Yule

Yule was still distressing to Sméagol- there were strong smells of baking and spices everywhere, there was laughing and singing outside his window when he wanted to sleep, and people changed their habits and schedules willy-nilly without consulting him and simply were not where he expected them to be when he wanted to see them. It was better than it had been in years past, of course, there had been a time not long ago when cheer and good will in themselves gave him a headache. 

Things had changed so much in fact that for the first time in centuries he had people to give presents to, and for the first time ever he had the King's coffers to buy them with. Someone walked with him into town to the shops and helped him with the money. Sméagol could do maths well enough, but he frequently forgot how much the different coins were and what they added up into. He had no sense of how much things ought to cost, either. 

His chaperone was also useful for helping Sméagol with the wretched mittens that kept his fingers from grinding to nubs on the frozen streets, and doing up the fiddly buttons on his coat that were quite impossible to do while wearing mittens, and keeping him from getting lost in parts of the city he didn't know, and making certain that the shopkeepers knew he was not a beggar and wasn't going to steal anything. Though this last was getting to be less necessary - people recognized Sméagol.

First he had gotten a present for Frodo Baggins, of course, even though it would not be sent to him in time... if it could be sent to him at all. Still, he must get a present for the Master if he was to get a present for anyone.

"But must we for Sam?" he mused, gnawing on his nails. "He does not like Sméagol. He wouldn't want anything Sméagol gave him. He would say it smelled bad, and throw it away."

"Are you certain he would go so far as that?" his chaperone asked, a little taken aback.

This Man's name was Maeron, unfortunately enough.  He came by Sméagol's rooms every so often to give him fresh water, and where he went after that Sméagol did not know- he had never been quite certain whether Maeron was supposed to be in his quarters at all, but he was a pliant young Man and easy to- well, to bully, if Sméagol was being brutally honest. Maeron had been an obvious choice for someone who would take Sméagol to the shops now and buy whatever he was told to buy there. He had also been clever enough to figure out how to get access to Sméagol's money, which was held in trust for him as he had no idea what to do with it on his own.

"Sam would go so far as that," Sméagol said now, frowning- he had not meant his mutterings to be replied to. "He wanted us to hang, yes he did. Told us to our face."

Maeron raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

"What about the others?" said Sméagol. "The tall ones. Merry and Pippin, they was nice." He thought this over silently for a minute, and ventured: "Suppose we gets something that is for all three of them and if Sam doesn't like it he can leave it to them other two. Yes, yes, that's it."

He was at a book-seller's stand (the seller looked amused; Sméagol tried not to look at him, he so disliked feeling as if he were being laughed at). For Frodo he had picked out a history book with pictures of Elves in it. Frodo was friends with Elves. And, admittedly, Elf history was fairly eventful. Sméagol had been reading some himself in the library, when he could find anything written in Common. Elves weren't always so virtuous after all, which made them not seem quite so terrible.

Now, he pawed through the books until he found one with pictures of food- the kind of food he didn't eat. "What's this one, eh?" He flipped through. "A recipe-book. Hobbits likes food. They will all like it, we will buy it. There! That is done." And with that he could move along.

Faelon and Eardwulf were two nice Men who had been looking after Sméagol since he came to the city, and they both ought to have presents. Both still worked their own jobs as well. Faelon worked in the gardens and often had dirt under his nails, so he must need garden gloves. Sméagol made Maeron help find a pair that made sense. He himself knew next to nothing about this sort of thing.

Eardwulf was a houndmaster. Sméagol had already gotten him a little figure of a dog for his birthday, so this was a little bit more difficult. In the end he found a vest with a dog embroidered on it.

"It's tacky," Maeron said doubtfully. 

"It is not tacky," said Sméagol, who had just been through three shops without finding anything he wanted to buy and had aching feet and still more gifts to find. Also, the shops were all too bright and his eyes stung and he'd gotten a headache. "It is nice, and he'll like it, and he is not so picky as Maeron, ach! Anyway it is Sméagol's money."

"You seem as if you're not enjoying yourself. Do you want to go back?"

"I'm not done!" He shuffled off to continue browsing.

In the same store he found something else he had wanted, a nice writing-set with inks and papers that fit into a polished wooden box. This was something he didn't want to explain, and he'd been worrying about how he would get Maeron to drag him around looking for it without explaining it, and so finding it here put him in a much better mood at once. He gave it to Maeron to purchase without saying anything.

"Is this for yourself, Sméagol?" he asked. "I know you're always writing something."

"Is it allowed?" Sméagol asked. "We did not come to buy toys for ourselfs, but Sméagol sees things and he wants them."

"Yes, it is allowed- you're allowed to ask for your funds to be used however you wish."

"Good, good!" The writing set wasn't for himself, but he had never said it was, so he wasn't really lying, and he didn't want to say who it was for, so he'd just let Maeron think he was being selfish. "Now what's this, eh?" A glass bauble with a miniature of the White City inside it- how cunning! Sméagol picked it up and found that little bits of something fell about inside when it was shaken, to mimic snow. He gurgled with delight. "Boromir must have one. He must!" Maeron looked doubtful. Sméagol had not asked his opinion and did not ask it now.

He glanced about to see if perhaps there was another of these baubles. Such a clever little trinket, and the glass felt nice on his fingers... but there was no other to be seen. Well, he hadn't come here to buy things for himself. Talking about it had tempted him, that was all.

That left one more gift to buy, but nothing had seemed right for it all day. He looked around the shop. Nothing here either, and Sméagol was getting hungry, and his head throbbed. "That's it, for now, I thinks," he said. "Ach, can't buy anything for Maeron if he's with us." He waved dismissively. "He should take some of the money."

"I should?" 

"If he wants it. That can be his present." That made things easier for Sméagol, since he had no idea what the young Man did all day or what he liked.

"How much ought I to take?"

"However much he thinks is fair. He has the purse. I won't even know how much you take," he said, frowning. "I don't know what any of these coins are, or how much they are worth."

"You could get swindled very easily, making such offers."

Sméagol squinted up at him. "Of course I could," he said. "Swindle me, if you likes, I can't stop you whether I gives you permission or not. And that would be the King's problem to solve, not Sméagol's." He went outside for some fresh air without waiting for a reply. 

The King was the last person he had to get a present for, and he had no idea what to get.

He had stayed up late fretting over this problem and finding no answer. The Sun was out and bright- he ought to have been asleep hours ago. 

Sméagol in desperation opened his window, and sat there with his eyes screwed shut, whimpering. It was a cold day and the burning heat on his skin was almost welcome, but if he went out in this he'd be blind. He shivered there until he heard heavy footsteps approaching. One of the guards across the way had noticed him sitting in the window. "Good afternoon, Sméagol. You don't usually open your window when the Sun is shining. Is something troubling you?"

"I didn't get a Yuletime present for the King," he said. "Does you know the King?"

"Only slightly. I do not report to him directly. I doubt he expects a present from you."

"Of course he doesn't," said Sméagol, yanking on a lock of his own hair. it felt slimy and coarse in his hand. "He doesn't expect anything from us. He keeps us and feeds us for nothing. I has to get him something. What would a King want? He has everything! He's not like the Queen," he confided. "We had flowers sent her. Elves likes flowers." And he had been able to arrange for them to be sent by someone else, so that he did not have to see or touch them. He didn't even know which flowers had been sent. "But what does he want? Whyever did she marry him?"

"I confess I cannot help you with this trouble, wall-crawler. Perhaps you could dedicate an ode to him, I know you spend much of your time composing."

Sméagol was in no mood for jokes. He made a rude noise and the guard left. 

He went back into his room and began to look through all of his things. Perhaps something in his room would give him an idea.

"Sockses," Sméagol muttered, tapping his foot. "Not these, they wouldn't fit Sstrider. Besides, they is slimy, besides, they is ours!" He felt ridiculous for wearing socks, but the floor was icy cold in the cellar in wintertime. Men, of course, wore socks all the time. They had absurdly delicate feet. "Buy him socks? No... he has sockses. He has everything. I can't buy him anything in the City, it is his own City. Doesn't the King own everything in it already? He owns Sméagol too, ach!" 

He searched his room and muttered and began to weep from frustration. Indeed, Aragorn didn't expect or particularly desire a present from him. "Thinks we're ungrateful, gollum, gollum! Doesn't like us. Ssss, ssss. I might just make things worser for even trying to give him something." 

Yet he did not give up for hours- even when some people he didn't know came in to take his laundry for cleaning and were discomfited to find him awake. When he asked, they did not know what to give a King either. 

"This is nice," he suggested to them, holding out a riddle-toy with interlocking rings- he was provided with such things every so often when people began to think he had gotten too inventive in amusing himself and needed more things to do.

The woman he was talking to noticed at once that the toy was damaged. She gave Sméagol a dubious look. He whisked it out of sight, hopefully before she could realize those were toothmarks.

"She hasn't got any better ideas," he sulked, and went under his bed until everyone was gone.

Finally, despairing, Sméagol picked out a rock from his collection. It was a nice one, sort of greenish and shiny, with gold flecks, and he would have preferred to keep it- so it was not really a terrible gift. Not so terrible as it might have been.

"But for a King it is dreadful," he muttered. Whimpering in his throat, he scribbled a note to go with it: 

To the King from his lowly wretched servant Sméagol: I do not have anything you want or need. I do not want him to think Sméagol is ungrateful so I have chosen this to give him you it is from my collection and I found it digging along the river so it is not stolen. It is not very much but it is the best thing I can find and I hopes you do not mind it.

He wrapped the rock in this note and in his haste to be done with the whole affair he nearly threw it at Eardwulf when he came in.

Faelon and Eardwulf were delighted with their gifts. They had presents for Sméagol, too. 

Faelon gave him a book that had pictures in it. Sméagol wasn't used to having enough leisure or interest to enjoy something as simple as bright colors on a page, and he lingered over the illustrations a long time, enchanted with his own newfound capacity for innocent pleasures as much as with the pictures in their own right.

Eardwulf, who did not work in the gardens and would not be responsible for repairing any damage done to them, gave him a little shovel.

"Whatever is that for?" Sméagol asked.

"Surely you have wanted to dig farther than your hands can comfortably reach."

Sméagol was delighted, in no small part because he knew people did not like him to dig that much and now he had permission to do it at least once. He started pawing at Eardwulf's legs and chattering, which the Man fortunately took in the spirit it was intended.

Boromir got a strange look on his face when he received his present, and handed over a parcel, which Sméagol ripped open to find a nearly identical item. His delight was so great that he almost forgot to worry that Boromir looked that way because he did not like his gift.

"Tis not much of a surprise, now, I fear," said Boromir.

"Look, ha-ha! The White City in snow," said Sméagol. "Whoever thought of it? Look, there is the mountain and the Tower and all the gates that do not line up."

"You seem happy enough!"

"There was only one left when we got that one," said Sméagol.

"I suspect I had purchased the other." He picked up his own snow globe and pondered it. "A generous gift, indeed. I will treasure it."

"Yes, yes, it's very nice. Look, they put in the Great Gate that Sméagol never saw."

Boromir looked very intently at it. "They did. I had thought never to see it again."

"Of course, it's very tiny in there, isn't it?" 

"Of course." 

The two of them stared into their respective snow globes until someone came in and told Sméagol he had to go back to his room.

He wrapped up the gifts to the hobbits in a parcel, to be sent to the Shire one day. He had included the writing set in the parcel, with a note: Dear Master please give this to Baggins (Sr.) and do not tell him we sent it else he will not want it. 

Galil brought his dinner and gave him a present, a soft blanket. "We did not give her anything," he said in consternation. It smelled like her hands all over, and even an ignorant wild creature like Sméagol could tell that she'd made it herself. It had fishes embroidered on it. 

"That's perfectly alright, Sméagol," she said. "You don't need to give me anything."

"We ought to have. We forgot!" he fumed. Galil often had a kind word for him when she was the one bringing his food, and he was not devoid of the desire to make her happy, but he was more motivated by the sense that, by being caught without a present, he had lost a strange type of game that everyone was playing.

"Hush- I do not mind. Seeing you happy with my gift is reward enough. I hope you shall use it- this cellar is far too cold."

Sméagol grumbled, but didn't complain any more because she had sounded rather final about it and it had occurred to him that perhaps she would take back the blanket if he were to make the mistake of persuading her that she shouldn't have given it to him.

Galil took the cover off the tray- it was laden with meat, fish, and eggs, and a little bit of milk.

"They've given us two dinners by mistake," said Sméagol, reluctantly, being committed to honesty at this stage in life.

"Not at all," said Galil. "It is a feast day, and that is a feast."

"O! Is that so? It's on purpose, then? Well, we will take it," said Sméagol, pulling the tray towards him and touching things on it so they were now spoiled and could not be taken back if Galil were to change her mind or realize there really had been a mistake. "Yes, yes, how nice! Sweet soft fishes in winter, they spoils us, these Men. Thanks ye, we'll eat now." He did not like to be seen at the messy task of using only six broken teeth to get his food down, and no one liked to watch him at it, either, so typically whoever brought his food didn't wait around.

It took him quite some time to eat it all. Stuffed and drowsy, he went to sit for a spell in the windowsill, smelling the approach of dawn and hearing distant carols. He soon dozed off.

He woke up to find that someone had propped an open umbrella against the wall over his head. This confused Sméagol for much longer than it probably should have before he realized it had been put there to protect him from the Sun. At least- that was what it was doing in that spot, and there seemed to be no other reason to put it there. He would never get used to how solicitous these Men could be. 

"Or perhaps it is someone forgetting an umbrella," he said to himself. "We mustn't start to get it into our head that everyone is always thinking about Sméagol, my precious." But he thought everyone probably was thinking about Sméagol a lot more than he was used to being thought of. He spent a few utterly unnecessary minutes adjusting his clothing, yielding to a mysterious impulse to preen. 

There was dried egg white on his sleeve. He scowled.

As he was frowning down at his arm, he saw there was an envelope lying near him, just outside the window on the ground. He snatched it up and began to tear it open immediately- then paused- then checked to be sure it had his name on it, because otherwise he wasn't supposed to open it. 

It did have his name on it. He took it inside into the dark, where he could see better, then resumed tearing it open. (He left the umbrella where it was. He didn't know who had left it, so he couldn't return it, and he didn't want to keep it. It was as tall as he was when he stood upright, and would have been rather unwieldy.) 

Inside the envelope was a message.

Sméagol, I have received your gift and it pleases me very much. It will look well in my collection, and I will enjoy having something to remind me of a most unique and unexpected friend. In return I have enclosed a small stone that I picked up from the banks of Anduin nearer the Misty Mountains, I hope it pleases you. I selected it for its texture, as I have noticed you like to pick up your belongings and run your fingers over them. Best tidings for Yule,
Aragorn

Sméagol nodded drowsily over this, congratulating himself on how good he apparently was at giving gifts. Everyone had been so pleased, generous Sméagol! Then he blinked and squinted at the signature again. Aragorn? 

He must be mocking Sméagol. But there was indeed a stone enclosed in the envelope. It was smooth and pleasant to the fingers. Sméagol put it in his pocket and read over the letter again, looking for sarcasm or insults. 'Unique and unexpected friend', hm? An insult? No, not an insult- it seemed like a way of politely describing someone the King wanted to treat kindly but did not really like, which fit well enough and was better than making false compliments. 

He shook his head. "He is humoring us, perhaps. So then, what if he is? Better than being kicked and called nasty things, isn't it? We should keep the stone and not worry about it. Mustn't be ungrateful. After all, we didn't even think we would be alive by now, did we? We'll be alive for the new year, too; but we'll be asleep, I think." He yawned, shoved the letter into his pocket with the rock, and crawled into bed.