Sneakyone.gollums-precious.1.var

Sam stirred. “Mister Frodo? You all right?”

“No,” Frodo whispered, more to himself than to Gollum. “I’m not like you.”

Gollum’s face split into a grin so wide it looked like a wound.

Frodo should have said no. He knew it. Every instinct from the Shire screamed trickery . But the Ring whispered otherwise. Use him. He’s broken. You can control the broken. SneakyOne.Gollums-precious.1.var

Then, as suddenly as a snuffed candle, Gollum’s demeanor changed. He cowered, whimpering. “But we can help. Yes, precious. Show you the secret way into the Black Land. Past the gates. Past the Eye. Gollum knows paths that were old when Sauron was a mewling spirit.”

“Sneaky… sneaky little hobbitses.”

The creature didn’t attack. He crawled closer on hands and feet, his long fingers twitching and scraping over the stones. His head cocked, then snapped sideways at a grotesque angle. Sam stirred

“We swears,” he breathed, crawling backward into the shadows until only his eyes remained. “We swears on… our Precious. The one that’s still yours. For now.”

Gollum.

“It burns us, doesn’t it, precious?” Gollum hissed, staring not at Frodo’s face, but at his clenched fist. “Yes. It whispers. Always whispering.” “I’m not like you

The Shire was dark, not with the wholesome black of a summer night, but with the oily, creeping gloom that had bled out of Mordor. Frodo felt the weight of the Ring like a cold, contracting fist around his soul. Sam was asleep, his breathing a soft, trustworthy rhythm against a mossy root.

But Gollum only grinned—a row of yellow, broken teeth. “No. No, we’s not leaving. We’s been following. We saw you put it on at the Ferry. We saw the wraiths stop.” He rocked back and forth, wrapping his thin arms around his knees. “Master is very clever. But Gollum is cleverer. Gollum is the SneakyOne .”

Frodo didn’t know what “point var” meant. But he felt it in the Ring’s weight. A version number. A countdown. And somewhere in the dark, Gollum was laughing without sound.

And as he vanished, his parting whisper coiled around Frodo’s ears like smoke: