Chapter 2
The Shadow Stirs
Gandalf, wrapped in grey and leaning heavily upon his staff, knocked at the door of the matriarch's hole and waited. It had been many years since his last visit to the River-folk, and the wizard was worried that it had been too long. Yet all seemed calm with the small people who inhabited the land by the river, and the home of the matriarch was as well kept as ever.
The door opened, and a small, elderly woman opened the door, but it was not the matriarch.
Gandalf smiled. "Good evening . . . Roselda, if I am not mistaken?"
Roselda smiled with surprise and delight. "Gandalf! You have come again. Oh, this is unexpected! And me without the kettle on –"
"My dear Roselda, you have turned into your mother," Gandalf said, laughing merrily. "But tell me, where is she? I wish to visit her."
Roselda's face darkened with sorrow. "O, Master Gandalf. She passed on not long ago," she said. "I am terribly sorry."
Gandalf lowered his head. "I suspected I had been away too long. I am sorry too. Your mother was a great lady, and the world is a lesser place for loss of her."
"Please, come in," Roselda said. "We need not dwell on the past. You must be hungry. I will have the tea ready in an instant."
Gandalf smiled as he followed her inside, for obviously the matriarch of the river folk was not entirely gone as long as Roselda lived.
"And how are your people? All seems well enough in the village."
"Oh – it is peaceful, quite peaceful," Roselda said, opening cupboards in search of a kettle. "We are settling down to a well-earned life of quiet, we are."
"And how is your son, Déagol? He would be quite grown up by now, wouldn't he?" said Gandalf. Roselda paused by the kettle.
"He would be," she said softly, "if he were not dead."
Gandalf bowed his head. "I am sorry," he said, as an image of Roselda's son rose unbidden in his mind. "You must miss him."
"I do not dwell on it," said Roselda tersely. "Let us not talk of such things. It is far too nice an evening to spoil with unpleasantry."
"Then tell me of those who live – what about your nephew, Sméagol? How is the young rascal?"
Roselda dropped the kettle with a clang, and Gandalf knew immediately that he had said the wrong thing.
"I do not know, nor do I care," said Roselda, quietly and fiercely. "I do not concern myself with my son's murderer."
Gandalf bent over to pick up the kettle, partially to conceal his surprise. "These are ill tidings indeed," he said, placing the kettle over the fire for Roselda.
"I never liked him," Roselda said sharply, turning her back to the wizard and walking to the table, where a bucket of water sat beside a pile of potatoes and a scrubbing brush. She picked one up, dunked it in the water, and began scrubbing angrily. "I always thought he was an unwholesome lad. Nosy, nasty child, always pestering and asking questions and getting in where he didn't belong . . ."
Gandalf could remember the young hobbit he met at the river years ago. He had been impudent, and obviously mischievous, but he had hardly seemed unwholesome, or capable of murder.
"Is he dead as well, then?"
Roselda gave an angry snort. "The world should be so lucky. I do not know. He probably is dead now. The charity my mother showed that wretch, even after . . ."
"After what, madam?" Gandalf asked when Roselda paused.
"After he killed my son," Roselda said fiercely, and a potato slipped from her grasp and landed on the floor. She stood silently for a moment, and then bent it up.
"I am sorry," Gandalf said, as Roselda retrieved the potato and set it on the counter. "I did not intend to upset you."
"One never quite recovers from the loss of a child," she said, sinking into a chair. "Days go by when I think that perhaps I've begun to heal, but then something happens to remind me, and I –" She broke off, her eyes closed tightly and her face averted. She raised her hand to her eyes and surreptitiously wiped away the tears that had gathered in them. "Let us speak no more of this," she said, rising abruptly and moving back to her vegetables. "It is tiresome to be woeful. Do not ask me any more."
"I would not dream of it," Gandalf said.
"It's just . . . I get so furious whenever I think of how many times I gave that rascal the benefit of the doubt," she said, reaching for a large knife and slicing a tomato in half with a savage blow. "Do you know what kind of things he did? You simply have no idea. I'll tell you this – he stole from my mother."
"A vile deed," Gandalf agreed.
"He took to holing himself up away from everyone. He spent hours alone, talking to himself. That was how we caught him, you know. My brother heard him, ranting to himself about how he'd done it. How he'd killed my son for one thing or another." She brought the knife down hard again. "He was completely mad, of course. Going around on all fours and gollum-ing in his throat, and always saying 'we,' as if he had a friend in the world!" Roselda laughed harshly. She did not notice that Gandalf was listening even closer now.
"And he spied – and I have no idea how, but I swear, he had to have been invisible to find out the things he did."
"Invisible?" Gandalf repeated.
"Yes, invisible, he had to be!" Roselda exclaimed fiercely. "No one had any secrets from him, not anymore. Nothing that could be used for hurt or spite went past his notice. It was unnatural, I always said. We should have cast him out much sooner, but my mother hoped he'd come to his senses."
The fuming hobbit turned and shook her finger at Gandalf.
"He was a nuisance right from the start," she said. "And nuisances have no place here. So we cast him out, we did, right into the wild, and I don't know or care if he's still alive out there but I hope he died. And I hope he was miserable when he did, after what he put us all through."
She threw the last clean potato into a bowl and set the peeler down.
"My mother died soon after," Roselda said quietly. "She was stern with him, of course. She was stern with all of us, but she was fond of him, even after he went mad. Casting him out was her last act as the head of the family."
The woman lowered her head
"I am sorry," she said after a moment, sitting up to wipe the tears from her eyes. "You must think me a terrible hostess, going on about troubles that are already past . . . the tea should be ready. Please, will you have some?"
"Thank you," Gandalf said, and accepted the tea. His face, formerly mournful for lives lost in his absence, had grown grim, and he drank the tea swiftly. There was a curiously sober look in his eyes.
"You know, I did creep up on him once," Roselda said, as she filled the cup. "Only once, though. He had the uncanniest sense of hearing, you know, it seemed like he could hear something a mile away, and by then he'd have gone who knows where . . . but I surprised him once. He was hunched in a corner, all filth and madness, muttering to himself and fingering something in his hands."
Gandalf lowered his teacup, his curious eyes fixed upon Roselda.
"What did he have?" he asked quietly.
"I could not be sure," said Roselda, who frowned, "but it seemed to me . . . it seemed to me that he held a ring, yes, a golden ring."
Gandalf's teacup rattled in its saucer.
"I caught only the quickest flash of it," Roselda went on as if in a trance, her eyes staring back across the long years. "But oh, it was so very beautiful. The gold was quite flawless." She blinked slowly, and her hands twitched a little as if longing to caress something yet untouched. "I do wish I had seen it more closely."
Gandalf leaned towards the woman, his eyes bright and his face grim. "What else happened?"
"Well, I opened the door a little further, so that I could see better, and I heard him muttering strange things over it," said Roselda. "Calling it, calling it 'precious' and whatnot – and then he saw me, and flew into a rage, so I ran. He was a violent creature."
She looked up at Gandalf. "Probably some trinket he stole from my mother," she said, shaking her head at Sméagol's audacity. "She had many lovely things in the way of jewelry – where are you going?"
Gandalf rose from his chair and swept up his staff. "I must go, Madam. Thank you for the tea."
"But it is after dark, and you've only just gotten here!" Roselda objected, following him to the door. "At least stay for supper. You can't have eaten well out in the wild."
The wizard reached for his hat and placed it on his tangled grey hair. "Thank you, but no." He opened the door and walked outside into the cool air. Roselda followed him. "I have tarried too long as it is, and I have business to attend to. Good night."
"Good night," said Roselda, watching the old grey man walking hastily down the path. She shook her head and shut the door. There was no accounting for the strangeness of wizards.
That night she dreamed of her son, dying in a flash of gold, and she awoke in tears with the shadow of the past weighing heavily on her mind.
