For Kitty and Claudia for their birthdays.

Miscalculation

            “Curse it! curse it! curse it!” the creature had said.  “Curse the Baggins!  It’s gone!  What has it got in its pocketses?”  And it had stated baldly, “Thief, thief, thief!  Baggins!  We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!”

            Now, the Ring did not feel that It owed Its former bearer any loyalty.  After all, Its only true loyalty was to Its own dark Master, and secondly to Itself.  However, the Ring fully appreciated such sentiments, and indeed had been designed to augment and fulfill such curses as much as It could.  But somehow the Baggins that carried It away from Gollum’s lake far beneath the Misty Mountains was protected from the full might of Its evil, and the most It had been able to do was to cause as many as possible of those infants of the Baggins’s family that would carry on his family name to die untimely.  Yet somehow It had failed with two such children, and now It was in the keeping of the second of those two.  Too bad, really, as It could have done much had It come into the keeping of the other one, whose nature was more like that of orcs and thus more in line with the Ring’s own bent.

            It had hated Gollum because, once he’d gone into the mountains and found his lake, he’d not stirred from that place, no matter how much It tried to move him to find the great Source of evil within Middle Earth to feed from and serve.  Finally, hearing Its Master’s call, the Ring had abandoned Gollum, enlarging Itself and falling unnoticed from his finger, much as It had done with Isildur.  The cavern complex beneath which Gollum dwelt teemed with orcs, after all.  It ought to have been easy to draw to It one of those sent down to fetch fish for the Great Goblin and then to influence such a bearer to leave the Misty Mountains to go forth to Its Master’s side, assured of favor and possibly even a position of command over others of its kind for returning to Sauron his long-lost treasure.

            How It instead ended up in the hands of Baggins It could not be certain; but there was no question that once he returned home from the Lonely Mountain the Ring had not been able to convince him to leave his own land for years—and when he did leave he left It behind!

            So It had languished still with Its new Baggins bearer, and had not been able to convince this Baggins even to put it on to hide from the orcish relatives both Bagginses had so detested.  What was more, this Baggins was nice!  Kind!  Full of compassion!  This Baggins was the antithesis of the power and nature the Ring had been created to focus and foster. 

            But then this Baggins did leave his home, just as It sensed Its Master’s slaves entering the Baggins’s homeland in search of It.  If only It could convince this Baggins to don It so that It could call them to It!  Still, whatever power it was that protected the first Baggins seemed wrapped even more firmly about this one, or at least as Baggins the Second remained within his land’s borders.  Once this Baggins was beyond his country’s borders it became easier to touch his heart, and to use his own fears against him.  Within the lesser Singer’s house It had convinced Baggins to put It on his finger, to test to make certain that the Singer had not somehow switched It for another when It had failed to render him invisible.  The Ring had not known what to think about someone with sufficient sense of self to not desire more power than he had already, who had no wish to influence or control others or more of the world than was already willing to answer to his will.  Now, if Baggins had only managed to make it past the door….

            It had been forced to place Itself upon his finger there in the place of music and drink; and when five of the Nine faced him beneath the ruins of the ancient fortress, the one the chief of the Nazgûl had felled, It had been able to convince the Baggins that It alone could conceal him from these powerful enemies!  But that had been the last time….

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Until now.

            “Begone and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.”

            This the second Baggins had uttered outside when facing down Gollum.

            A curse!  An actual true curse!  And one that echoed one It knew had been placed upon Gollum by the Master, who had perceived that it was the wretched creature’s intention to find the Ring and take It for itself, and bugger the Master’s will that Gollum should bring It back to him in Mordor!

            Seek to touch It ever again with no intention to return It to my hand, and thou thyself shall be for the Fire!

            This Baggins had brought It back to the Mountain, where It had been born and infused with Its Master’s nature and will and much of his substance.  Oh, how It delighted in fulfilling the curses of both Masters!  It rid Itself of the Baggins by calling one last time to Its former bearer, promising him eternal bliss should Gollum find a way to wrest It from Its current bearer, the one who’d tried to take It for his own, never realizing he had not the full strength of will necessary to subject It to his own will.    

            And Gollum had responded!  How delightful that he’d bitten It from the hand of Baggins!  That agony suffered by this so undeserving bearer was something that It had wanted to know for so long!

            “Precious, precious, precious!  My Precious!  O my Precious!”

            *Now, fool, you are dancing?  Oh, yes, dance!  Dance that way, just a bit!  Oh, yes, that is right!  Now—you are indeed cast into the Fire!*

            Only—only Gollum did not cast It from him as It had intended.  Instead, he grasped it more closely, even as he danced that one pace too far……….

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*Oops!*