II. SMÉAGOL, THE LITTLE NIPPER
The Ring had disintegrated in a storm-tossed sea of molten rock. So, too, had the Great Flaming Eye, the Nazgûl, Barad-dûr, thousands of orcs and, luckily, a stretch of real estate which would have swallowed up every last coin in Gondor’s Superfund. All that remained was to dust off the high throne in Minas Tirith and settle the new king onto it.
Denethor, Steward of Gondor, stuck out his tongue with concentration as he finished twining a wreath of laurel branches.
The wreath was lopsided. Nobody in Minas Tirith had the heart or nerve to tell Lord Denethor he was no good at crafts. He was even less good at crafts after he’d put away a bottle of wine.
“I don’t see why I should just plop the crown on that man’s head and step aside with a smile,” he growled. “HE hasn’t been keeping an eye on the Eye with a fancy crystal ball. HE didn’t come all the way from Valinor to meddle in our affairs. HE didn’t have lots of weird, cryptic dreams. And HE didn’t destroy the Ring! Here, lean this way, Master Baggins....”
After a few ungainly attempts he stuck the wreath on Frodo’s dark curls.
“There!” he chortled. “I’d let you sit on that throne, brave little creature, but sadly, it’s too big for you.”
“Um...thank you,” said Frodo, ever the Courteous Halfling. “I appreciate the thought, but really, I’m sure Aragorn is just the right size for it. Truly, Lord Denethor, I couldn’t have destroyed the Ring without the help of my friends, large and small.” He was of course thinking of the balrog as well as of the others in the Fellowship. Roggie (as he’d come to think of her) had been particularly helpful, indeed, in making sure he carried out his quest. He thought of her often and was embarrassed that he had never enquired after her real name.
“Aren’t you the proper hero, then!” chuckled the Steward. “Modest and unassuming to a fault. Here, this wine is excellent, isn’t it?”
The wine was so excellent Frodo had stopped at a quarter cup. “Certainly is!” he said while furtively pouring the new cupful into the earth behind him. The White Tree needed all the help it could get. He was trying to think how he could weasel the Steward’s cup in that direction as well.
“Here!” cried Denethor. He tugged the ring off his finger and shoved it onto three of Frodo’s, then crunched the hobbit’s child-sized hand in his. “Take this! I’ve no use for it. All I do is wear it!” He giggled.
Frodo regarded his aching fingers with just the slightest wince on his beautiful face. With a little soap I could work this thing up a bit further to use as a bracelet. “Lord Denethor, you’re too generous. Your signet ring?! With all due respect and gratitude, sir, I just can’t accept this.” Or lift my hand.
“Nonsense. Keep it, keep it! I won’t need it anymore.” Denethor sniffled. “Just a worthless bauble once the King is crowned, after all. He’ll have no need of me. No need for poor Denethor! I’ll just go out and sweep the streets, that’s all. ‘Go out and sweep the streets, Deni; there’s a good lad!’ he’ll say, and I’ll do what I’m told because that’s the kind of mild-mannered, noble, selfless Steward I am, but he needn’t expect me to be happy about it. Ah, no-one understands, Ring-bearer, no-one but you! Oh, my lot is piteous, just piteous!”
Frodo sighed, not meaning to, but he was having an attack of homesickness. This ordeal was redolent of the endless nights he’d endured at the Dragon listening to Blogobund Grimytoes snivel about one amorous disaster after another. He took a deep breath. “Things will get better, my lord. Just wait and see! Aragorn will ask you to remain as Steward. Everything will be fine!”
Aragorn was just out of earshot, sulking by the wall. He had a handful of rocks and was dropping them one by one over the ledge.
“Ow!” cried a faint voice many levels below.
He fingered another rock. “‘A Steward did sit in a palace /’” He dropped it. “‘toward whom I felt all kinds of malice /’”
“Ow!”
“‘’til finally one day / him back I did pay /’”
“Ow!”
“‘by smashing his nice golden chalice!’” He released them all.
“Ow!” “Ow!” “Ow!” “Ow!” “Ow!” “Ow!” “Ow!”
Aragorn leaned over the wall. “Hey, that was a good limerick, darn it!”
“Sorry, old man,” said Boromir. “Majority rules. Say, did you know that when you drop something, it falls––often onto someone?”
The Heir of Elendil frowned. “Your point being?”
“Never mind. Say, Father’s really taken to Frodo, hasn’t he! There’s just something about a chap who turns one’s immortal, invincible arch-nemesis into vapor....”
“Oh, sure,” sniffed Aragorn. “Easy enough when you’ve got a balrog on your side! Has Frodo told him about that?”
“Many times,” Boromir assured him. “Father just laughs. He thinks Frodo is very amusing.”
Aragorn pouted. “Frodo doesn’t put together limericks like I do.”
“One of the many demonstrations of his wisdom,” Boromir said gravely.
“Your dad wants Frodo to be king,” grumbled Aragorn. “And the king gets to marry Arwen, so Frodo would marry Arwen, and I’d be out on my rear in the dirt with nothing but this!” He gestured to the magnificent sword, Andúril, at his hip.
Boromir gazed enviously at Andúríl, all the while imagining Frodo hand-in-hand with the statuesque Arwen. His eyes glazed. “What in M.E. would their children look like?” he thought aloud. “Pretty, of course, but come on––elves with woolly feet? Aa, who cares; he destroyed the Ring and he’s got a balrog on his side. A balrog! Hmmm. Yes. King Frodo. Not bad. I’ve heard far worse. How about poor old Dungshloppel of Glurb, over east of Mordor somewhere? Sorry, but no kingdom is worth that! Sauron wouldn’t even attack him. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Frodo. Why not? Be nice if the king had a functioning brain in his skull, after all. We’d have to scale that throne down...oh, what the Void; it’s too ostentatious anyhow....”
“What?”
Boromir cleared his throat. “Honestly, Ari! My father wants NOBODY to be king. He wants to be Steward and rule Gondor; that’s all he’s ever known. Think of things from his perspective: if he isn’t Steward, what would he be? Would he get his own little stall in the market selling crooked laurel wreaths?”
“I’d give him a job,” Aragorn protested. He thought about it. “Does he know any good limericks?”
Boromir suppressed the urge to throttle him. “Father wouldn’t make a very good jester, Ari.”
“No, I suppose not. He IS on the grumpy side.” Aragorn watched as Frodo gave another cup of wine to the dead tree. A strange movement on the other side of the tree caught his eye. “Say, Bori––was that bush there yesterday?”
“Bush?” Boromir frowned. “There aren’t any bushes around the White Tree...well, unless the palace gardeners lost track of Samwise for a few hours.”
He was annoyed when he looked where Aragorn pointed and was forced to admit that a bush had indeed sprouted, seemingly overnight, among the Tree’s roots. Just why and how it had gone to all that effort was beyond him, as it was a ratty, pitiful mess, leaves wilted and turning brown, several branches broken. It looked as if it would profit greatly from an entire vintage.
“Shameful!” sniffed Boromir. “A dying bush under the White Tree.”
“But they match!” Aragorn said.
“Hmph,” grunted Boromir. “It must be a prank. Of course it’s a prank––in fact, it’s got ‘Merry and Pippin’ written all over it. Really, those two have no decorum whatsoever––”
Aragorn stared. “I don’t see anything written there! Hey! See?!” He clutched at Boromir’s arm. “It IS moving!”
“You’ve got to quit playing Chutes and Ladders with the guards’ children and get more sleep,” Boromir insisted. Nonetheless, to humor the future King of Gondor he stared at the bush until his eyes watered.
Brown leaves moved dully in the breeze. The rest of the bush was still as stone.
“Well, it was,” muttered Aragorn.
Boromir patted his shoulder. “Go get a nice nap, Ari. I’ll let you know if it moves again.” His eyes narrowed. “Hmm. I wonder if Merry and Pip would like clods of nice fresh Gondorian dirt on their second breakfast plates?”
Frodo finally got hold of the bottle, slipped it behind his back and shoved it nose-first into the loose soil. The muffled gurgle as the bottle emptied itself was most gratifying. Denethor never noticed a thing, busy as he was with stacking the dishes in a wobbly pyramid.
Meanwhile, the new bush rivalling the White Tree in the extent of its deadness and immunity to alcohol had no plans whatsoever of moving again––that is, not so long as Frodo stayed put.
Sméagol bit his lip, trying very hard not to mutter ‘Gollum! gollum! tricksy Bagginss!’ It was so difficult that his resolve wavered for a moment. The dying leaves rattled faintly all around him.
My preciousss! he thought desperately. My preciousss! All gold and round and worth a nice big dark cave with a big pond with big fishes and frogses and eggses and all the good things Sméagol loves! Sméagol pawn the Precious and buy dream cave in mountainss––only edible neighborses for lucky Sméagol! No Bagginses; no fat, stupid gardener! Only fish and frogses and eggses and lucky Sméagol, gollum, gollum!
No! what Sméagol thinking?! Can’t live without the Preciouss!
But...sssss...big cave...lots of fish and eggses....
A wild light flashed in Sméagol’s eyes. He looked around guiltily, licking his lips. Ah! Sméagol knows what to do!
Have nice man melt Precious––make little souvenir Precious––Sméagol use rest to buy dream cave in Misty suburbses! Nice quiet cave, nice fish, yes, preciouss, is a plan!
Not so fast, Sméagol, my love...first we must HAVE the Preciouss. We must get it back from nasty, tricksy Baggins.
Wait! What about rumorses Sméagol has heard? Terrible rumorses! What if rumorses are true? Sméagol went from his usual sickly grey-green color to livid white. Luckily Frodo sat facing away from him, and Denethor––truth be told, in his current state Denethor was likely to mistake the branch-clad Sméagol for an enting lawn ornament.
Rumorses not true, silly! Does Sméagol believe everything he hears? Does Sméagol read stories in ‘Gondor Enquirer’, eh? Tell us, eh, what Sméagol has learned about ways of wicked peopleses.
Ssssss.... ‘Alien Bigfoot Gimli’s Real Dad’?
The sheer volume of outrage going off in Sméagol’s head made him dizzy. Here real news flash! ‘Sméagol gullible loser!’ Bad, bad Sméagol! Not read trash from checkout lane in Buy ‘n’ Ride anymore, not! Sméagol must have clear head to get back the Preciouss!
Then...Precious not...not...Gollum knows....
Lost? Melted in big crack?
Sméagol winced.
Course not, silly! Only lies to fool poor Sméagol. Look at wicked Baggins’s hand and you will see! There it is, my love, plain as night in cave!
Sméagol squinted. Is ring, preciouss...but color of nasty cold sword, not color of ugly Yellow Face. And what
is black stone doing in Preciouss, we asks? Not right, no, ssssss!
Foolish! Is plain––clever Precious disguised. Not thrown in fire if not look like the Precious! But we knows, my love. We sees it for what it is. Meant for us, gollum, gollum!
Sssssss! Sméagol glanced about nervously. Not bounce up and down; not be noisy, preciouss. Not want to be found by wicked Baggins or crazy drunk Steward.
Steward is stewed, eh?
Sméagol bit his hand to muffle a snort. Stop! No time for silly jokeses from Gollum! How we get Ring from tricksy Baggins?
Well, we not ask for it, that for sure. That get us quick trip to lowest dungeon in city. No nice fish there; only ratses! Ratses meaner than orcses, though got to admit, much tastier.
Gollum digress, he doess.
Gollum never let Sméagol near dictionary again! Anyway, we says, do it quick and smart before drunk Steward and idiot King and nasty servant jump to rescue. Pounce on Baggins and grab Precious. Precious come right off. Precious likes us! We better than sneaky hobbitses anytime! We not throw poor Precious into volcano; we keep it safe forever and ever, gollum, gollum! At least til we sells it for real estate!
Denethor passed out, face down, in the apple salad.
Frodo managed to roll Denethor out of the salad before he smothered in it. Then he set about wiping the man’s face clean.
Denethor snored gently.
“Oh, really, now,” Frodo muttered. “Hobbits in a stupor on the ground are one thing; the Steward of Gondor is quite another. Blast! Where’s Boromir? He said he would meet us here.” He shaded his eyes and looked around.
Now, my precious!
The next instant Frodo found himself rolling head over heels, tangled in clammy, gangling limbs, dead leaves and the rest of the apple salad.
“The Precious!” panted Sméagol. “Give it to us, naughty Baggins!”
“Precious?!?” cried Frodo as he tried to break Sméagol’s grip.
“The Ring!” howled Sméagol, grabbing Frodo’s left hand.
Frodo stopped cold. “What? THAT? That’s not the One Ring, silly! It’s Denethor’s signet ring! Ow! Wait! Stop! It’s stuck!”
“We sees about that!” the mad creature gurgled, and before Frodo could blink, the ring and his three trapped fingers were in Sméagol’s mouth. Sméagol’s sharp teeth caught behind the ring and tugged.
“Don’t bite down!” cried Frodo. “You can have the thing, just don’t bite down!”
The ring came off with a backward jerk of Sméagol’s head. Frodo yelped and ruefully examined his scraped knuckles.
“Not bite, silly hobbit!” burbled an exasperated Sméagol around the ring in his mouth. “Baggins too sweet for us. Ick!”
At once his expression changed. His eyes bulged so much Frodo feared they would explode. He made a tight, queer whistling sound and clutched at his throat.
“Oh, you didn’t!” cried Frodo, scrambling up. “It’s stuck in your throat?!”
Sméagol squeaked in affirmation, pathetic and a little blue.
Frodo heaved a deep sigh. “Sticklebacks! Oh, all right, hold on; I’ll try to fetch it out.” He reached into Sméagol’s froglike mouth, feeling carefully, and was relieved to catch his forefinger inside the band. Carefully he began to draw it out––
**WHAM!**
The next few moments were a blur of Sméagol spit, salad, dirty hair, shrieks, and a bit more pain than necessary.
Frodo came to in a lovely, airy, sunlit private room in the House of Healing. Ioreth had given him a powerful concoction to ease his rest and the throbbing in his wounded hand, so he was blissfully unaware of the splendid row in progress outside.
Not nearly far enough from the House of Healing to satisfy the demands of courtesy, Aragorn cowered against a wall, trembling with fear, the eye of a storm of wrath. Sméagol danced before him in a delirious fury, hissing things nobody understood but which prompted the mothers round about to cover their children’s ears. Sam waved his heaviest frying pan. For once, the look of pure murder in his eyes was not directed at Sméagol. Merry and Pippin had an array of rocks at their disposal and were visibly weighing whether or not to throw them. The remainder of the Fellowship was torn between holding the little folk back and cheering them on.
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” cried Legolas. “This is so exciting!”
Gimli grunted and crossed his beefy arms over his chest. “Shut your lembas hole, lad! That’s no way to talk about a good hearty punch-down.” Then, framing his mouth with both hands, he cried, “Go on, Master Brandybuck––use that fine chunk of granite there!”
“Stupid, dirty Ranger, hitting us on head!” Sméagol raged. “Made us bite down! Bad, nasty man! Sméagol broke tooth! Poor nice Baggins, poor Sméagol, poor tooth, poor Precious, stupid, stupid, filthy Ranger! Precious better not be dented or we hires fancy lawyer and sues! Bah!” He spat on the cobblestones. “Not get sweet Baggins taste out of mouth for weeks!”
An onlooker fainted.
“And what ABOUT my poor Mr. Frodo?!” Sam yelled. “What about his poor finger?! Him just trying to help and all! That dead Tree’s got more sense than you, you feather-brained ninnyhammer, king or no!”
“For Overheaven’s sake, I didn’t mean it!” wailed Aragorn. “Gandalf! Bori! Fari! Call them off or something! Aren’t you going to help me?”
Whistling, Gandalf looked pointedly away.
“Do you think we should toss down a shield?” asked Boromir of Faramir as they watched from the battlements.
Faramir rubbed his head where it had been repeatedly struck by falling rocks. “And risk hitting the little ones or that gangrel creature? Not for a moment.”
“You weren’t too hard on him, I hope,” said Frodo sometime later. “Just half a finger. It’s not that bad.” He was sitting up in bed playing checkers with Faramir. Boromir and Sam were deeply involved in a game of Crazy Eights by the window.
“Not hard enough,” scowled Sam. “Gandalf finally coaxed us away.”
“What did that take?” asked Frodo.
“For me? Well, I get three days in the royal kitchens telling them fine cooks what to fix and how, and three more days the same with the gardeners. Oh, and I get to give Strider all the sauce I want for three whole hours.”
“Perfect!” laughed Frodo.
“Course you know what Merry and Pip wanted,” Sam continued. “And they got it, too. They each got a brand new larder, all to themselves, full up with every good thing you can imagine. We’ll have to roll ‘em home.”
Frodo laughed harder. “But what about Sméagol?”
“Freedom; bucket of fresh fish; that old ring,” Sam said. “That’s all he wanted. There just ain’t no accounting some folk.”
“And there he went,” said Faramir. “The last we heard from him was a lot of talk about real estate and something Gandalf calls ‘aquaculture’.”
Boromir grunted. “He took all that money and went back to the mountains, and I say good riddance!”
“Who knew somebody’d be willing to give him so much for Denethor’s old ring,” Frodo said.
“Especially after the trip it made,” groaned Sam. “Yuk!”
“You can sell anything in the auction houses of Gbay,” said Faramir.
“Someday I’m going to see how much that old Horn of Gondor would bring,” said Boromir.
Faramir grinned at him. “Better split it with me!”
A few months later a monstrous shadow fell over the city. Everybody screamed and ran, including King Aragorn II Elessar, who dove behind a statue of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Elros and huddled there, shaking and whimpering, “Make her go away! I didn’t mean it! It was just half a finger! I’ll never hit Gollum again while he’s getting rescued! How was I supposed to know? Make her go awayyyyy!”
Arwen leaned out the window. The shadow was cast by an enormous ugly fiery thing which could only be a balrog. There was a faint whiff of sulfur in the air.
She sighed. “Relax, dear. It looks as if she’s only passing through.”
Indeed. The balrog had considered dropping in to say ‘hi’ to her friends in the city, but she could tell that the mere presence of her shadow had put the place in a dither, and being a rather bad example of a demon she wished to cause them no further grief. She contented herself with dipping a claw into the Anduin and humming loudly and out of tune on her way to do a bit of sight-seeing in what was left of Mordor.
“Well!” she sighed happily as she kicked a pile of ash into one of the huge crevasses. “Serves you right, doesn’t it, Saurrot! Remember when you told me my fires were so banked I could brush my fangs with an oak tree?! HA!”
She plucked up a boulder, popped it into her mouth and chewed. Presently she blew an enormous bubble shimmering with heat. With an air of tremendous satisfaction she lifted a claw and burst the bubble. Streamers of lava rained in all directions. “Hey, Saurwrong! YOU couldn’t turn WATER to steam if you stared at it FOREVER!!” She took the wad of fresh lava in her paw and stretched it out like a child stretching taffy before gobbling it down. She made a face. “Not quite Rohan’s finest sub-Aglarond, is it. You did have a way of spoiling every single thing you touched, didn’t you, Saurretch! Well, I hope they get this place up and running soon. Nothing like water and greenery to freshen everything up!”
Soon she had forgotten all about her old flame in the sheer joy of skipping like thunder enfleshed across the barren landscape. She didn’t notice––and wouldn’t have cared if she had––that behind her the fragile crust was splitting apart beneath the assault of her huge hind paws.
That weird grey corner of Mordor, blasted, melted and stomped into submission, would eventually become a tourist attraction known throughout Middle Earth as the Bland Canyon, a fitting money-maker for the ex-slaves of the Eye, who for reasons they themselves could never understand would use the likeness of a balrog on their coins.
Perched on the lofty throne of the Kings of Gondor Aragorn played with a loose thread in his tunic.
He bit his lip. ‘Gondor’ was a hard word to rhyme. Why couldn’t his realm have had an easy name––like Ham, or Spam, or Wham?
He shivered. Maybe not Wham.
He would miss his comrades of the Fellowship but their departure had actually been a relief. After the unpleasantness at the wall the mere glimpse of a hobbit had made him nervous.
“‘Protect the Ring-bearer!’ Elrond said,” he grumped. “‘Protect Frodo! Nothing in there about protecting the King of Gondor, was there?! Hmmmm...oh, hey! How about...‘/ and the queen’s nice green gown /’...a-hem!....”
He struck a triumphant pose.
“Again there’s a high king of Gondor
Whose glory flies high as a condor!
I like my old crown
and the queen’s nice green gown...
But now I just sit here and pondor!’”
The White Sapling trembled all over before absorbing a long, deep drink from the wine-saturated earth.
Thanks for enduri--I mean, thanks for reading!
