INTO THE DARK AGAIN

by Wayfarer
(closetwayfarer at yahoo dot com)

Prologue
Out Of The Mountains' Mist

High in the Hithaeglir the wind blazed forth every September, an early herald of the long march of Winter. Gleeful howls grew increasing loud as autumn waned. It would touch everything with icy fingers, and cover the hardening ground with a fine layer of frost, for its strength it drew from the advancing cold that crept down from the highest peaks.

And oft it was said that things other than winter chill were borne on the shrieking wind, that whispers of secrets echoing in caves deep in the mountains’ bowels were gathered in its scouring grasp and scattered far and wide as it raced forth to claim the lands. So it might seem on a dark autumn night, when deep amongst the high places of the peaks, an unknown cavern murmured, low and guttural. Yet it was not giving up its own secrets, merely repeating to the wind the wails of the creature that hid deep within.

Indignant cries echoed within the cavern: ‘Precious! Where is the Precious?’ On all fours, he paced the stone hollow, bemoaning his loss. Sullen resentment flared, rising ever high for he was angry: with himself for his carelessness, and for the time spent indulging in the game instead of breaking the thief’s neck quickly. But more than all else, it was the bold cunning of the thief that infuriated him.

‘Tricksy thief, Baggins stole our Precious. It cheated us, we hates it and we wants the Precious back!’ He raved, maddened again.

His back against the trapdoor, he pondered the cold walls spreading away from it. Dark nooks dented the stone, running entire lengths of the walls, leading to the blocked cavern mouth.

Behind him, the trapdoor opened onto a tunnel, part of the goblin thoroughfare.

Without the magic of the Precious to make him invisible, it would have been folly to approach the goblin tunnels; but no longer, for they were gone. Their disappearance mattered not at all, save that there was much less meat for him.

In truth he could not care less, if they had not vanished soon after his Precious was stolen.

‘Baggins took it, nasty thief,’ he hissed. ‘We guessed what was in its pocketses, we did -- if only we guessed sooner, precious, Ach!’

Back and forth he paced before the trapdoor, stamping and kicking the pebbles cluttering his way.

Anger quickened his steps, until he began pacing in a circle. Ever wider his course grew, but always it brought him back to the trapdoor -- until it grew so large that it reached the cave entrance.

Surprised at having his pacing suddenly stopped, his anger crumbled, and he fell onto his knees. Feet splayed while gnarled fingers kneaded the hard stone floor, he sat glaring at the boulder guarding the entrance, like a door left ajar in careless haste. Near to his busy hands, an unfamiliar sight attracted his eyes. Though he did not remember when he last saw such light, he tried not to stare at the bright lance cast upon the floor, for he remembered its name.

‘Don’t look precious, the hateful White Face burns. Oh, our eyes! Gollum.’ He squatted just beyond the light’s reach, listening to the mournful wind force its way through the narrow gap in the ponderous stone door.

Shadows flitted past, slicing through the thin shard of light. Startled, he scrambled for the trapdoor, hiding well behind it.

At length, he put his face around the shield of the door. From the safety of his vantage point, he stared again at the gap that led out of the cave.

‘Can we gets the Precious back?’ he asked. ‘Rush us and crush us, it’s beyond the stony door – gollum. But the nasty light, it’ll burn us. We can’t go there, precious.’

Then his voice changed as his other self began to wail: ‘But the Precious, what about the Precious? Baggins must be taking it away, further every day!’

‘Yes, we knows, precious can’t be happy ‘til he gets it back, but we is famished,’ said the first thought. ‘Fissh! Yes, food helps us think. Maybe we’ll finds a way after we eat – sss.’

As time passed, he found himself spending his time in the cave. Always, he sat just beyond the reach of White Face, and thought about the piercing light that kept him prisoner while the thief carried the Precious further and further away from him.

--- --- ---

Once, he entered the cave with caution, and snuffled at the dissimilarity he felt. Yet, his sensitive nose could tell no discernible difference. Confused, he began pacing, wondering.

‘What is it, precious? What’s - gollum - changed now?’ Muttering to himself, he almost walked into the great stone door. Just in time, he stopped, flopping down in a clumsy heap.

He cocked his head at the door. ‘Blesses and splashes!’ he laughed. ‘Sss - White Face doesn’t spy us.’

Indeed, there was no painful lance of light that marked the end of his familiar course.

He remembered then another thing about White Face: it was hateful but it could not watch him every night, for it had to sleep too. And when it slept, it could not hurt his eyes with its unabashed staring. Cackling at the re-discovered weakness of White Face, he clapped and gloated: ‘Sss - it can’t hurt us tonight, precious!’

Beyond the great stone door the wind mimicked his mournful cry for the Precious. He glared at the door. Gaining courage from White Face’s absence, he thrust his head through the gap.

Instantly, he retracted it.

Boneless with stunned senses, he slumped down where he sat.

A glimmering pale covered the distant lands that lied beyond, and his hissing breath misted in the chill. The dark roof of the sky was too far away, and there was nothingness between it and the mountainside. If it was all darkness, it might have gone the better, for had he not lived his life in the lightless bowels of the Misty Mountains? But the nasty stars piercing the black fabric of night: they gave out such dim light that his eyes could bear to see them. Yet, in seeing them, he realised the depth of the sky they were hanging in, and that described the empty space between them and the ground he stood on. The nothingness filling that space overwhelmed him, drowning the ever present thoughts of the Precious for a breath.

Rare were the moments when he did not think of the Precious, and he felt suddenly very small, as he sat there, gulping the cold air.

‘Ach! The Outside is a BIG room, precious. How can we finds the Precious out there?’ He began to wail, ‘Lost, it’s really lost! Baggins, we hates it for ever!’

‘No, no! It can’t be! I promised, its mine and I won’t ever lose it -- I must find it!’ came the answer.

‘Yes, we must, mustn’t we? Must get the Precious back!’ he said with determination. ‘But we needs some fissh before we begins.’

And so he retreated deep underground. Upon his island throne out in the lonely mere he sat, and barely tasted the large-eyed fish that filled his mouth.

--- --- ---

He was in the cave again, wondering about how far away his lost Precious was. The vastness that had swallowed it daunted him. Curses he threw at the hateful White Face gave vent to his seething anger, but not for long.

Though he knew not why, he began to count the nights between White Face’s time of hiding. With effort he strove to keep the memory of his count firmly in his head though it ached; it seemed he could think of nothing but his loss, torn between his fear of White Face and the need to answer the Precious’ pull.

Whenever White Face slept, he would put out his head through the gap, determined to venture forth. But he would retreat, and each time his limbs quavered worse than the soft mud on the banks of his underground home, defeated by the fear of stepping out of the cave, back into the light that he had abandoned. Always his retreat were accompanied by complaints and snarls:

‘O no, we can’t!’ he cried, gasping with distaste. ‘It stinks, the nassty air, it chokes uss.’

‘It hurts, and I’m tired,’ the other thought wept.

‘We musst, we must - gollum - we came with the Precious, no one can takes it away. We wants the Precious back!’

For a moment, there was silence. Then he frowned.

‘Why am I alone?’ asked the other, crying not for the first time. ‘We can’t go back there, and I can’t stay here.’

‘Precious doesn’t needs them!’ he reminded the other. The glint in his eyes was hard. ‘They gave up on uss!’ he spat. ‘We didn’t leaves them, but they grew jealous of our gift, we came because we has to keep the Precious safe!’

The third time he poked his head outside, he was rendered motionless as his eyes swept down from the uncaring stars. He was perplexed anew by the change he saw, for the distant lands had shed the cold pale gleam; mist no longer turned his breath white, for the air itself was growing warm. And the bare tree branches that resembled his gnarled fingers as he strangled his prey, were heavy with things that waved with noise if the wind blew.

He began to remember -- the funny things on the branches were leaves.

As the nights passed, there came to his snuffling nose more and more scents and a feeling that he had long forgotten. Even the cold forbidding crowns of the Misty Mountains yielded to the cycle, and only their very peaks still gleamed as the snows retreated from the lower ranges.

The perplexing scents he tasted told of things strange to him now. Yet, though he disliked what the cloying smells were trying to tell him, still he found himself pushing his nose through the yawning crack, eager to sample more. He waited with impatience for White Face to sleep again, for he chafed with the need to have his eyes give shape to the smells.

Finally, the night of darkness came. The view beyond the cave door was changed, altering itself before his disbelieving eyes. Overwhelmed by things that sat on it, the land seemed darkly green. Everywhere he looked, there was ... growth. Bemused by the teeming life, he sat in wonder.

Amidst the confusing thoughts an idea grew, and he began to shape for himself a plan.

A pale light shone in his eyes as the other voice said: ‘I remember, it’s spring!’ He sniffed again the air, drawing a deep breath. ‘Yes, Spring!’ the other cried in excitement.

‘Yes, yes,’ he replied, impatience grating on his annoyance at the fresh smells that lingered in his nose. ‘P'raps we can go Outside, precious. Leaves and grasses, eggs and mouses, there’s food enough for us, ss,’ he said, eyes gleaming green.

‘But I can’t do it all at once,’ said the other voice, and a note of apprehension was evident. ‘There’s so much nothing out there.’

‘No, we durstn’t, we durstn’t go out all at once, all together,’ said he soothingly. ‘Poor precious, it’ll hurt, but he musst remember.’

The other voice whimpered.

‘Maybe we tries too hard, precious?’ he said, eyes flickering green again. ‘Gollum. We doesn’t swallow fish whole, not even scrumptiously crunchable bones. Maybe we should try this like we eats, first a bit, then another bit, and then another, until we finishes it up.’ Then he poured as much coaxing as he could into his voice: ‘Sss, precious, we looks at the Outside first, get used to the nothingness, yes?’

‘Yes,’ the other thought answered, strengthened by the yearning he felt. ‘I’ll go, back to the Outside.’

And so, he began to look to the slumbering night of White Face, for it was then that he could thrust his head through the gap and begin to be familiar with the vastness he knew he must venture into if he was to retrieve the Precious.

--- --- ---

It was the White Face’s night of slumber again. He knew that the next time it did, it would be one more time than he could measure with all his fingers and toes.

Eyes gleamed as he snuffed at the air, for it brought smells that reminded him of Baggins; scents the thief had brought to the shore of the underground lake -- rich yielding sweetness, the promise of harvest. Autumn was come, cooling the air. His breath raced away in faint mist trails as he cast about, preparing himself.

The last time that White Face slept, he had managed to stand outside the gap for a moment. Upon the ledge he had lingered, not for courage, but for his skinny legs that seemed to have been suddenly cast in stone. Too stunned with the vast nothingness that held him fast, he had struggled to move his feet. Then he looked down and blood rushed through his scrawny neck to reach his overwhelmed mind much too quickly. Countless treetops crowded the mountainside as it sloped downwards into darkness; finally, he tore his eyes away, the cover of the cave his only thought. Step by heavy, reluctant step he slowly put himself into the welcoming dark of the cave mouth. So proud of himself was he that as soon as he recovered his strength, in the shadowed safety of the cave, he capered, a mad dance of skinny happiness.

And this night though he stood shivering even before he began, it was not merely the cold that caused him to shake. For he was learning the truth the smells brought: the cold covered the land again and it would make it impossible to leave for a few more times of White Face’s slumber. Already he chafed with the need to recover the Precious. He knew he had to do more before Winter sealed off the cavern mouth again. And so he had resolved -- this night he would leave, this night he would go after the Precious.

Also on fanfiction.net: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/931862/1/