Golden Orbs

Veiled by the fog in the hooded forests leading to my burrow, I run. I run sharper than an Elf’s arrow; swifter than sand in a rough current. I run faster than death itself, because that is what I must out run. Poor Deágol, taken by the hands of that greedy river… But he was jealous of me, he was. Yes, my birthday is not to be forgotten.

I enter, admiring my newly acquired present.  Gran’s singing voice meets me at the doorway. I stash the ring in a pocket lining my tunic. The one I sewed on myself. The one made from the fabric of Ruby’s long "lost doll. I smell dinner before I see it. Loathsome scaled creatures simmering in a pan or perhaps bloating in the oven. Gran ambles out of kitchen, fixing her wise eyes on me, wiping her withered hands on a blue apron.

“Where is Deágol?”

My Deágol: his body stashing water, all facing down and pale. The fish will feed on him tonight. My hands were mine, of course, never touching him; never helping, never hurting. My poor Deágol….

“He was to supper with us tonight. Did he change his mind, Sméagol?” She asks me hoping for answers. Always, always hoping and wondering.

“Deágol tires of fish. The river made it so.” I say. And Gran nods her skeptical head and goes on cooking my meal.

I seek privacy in my room. There is much to learn from my new present.  I extract it from my pocket, and marvel at its beauty. A golden halo waits in the palm of my hand. It waits to be discovered, yes. And even as I’m holding it, the ring seems to swell and shrink; its hollow center inhaling and exhaling. My joyful hand lifts it, and slips it on a lucky finger. All at once, everything is clear. My beloved shadows, which hang from every corner, lengthen. A hot, cumbersome burden lifts and dangles just above my shoulders. But, I am the most altered, for I appear to be absent. This transparency, this obscured quality has been my unknown aspiration all these years. To see those and their hoarded secrets without notice is truly a precious gift. Yes, yes, and this ring shall always be my precious. I gently lift it from my finger, and flick back to visibility. Stroking it, and murmuring softly in the back of my throat I say: “We have so much to learn of secrets and beginnings, my precious.”

***

My precious weighs heavily on my inner pocket. It presses, a cool reassurance on my skin, and begs to be worn. “All in good time my precious, all in good time,” I murmur. Down the road, I spy Ruby Loamsdown meandering in my direction. She’s looking up, her face held against the merciless sun. She whistles and swings her basket of toadstools. So careless in her every action she is. I slip on my precious before I am discovered. I follow her from behind, silently. The wind plays in her twisty auburn hair.  A smell wafts into my dry nostrils, and for a moment I am inexplicably dazed. She veers off the path wobbling, and stumbling down the hillside to the river bank. Ruby settles on a large stone, and I ooze beneath the ferns, winding my limbs around their succulent roots. I watch eagerly as her face falls downward, burrowing holes in the sand with her eyes. A single tear falls down her lovely ashen cheek. My heart is not met by the usual joy that comes from uncovering a covert sentiment. No, my heart falters, and my chest expands suddenly with a painful gasp. Moving swiftly I go to her, and reveal myself.

For one moment she fixes me with a dark look; mingling between terror and pity. Ruby bolts from the decrepit creature before her eyes. But those eyes, her eyes; like two halos. All flecked and golden they were, and tiny centered; exhaling in her face, and oh so lovely. They’d be two lovelies for my precious, who grows lonely without fellow gold. We must make them ours. Yes, thrice the beauty in my hand. We shall make those lovely orbs our own.

***

A full moons’ glow envelops my unseen form like a silver shawl. We shall collect what is ours tonight. Yes, and feed from the guilty. I wade into the river. The mud and grime seep invitingly between my toes. Here I wait for that shallow murderer to swim by. Perhaps he had no hand in Deágol’s slaughter. Perhaps it was his brother, no, cousin. His dear cousin fishy, who will mourn him; know he had no hand in his death; but he could not stop it. I plunge my hand deep beneath the unsuspecting surface, my finger close around my sought water vermin. I gaze into his dumb black eyes for a moment, before I tear into his still-wriggling form. He is bitter, and lively in my mouth. The scales scratch at my throat; a small price in pain for kinly revenge. One fish will do for now my precious. We must carry on.

Ruby sleeps in her room. Her delicate hand is draped across her face, concealing my golden desires. I slip my ring from my finger, and croon to it softly. “Soon my precious, soon, we’ll have those lovelies she hides from us. And then, yes, then no secret will escape our ears; no beginning will be buried too deep for us to unearth. Listen how she breathes so deep and calm; trusting what she cannot see in dark sleep…”

With the tenderness of an embracing serpent, I reach my quivering hands towards Ruby’s neck. Moments before they make fatal contact a beam of light slices through my dark intensions. A portly figure rushes into the room and grabs me by the back of the neck. I hiss and spit, as he bellows down upon me.

“Son of snakes! What you be doin’ in my daughter’s room? You leave her ‘lone or I’ll pluck every last hair from your ugly feet!”

Ruby wakes hearing our storming voices. Her eyes pull me in, and I grasp to meet them, but her father holds me roughly and continues.

“I’m takin’ you straight to your Gran’s! You sneaking, thieving, gurgling poltergeist….”

He throws me up and over his shoulder as if I were a sack of tubers, roaring insults even as he drags me down the lane, to my home. The ruckus brings several nosy hobbits from their homes. I fix each with an irate glare. Foam trickles from my panting mouth onto my affronter’s coat. I feel my long, filthy nails dig and scratch at his meaty shoulder. He pays no notice as I’m carried through my threshold.

Gran enters, stern even in her sleepy state. “What is the meaning of this?” There is hardly any surprise in her voice as she says this.

“I caught your boy a creepin’ in my Ruby’s room,” he says this calming down a bit.

“Now Ponto,” she reasons in her guiding voice, “Are you sure this isn’t just some sort of misunderstanding. Why, I remember last fall you came to me saying Dimple Sandybanks was stealing your crops; when really, you forgot that you had agreed to pay him in food.”

“Oh no Gran, I caught him red handed,” he sputtered. “I was readin’ by the fire, when all the sudden I hear this gurglin’ noise a comin’ from Ruby’s room. She has never made a sound like that before so I get up, an’ open her door. An’ there is that thing you call a grandson, that Gollum has his hands jus’ above her neck ready to strangle her!”

“Sméagol ,” she asks, “Is what Ponto says true?”

True? We did try to take her lovelies, which should be ours. That old fool had it coming; him hoarding his Ruby, and her stashing her eyes; those golden orbs. By no right she possessed them. No, shielding them constantly, then, veiling them for all those worthy dark hours in sleep. I say none of this. Ponto and his gray life know nothing of luster.

Gran allows her severe eyes to rest on me. “Ponto, go home and rest.” All the while her hands cover each other, wringing with worry. “I will talk with Sméagol, and he will not bother you again. Rest assured he will be punished.”

Ponto gives a heavy sigh, then, wanders out of our home, turning his muddy eyes on me one last time to confirm my imprisonment.

“Sméagol, you are a moonless night.” Gran’s comment pleases me so, and she continues. “I always knew there was a shadow about you, but lately everything is cunning, and masked in secret. And I have my suspicions about Deágol’s death. You come home late, spattered in muck and grime, never eating the meal I cook for you. You…you.” Her ancient eyes well up with cheerless liquid. “You aren’t Sméagol anymore. I’ve heard the whispers: them of your foulness, and your wretched burbling to yourself. Gollum, that’s what they call you, for the noise you make.” She finishes, looking infinitely tired.

“I never killed Deágol.” I shout, spittle flying from my lips. “Not once, not when he forgot my birthday, not when he looked at Ruby, not when he borrowed my dagger. The river grabbed him, and whisked him off on the backs of murky fish. You must know Gran, as we devoured our fish that night, a whole hoard dined upon him.”

“Sméagol stop!” Gran shrieks, clutching at her eyes and ears. “I cannot stand your crazed reckonings. How can you listen to your furious denial? I am sure you killed him.”

I killed him? My hands, seekers of riches, have never been cousin slayers.

But there was that day, a slippery voice in the back of my head whispers, when a ring like none other washed ashore.

 “Yes and I took it.” I shout. I must drown out the voice.

But who should find it first? Not Gollum, the voice slithers over my mind, and such a pretty thing is meant to be gifted, but Deágol wouldn’t give it up would he? So you killed him with your hands that now finger that ring, your precioussssss.

The voice ends, dragging out the final word mercilessly. I scream a bloody epiphany that rings from my lungs and heart.

Gran stares in shock, hearing nothing, but my chaotic outbursts. “Leave now, Gollum.” She’s read the murder in my eyes. “Never come back, your presence puts everyone in danger.” I depart out the front door seamlessly with naught but my precious and soiled rags on my back.

***

The noon day’s sun boils down on my tortured back like an oven. Just another judge, it is, witnessing my exile, and scorning me for a necessary slaughter. I gaze upon a horizon blue and interrupted. The sun could not watch me there. The roots of those mountains must be roots indeed; there must be great secrets buried there which have not been discovered since the beginning.