Chapter Fourteen: Before Departure

Frodo had been listening to all of this, his eyes unable to leave the creature. The fire was dying, and Sam was turning about in his sleep, but Frodo noticed none of this. Gandalf's words about Sméagol came back to him; Déagol had been killed while he and Sméagol were travelling down the –

"Stop!" Frodo cried. "Stop, I don't want to hear any more!"

But the creature continued.

"I was eager to leave immediately, and at night visions of Elves danced through my mind. The rest of the house baked and cooked and sewed for our departure. I taught Déagol how to row a boat, and he was talented at it once he had learned. Within a week after my grandmother's offer, we were set to depart.

"Déagol wanted to bid farewell to his family first, and he took me with him. The journey across the bridge and down the river was calm and peaceful, unlike the first time I had traveled it. We rode on separate ponies, and he led the way.

"His mother met us at the door, and a moment later three small children came and clung to his knees. Pearl I recognized immediately; the other girl was called Amethyst, and the last, his only brother, was Dorbo. The other children of the family were introduced, but their names escaped me then and I do not recall them now. Most were fair and dark-haired like Déagol; a few were sandy-haired, and one was blonde. They were quick to speak and laugh, telling their brother stories and fetching him trays of pastries from the kitchen. Pearl I took to immediately. She alone of Déagol's siblings was quiet as he was, and in her I saw the way he might have been as a child. She observed everything that went on before her from her perch on a small stool, and when she gazed upon me I found myself wondering if she could tell how much I loved her brother.

"Déagol's mother was much like my own, harried but good-natured. She and I fell into a conversation about our shared relatives; it seemed that she remembered Iris as a baby. As a child, she had traveled to our house many times with gifts of fruit for my grandmother. She looked nothing like her son, being dark where he was fair and possessing hair much lighter than his. Déagol must have looked like his father; I wondered if that troubled him, though I never asked.

"From his family's home we went straight back to mine, where we found our boat already loaded. My mother and grandmother kissed us both, and Iris presented us with a blanket she had sewed for the occasion. When the goodbyes had been said, Déagol and I climbed into the boat and my father pushed it from the shore. We paddled only slightly, for the current was in our favor and the river did not curve for several miles. I looked back at my family several times until I could see them no more, and then it was just Déagol and me, alone on the river with our thoughts."