Death's Head

Then they’d asked him about a place he had never been to or seen and things had gotten awkward for him. After some long stammering, during which he was privately trying to decide whether he should admit he didn’t know, or make something up, they had decided for themselves that he didn’t know and dismissed him. Very politely, of course, but they had dismissed him.

Sméagol was under no illusions that he was kept in Minas Tirith and fed and coddled because people got oh so much enjoyment from his presence. If he stopped being useful his station in life might change for the worse. Oh yes, he had been promised that this would not happen, so many times he had been promised, but that was what people felt about him today with the War fresh in their minds and the interceding words of Frodo Baggins still in their big round ears. Over time they would start noticing that Sméagol was a bit of a nuisance.

Perhaps he insisted on believing this in part because deep down in some hidden place, he preferred to earn his keep. Everyone has some measure of pride. Be this as it may, he was mortified when anyone asked him a question he could not answer. Even the arrival of breakfast and then his evening bath had not cheered him. It did not help that he had knocked over his water-glass and ruined a big stack of notes… and then while eating he had gotten blood on the sleeve of the over-shirt that he wore to meet with important people because he had forgotten to take it off after the meeting, and then he’d managed to overturn his bathtub and get water everywhere, which made him feel like some kind of big clumsy nasty dog. Eardwulf, who came to help him every evening, had been very patient with him over it, which somehow made him feel worse.

When this was all over Sméagol had put on the hood and short shoulder-covering cape that he wore to conceal his face and long pallid neck when he went out and about, and waited outside his window for Boromir, who was supposed to walk with him in the city that night. Boromir had shown up distracted and not quite himself, and no amount of proto-hobbitish chatter could bring him out of it. Sméagol had eventually decided to give in and be out of sorts himself. And then Boromir said: “We are hosting a ceremony of sorts, some nights from now. A tribute to all who were lost in the war.”

“Oh?” Despite his resolution to be out of sorts, Sméagol was intrigued- not by talk of a ceremony, which he classified with any other gathering of Men as ‘some Man-party’ and viewed with distaste, but because Boromir might be coming back to himself if he was beginning to talk about things happening in Minas Tirith. And maybe that meant he would go on to talk about something else that was more interesting.

“Yes,” said Boromir, “and it occurred to me to ask you if you perhaps would like to attend. You may sit in the back, if you wish. Of course if you should desire to address the gathering, we could arrange something. Perhaps an interpreter or mouthpiece of sorts, as your speech is quiet, and so removed in time and place from-”

“No one Sméagol knows died in the War,” he said, more abruptly than one usually interrupted a Lord, if one was fool enough to interrupt him at all. This talk of losing things in the War reminded him of the Precious and how deep in his bones he wanted it still- ached and thirsted for it and could not have it. Now he really was out of sorts. “Sss- and Sméagol don’t go to parties. Does they know you invites me to these things? I wonder what would happen if I really came and turned up underfoot among all of those tall Men. They would not be happy with you. Not happy at all.”

“My friend! Do you still think you are so unwelcome?”

It was useless to try to argue this point and Sméagol was tired. “Perhaps not,” he said. “But we doesn’t know anyone who died in the War. Why should I come?”

“The start of the War is a strange, shifting thing,” said Boromir. “Gondor was at war with the Shadow for a long, weary time, while in the Shire they led lives of peace without suspecting anything amiss.”

“Yes, yes,” said Sméagol. “All alone, in the City, fighting on and on. The hobbits said ‘thank you’ to him, we hopes.” Not that there was any real doubt of that- Merry and Pippin at least were so very fond of Boromir. Nice hobbits, them two- sensible young hobbits, perhaps the most sensible out of all the hobbits Sméagol knew. He knew five.

“The hobbits have certainly discharged any debt they once had! And I spoke of the Shire, not all hobbits; for yourself, I think it began when your ill-fated friend found the great evil that lay at the bottom of the River.”

Sméagol twitched and made no reply. After a moment or so of strained silence, Boromir went on to talk about something else. “Have you nothing to grieve over?” he asked. “I know you have lost much.”

“Lost. Yes, I have lost.” He went a bit tight-lipped. Boromir usually understood him rather well, and surely he ought to know what those losses were and why they might not be spoken of in polite company. Were it anyone other than Boromir, anyone else breathing, Sméagol might think he was being mocked. As it was, he reflected that Boromir was rather young still.

“Then why not come?” Boromir insisted. “It may help you.”

“I cannot go,” said Sméagol, feeling at his chest. He still had an aching, hollowed-out feeling when he thought of that ‘great evil’ at the bottom of the River, and how he would never hold it again, and never again slip into the wraith-world where no one could see his twisted face and form.

“Why can you not go?” Boromir didn’t know when to drop something, sometimes. “Are you unwell? Have you been given a task or assignment that will keep you away?”

“It would be inappropriate .” He had been acquainted with the word ‘inappropriate’ a few days ago when someone had told him that even though clothing was sometimes hot and itchy, and even though it was legal for Sméagol to go bare above the waist in public, Sméagol was still not allowed to take his shirt off at certain times, because it was inappropriate. It had been Faelon who explained this, and he had been so patient, even when Sméagol asked many follow-up questions about what made something inappropriate and who decided it and when and why, and why Sméagol was meant to pay attention to such things in the first place.

“Whyever would it be inappropriate for you to attend?” Boromir asked.

Because I ate bits of the people your friends will be mourning, whenever I found them on the battlefields and the orcs hadn’t gotten everything already, he thought and did not say. “It would not be right,” he said. “And I have nothing- no one to talk about- gollum- no one!”

“What of your family?”

Sméagol shook his head. “No! No family. It would not be right, and I will not go. I won’t, gollum!”

“Very well. No one will pressure you to do anything you do not wish to do.”

That was patently false.

They walked a little longer. Boromir was not in a gregarious mood, tonight, and stuck to a quiet path by the wall. Sméagol was trying to make up his mind to ask whether the big Man was ill (would he not have said so, if he was? And if he was not, would he not be annoyed to be asked?) when some young upstart Man came running out of the dark, looking haggard and unhappy, and said Lord Boromir was wanted urgently by the Lord Denethor. Boromir went at once, and that was the end of the walk. Sméagol had not been enjoying it as much as usual, but he hadn’t wanted it cut short either- for one thing, he hadn’t said Boromir could leave, he had just left, called away by his nasty father, and for another thing now he wouldn’t see Boromir again for another week, at least. He sniffled a little on the way back to his room. He felt that his outing had been spoiled, and wasn’t sure who had done the spoiling. He suspected that he himself had had a hand in it, and that made him cross.

And now here he sat in the grass outside his window, pouting.

Sméagol was desperately tired but the thought of napping was distasteful to him. The night was crisp and cold but not so cold that his joints ached, and it was the kind of night he liked to be outside on. He would be out on a nice walk now if his companion had not been summoned to attend to a different unpleasant old wretch who just so happened to have a prior claim on him.

“We never needed a minder to take us for a walk before, did we?” Sméagol mused. “We just went out when we wanted- out, and out, and out, such longer ways than the roads in the City we’ve walked, and all alone.” Well- not in Mirkwood, which the Elves were now insisting was called Greenwood in their uppity fashion. “Sss, but they says we are not a prisoner in the White City. Boromir has never put a leash on us, has he?” He felt at his throat. “No, he would never. We can go out if we likes, if it suits us. We don’t even have to ask first. But would it suit us, my precious?”

It had been months since he had been out in the city alone, it had been before the hobbits had left the city- and it had gone badly- and he had resolved that he would never go out alone again. And so far, he hadn’t. He’d been very good- he had only gone so far as over to talk to the guards by the wall that he could see from his window. That didn’t count as going into the city, and it didn’t count when he went into the gardens when he thought no one was there, either.

The guard across the way was watching him now. Sméagol’s nose twitched and he frowned and scratched in the dirt. He did not want to sit and be watched by guards. And drawing pictures and writing down remembered stories had gotten boring. And he didn’t want to try to solve the wooden puzzles Eardwulf had brought him back from the market, and he didn’t want to gnaw, and he didn’t want to read his books, and he didn’t want to look at his rock collection. And he didn’t want to pace around in the gardens like a caged thing, and more likely than not run into someone having a private encounter and stumble away after blushing and apologizing as if he were a befuddled old man who didn’t know how to find his own feet anymore.

“And it might be Lord Faramir we trips over,” he muttered, rubbing at his chin in remembered agitation. Faramir had never liked him and no doubt liked him even less now that Sméagol had run across him with his lady-friend. They had been doing nothing more than talk at the time, but Sméagol could still tell well enough when something was meant to be private.

No, he didn’t want to go into the gardens. He wanted to go out. Entirely out. Out of the city altogether if he could have managed it- he couldn’t, not tonight, it was a long walk- but at least out of the Circle.

But he didn’t want to be seen, or watched with suspicious eyes. He didn’t want to have to explain himself.

He found his thoughts straying to the sewer that ran under the city. It smelled foul, but it was so large- cavernous, to little Sméagol- and it was full of little things that were lost and would never be looked for and easily fit into a pocket, and someone with sharp and clever ears could hear bits and pieces that were interesting, because people walked past the grates in the road that stormwater flowed through and talked without knowing anyone could hear. And no one liked to be down there and he could be alone and act as wild as he wanted. Every time he went out with Boromir he glanced longingly at the grates they passed. Boromir, of course, was not about to go into the sewers with him.

He hissed and grumbled to himself. “It is safer inside, we have been so much better since we started staying inside. There is nothing out there but Men. Ach! The King said we would not be able to sit still, and would go out. And we did not believe him, did we, my precious? Sméagol who sat in his cave all those years can’t sit still any longer, and I don’t know why not. I can’t help it. I don’t like to be shut up. I, I feel like I’m choking.” He headed forward, padding silently across the grass, and even though the guard had been watching him the whole time, and even though he was a serious Man with sharp eyes and a keen mind, he suddenly discovered that the creature that had been there the last minute now was not there and had left no sign of where he may have gone.

It did not take Sméagol long to find a storm grate and slip into it, and there was the sewer just as he had remembered it, with its flowing waters and its rats and its stone walls. And its stench. This last was not welcome, but it was part of why he could be so certain of having the place to himself.

Sméagol padded along next to the water, his eyes wide and his nose twitching. There was a fascination for him about a place he knew had been rarely visited and mostly forgotten. He soon found several interesting rocks, three lost coins, two worms, and a button. For the first time that night everything was going as he wished it, up until he turned a corner and saw the skull.

It was a Man’s skull. A rat’s skull would have been quite innocent and a welcome addition to his collection, but this was a Man’s skull. It lay on its side, staring at him. Sméagol trembled in every limb, and backed away a few steps, his gaze remaining fixed on the skull- its empty eye-holes that gazed unblinking, its bared teeth. “No, o no, no, precious,” he said. His voice was a thin childish cry. “Not here! Not here!”

Of course Sméagol had seen many skulls. He had once kept them about to make his slimy island home more interesting to look at, and had even rolled them around the floor of his cave when he badly needed something to do, trying to see how far he could pitch them, and whether he could hit a particular stalagmite fifty paces away, and all of that. Mostly he had kept orcish skulls- the skull of a Man would have struck him as an intriguing novelty, and a little more valuable. That was the old life, and those were dark, nasty places where violent death was to be expected. This was Gondor. This was the White City, and to Sméagol it was a shining place of life and health. The Men of the city were free and they talked and laughed in ringing voices, the streets and the walls were clean and shining, there were fountains of water that danced and caressed Sméagol’s hands and face. It was a place that should not have skulls sitting about. 

Sméagol had the brief, awful, utterly senseless thought that he had somehow made the skull appear by his presence. He did not belong in the city, after all. “No, no, no,” he said, gulping in his throat- “I don’t want it. I don’t want it!” He turned aside, and headed back the way he had come, thinking that he had gotten what he deserved and ought to crawl back into his den- his nice little cellar, where he was contained. Then the obvious thing to do popped into his head, and he turned back again. He flapped determinedly up to the skull and looked it in the eye, glowering. “It ought not be here,” he said. “It mustn’t be. I am going to take it away, that’s what Sméagol will do, I will take it right away. Sméagol is good at throwing things away and getting rid of them, and doing nasty jobses no one else will do- and he will do it again!”

For good measure, he decided he would wrap it up in something and hide it. This was a prudent thing to do, as he did not wish to be seen hauling it around like it was a picnic basket, but that was only the second reason that occurred to him for wrapping it up- the first was that he just wanted the awful thing to go out of sight. He took off his mantle and wrapped the skull thoroughly in it before carrying it off.

It was awkward for him to walk with the skull under one arm- it was a heavy thing for him, a little larger than his own head. Now that he was growing calmer and could think about such things, Sméagol would guess it had been there for only a few months, perhaps. The flesh was all gone, but the bones didn’t have an old look- he suspected the rats who dwelt in the sewer had helped along the defleshing process. There were gnaw-marks on the cheekbones. The neck had been cleanly severed. The work of a war-axe or a sword, if he guessed right, and he’d seen enough bits of dead people to know a little about the subject.

He paused and looked over his shoulder. “Sss! Where’s the rest of it, precious? Men do not leave just heads behind when they dies, does they? So where is he?”

He set the head down and spent some time exploring the area, but found no body and no clue to what had happened. In the end, he gave up and went on his way with just the head. “And what’s Sméagol going to do with it?” he asked himself. “Bury it, I suppose, that is what Men do with their own dead, I- I thinks. Where will I bury it? Not in the garden. People will find it. It must go right out of the city! Yes, that’s it, it cannot be here, gollum, gollum, it doesn’t belong! Ach! It’s a long walk.” He’d never made the walk out of the city all by himself- he’d been taken by cart when he needed to leave.

“Give it over to someone, perhaps,” he mused. “But suppose they thinks- suppose they thinks we have brought it about, somehow- taken the head off a Man?” He shuddered and said gollum in his throat a few times and thought he might be sick. Obviously the head was not fresh and the death of its owner not recent. A few months, perhaps- and it had been a few months since Sméagol had last been out on his own, not supervised.

It occurred to him, for the first time, that the head had belonged to someone who had had friends and might miss him. It wasn’t merely an unpleasant thing that had turned up in the sewer to bother Sméagol (though it was that too, he thought); it had been a part of a person, an important part.

He took the skull out of its wrappings and looked into its face, frowning a little. “His friends wouldn’t know him this way, eh, would they? Would rather not see him this way, we thinks.” A long-ago thought flickered up, like an eel out of the depths. Before being ousted from the village, he had thought to go back and check on Déagol, make sure he was still hidden, and see his face again one last time, perhaps… the body had been a few weeks old, then, and Sméagol had not known what a body dead a few weeks would look like.

He shuddered and choked down the memory. “Gollum! Bury it, bury it, yes, bury it away.” He wrapped the skull back up and tucked it back under his arm. The first step was to take it out of the sewer, and to take himself out of the sewer- he wanted fresh air.

It was harder to climb and move around now, with one arm tied up with his cargo. He was obliged to exit through a grate that was farther from his quarters than he would have liked to emerge, where there was a slope to climb rather than a wall. It would have been better to stay underground out of sight as long as possible, but it was late, and the Men ought to be abed except for the guards- the night guards, who were the sort he did not like to be spotted by when doing something untoward. But it should all be alright. He was good at not being seen.

Sméagol looked about himself, taking in deep breaths of fresh air. For a brief moment he didn’t know where he was, but then he recognized a street corner he had been to with Boromir. If only Boromir were here now! He would have taken the skull away and done whatever was proper for Men to do with the dead, and without making any nasty remarks.

For the first time it occurred to Sméagol that, if he should approach a guard and tell the truth about what had happened, the guard might help him rather than call him a murderer and try to kick his face in. Could his world really have changed so much as that? Suppose the guard did not help him, though? Suppose the guard did not know Sméagol at all, or had heard the wrong things about him. People who didn’t know Sméagol often had a hard time understanding what he was trying to tell them. Besides, he could solve his problems himself. He had always done so before.

“And ssuch a good job of it we’ve done, my precious,” he hissed to himself. “Ssolved our problems before by trotting up into His dungeons and laying our neck on the block.”

His arm was already getting tired and he was lurching about off-center without having both hands available to help him walk, or- or climb.

He hissed curses under his breath, his heart thumping. He couldn’t climb the wall with this thing under his arm. He had gone under the wall through the sewer into the Fifth Circle. He lived in the Sixth.

That was where he lived.

He struck himself in the forehead with his free hand. “We’re not going home, my precious,” he said despairingly. “We’re going outside. It’s the other way!" And that meant there were actually multiple walls between him and his destination- and one of them was the great wall around the outside of the city, where the Great Gate had been broken down and now there were even more guards than at the other gates to make up for it. And Sméagol was going to have to walk through all of those gates with a skull under his arm without anyone noticing. That would make a long walk even longer, too, because the gates were all offset from each other and he could not simply go straight through. And he would have to do it all before sunrise! It was past midnight already, and he wasn’t a fast walker these days- and certainly not with one arm hobbled. He also reeked of sewage, which hardly made him less conspicuous, but maybe that would mask the smell of rotting flesh.

“It would have been so many wallses to climb, too,” he muttered. “How was I going to manage that, either? How am I going to manage anything?”

He began to drift up and down the empty streets, muttering to himself. Approaching a guard would have to be done one way or another, as he could not stay here forever. The question was whether to be truthful. If he was going to confess to a guard and show him the skull, he may as well talk to the one closer to home because in that case he was going to insist on turning over the skull instead of dealing with it himself. If he was going to try to keep this all secret, he would have to approach the guard at the gate to the Fourth Circle, on the route that led outside, and lie to him. Or at least carefully omit things. He couldn’t decide which way to go, and asking himself about it was useless. More than ever he wished he had sat at home and been good, the way he ought to have.

Suppose he hid the skull, and came back for it later? “We will not know what to do with it later any more than we knows now,” he admitted. Supposing someone else found it while it was hidden? “Then perhaps that person will take care of it and we won’t have to! Yes- yes, we could hide it, but perhaps…” But perhaps it would just sit there, a thing of death, furtive violent death in the White City. “It is not right, not for here,” he said. “Gollum, gollum! It’s not my fault. I didn’t make it be so. There are so many things Sméagol did do- he needn’t bother about things he didn’t! Ach! I hate it! I hate it!”

He was so very badly tempted to just throw the thing in the nearest sewer grate and return it to the state he had found it in. It didn’t know anything anymore, it was dead and he could not hurt it. It had been grinning!

“No. No. It was a Man once. It’s not nice. And skullses doesn’t grin, my precious, they has no face to keep the teeth inside of, and they don’t mean anything by it,” he reminded himself. “It wasn’t looking at me. Stop it!” Déagol with his face rotting away had not been grinning. He had been angry. Even in death. He knew he was being robbed of the Precious, which would have seemed much worse than being killed. How well Sméagol knew the feeling now! ‘Hates it forever’ had been something akin to Déagol’s last thought, no doubt, as he felt the rage and pain of having the thing taken from him as if it were taken from his own body.

Sméagol paused in his wanderings, to catch his breath, which had grown short… and over his own wheezing, he heard his name called.

He recoiled, blinking through tangled locks of hair that had fallen across his face. He had stopped noticing when this happened at some point during his solitary wanderings, but had remembered over the past year that it was nicer to have hair that was washed and combed and brushed back- or at least, not in his eyes; he wanted to remove it but at the moment one hand helped his balance and the other held the skull. “Who?” he asked. It had been a small voice and for a moment it had sounded like a hobbit. 

No- there it was again. It was a child’s voice. One who knew him by name.

He had spoken briefly with some of the city’s children at a few times- mostly when he was with Boromir, and stuck to his leg like a barnacle, so everyone could see he was being watched and would do no harm. Sméagol was rather well known by now. All in all it was not so strange for some child he encountered at random to know his name, but it wasn’t something he was used to. Nor would he expect that tone of voice- whoever it was sounded excited to see him. And a bit furtive.

A small figure was beckoning him from a window across the street. Sméagol hesitated, and almost slunk away as he thought he ought to. His curiosity got the better of him in the end, as it had so often before. He approached, hastily assuring himself that he could bolt if he needed to, and making no reply to the quick, irritable thought that by the time he realized he needed to bolt it would probably be too late, which of course was true.

What he was doing felt familiar. Why, he thought, I used to go out and walk about when Gran’s smial felt too small, because we was getting on each other’s nerves; it was too nice of a burrow to really be small. And sometimes Déagol would catch me wandering around by people’s houses and call me over. He was too lazy to come out, but we would talk by his window.

That was before Sméagol held the Precious and began slinking around at night with far worse intentions than just getting some fresh air. Déagol never knew about that part. He hadn’t been let to live to see it.

There was acid in his throat. “Gollum! What’s it want?” he asked peevishly. He was looking into the face of an honest young girl. Not at all like Déagol, who had had scruff on his chin and a sly smirk.

“Sméagol, why are you crying?” she asked. She showed no sign of noticing that he had just been rather impolite to her.

“Crying?” he asked. “Am I?” He touched his cheek. “I suppose I am. How long have I been doing it, I wonder? Never mind, it is nothing, nothing.”

“I don’t think it’s nothing, or else you wouldn’t be crying.”

Sensible, she was. Almost like a hobbit. “Perhaps it is not nothing, but it cannot be helped and I do not want to tell you anything about it.”

“Oh… I see. May I help you? You looked lost.” Her small face was very serious.

She did look familiar. She might have known his name and bent shape by reputation, but he would not have known her face. “No, not lost. I knows where I am.”

“I suppose I misunderstood, then. You were wandering. And you were lost the last time I met you,” she said.

“But this is not then! When was the last time?”

“I was playing hide and seek and you were in a tree. A spider frightened me and you killed it.”

“Ach! Then.” That had been the first time he went out in the city, and he had still been a half-mad wild animal then. She was lucky she hadn’t been bitten. He didn’t remember the spider, but no doubt he had had his own reasons for killing it. “Yes. Sss, we was lost then. Not now. Not lost, not searching, just deciding.”

“What are you deciding?”

“That is… for grown-ups,” he said. “Sméagol is growed up and has grown-up problemses she knows nothing about.”

“Oh, I see. And that makes you cry?”

He considered this and nodded. “And I won’t tell you any more about it. But-“ He was remembering more about the girl, which surprised him a little because he had never cared much about other people in years past. Her father was a guard, which meant she must know a little about the guards and what they were like. “If someone went up to a guard of the city,” he said, “and said he had found something nasty and horrible which meant a crime had been done, what would happen?”

“If you say something like that, the guard will want to know more about what you mean and whether you have proof of it.”

Sméagol had a quick internal debate, which resolved the way it did largely because he was so very very tired of lying. “I has proof right here.”

She leaned forward a little. “Can I see it?”

“No!” he cried. “Abss-sss-olutely not! Ach! Of all silliness! She mustn’t! Sshe musstn’t!”

“I understand, Sméagol, and I won’t ask anymore, please don’t be frightened. My father used to be on the guard-“

“O no,” said Sméagol. What if this was her father’s skull?

“He’s happier now,” she assured him. “He had always wanted to open a shop, and they don’t need so many guards now, and my mother is going to have a new baby now that the war is over and we will all work in the shop together. But not the baby, for a while yet.”

Sméagol sat there frozen with his teeth clamped on his lower lip for a good long minute before it sank in that her father was alive and simply no longer a guard. “O yes yes,” he babbled, understanding nothing about the shop or the baby.

“Do you want to talk to my father? He can probably help you, because he knows all the people who are still guards.” There was a sound behind her. She turned her head.

“Prestien?” a voice called. “You ought to be sleeping.”

“Sméagol is here,” she said. “He’s in trouble.”

“Who is here? Where?” A woman appeared in the window, her eyes sharp. When she saw him she stared.

It belatedly occurred to Sméagol that this was the correct reaction to have, and Prestien, who had taken his sudden appearance as a matter of course, was either very bold or a bit unnatural. Perhaps both. “Sméagol doesn’t mean any harm,” he stammered, “he did not go to the nice young lady to make problems, only she saw him crawling on the street and she called to us.”

“I see. Wait there. I shall call my husband.” It was not a request. She turned aside to Prestien, and spoke to her sharply, and the shutters closed.

Sméagol realized he had caused the little girl to be scolded. He felt sorry about it, which surprised him. He reminded himself that not even a year ago he probably would have eaten her. Her mother was right to scold her for being pleasant to strangers who could be dangerous. Prestien probably would have let him crawl through the window if he’d asked, and she had no way of knowing that he really did only want to talk.

Her father came out of the house then, looking familiar. He gave us a cup of water before, Sméagol remembered.

“ What crime has been done?” the Man asked, curt and to the point.

“I- I found it,” Sméagol stammered. “In the sewer.”

“What did you find?”

Sméagol whimpered and could not manage to speak. His throat had locked.

The Man crouched down to look him in the eye. His face was grim. Most Gondor-men had bare faces, like tall hobbits, but this one had a severe close-cropped black beard. “What did you find?”

“Begs his pardon, we does, gollum, didn’t mean to make noise and wake up his nice family, his lovely wife, his kind daughter-“

“Show me what you have found.”

He was groveling on the ground. He pulled himself back up to a crouch. “Here! It is here-“ As he began to remove the cloths, a motion from the window caught his eye. “No! No! Not here! She mustn’t see it!”

The Man looked over at the window and it shut again. “Here,” he said shortly, taking Sméagol by the collar and dragging him down the street. “Show me now.”

Sméagol again reached for the cloth, but another window, across the street, caught his eye. Another motion. His hand shook, he could not remove the cloth.

The Man roughly snatched the skull away from him and he ripped off the cloth, his face grim. He looked hard at the grinning death’s-head, and there was a hint almost of relief on his face.

Sméagol’s voice was so small and yet so loud in the still night. “I only- I only found it.”

“So I see. Where did you find it?”

He pointed wordlessly to the nearest grate in the road. “Under. Below. I could not find his body. It was not anywhere.”

“There was no body,” said the Man. “Not if I guess rightly.” He was silent a moment, as if he were deciding whether to say more. “During the siege, the orcs flung the heads of our fallen soldiers over the wall. Into their loved ones’ faces.” He fell silent. His jaw was tight.

“Is that what it was,” Sméagol said softly. He had heard of orcs doing such things. “Of course. And that one… slipped underground.”

“Yes. It has traveled far, perhaps taken by stormwater. It ought never have been in such a place- that is no fate for the Man this once was.”

“No, of course not, gollum, no fate for anybody.” Then the death and the foulness had come from Mordor, and been forced onto the City, and would not come again. Things seemed now to be in their proper places. He found that his hands were still trembling, but his voice wasn’t any longer. “We did not mean to make trouble,” he said.

“No, I can see that you did not. It is well that this has been found and recovered, and it was right for you to bring this to someone’s attention.”

“It was? I- I didn’t know. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You have done well. And now, the right thing to do is to return to your quarters and leave this with me. Come.”

Sméagol meekly followed the Man to the Sixth Circle. Prestien’s father stopped by the gate. “I must tell the guards what you’ve found,” he said. “Will you continue to your quarters from here?”

“Yes we will,” Sméagol said. “Go right there, won’t turn away for nothing, won’t creep about or-“

“Good. Go.”

He slunk off. 

Suilorion was at the guard post outside Sméagol’s dwelling tonight. He was an elderly veteran who was half-deaf and had lost one eye and one hand, and he was happily playing cards and humming to himself. He was often stationed there at night. Perhaps they couldn’t find anyone else, or perhaps they thought Sméagol could look after himself in the dark and didn’t need as much watching- supposedly a guard was stationed at his doorstep to keep Sméagol safe, and not to keep the city safe from Sméagol- but Suilorion was not the most observant person and Sméagol slipped right past him without being seen.

Once he had gotten inside, he hesitated before going down to the cellar. The stench of the sewer clung to his clothing and skin. If he didn’t wash it off before having a lie-down, it would cling to his bed too.

He went back outside to Suilorion and quietly called out until he was spotted.

“Good evening, Burrower!” the old Man said cheerfully. “Have you come to play cards?”

Sméagol was a bad loser and a worse winner and not much fun to play cards with. Déagol had not liked to play with him, but Suilorion was difficult to annoy and had never stopped offering games. “No, not just now.”

“If you change your mind, I shall be here until morning!” He started dealing himself a game for one person. “Will you be at the ceremony next week?”

“Ceremony?…”

“For honoring those who are gone, and the lives they lived! I am an old man, and I have many friends I wish to honor. You are always claiming to be older than I am, so perhaps you have as well.”

Sméagol was quiet a moment, then said: “No, we don’t. Would he ask someone to come draw us a bath?”

“What’s that?” Suilorion asked. Sméagol had to repeat himself a few times, and Suilorion at last said: “Ah! A bath. I was confused, because that didn’t relate to what I said.”

“No, it doesn’t, I jusst… I wants one.”

“But there’s no need for me to ask anyone! I can do it myself! Where is the thimble they bathe you in?”

“It…” It wasn’t a thimble. Sméagol didn’t know what to make of him calling it one and decided not to comment. “They keeps it here, I think.” He led Suilorion inside and pointed to the high cabinet with his washtub on top of it. He wondered idly if someone who didn’t know he climbed had thought he couldn’t reach it up there if he wanted to. They needn’t have bothered making an attempt to keep it away; there was no reason for Sméagol to go to the trouble of retrieving the washtub on his own when someone came in twice a day to take it down and fill it for him.

Suilorion took down the washtub. He had only one hand of his own- the other was an iron claw- but he made no complaint and seemed to have no trouble hooking the claw onto one of the tub’s handles. He walked away with it, whistling. That left Sméagol sitting on the floor in an unguarded room and suddenly aware that Prestien’s father had taken his cloak away with the skull still wrapped in it. He’d been going about bareheaded. And would have to keep doing so from now on unless someone noticed the garment missing, took pity on him and gave him a new one.

He idly studied his own two hands with all ten of their fingers, splayed out before him on the ground like spiders made of bone. There is always more to be lost, I suppose, he thought, and licked at his fingers. They had begun to hurt in the joints- there must be a change in the weather coming.

Suilorion came back with the tub and set it down. “There you are!” he said cheerfully. Then he left without even waiting for a thank-you. Sméagol was not often left alone to bathe. He didn’t need help, but someone usually sat with him just in case he did anything stupid such as overturn the tub. He had not thought these attentions were entirely welcome but without them he felt odd.

He was still scrubbing when someone came in with a tray. “Oh!” she said. “I did not expect you up here. Sméagol, are you taking a bath?”

“Yes- very clean Sméagol, nice Sméagol.”

“There’s no one here. They’ve left you alone in the bath?” There was a note of alarm in her voice that he grumbled at. He was not going to ruin all of the floor, he didn’t splash as much as that. “Why, for how long?”

“Don’t know.” He rubbed at his face.

She set down the tray and came closer. He recognized her now, it was Galil. Unlike many of the people who brought his food she usually stopped to have a word with him before leaving the tray, and didn’t get flustered if he asked her for help with something. “Look at me, please.”

He did so briefly, then looked away.

“Sméagol,” she said, “you’re clean now- you may stop.”

“No. Not clean.”

“Yes- clean enough.”

“No.”

“You’ve rubbed your face raw. Please stop.”

“It is foul and slimy.” He dug his nails into his skin.

“No,” she said firmly, and when he did not stop she took him by the wrists. He trembled, and thought for a moment of biting her to free himself because she was overstepping by clutching at him. Something in her eyes stopped him. She let go a moment later of her own accord. “I have brought you a meal.”

“Don’t want any meal.” He turned away, scowling. “Not nice grabbing us like that. Not nice! We wasn’t hurting nothing!”

“You were hurting yourself, and I shall stop you from hurting yourself if ever I see it,” she said. “Come out now, please. You are clean enough, and it is time to eat.”

“I’m not hungry,” he sulked.

“I have never known you not to be hungry.”

“I am not hungry, and I did not hurt myself. I wouldn’t do such a thing. Sméagol doesn’t like to be hurt.” He rubbed water over his arms.

Galil didn’t answer, but took a towel out of the cabinet, and motioned to him the way Faelon and Eardwulf did when they wanted to pick him up. This gave Sméagol pause- not because he was unclothed- he was used to the idea that the people who looked after him had already seen everything when he had been too sick to wash or dress himself, and they did not care anymore so he shouldn’t either- but she’d never picked him up before. He usually only let people carry him after they proved they would be gentle with Sméagol and had sense enough not to drop him.

Of course, she couldn’t prove herself unless he let her try it, and he would rather be carried down the stairs than have to navigate them on his own. He held out his arms. She scooped him up into the towel just as deftly as Eardwulf would have, and held him close as she carried him down the stairs to the cellar. It was lovely dark there. The candles the Men lit when they came had been put out or burned out. Galil stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked about blindly.

“She may set us down here, we will be alright,” he said politely, hoping she would be content to leave and not light a candle. He did not want one. If not for that, he would not have been in a hurry to be let go. Galil was soft and smelled nice.

She gently lowered him to the floor. He squirmed, whining. When he was moved he discovered that the towel was scraping his skin. He didn’t recall his towels being so rough.

“You do not need help to dress?” she asked as he crawled away.

“O no. Nice Lady. She may go. Nice to come see Sméagol.”

She was fumbling for the candle. He sighed resignedly. “I shall bring your food,” she said, as the light flickered into existence. She tactfully did not look in his direction.

“I don’t want food,” he said matter of factly. “I won’t eat it. She may take it away, to someone who wants it.”

“Are you feeling ill?”

“Yes, and I am not hungry.” He realized his mistake. He did not want someone to come and poke and prod him to find out what was wrong. “No. Not ill. We aren’t hungry.” He realized his second mistake. She might think he had been hunting. “We haven’t killed anything!”

“Will you allow me to bring you the food for you to see and smell before I take it away?”

“Whatever she likes, but I do not want to eat it.”

She went upstairs while he dressed himself in his favorite old clothes which were usually so soft and pleasant on his skin, but everything felt rough just now. Perhaps he had over-scrubbed after all. She came back shortly, and offered him a tray full of meat. He sniffed at it and shook his head. “I’m not hungry. I said I wasn’t.”

She set the tray down on his table instead of taking it away, and then she stood there watching him. “What’s troubling you, Sméagol?” she asked.

“Troubling? Nothing, we are not troubled. Sméagol does not need anything just now, nice lady; she may go.” He hopped up onto his bed. 

She did not leave.

“We are not ill,” he insisted. “Sméagol can’t be hungry every minute. The Men feeds us too much.”

She said nothing and did not leave.

“Sméagol took a lovely walk,” he said, plucking the blankets. They were getting frayed. “Nice cool night, it is, and not dry enough to make us cough. Saw some things. Nothing very much, nothing the nice lady would care to hear about, no. Nothing.”

She said nothing.

“Nothing is wrong,” he said. “Gollum! We’re alright- gollum- didn’t see anything nasty. I can’t always eat everything you brings me. I- nothing is wrong. Why don’t you go? I knows you have other things to do with yourself.”

“Are you ordering me to go?”

“No! Of all the silly things. Sméagol doesn’t order Men about. But you’re busy, aren’t you? You has better places to be, don’t you? Don’t need to sit and watch Sméagol. He won’t shatter.”

She stayed a bit longer. He crawled into bed, lay face-down, and pulled his pillow over the back of his head.

“Very well,” she said at last. “If you do not desire my company, I shall go, but I shall leave the tray in case you want it later.”

“How nice, kind lady. We will not want it. Goodbye, goodbye.” He wriggled farther under the pillow.

Her footsteps went away, up the stairs, and then overhead across the floor. Sméagol was left alone in the quiet. He lay still and tried to sleep, but thoughts came into his head in the stillness and silence. He could not force them away, and he began to weep- wracking, wretched sobs that came from deep in his chest and shook his body.

This was the state Faelon found him in. “Sméagol!” he said in dismay, sitting nearby on the bed. “Sméagol, whatever is the matter?”

“Noth- nothing, gollum, n- nothing,” he sobbed.

“You need not tell me, if you really don’t wish it, but mayn’t I help you?”

“He may not help! He may not!”

Faelon stayed near, and laid his hand on Sméagol’s back. He gave two deep heaving sobs and said: “I- m-miss Déagol!” A horrible shuddering cry came out of his throat and he dove back under the pillow.

“Of course you do!” said Faelon, dismayed. “He was your friend.”

“No! No! That’s wrong, that, that’s wrong. I can’t. I k- killed him! I dursn’t, I dursn’t miss him too, I, I-” He moaned and gulped and sobbed and felt ill.

“But you cannot help missing him,” said Faelon. “How ought you to feel instead?”

“Sorry!”

“But aren’t you sorry as well? You seem terribly sorry to me.” He now sounded confused as well as dismayed.

He brought one bony fist down onto the mattress. “I’m very sorry! Gollum, gollum, gollum! For all the good it does- gollum! Sorry doesn’t bring him back!”

“No, of course not, but- it wouldn’t be better for you not to be sorry, would it?”

“No!”

“It doesn’t do Déagol any harm for you to miss him,” said Faelon. “I should think he would like you to miss him.”

“But it is my own fault that he’s gone,” said Sméagol. “It was my fault and not anyone else’s. Now Sméagol is whinging and sniveling because his little friend can’t play with him anymore, and whyever not? Where has he gone? It’s- inappropriate! That’s what it is!” He turned and clutched Faelon’s sleeve. “Don’t tell anyone. You mustn’t. You mustn’t!”

“I won’t,” said Faelon, “if you don’t wish me to. But- I don’t like to hear you talk about yourself that way. I don’t see why you may not grieve your friend.”

Sméagol shook his sleeve. “Why not? I killed him. I, I hid him. I put him away, because it would have been trouble for me if he were found. His mother begged me to tell her what had happened. Everyone knew I knew what had happened. I was the last to see him, the very lasst- I went out with him, and came back alone, and no Déagol any longer, and they were not stupid. They wanted to know where their friend had gone, their brother, their cousin, their s- son. I laughed at them! Gollum! Then I went back where he was and had another look at him! His face had ss-sloughed off and he was crawling with maggots! Crawling with them! Crawling! Slimy, soft, white m- maggots!” He reached up and pinched the stretchy, pallid skin of his face and yanked on it. “That was what I did to him! That’s what I did! And I says I miss him! How could I? How could I?”

He shrieked and choked and sputtered, his shoulders convulsed, and he put up no resistance when Faelon gathered him close.

“They- they’re- all dead,” Sméagol gasped, when he could form words again. “They’re all- all dead!”

Faelon had cradled him through wailing and thrashing and no doubt elbowing him in the ribs by accident more than once. Sméagol’s elbows were sharp. Faelon made no complaint. Instead, he ventured: “I would be utterly wretched if I was driven out of Minas Tirith, and returned later to find that no one here was left alive. And it would still hurt me just as much if I were the one to blame for my exile, I would think. Perhaps, in some ways, it would hurt even more, and be more difficult to talk about.”

Sméagol moaned and shivered. “But it was all my own fault,” he said weakly. “Doesn’t it bother you? Eh? Even a little?” He sniffled. “You carries me about in your arms as if I was a little toddling thing that never hurt anyone.”

“I- I don’t think you would hurt anyone anymore,” said Faelon.

Sméagol sighed a little. “Ach! It depends, doesn’t it, on what ‘anyone’ is doing, and why. I have bitten you before, haven’t I?”

“Yes, but you were ill. Were you not ill when you harmed Déagol? You didn’t want him to die, did you? I have never heard you speak as if you wished for him to be dead.”

“It was so long ago,” said Sméagol. “I suppose I was sorry. Even before; it bothered Sméagol very much, I suppose, because I made believe that it hadn’t happened and that there never was any Déagol, which was not nice to him at all. Perhaps missing him is better.” He yawned fitfully. “O! I don’t know what I did or thought. Poor Déagol. But Sméagol doesn’t deserve to be petted like a puppy for doing it. I don’t understand you.”

“Oh, Sméagol, I… I suppose it doesn’t matter to me whether you deserve to be comforted,” said Faelon, a bit desperately. “I like you, and I don’t wish for you to be in pain, and it saddens me to see you so miserable. I know you have done wrong, but I don’t see how it helps anyone for you to suffer. You have suffered enough. Did it do the world the slightest good when these marks were put on you?” He gently touched the scars on the back of Sméagol’s hand. “I think it did not- it did not bring Déagol back, either. Please, don’t hide it from us when you are missing your kin. We will not hold it against you.”

Sméagol rested his head on Faelon’s arm. He was utterly exhausted by now, and his speech was weak and slurred. “Peoples keep saying I should come to this ceremony the King is having. For people who miss somebody. And it makes me think of Déagol. He would have liked to see the City. There were so many things I could have shown him. But I can never show him any of it.” Tears started on his cheeks again. “He would have been dead a long time by now in any case, of course; unless- unless he kept it- but if he had, I would have been gone by now- and what would have happened to him if he had kept it? I do not know, but we could never have been here together. I wish we could have.”

“That is not an evil thing to wish.”

“I cannot go in front of the people and tell them I’m missing Déagol,” said Sméagol, “because it is not…” He tried to think of a way to explain the problem, and ended with lamely saying: “It is inappropriate.”

“I see. Perhaps it would be,” said Faelon, “but you can tell me about it. And I think Eardwulf ought to know about it, too, because he likes you very much and he’ll be upset when he sees that you are miserable and not hungry. You won’t be able to hide from him that something is paining you, and- you see it will be rather difficult for me if he asks me if I have noticed something the matter, and I know what the trouble is but can’t tell him.”

“Mm.” Sméagol closed his eyes.

“Might I tell Eardwulf?” Faelon persisted.

“O, very well,” Sméagol said curtly. “If he asks.” He sighed and coughed a little, and sank into silent weariness.

Faelon sat with him until he fell asleep, and then must have left, because Sméagol woke up alone. He had slept a long time, and sunlight was trying to come in around the shutters of his window.

“Ach,” he said, sitting up and pawing at his aching eyes. “What has we done to ourselfs?” His head was pounding and his nose was completely blocked from such strenuous weeping. “Déagol isn’t any less dead than he was before all that carrying on, is he?” he told himself. “And neither is Gran, or any of…” His voice was shaking. He shook his head in disgust.

He was hungry. The food Galil had left for him had been taken away because it had sat too long.

“They ought to have left it, my precious! It was still mostly good,” Sméagol grumbled. “It was good enough.” It would not be time for breakfast for hours yet.

He could go to the guard outside his front door upstairs and ask for food- but he had already asked someone to bring him a bath, and there was always the risk of becoming a nuisance. It seemed to him that he had been particularly inconvenient lately.

He made it so far as the upper floor, and lingered by the door, closing his eyes against the heat and light. He did not particularly feel as if he deserved to eat, either, but of course that had never stopped him before.

He waited there, indecisive, until someone else spoke to the guard outside.

“I have here an item for Sméagol.”

“He sleeps at this hour,” the guard replied. Not Suilorion now- someone else had come in for the day shift. Sméagol didn’t recognize the voice. “If you leave it with me I shall see that someone brings it in to him.”

Sméagol opened the door a little, flinching at the light that came inside. “Who’s there?” he asked. “What’s he got for us? We’re awake, but we won’t go out. It is too bright! He may come in if he wishes it.” Perhaps this mysterious item was edible?

There was a brief silence, and then the guard said: “He would like to receive your item personally but the sunlight is too bright for him to come out to you. He’s inviting you inside.”

“I see. I shall go.”

“It will be dark.”

“I understand.”

The door opened further. Sméagol backed away, closing his eyes and keeping them closed until he heard the door shut. A black-bearded Man was standing there.

“It is Prestien’s father!” he said.

“Indeed. Good afternoon,” the Man replied. “I am here on the subject of the soldier’s remains you discovered last night.”

“Ach! Yes, that.”

“I brought the item to the guards, and when I did so we discovered that you had wrapped it up in your own clothing.”

“Yes,” said Sméagol. “Didn’t have nothing else to wrap it up in.”

“Your cloak was too badly soiled to save, but I saw fit to replace it with one of like size.” He presented a wrapped-up parcel. Sméagol took it eagerly and opened it up.

“This is nicer than we had,” he said, turning over the fabric. “It isn’t worn out or patched up. Ha, ha! Sméagol hasn’t had a chance to ruin it yet.” It was nice and plain, too, without any silly trim or embroidery on it. He missed the familiar smell of the other garment, but this new one would pick up its own scent soon enough.

“I am glad the garment suits you,” said the Man. “If you find any other such things, it is not needful to remove them on your own. Tell the guards what you have found, and where, and do not touch anything- it may be important in future for them to see what state things were in when you found them.”

“Yes, yes,” said Sméagol. “That is better; but we could not do that last night, because of where we found it. The Men cannot go through grates, can they?”

“Men have other ways to access the underground wastewater system.”

“They do?”

“They do.”

“They might turn up there any time, eh?”

“Yes, so be on your best behavior. That is all I had to discuss- I take my leave, now.”

“O, so soon? Goodbye, then. Lovely of him to come and see Sméagol, it is. And with a present!” He added diffidently: “Maybe on his way out he can mention to the nice guard that Sméagol would like a bit to eat.”

“Very well.”

The Man left. Sméagol turned the gift over in his hands, admiring it. It seemed as if somehow or other, he had done something right, although he wasn’t quite sure he’d done it for the right reasons.

“That is always the way, isn’t it?” he said to himself, and sighed, and went downstairs.