Seeing the Light

Sméagol's shriek echoed around the little cave. He stumbled back and sat down on the rock, covering ears and eyes by turns. The echo faded after a moment, but the other pain did not- the light- the hideous hot light! Not like torches. Those were bad enough!

"Not down here, can't be down here," he whispered. Hadn't he come here to get away from it? Yes, he had. When had that been?

It didn't matter. No. It could not see him. No one saw him if he did not will it, of course. He brushed the tip of his thumb against the smooth cool band that hugged his finger. To all searching eyes, he was nothing. He did not exist.

He stood up, scowling at the bright bright burning with hands on hips. He scowled for the light, and for the ache in his back, which had been bent like a fishhook, and for the sharp points of his hips. The flesh that ought to pad his bones had melted away, drained away from his body. Precious felt heavy on his hand. Heavy and slick.

Turning, he crawled away, muttering and cursing. The tunnel that led to the shaft of light was narrow, and a pleasant idea occurred to him. He made a quick inspection of the boulders surrounding the mouth of the tunnel. Finding a likely one, he shoved it with both feet (nasty flat flappy things they were, had they always been so?) and it moved just enough. The surrounding rocks began to shake.

Sméagol backed away, grinning as the tunnel collapsed.

Sméagol scrabbled at the rocks. The back way was no good, the orcs knew it. The front way was no good, it had been blocked. There had been light in this tunnel, from outside. A thin creature might be able to get through. If only he had not blocked it off!

It took aching work, sore fingers, tired arms. It took a long time, too long. Three times he grew so hungry that he must stop digging and hunt a while, and once he grew so tired he slept, but not long. He couldn't sleep long- the empty tugging feeling in his chest woke him.

Perhaps he couldn't do it. Perhaps the fissue in the mountain had been sealed so well it could not be unsealed. Just before he gave in, he smelled something dry and bright and hot. The light on the rocks. And there it was!

He shut stinging eyes and withdrew. He had been seen. He was seen and he could not get away.

But the light would not be forever. It would go away for a time. "The Sun, that's what it is, my precious." The same Sun that shone on daisies. It set in the morning, and rose in the evening- no, the other way. It didn't matter. The Sun would set. It would rise again, but it would set. "It must have come a long way to reach here, slipping down through the rockses into the dark place under our mountain. Sss! What made it come? We do not want it!"

And yet he must go out where that Sun shone freely. His pale soft skin, his bright eyes and splayed limbs would be laid bare. He could not retreat into the wavering caressing land of the shadows, into invisibility. If he could, of course there would be no reason to even think of going out.

He waited, and watched, and fretted because he was hungry again. Suppose there were no nice fishes left out there in the big cruel world? It had been so long! What if the Sun no longer set?

The searching tendrils of the Sun's light turned red and finally vanished. In its place another light came, silvery, pure. The Moon. He had forgotten the Moon.

"We do not want it either!" And yet he must go out.

He crouched, and muttered, and finally his instincts said he must go now or he would not. And if he did not go out, he would die of want- want of the Precious, want of light and air, want of that small voice telling rhymes to him, perhaps-

"We hates it," he told himself. And he began to climb.

There was barely enough room for even his withered form to get through between the rocks and more than once he feared he had reached a place he could not get past and would go no further. He was panting, scraped and bruised. He would wring every ounce of this misery out of that nasty little thief's neck. He would scratch it out of his skin. He would gouge it out of his eyes.

Then, suddenly, a gap ahead. Here was the light, burning his eyes, and something else with it. Cold. Moving.

The air itself was moving. Big, not like the movement of a passing orc. The world was breathing, exhaling strange scents into his face.

Nothingness all about, nothing where there should be a womb of stone on every side echoing and vibrating with distant sound. The footfalls of orcs and the movements of animals, even the rustle of insects. They were gone now. All gone. There was finally, only, lonely Sméagol. There was nothing but the swirling wind. It whistled in his ears and pulled at his hair.

His chest hurt. He couldn't get his breath. When the unknown became more terrible than the light he opened his eyes. Something was moving near him. Very near- something was under him, reaching up out of the ground, a dark shape. A flat shape.

He leapt forward. The shape moved with him.

That shape! That spot of nothingness on the rocks. He was doubled. The two flitting shapes in the night were twins. Empty. The Moon had seen him and this was what it made of him. His hands shook. He sobbed in his throat. Again he ran from his shadow- running from the light that cast it.