Ruined, Poisoned, Murdered, Precious

A muffled crash arrested the goblin-sentry's attention.

He would not have heard it if there had been another sentry to talk to and argue with, but he was alone, and very bored, and wishing he could go and do anything else. Here was a perfect opportunity, even if it sounded like all that had happened was that something had fallen over in a storage closet.

Indeed the sound had come from the nearby closet and indeed there was a fallen shelf inside. Standing in the doorway, the sentry took note of the mess, agreed with himself that it was not his job to clean it up, and was just about to leave when some small warning instinct- common to expendable creatures who live dangerous lives in wild places- made him look again.

There were objects strewn all over the room and it didn't look possible that they had landed where they did just by falling out of a shelf that had tipped forward. Here was the shelf lying straight out on the ground, here were items scattered to every side as if thrown. And it seemed to him as well that there was a faint unpleasant odor in the room. It reminded him of something. Yes- a few days ago he had taken some of that tainted meat to dispose of it in the lake at the bottom of the mountain. He didn't know exactly how much had needed disposal to begin with, it was a taboo subject to talk of the way the Great Goblin had been swindled and left with some horrible inedible stuff to dispose of, but a great deal had already been dumped, and a line of dead fish had been lying on the shore. The cave had smelled of damp and mildew, and rotting fish, with a hint of vomit.

There was a damp smell now in this dry room.

The sentry took a slow step forward. He saw and heard nothing moving, but he had a feeling of being watched, which he also remembered from yesterday's trip to the lake. He had remarked on it to the other goblin helping to carry the meat and gotten the reply:

"Shut up, you idiot!"

Which meant the other goblin had also noticed and found it very unpleasant. In fact, since then, the sentry had talked to a few others.

" 'Course something's down there," one had said, amicably chewing on a rat. "Sneaky little thing- sits in the lake and stares at you. Never comes closer. Just stay away from it."

The sentry knew better than to dismiss this as superstition or assume the watcher- if it existed- was harmless. All kinds of things lived in mountains, some of them difficult to explain, and often no friends of orc-kind. Why, it could even be some rotten adventuring Man that had rolled in lake mud to disguise its scent.

He thought the best, safest, sanest thing to do was really to leave this room now and barricade the door, just in case something was in there- the something could be left a while to die of thirst, no one used this closet very often, as it wasn't used for weapons.

However, as goblins go, he had a reckless streak and he knew that if an enemy was here it must be hiding, cornered. Getting promoted would take him off of boring sentry duty and killing an adventurer was a good way to rise in the Great Goblin's estimation.

He placed his hand on the hilt of his dagger and took a step forward. His foot came down on what he thought to be a pile of rotting food- something slimy and cool. He jumped back and saw nothing where he had stepped. He soon realized, however, that the scent in the room had changed. The hint of lake was gone.

Gollum very much resented having been trodden on.

He had moved in silence until it was clear that he was alone and the goblin-sentry, nasty suspicious glaring thing, was not following him. Neither was anyone else, and there were no other creatures within the range of his keen hearing, aside from a bat high above somewhere under the cavernous ceiling- too high to catch.

Now he glowered, snarled and began to limp, favoring the foot that had been stepped on even though it was not injured and was perfectly able to bear his light weight. Anyone watching would have gotten the picture right away that here was someone who thought himself deeply wronged. Of course, no one was watching and Gollum was invisible to begin with.

He twisted the Precious back and forth on his finger, running its cool, smooth metal over the tip of his thumb. In the past, it had taken on the warmth of his hands and felt like a live thing in his grip. Now it seemed that Gollum had no warmth to impart. Almost against his will, he removed the Precious from his hand, tucking it into his pocket. There was no danger of being seen now.

"Caution, yes caution," he hissed, "caution and patience is what we needs now, my precious, oh yes." He had just very nearly been flattened in the closet by grabbing at the top shelf of the cabinet he was searching and tipping it over onto himself. Then he'd attracted the attention of the sentry and been stepped on. "But where are they hiding it? Nassty creatures. They're keeping it from us. They wants- ach! Sss!" Spluttering, he went into a sort of spasm, scratching wildly under his chin and at his thin ribs with both hands and one flappy foot, and even crunching up to bite at his knee- then ramming himself against the rocky wall and scraping his shoulders against it.

"They wants us to suffer, they does," he said, a little out of breath, and continued on his way again, rubbing the skin of his forearms, which was unpleasantly mottled and bleeding in a few places. "Cruel things- poisons the water and hides things from us, my precious. S-s-s-s-s!"

Deep down, he must have known that the goblins did not know he lived in the mountain at all- as he had taken great pains to ensure that they didn't- and had not intentionally poisoned his lake just to make him miserable. Nor were they now hiding medicine from him. He did not care. This was all their fault.

He thought back to the goblin sentry, who had been inches away and not known he was there. It seemed unfair to Gollum that the sentry was now going about its day as usual. It had been a wiry creature, about half a head taller than himself, certainly not much stronger. Could have squeezed it.

He shook his head with a hissing sigh.

He remembered clearly the first time he had come upon an orc in these tunnels. The Precious had saved his life, as it had done so many before, his only true friend; it had kept him from sight when he turned a corner and found he was not alone.

The goblin had been armed to the teeth, and though it could not see Gollum it clearly suspected something was there and alive before it. It walked forward, scenting the air, and Gollum stepped backward, his pale eyes wide and his own nose quivering. Sméagol had heard tales of these creatures and never seen one. For a moment he took in the appearance of the goblin, its scents and sounds, as if he had been handed some unusual exotic food to try, pulling up old stories in his mind and matching them to what he saw.

Then he'd fled, of course.

"What's it want down here, my precious?" he had asked himself. "Nothing here but a poor old creature, is there, eh? It shouldn't be tresspassing and sniffing around with its nassty little nose, no. Nothing here." He had clutched the Precious tightly to his horrid little fluttering heart, because of course there was something very much worth having here in the dark, now wasn't there?

He had half expected that the goblin had been a lone scout that would find nothing useful in the mountain and then leave. He had expected this mostly because he wished it were true. But more goblins had begun to appear. He had crouched up in nooks in the rocks and, with blinking eyes and a very dry mouth, watched a motley band of them plod into the caves.

"Looking for treasure and nice things," he had told his Precious while huddled up on his island later, picking at fish bones. "They'll be on their way, yes, nothing here, gollum. They'll root about with their filthy handses and make a mess of things. Horrible wicked creatures, ssss! But then they'll go, they'll be off, gollum. Nothing here for orcses. We know it- we know there's nothing."

He had fallen silent then for a few minutes (aside from sucking on his teeth; one was loose and annoying him greatly). Then his thin voice spoke again, and if there had been someone there to listen in the dark, that person might have been confused by Gollum's tone, which was meek and cautious now, almost wheedling, as if he was speaking to a tyrant with a bad temper.

"But, we stays here, doesn't we," he'd said. "Doesn't we, precious?"

The answer might have been equally befuddling, because it was the same voice, but now snidely patient, with a note of condescension, like a teacher answering a particularly stupid question from a disliked pupil. "O yes! We stays in the nice lake with nice fish. Nice fish, sweet fish for us, precious. Yellow Face doesn't watch us here, White Face can't see."

And then the first tone answered. "Goblins doesn't like the Faces, precious. O no."

"No, no," the second tone agreed.

And, with the sound of someone who knew he was pushing his luck: "Does goblins, eh, does they like fissh?"

"Goblins can't have fish," a sharp tone replied, "fish ours."

In a pique, he'd twisted the loose tooth out of his mouth and flicked it into the lake. There was no longer any blood when he pulled them out.

Of course the goblins had not left. Gollum had listened to their digging, watched them set up living spaces, and the dreaded day had come when a band of them had come to his lake and stood on the shore, peering at it and asking each other if the lake could be drained. Drained! What was Gollum to do if they drained his lake? There were so many of them. He could not bear the thought of leaving the mountain, of being seen by the Faces.

"Probably not, no telling how deep it is," one of the goblins had said. "And there's no point in draining it anyway. There's enough space and it would be hard digging here. And it might be handy to have a lake, you never know."

Another goblin had said: "Yes, it might be useful. Looks like there's fish in it."

They had wandered off, and Gollum had burst into resentful tears.

The goblins were staying. He could not make them go. There was nothing he could do. "Nothing, nothing," he had started to say to himself, and had been in quite a state, repeating "nothing, nothing" in a dreamy tone for a long time- a very long time. The other voice in him was not its own creature with its own life. It could not take a step back, take Gollum by the shoulder and say 'You've been lying there saying 'nothing, nothing' for hours and I'm going to go mad too if you keep this up.' So he'd lain there murmuring until eventually he had been doing it for so long that he fell asleep. He woke up in a subdued state, and for some time had very little to say to his precious, and even lost his appetite for about half a day. For any creature that had ever had any relation to hobbitkind, that was very serious indeed.

And yet, until recently, it had done him no harm at all to share the mountain with goblins.

Gollum did not care to venture away from his lake very often. When he did, he had the Precious. The goblins rarely came near the lake. And not only did they do him no harm, but there were benefits here and there to their presence. Sometimes Gollum found opportunities to steal from them- rarely things he actually wanted, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Once or twice they had killed a bat or some other small creature and not bothered to take it away, and then Gollum found it and could do as he wished with it. And every so often he would go to spy on them if he heard them in tunnels nearby, watching their scuffles and fights. Once he'd seen a group of them in a vicious argument with one of their number, a surly young imp being accused of stealing. There was no talk of banishment, Gollum had remarked to himself with a scoff, and then at that moment one of the angry goblins had knifed the young imp in the gut; it fell where it stood and was carried off, and Gollum was very quiet after that.

Occasionally they did take fish from the lake, although never very many at a time. When this happened Gollum sat on his island and glared invisibly at the creature holding the fishing-pole until it began to look visibly uncomfortable. Occasionally he had thought about putting his hands around one of their throats, considering it in an idle manner, a bit like the way someone with an unpleasant job may dream about punching a colleague. He had never yet seriously intended to try it- the goblins seemed like a force of nature apart from himself, not something he could harm, any more than he could have taken a boulder in his hands and wrung it to death.

And then a few days ago they had poisoned the lake.

'Days' is the easiest way to put it, anyway. Creatures that live in complete darkness live by their own internal sense of time. For the dwellers in the mountain, day and night were rarely relevant and when they were out under the sky, day was to be avoided. But it's easier to say that it was a few days ago.

In any case Gollum knew at once to be suspicious when he saw goblins putting something in the lake. He remembered an incident, long ago, when someone in a neighboring hole had been thoroughly scolded for putting something in the River. Sméagol had privately asked why this was such an offense- he was uncomfortably aware that he himself put apple cores in the River if no one was watching- and he'd learned that rubbish in water harms fish and snags boats.

"But not little apple cores that are smaller than our fists, those are no trouble, are they, are they?" he had said, and received a look from his grandmother that caused him to decide he had said enough.

Knowing all this, as soon as the goblins had left, he'd swum over to see what they'd put in the water. It was something outside of his experience and completely vile, and it looked very likely to both kill fish and snag boats. He'd dragged as much of it out of the water as possible, leaving it on a rock where the goblins would by no chance see it and push it back in. But Gollum had forgotten that he, himself, was a creature of the lake now, and liable to be poisoned. He'd developed a nasty rash after swimming near the tainted stuff.

This was what he was scratching now. It does not help a rash heal to scratch it, but he couldn't help himself. And he was loath to even swim in the nice cold lake, because the water might still be foul.

He was heading back to the lake anyway, and had exchanged his theatrical limping for shuffling along doubled at the waist, which looked more genuine. He had also stopped talking to himself. Suddenly he swerved, leaning against the wall and retching, arching his back like a cat with a hairball. He went on his way wiping his mouth and muttering. Gollum certainly knew well enough not to drink poisoned water or eat fish that had died from being in toxic waste, but he was not able to forgo drinking entirely either and there was no alternative to the lake. He had tried to find clean water close to where the stream that fed the lake came in from outside of the mountain, but evidently that had not been clean enough. Two nights ago he had woken up with a deep feeling of foreboding followed by knifing cramps in his gut.

"Poisoned! Yes, murdered we are," he whined to himself. "They've killed us, my precious." It should be fairly evident that he was not going to die. Even Gollum knew this, or he would not have been up and about looking for things to steal from the goblins. Yesterday he had been much weaker and had actually thought he might die, and he had stayed curled up on his island with the Precious clutched tightly in his fist, because even if he died he did not want anyone else to have it. Today was quite another story.

"Murdered," he repeated anyway. "S-s-s-s! And we've done nothing, nothing."

He had hoped to find something in the goblins' stores to treat the itching all over his body, or some source of clean water, or something safer to eat, or all of the above. He had found nothing and he had not forgotten that he'd been stepped on while invisible.

His gagging had dislodged a tooth that he hadn't realized was loose. Automatically he took it from his mouth and tucked it into his pocket so that no goblins would find it as evidence of his presence in the tunnels. Losing teeth had bothered him very much when the first one had gone. Now he was used to this happening every so often, and it wasn't painful, only annoying. He did wonder how many would be left in the end. He had lost about half of what he originally had- although of the many lost, two had actually grown back, larger, sharper and more useful.

Gollum chose not to think about this, or about the fact that he sometimes saw an eldritch green light reflected on the water when he looked into it, a light that could only have come from his own face, an impossible light. Maybe, just maybe, deep down he knew full well that the Precious was changing him. But if he did know, he must have also decided that the Precious would have to be allowed to go on changing him, regardless of what he turned into. He was not going to be parted from it.

It seemed like a very long and tedious time before he reached his cave. Usually, he left his boat some way out from the shore, where it would not be seen at once if anyone came to the lake while he was not there. (Gollum had developed this habit long before the orcs came. As he was always looking for opportunities for mischief himself, he was keenly aware of when he created opportunities for others to do mischief to him- even if no one was available to take the opportunity.) At present, he was loath to so much as step into the water, and had left the boat on the shore where he did not have to swim out to it.

He had also gotten a particularly large shell to serve as a makeshift oar because he was wary of paddling the boat with his feet as he usually did. He had once been very skilled with an oar but he found the shell clumsy to use, perhaps because a large shell was not actually an oar, and he sat in the boat in a stupor for a few moments before starting to fumble around with the so-called paddle.

His lank hair had fallen in front of his eyes. He tucked it away and at once it fell back to where it had been. He left it where it was. He had cut it a few times after being driven away from home- 'cut' being a generous term, once he had just bitten off as much of it as was long enough to reach his mouth- and then at some point it had stopped growing and he usually didn't remember it was there.

When his boat touched up on the island he lived on, he flopped out of it and almost let it drift away, remembering to catch hold of it and pull it up onto the ground just as it was about to float out of reach.

There were plants that could help someone who was poisoned, he dimly recalled, but he had never been terribly interested in that type of secret. The scent of herbs had become repulsive to him. And anything helpful wouldn't grow inside the mountain, he knew- or thought he knew. He had picked up the knowledge of relatively safe ways in and out, but he didn't want to go out to forage at any time, let alone in a weakened state.

There was a memory he had- something about helpful plants. He had a remarkably clear and long memory, particularly good at recalling times when he had felt even the remotest sense of being wronged, but this one was elusive, slipping away like a leaf in water.

It's not funny, I could die, you know. I probably saved your life, you would have tried the stuff if I hadn't. I know you would have, Sméagol, you're worse than I am. O, that smarts!

Here, now, gran will know what to do. Can't you walk, my love? O- I'll carry you, I will, just this once, eh?

Sméagol had not lingered to watch Déagol be treated, but had gone off wringing his hands, and later been scolded for letting his friend eat strange berries. Somehow the defense of 'I would have eaten them if he hadn't tried it first' - or, more truthfully, 'I would have eaten them if I had not talked him into trying them first' - had not worked.

In any case, Déagol had not died that day or in that manner. Perhaps he had been cured, or perhaps he was not deadly poisoned at all. This wasn't helpful, no, not at all. It didn't bear thinking about, it was useless.

Gollum curled up into a knot, lying on his side. The Precious was clenched tightly in his fist. He did not remember taking it out of his pocket.

He couldn't trust the lake for food and drink. Going above ground sounded utterly intolerable. He would simply have to take the Precious and venture back into the nest of goblins again, but not yet. Not yet...

Something had happened to draw Gollum out of his self-pitying stupor- some sound or scent. He knew better than to start up or make noise. He lay stock still instead, breathing as quietly as possible. He hadn't been asleep but he hadn't been paying attention either.

Caution, yes caution and patience were needed. He slipped the Precious onto his finger before even raising his head, and only when he was utterly invisible did he scent and listen. It was a goblin, of course- poking about the bank of the lake.

There are different types of anger, and different people are prone to feel one more often than the other. Gollum was prone to ugly, noisy fits of temper, as has been seen. It would be a mistake, however, to think he was not also capable of being angry in icy silence. In fact, he had many ways and manners of being angry. Some of them were not at all amusing.

He got into his little boat and set off without a sound, giving up on the large shell and paddling with his feet, as he was sure of stealth that way.

"I don't know what he expects," the goblin was muttering, poking at the dead fish on the bank. "None of these are fit to eat and I don't think anything will be fit to eat in the lake, either. He can't tell us to dump things in it and then ask for a fish dinner the next day."

The goblin didn't expect an answer, and if he did he certainly wouldn't have expected the answer he got, which was "No, but you've brought us dinner, haven't you?" in a sibilant whisper.
The voice and the grip 'round his throat that came with it were as if the cold mud at the bottom of the lake itself had crept up to kill.

At once the goblin thrashed and felt for his sword. The grip round his throat tightened. Teeth bit into his neck. Choking, he tipped himself sideways, and he with his attacker rolled into the lake. That was shortly the end of the goblin.

Having fallen into the water anyway, Gollum gave up on staying out of it and swam to the island, dragging the goblin's body up onto the bank. He sat there staring at the murdered creature.

"Dead, is it, precious?" he asked.

He could think of no reply to make to himself, but the goblin was indeed dead. It had no pulse, it had no breath, and its eyes stared in glazed mute horror without blinking. It was a bit bigger than Gollum and wore a mail shirt, though, to its undoing, its neck was not covered. Clearly the creature had not expected to have real need of armor.

"Ach! What am I going to do with it?" Gollum asked. His remark about dinner had been meant as no more than what passed for a joke in his wicked little mind. He had never seriously considered eating a goblin. He hadn't really even believed until the last minute that he would actually kill it.

He poked at the goblin's arms and hands, too similar for comfort to his own long hands. "We can't eat it," he huffed, "we'll have to hide it, yes. It has two hands, two legs, two eyes, that's not how food is shaped, is it? And it's nassty. Dirty. But it's meat, like any other, precious. It's Orcses, isn't it? Not our kind, no. Won't mind anything we do to it now, gollum! Won't never know. And it shouldn't have been here, no. Sshouldn't have been tresspassing. It's tassty. It looks crunchable. If it's dirty, we'll clean it up."

Gollum did not quite know at what point or what thought he had completely changed his opinion like this. "But," he told himself, "mustn't be found out, gollum! There's blood on the bank and it smells. Clean it, clean it first."

He swam back to the bank. There was not very much blood spilled. Gollum remembered more coming out of the goblin's neck than this. It had gone into the water, or- it had been swallowed, yes- that was it. But there was a scent, and he clawed dirt over the spots that smelled, and even rolled on the ground to disguise it with his own scent. Gollum's own scent, which he thought rather pleasant and comforting, was so similar to the smell of any other slimy thing that lived in the lake that only someone unfortunate enough to have an intimate familiarity with the odor of his skin could have told it apart from the skin of a frog or fish.

Then he went back to the island and looked at the goblin again. It was still just lying there.

Something was watching Gollum. Something saw into him. He had made a horrible mistake, he had done wrong and now he had caught the Eye of something that only wanted to see small things that had once been harmless be corrupted and ruined, ruined until no one could tell what they once had been, and he was sobbing as he bit into the goblin's neck.

Gollum woke up not knowing where he was, or what he was. It was dark, he couldn't see. Something was next to him- he felt cold dead flesh.

Outside in the tunnel, two goblins were having an argument.

"I'm not going down there," the first one said. "It's disgusting. The fish are all dead. If he hasn't come back, he's probably been overcome by the smell. I never liked him anyway, I don't see why I should have to search."

The second goblin may have secretly thought this was a good argument, but he couldn't say so. However, when he was preparing whatever he planned to say instead, he was interrupted by a hysterical scream from the lake.

"Why didn't you give it to me? It was my birthday. You should have given it to me! Why didn't you give it to me?!"

This was repeated several more times, and then melted into a piercing, sobbing howl, the cry of something that had gone utterly mad.

Both goblins stood stock still for a moment. Then they glanced at each other, and as one they turned and walked swiftly in the other direction from the lake.