ever know or find your boneses, gollum! We wouldn’t carry him out unless we wanted him alive at the top, now, would we? Now climb on, unless he’d like to drown!”

The boy finally decided the drowning was more certain and more terrifying than the prospect of Sméagol’s teeth- which he could not see in the dark, after all; perhaps he would have had a different opinion if he had seen them. It took some jostling and wrangling to get the boy situated on Sméagol’s shoulders with his arms wrapped around his neck, and by the time it was done the water was deep enough to submerge an arm up to the elbow.

“I can’t hold on,” the child said.

“I cannot hold you and climb both,” said Sméagol, and, wincing, he tried to remember how he had carried bodies when he climbed- before. He had often found prey in a slightly inconvenient place and taken his kill off somewhere safer to eat it. In pieces, he recalled, unless it was small enough to tuck under an arm, and he nearly gagged. 

Enough memories, they would not help. He was wearing a belt to carry pouches of things he found. The boy wouldn’t fit into it, but he used this to tie the child to him.

“You must still hold on,” he said, and began to climb. The weight of the boy pulled dreadfully at his neck and his shoulders. The trek jarred the broken leg and the boy began to weep and wail. His voice echoed on the stones and came again and again, from every directions. A crowd of voices.

The voices I stopped. That was foolish, but he could not shake the thought. Sméagol could do nothing about it now, either to ease the child’s pain or simply make the crying stop.

Halfway up he paused to get his breath. His fingers were skinned from the rough rock. His shoulders pulled and throbbed with the extra weight, it was like being back on the rack. The boy’s arms around his neck were choking, throttling, and the belt tied around the both of them cut into his belly.  The crying, at least, had softened. 

Even if Sméagol were inclined to do something wicked now, and drop his burden, he could not untie the belt without letting go of the wall and falling to his death. He thought of the Precious, as had been his motivating habit, but it was gone now, and if it had not been, carrying a hurt child out of a well would not have helped him to get hold of it. He thought of Frodo instead. Supposing he ever saw Frodo again; how would he explain himself if he left the job half-finished? Frodo would surely be disappointed in him if he failed to rescue the boy. Worse than disappointed. What if Frodo beat him? He had never done so before, but suppose Sméagol deserved it very much? Frodo was just. He had carried a sword, and he had said he would use it if pressed. He would surely beat Sméagol if it were the right thing to do. The utter devastation of a deserved beating from a just master! It was sharper and fresher than his own fear of falling off the wall and breaking his neck, a fear that by now had faded and gone numb.

Using this horrid thought- and others like it- like a skilled orc-driver would use a whip, Sméagol kept himself climbing up the wall. He realized after some time that the boy was sobbing quietly into his shoulder. Surely no matter how miserable Sméagol was- and he was very miserable- the boy was moreso. Sméagol found it difficult to truly care about this, because his own pain was distracting and the boy hadn’t been very nice to him, but he might pretend to care. The Men had persuaded him that that sort of lie was alright because it helped others.

“It’s very nasty down here, isn’t it?” Sméagol said sympathetically. “And his poor leg must hurt dreadfully. It was bent.”

“How can- how can you see?”

“Our bright eyes. They are nice in the dark, so clever and sharp! But in the light I cannot see at all and my eyes burn like coals. I want to put them out, gollum, take them out! But the night always comes again and then it is better. And then we are glad we kept our eyes, so that we might see, ha-ha!” 

The boy did not laugh. Sméagol decided to change the subject. “What’s his name? What’s your name?”

“G-Gasson.”

“O that’s a shame,” Sméagol said, with gentle commiseration. “They called us Gollum, before.”

Gasson did not ask why they had called him that.

“But,” said Sméagol, “now we have our own nice name back. The King said so. And if Gasson wishes it, the King might give him a new name!” He took hold of a brick that, in his haste, he did not check properly before pulling on- it came loose and Sméagol almost fell. He grabbed swiftly at the wall, jamming his finger. Gasson screamed at the jolt, going into fresh sobs. 

Sméagol indulged in a little weeping himself, but he kept climbing. 

It seemed too good to be true when he reached the night air. “And we are out!” he cried, crouching on the pavement, sniffing the breeze and trying to believe those were really the stars up above. He had never been so happy to see them before. 

Gasson’s weight now sat on his back. Sméagol could breathe better this way, but the small of his back hurt dreadfully. His hands had gone numb, after all of the scrabbling at the rocks with unaccustomed weight to hold. Sméagol glanced at them to see what he was in for once the numbness was gone. He flinched at the sight and looked away. “We are out,” he announced again, as Gasson had not moved.

“Can you take me home?” Gasson whimpered.

“Why, I do not know where you live! Make haste, make haste, untie yourself and-“

“But I can’t walk! I can’t walk!”

Sméagol felt a sick sinking inside. “O, of course not,” he said. “Yes. Yes, Sméagol had forgotten, we begs his pardon. And since he cannot walk, we must take him off home, yes, like a sswaybacked old pony.” He was doing his best to sound cheerful. His shoulders trembled. He thought he might fall down like a pancake. “Of course we will. Which way is it, eh?”

“I don’t know. I’m lost.”

“Then-“ Sméagol nipped at his own tongue. He had wanted very much to say Then how am I meant to take you home? “A guard, a guard! We’ll ask the way!” And the guard would no doubt take the little boy away at once. The problem was solved. He only had to move twenty more feet or so.

“But I’ll get in trouble,” Gasson cried. 

Sméagol was now already plodding towards where he knew the nearest guard post to be (he had learned their positions quite well) and was not changing his course. “In trouble? O yes, I suppose he will. You have been charging off poking about old wells and falling in and hurting yourself. That is naughty! It’s very dangerous! There is nothing for it now, of course. Nothing at all. They will have to find out anyway, because your leg will need a healer! It’s no good crying about it. That is how it must be. And you ought to get in trouble because you have caused troubles for yourself, and for Sméagol, and for your parentses.”

The guard post was some way away yet, but there were people up ahead, rushing around and looking behind things and under carts and into crates, even though opening the crates let in the rain and ruined whatever was inside. Lanterns flashed. One of these flashes blinded Sméagol, who froze in place, wincing and squinting, and wondering if he should take the expediency of approaching one of these people, though he didn’t know who they were or what they were about. The people saw him first and ran for him, crying out. They were calling for Gasson. Aha!

“See, they have been out in the rain looking for you because you wandered off,” said Sméagol, as the people approached. “That is naughty, to wander off and make them search! But they will take you home now.” 

A woman was running towards them. She screamed, and grabbed hold of Gasson, pulling hard- he was still tied to Sméagol and the belt stopped him. It cut sharply into Sméagol’s belly so that his breath was quite taken away and he could not tell the woman the boy was tied on, and she was only hurting the both of them by yanking that way- Gasson was shrieking all over again.

Then she had been firmly pushed aside- there was another woman with a thin line of a mouth, and a knife in her hand. Now Sméagol was the one who shrieked, but she only cut the belt, freeing Gasson to be taken up by the first woman. Sméagol dashed off. He made it a distance down the sidewalk before he stumbled and fell to his hands and knees- but this did not slow his progress very much. He was accustomed to crawling.

He made it down a side street and around the side of the block. The cobblestones were not nice to his hands, but they did not show his tracks, especially when everything was wet and no signs of damp feet could be seen on dry stone. He was not followed. 

He limped his way home, licking his sore hands, which tasted of blood, as they had so many times before. 

A baby was crying. Sméagol cursed under his breath. The sound was coming from the refuse heap next to the one he had been digging in. 

The discovery of Minas Tirith’s communal rubbish pit had been a great day for him, but now he thought he had perhaps been better off not finding it. “I suppose now I’ve heard it I must do something,” he grumbled. “Sméagol always finds these things, and he is the last person who ought to be meddling with them.” Yet no one else was there. He ran his fingers through his thin hair in what- if he only knew it- was a starkly hobbitish-looking gesture, and turned towards the noise with a sigh. 

The baby turned out to be very small, thin and sickly and snot-encrusted, and a color too sallow to be healthy in Men. At least its smallness made it possible for Sméagol to hold it in one arm, cradled firmly to his chest while he used his other arm to help him pick his way along.

He tried to make soothing noises, but they had no effect. Sméagol’s body was too cool to warm the infant, his bony chest too hard to comfort one, and goodness knows how his attempt at soothing noises sounded to its little ears. He had no way to feed it or clean it or doctor any hurts it might have. The baby was going to keep crying. “You have enough reason to cry, eh?” 

He made for the nearest guards, trying not to think of what his old self would have done if he had found an abandoned baby. He must be getting better, at least; he had not had the thought even once that the baby would be edible. He had only thought about how he would have once considered it edible. That was progress. 

It was not a long or strenuous walk to the guard post at least. “You! Over there,” Sméagol cried. The baby had stopped making any noise aside from difficult breathing. He didn’t think that was a good sign.

The guard turned to look at him in surprise. The Man was a stranger, and had never seen Sméagol before. “I found this,” said Sméagol, “left alone, all alone, it is a baby, a child of Men, and- it was alive when I found it- I think it still is. Take it, quickly!”

The guard hesitated in confusion.

“You will have time to gawk at Sméagol later,” he said, in a voice on the edge of patience. “He lives here; but the baby may not any longer if you do not get up and help!” 

Perhaps the guard could not make sense of his squeaking speech. Fortunately the baby made one last whining noise and that got the Man’s attention. He took it from Sméagol with more force than was needed. And surely he would know what to do after that- he would know better than Sméagol, at least- hopefully he did. Sméagol took his chance to escape when the guard was looking in confusion at the infant in his arms. This was not the time for an awkward misunderstanding. 

That had all seemed too easy- he didn’t even have to go out of his way very much, just cut short his explorations. So he was not surprised when someone from the guards came by later to question him. 

They did not suspect him of stealing the baby, it had been too plainly neglected to look freshly carried off, Sméagol supposed, and it also had not been reported missing. The guards only wanted to know if Sméagol had seen who had left it or found any trace. He had not.

“What will happen to it?” he asked.

“She took no grievous hurt, and will live. She will go to the foundling home.”

“No nice grandmother with lots of wealth and a nice big smial to take her in,” he said to himself.

“The foundling home is well provided for- the King and Queen have taken great care to see that this is so.” 

“O, that is nice, I suppose.” But the whole thing seemed rather sad, and when he found another several months later, it seemed sad then too.

This time he surprised the mother in the act. She wasn’t leaving her baby in a rubbish heap, but on the doorstep of a house; Sméagol was passing by and nearly tripped her. “Ach!” he said, and nearly told her to look where she was going, but it was dark, and he had the advantage of her. “Silly Sméagol,” he said instead, but with his irritation poorly concealed. “Not watching. A warmish night, isn’t it, eh?”

That was when he saw the baby in her arms. It was watching him, goggling in the way babies do when confused, which they often are, having very little frame of reference for anything. Sméagol didn’t like being goggled at even by a baby. He pulled up his collar and ducked his head. Then he heard the mother say “Hush! They may hear!”

His curiosity drew him to follow her out into the middle of the street, where she stood barefoot. Men liked to wear shoes. Her cut and bloodied feet showed why that was. She showed no sign of pain, oddly. Sméagol, never a bastion of empathy, was wincing at the state of her poor little feets, they was that cut up and bruised, and she seemed not to notice. She stared at him with vacant dark eyes. “What are you? What do you want?”

“I am Sméagol,” he said, “and I want nothing, only out and about. We was taking a letter. What’s she doing about?”

“I’m…” She stared off into the distance for a moment or so. “You’re Sméagol. The Ring-bearer’s guide. Will you tell anyone you saw me?”

“Tell anyone! Will we tell? Ought we to? Who would we tell? Whom,” he corrected under his breath, “whom would we tell. That was in the grammar-book.”

“What is the nicest house here?”

“Sméagol can’t tell, he doesn’t live in a house. He has a cellar.” The small cabin that sat atop the cellar was merely an appendage. 

The baby made a little complaining sound and grabbed at her dress, which was worn and filthy. Sméagol was only just now noticing that people in Gondor usually wore much better. The woman looked down at the baby, and held it out a little farther from her body, which made it whine a little louder. “Sméagol,” she said again, thoughtfully, wonderingly; no one had ever said his name that way. “I cannot feed the child, Sméagol.”

“That’s a shame. There is a foundling home-“

“I cannot take him. No one must know I have him.”

“She may take him! They do not watch, they do not bear tales.”

She was crouching to his eye level. “The Valar sent me a guide,” she breathed. There was something about this that was fundamentally incorrect, Sméagol thought, and it was getting worse. “Please. Bring him to the home,” she urged. “Bring him in secret. In the dark.” Her face was impassive but tears ran down it. The baby waved its little arms and fussed. 

Sméagol looked over his shoulder, half expecting to see someone standing there laughing at what was plainly a joke. “But…” He looked down at the baby, which was fat and healthy, and wrapped in cloth that was worn and tattered but clean. “No, no, not us- that is silly,” he chided. 

“You must. That is why you are here.”

“I don’t-“ He stopped. What if that was why he was here? He didn’t usually take this route home. The Valar she had spoken of- they were mysterious, and big, and often seemed to be playing jokes on Sméagol. He shook himself. “No! You mustn’t give me- what if I eat him?”

“You must take him!” she cried. “Take him away, take him now!”

And Sméagol discovered he did not want to know what would happen if he didn’t, so much so that in the next moment he was cradling the tiny warm little thing in the crook of his arm, by his chest. The woman adjusted his grip, making sure he was supporting the child’s head. He in fact had already known he must do so. 

Wherever did I learn it? he wondered. Perhaps from long, long ago days having tiny cousins and second and third cousins handed to him, although even back then it had been foolish to trust him with anything so fragile. And soft. And warm.

“What’s his name?” Sméagol asked. The child had a healthy, milky scent, despite the rags. Was she really unable to feed him?

“He has no name.” 

“He needs a name.”

“I can give him none.” The woman stood back and looked at Sméagol, right in his eyes. Even people who knew Sméagol well did not look at him the way she did, meeting his eyes that way. His eyes were too bright and strange to meet without flinching. But she managed it as if she saw nothing out of the ordinary. She nodded, and turned to sprint away, faster than he had ever seen a Man run- she tripped and fell, so careless was her flight; it was a bad fall, facedown, but she pushed herself up and was running again like a mad thing before he could do anything about it. He went to the cobblestones where she had fallen and nosed at them. He scented blood. 

“Why can’t she keep you?” he mused. “What has she given you up for?”

The baby was grousing and wriggling. “Ach,” said Sméagol. “We begs his pardon, we aren’t taking him all the way to the foundling home, if we tries we’ll jusst drop him on his poor little head, or something nasty like that.” 

The baby responded with a sudden, distraught yell.

“Sss! No, no, I won’t leave you in a puddle, or a ditch, nothing like that, no! I only meant I will take you so far as a guard, and he will take you the rest of the way, and you’ll like him better- he will be warm! Hush, now, he mustn’t cry. He…” Sméagol sighed, patted the child’s back a time or two to no effect, and gave up. There was nothing in him that would give a baby any comfort. He had given all of it up long ago, for a cold bit of metal. 
If someone had turned up just then and offered the Precious in exchange for the child he’d been entrusted with-

Sméagol sucked in air through his teeth. “It is good that it’s gone,” he muttered, “o! I would take it!” And not only because the baby was screaming in his ear, although he didn’t much care for the sensation. 

He made his way to the nearest guard post as quickly as he could. He had an awful headache by the time he got there, but at least the sound preceded him and the guards were prepared for what he was coming to give them.

“A nice night for swimming, isn’t it?” Sméagol said affably. He had just been swimming himself. Now he was resting on a rock, comfortably full of fish and watching the wildlife in the indulgent manner of a sated predator who condescends to let smaller creatures pass by alive; and one of the passing creatures tonight happened to be a woman.

She was wading into the River.  The River had such attraction for Sméagol that he saw nothing odd in wading at midnight. She was fully clothed. Sméagol also swam with his clothes on when the mood took him. The only thing he noticed was that she had not answered his pleasantry. Perhaps she had not heard him. He raised his voice a little.

“A lovely night for swimming!”

She said nothing. She was up to her waist now. 

“But we are talking to ourselfs, my precious,” he continued. “She is not listening at all!” 

Indeed it seemed not.

“River stays nice and clean,” Sméagol said. “It is nicer than is usual, by Man-places. They puts their nasty rubbish elsewhere and the river is still good for drinking, and swimming, and fissh is tasty and fat and hasn’t been eating nasty things. The King is wise!” Actually a large part of that must have been Denethor’s doing, because the River had no signs of having been fouled before Aragorn’s still-new reign. In fact Denethor must have been a fairly good ruler himself, or his city would have been much nastier overall and Aragorn would have had a lot longer to go to fix it. But Sméagol disliked Denethor, so he would not compliment him. Aragorn still deserved the credit for keeping the River clean- he could have destroyed it by now if he’d had a mind.

Sméagol frowned a little. He had had the idle thought that he might get a gentle scolding for coming home wet and muddy and smelling of fish; he recalled now that he was seen as rather individual for turning up in such a state in the small hours of the morning. Men were not often found doing things Sméagol liked to do, let alone at the time and in the manner he did them. “Men do not swim in the dark. It is too cold for Men. What’s she doing?”

She was up to her shoulders.

“Men doesn’t swim with clotheses on either.” By now he did not expect an answer. “There she goes- ach!”

The woman’s head had gone under the water. Sméagol leaned forward, staring. She did not resurface. She’d gone out where the water was deep and the current strong. 

Then she bobbed back up, crying out and bobbing back down again. When she bobbed up a second time he heard a distinct “Help me!”

“Not us,” Sméagol whined. But no one else was anywhere around. He growled and slipped into the water. 

The woman flailed and tried to fight him off when he came up to her.

“You asked!” he spat. “You asked for help! I’ll let you drown if you wish it!”

“No!” she gulped. “Help me, please!”

The woman was larger than he and weighed down by a dress and so stupid. And he could not swim without his hands any more than he could walk without them. In desperation he dragged her along by taking her arm in his teeth some way, in order to use all his limbs for swimming. He bit a little harder than he really needed to because she kept flailing and hitting him and he was finding it tiresome.

There was a dreadful moment when he thought he would have to let her go or else die with her (and he had a dreadful suspicion she would grab his ankle on her way down, unless he bit her a little more decisively)- but then they came through it. At last they were on the bank. They both coughed and spat. Sméagol had not been foolish enough to inhale water for many, many long years, and found the sensation somehow offensive.

“Thank you,” the woman gasped finally.

Sméagol was vomiting water and did not reply.

“I wanted to die,” the woman said.

Sméagol gasped in confusion and choked on his gasp, which kept him from swearing, which was likely for the best.

“I wanted to die,” she repeated, and wiped her wet face with her wet sleeve. “And yet when the water took me- I was frightened. I wanted to live. If not for you, I…” Sobs shook her. 

Sméagol, who in years past had lied, cheated, groveled, blasphemed, betrayed, killed, and defiled the dead in order that he may live a few hours yet on top of a life that had spanned centuries already, looked at her as if she was an incomprehensible thing from a world outside of his own. “Why did she want to die?”

She leaned in close and put her arms around him. He did not want her closeness. He tensed. She spoke in his ear; what she said was only for his hearing and not to be repeated. 

When he heard what she had to say his jaw tightened. 

The woman was not looking at him now, she had let go of him and was hiding her face, which was for the best; she would have seen him suddenly smile in secret amusement, which was not an appropriate response to her admission whatsoever. He shook his head at himself and gave a helpless shrug. “It is not Sméagol’s business! No. What can I say about it, when I have done worse, much worse, and the King let me live?” 

“There is nothing worse,” she said in a shaking voice.

“O there is,” Sméagol told her, almost glib. “Much. It is better for you to live. And now we’ll lead you back to town, yes, we will.” He would take her to a guard, so she wouldn’t decide to die again once he looked away. He had heard that Denethor had once tried to take poison after setting himself on fire had not worked.   

She thanked him and blessed him and cried some more. He eyed the tear in her sleeve where he had bitten her. He had felt his teeth go through the skin and she wouldn’t like him so much anymore when she wasn’t numb from cold, but that would come later. And besides, there was her confession; perhaps no one ought to die, but perhaps some people could stand to be bitten. Just perhaps. 

He took her to the city gate, where she was taken in by city guards and Sméagol gratefully slipped away. He didn’t think the guards had even seen him. That was best; he had promised to keep the woman’s secret and he could keep it completely if no one knew he had saved her. It would be entirely her choice whether anyone ever even knew she had tried to kill herself, let alone her reasons.

There was the matter of his rather distinctive bite-mark on her arm. Ah, well. She could explain that however she wished to.

He had hired a horse and cart to take him to the outer gate (well, he had asked someone to use his money to hire one), and to wait for him there and take him back. What a grand night not to have to walk home! He was near fainting with tiredness.

“Hast thou been trying to drown thyself?” the driver asked, eyeing some weeds stuck in Sméagol’s hair.

“Maybe,” said Sméagol. “He’ll hand us that blanket, won’t he. Thanks ye, love.” He felt the cold more than he used to. He wrapped himself in the blanket. It seemed for a moment that he was forgetting something, some reason why he could not rest.

The Precious! He still thought of it sometimes, without warning, and he had just been thinking he had to go and look for it! I do not, he thought, and though he wanted it still, he was glad not to have to go look for it! Instead he could sleep.

He slept right away, on the way back home. It seemed like an incredible luxury.

Someone was coming. Sméagol just happened to see the approaching figure because he was outside rooting in the grass by his window. It was Boromir- Sméagol dashed inside, washing off the dirt and the grass stains as well as he could, then scurrying up the stairs.

Tarador was his guard this night- not a very friendly sort, but he had all of his limbs and was young, so Sméagol did not feel bad for trying to order him about. He might not listen, that was the trouble. “Ssss! Ssss,” he said. “Quickly! Go and get- I want- what is it- ssss! What’s it called?”

“Surely I know not!” said Tarador.

“It’s the pot full of hot water and it sstinks. It has leafs in it. Ssss- and it has a spout-“

Tarador’s eyebrows rose. “Tea? Thou art asking me to fetch thee a tea service?”

Sméagol slapped the floor with one hand. “It’s not for me! It is for the Lord Boromir. Look- there he comes! And we must be hospitable!”

“Indeed! Tis the Lord Boromir. I had not known,” said Tarador. He stood in a respectful attitude, which meant he was going to stand there and salute like a blithering idiot, and not be useful by fetching tea. “Why dost thou need guarding when thine eyes see everything from here to the Tower?”

“The same reason they will not let us have a kitchen of our own, I suppose,” said Sméagol. “I should be able to do these things for myself if no one will do them for me!” He had not the faintest idea how to make tea, but he could learn.

“Peace! I have never known the Lord Boromir to demand tea. He is a man of valor, and drinks ale.”

“Yes but he is missing his friends who are hobbitses, and we haven’t any ale, either, do we? And-“ Sméagol broke off, fuming. He saw clearly what he meant to say, and he knew whole-heartedly that he was quite correct, but putting it into words was another matter. “If there won’t be tea, we musst have a bit for him to eat,” he said, thinking that surely Tarador would understand that!

“Thou dost worry about the oddest things! I do not believe the Captain-General of Gondor is allowed to go hungry in his own city.”

“It doesn’t matter if he’s hungry!” Sméagol’s voice squeaked and cracked with frustration. “What does Men do when they visits? Sits around and stares at each other?”

Boromir had come into earshot. “Hail, Tarador! You may be at ease. What is the trouble?”

“No trouble, my Lord,” said Tarador with a respectful incline of his head. “The creature worries for your comfort.”

“Ah! Do not worry so, Sméagol, I am quite comfortable and in want of nothing. I would sit and speak to you a moment if you would.”

“I will, I will! Come in,” said Sméagol, not deigning to look at Tarador, who had always been useless. He led Boromir to the best seat, and hopped up onto the couch across from him. “It is a pleasure to see him, it is, an honor,” he said. “But he is busy, he would not come for no reason. What is it?”

“You are as astute as ever,” said Boromir, taking a seat. “Indeed I rarely have the luxury of visiting merely to enjoy your company- I have come on business of a sort. I have heard good tales of your doings in the city. Why did you never tell me of the child Gasson whom you pulled from the well?”

“Sméagol forgot!” he laughed. “He does not remember now!” He had the oddest feeling that he preferred to forget about it.

“Is that so! Then I may advise you. I confess that in the heat of battle or in some other such crisis I have also done things I do not recall now, or have done things that I did not know were seen. So I too have been thanked for deeds I did not remember. It is best to be polite, accept the gratitude, and not confess your lack of memory. For of course, you mean no insult by it. Your life has been full of many deeds and much action, and for you, perhaps you were only doing what was natural. But the person you helped was impacted greatly and would feel hurt to be forgotten.”

“Yes, of course, of course. We will just say ‘you’re welcome’ and that is all that is needed. But who is Gasson?”

“A small boy who fell into a well and broke his leg. You carried him forth on your back. Had you not, he would surely have drowned.”

That sounded like a bit more work than Sméagol usually went to. “Good Sméagol,” he said, deciding not to bother denying it. Who else would be messing about in wells?

“Very good. And there was the matter of abandoned infants found and taken to the guards. Do you remember them?”

“Yes… yes… why do people leave them?”

“There are many reasons, it is an evil that is in every city of large size. There is less of it here than in other places for all know that children left at the Houses of Healing will be taken in, with no comment made or record kept.”

“Is that so. Then… why are they left where they are not safe?”

“That I know not. You have found two in three years, is that so? Were there others?”

“No, that was all.”

“It is still too many, but they were rescued by your ‘nosing into dark corners’ as you’ve called it. There was a woman who you saved from drowning, as well, I have heard.”

“Ach, yes, that, I remember it. I am not proud of it, I bit her.”

“She bears you no ill will. She understood that you needed to free your hands. I for one am well pleased with you.”

“Boromir is kind.”

“The King is pleased, as well. I felt he must know what service you have done.”

The King! Boromir was often pleased with Sméagol even if Sméagol was not really doing anything, but the King was not so. 

“And,” Boromir continued, “I have the pleasure of conferring on you a mark of our gratitude, a token of the King’s esteem and my own. You know well the White Tree of Gondor that the guards wear upon their breasts, I deem. Here is a smaller version, which you may wear to mark you as a friend of the city.” He pulled from his belt pouch a metal disk with the familiar tree and seven stars carved upon it and embellished with enamel. “Tis a brooch. It could be used to fasten the capelet you wear, if you so choose.”

It was a treasure. A gift? For Sméagol? It was the kind of thing he was usually not permitted to touch, lest he dirty it. He had nice things, of course, other presents, but this! It had been made for him? He did not feel he deserved it, but he wanted it so much that he started to make up reasons why perhaps he did deserve it. The King wouldn’t give him a present he didn’t deserve, would he?

He had had so many excuses for taking and keeping the Precious. He eyed the brooch with uncertain longing. Next to the Precious itself it looked like the most beautiful thing ever created.

“It is yours!” Boromir said. “You may take it.”

Sméagol surely didn’t deserve it. “It will smudge if I touch it.”

“It may be polished, then. It belongs to you!”
Sméagol could withstand it no longer. He snatched the brooch, turned it over in his hands, explored the design with his fingers. Smooth enamel, smooth metal, cool and ridged and shining, the shapes and edges of the Tree and the Seven Stars insinuating themselves into his hand. Careful of the pin! He fumbled with it a bit, found his fingers clumsy, was shy of the point. “Put it on! Put it on!” he shrieked, pressing the brooch into Boromir’s hand. He wanted his present and he wanted to wear it proudly- a friend of the City! The King had said so! It must be true if the King said it! 

But he had forgotten that Boromir was a Lord and he may condescend to be friends with Sméagol but would surely not wait on him. He did not move to attach the brooch.

“O forgive us, my Lord, I am a poor old creature and I had forgotten, someone else will do it,” Sméagol said, blushing.

“I am quite willing to aid you in any way you ask,” Boromir said. “It is only that- I believed you feared my hand.”

Sméagol blinked. “Yours? No, of course not! Why should I?”

“I believed you feared I may injure you.”

Now it made sense, of course, the big Man was always so skittish of hurting anyone. “No, how silly! He would never. Put on our brooch, then, if you do not mind it.” Or maybe Sméagol was the one being obtuse after all. “Unless he would not like to? Does he not want to be so near us- is it because I am cold and slimy?”

“Nay, that is not so! It is only- you are very small to my eyes. And your skin is so pale and soft, and looks as if I may pierce it with a nail if my fingers slip!”

“Not at all, it is tough and stretchy! Put our brooch on then,” he begged, “if he really doesn’t mind it, put it on! Here, here!” He gestured to his collar. “Needn’t touch us, if he doesn’t want to, only touch our clothes.”

Boromir was shy and wary attaching the brooch. His fingers accidentally brushed Sméagol’s neck, and unfortunately, Sméagol was ticklish and squeaked, and then had to reassure the poor silly Man that he had not stabbed Sméagol in the throat with the tiny little pin or caused him a mortal offense. Somehow the brooch was attached in the end. “A looking glass,” cried Sméagol, and then he remembered why he did not have one. “Never mind, we do not want one, does it look well?”

“Indeed it does,” said Boromir, who looked immensely relieved.

“Good! Good! Now take it back off!” Seeing Boromir’s reaction he added, patiently and reassuringly: “We will get it dirty if we wears it, and no one will see it if we wears it in our house. Don’t flinch so, you will not hurt Sméagol, just take the brooch off nicely and slowly.” This was managed more easily than attaching the brooch. “Very good! See? He put it on and off again and didn’t hurt Sméagol at all, did he?”

“It seems I managed not to.”

“He didn’t hurt us at all. Now I will put this away, somewhere safe. Ha, ha! I feel as if they will realize it is all a mistake and take it away, so I must hide it.”

“A mistake! Why should it be a mistake?” 

“It does not feel as if- Sméagol was going about doing nice things, like a Man of the White Tree,” he said. “I was on my own business, and peoples were interrupting. And I said to myself, what a bother it is that I must do something, and I was very put out, and not very nice at all. And it all seemed- sad and tiresome, a nasty business. To be done in the dark.”

“Ah,” said Boromir. “In this you need not fear that you are different from Men or even different from heroes. For I did pledge my life to serving others, and before you knew me, when Isildur’s Bane had not touched me, I was stalwart in mind and certain of myself in all ways- too certain, some would say; surely it was easier. And yet even at that time I too felt that rescuing others was most often sad and tiresome work. And often done in the dark as well, whether I would or no.”

“It is?” Sméagol asked. “But-“ He didn’t know what to say after ‘but’ and so he simply stopped.

“Even the King finds toil for others’ sake wearisome,” said Boromir. “If goodness were easy, why would it be commendable? If it were pleasurable in all ways, why would we give you a reward? And a handsome one, too; it was our intention that you would enjoy your present. I am happy that you do.”

Why, perhaps that was why Gandalf had been so sour and Sam so angry. They had been too good, and it had given them dyspepsia. 

This line of thinking did not seem quite right to Sméagol but nor could he disprove it to himself. He decided to let it alone and be happy with his brooch.