“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.”
Behind them, two pale eyes opened again.
The way he said it— SneakyOne —was not a name. It was a title. A sacred thing. SneakyOne.Gollums-precious.1.var
Frodo swallowed. “Go away. Leave us alone.”
Then a whisper, wet and chittering, sliced through the silence. “We swears,” he breathed, crawling backward into the
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.
Watching.
And in that moment of hesitation, Frodo understood the true horror of his burden. Not the dark lords or the armies—but this. Becoming someone who would bargain with a starved, mad creature because the Ring made you believe you were the clever one.
Gollum reached out a trembling hand, palm up. Not to grab. To beg. For now
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 .”
“Oh, but you will be, hobbit. You will be. The SneakyOne always finds the Precious. And the Precious always eats the SneakyOne from the inside. We knows.” He tapped his chest. “We’s full of holes.”