Page 2 of Rumpelstilzchen

Shameful. A thief and a liar. Rumple commanded his shadows into giant bat-like wings on his back and flapped them in agitation. The other man, who had streaks of bile and broth down his simple woollen tunic, dropped to his knees in an instant and clasped his hands as if in prayer. Rumple’s shadows grew into a long and spiked tail that snaked the short distance to coil up the newly devout man’s body and cinch around his neck.

All the while Rumple’s shadows squeezed, the man’s lips never stopped mouthing his silent pleas. For clemency? Salvation, perhaps? A merciful death? The man’s eyes bulged from within his bright red face and he slow-blinked.

Why did humans rarely ever embrace death? Rumple squeezed harder still and felt the rabbit-like pulse weaken under his hold. Why did they assume their right to life? His anger spiked, and the sudden but muffled crack of the man’s neck was unfulfilling.

He redirected his gaze to the man with the dagger. How many had this man stolen from? How many had he killed? How many lies had he told? What purpose did his life serve? Bored with the enforced nature of this evening’s expedition, Rumple drove his shadowed rapier through the man’s lying mouth and out the back of his skull before he could utter another word, forgotten before his body hit the floor.

Rumple dusted off his black leather gloves as his shadows retrieved the Queen’s stolen property. Unable to resist, he chanced a look inside the thieves’ knapsack. Some pewter drinking cups, a small leather-bound book with a title almost too faded to read in the patchy moonlight etched upon it, and an ivory ink pen.

“Something, something, Geisterjagd,” he muttered under his breath as he tilted the small journal this way and that. Rumple infused the book with shadow magick and sent it to the shadow realm to read later. For decades he had been acquiring scrolls, parchments, and grimoires that held even the slightest reference to black magick. Specifically, the magick Queen Schön had used to bind him into her servitude. The same magick that pulsed painfully inside him.

Overall, however, Rumple thought the loot was hardly worthy of Queen Schön sending him all the way out here to retrieve it, but she could—and so she had. And she would do so again.

Rumple growled out his frustration, and a murder of crows took to the night sky in a flurry of frantic wing beats and caws. Leaving the bodies where they lay for the scavengers of the forest to feast upon, he dematerialised and raced through the evergreen canopy of the western forest toward the palace.

Time passed strangely for Rumple. Each day bled into the next in a never-ending cycle of violence and monotony. If he were being truthful, he’d admit that the fear radiated by a human in those moments before their death thrilled him, but lately he’d found himself wondering more and more if this could ever be enough.

For every day that went by, Rumple could feel the shadows that gave him life thickening. Where once they were wispy and malleable, now they were unforgiving and demanding. He flexed within his noncorporeal form, pushing further outward, and was met by an invisible barrier. It shouldn’t be like this. Soon, they would consume him entirely.

Geist’s seldom reached the maturity and power that Rumple had, and without a Heart—a magickal amplifier designed and created especially for him—he was on borrowed time.

He should have searched harder. Had he found his Heart sooner, his core would have been impervious to the Queen’s forceful claim upon him, but as it was, the barbs of her black magick were now sunk deep.

The bitter irony of it all, was that her poisoned magick not only tethered him to her, but entirely filled the space where his Heart should be and thus stalled his departure from the human realm. Even if he happened across it today, it would be nothing more than a painful reminder of his failure.

Until he found a way to break her spell, his Heart was nothing more than a useless trinket.

two

Rumple

The palace was four floors tall, with the fifth floor being an unfinished attic space. But the tower where Queen Schön kept her Collection of enthralled magick users—like him—reached eight floors high, and Rumple’s room was at the very top of the spire, in the cupola.

The thick and heavy wooden door that barred the only entrance hadn’t opened since the day he claimed the space as his own. After all, he didn’t need a doorway—or even a window—to gain entry. He poured himself easily through the gap below the door, materialised on the other side, and sealed himself in with his shadows for good measure. No one ever entered here, no one dared—not even the Queen—but Rumple wasn’t taking any chances.

He approached the looking glass on the far wall and straightened the high collar of his starched shirt, realigned the embroidered gold skull affixed at the neck, and passed a gloved hand over his hair before he secured it at the nape with a length of black ribbon.

No sooner had he righted himself than Rumple’s chest cramped with a savage brutality that froze him in place in an instant. The Queen’s summons ripped through him so suddenly and definitively that, had he required air to live, it would have stolen his ability to breathe. As painful as it was, it only fuelled his resentment and anger further.

“Mirror, mirror. Show me my Shadow.” The melodic lilt of Queen Schön’s disembodied voice was a stark contrast to the demand upon him.

He schooled his features into a hardened mask of impassivity.

“Where are you, Pet? I sent you to retrieve what was stolen from my storehouse, not gallivant through the forest. Clearly, I am not giving you enough to do if you have time to waste on such meaningless pursuits.”

Rumple ground his back teeth against the accusation. He wasn’t free. He was her prisoner. Her pet. And he would be until the day either of them died, unless he could break the spell she had used to bind him.

Forbidden from looking her in the eye, Rumple lowered his gaze. This was an aspect of their dynamic that angered him as much as it amused him. She was the one who had enthralled him, the most powerful shadow geist in the kingdom, and yet she also feared him. He, however, could cause her no harm while her spell held. Another reason he committed all his spare time to finding ways to break it.

His fists clenched so tightly at his sides that the leather of his gloves creaked in protest.

“And what is that?” There was a pause, and Rumple could see in his peripheral vision that she had leaned closer to the looking glass. He could easily imagine her perfectly arched brows furrowing as she squinted to examine him more closely. “Is that blood?! From those bandits? You dare bring the blood of such scum into my palace?”

Rumple remained silent. He had learned long ago that the sound of his voice was enough to escalate her temper from annoyance, or in this case disgust, to cold anger.

A heavy sigh predicated her next words. “You disappoint me.”

This was nothing new either. Queen Schön had never been satisfied a day in her unnaturally long life. Rumple counted slowly back from five as he waited to learn what it was about him that had vexed her so early in the day. He hadn’t ever made it lower than the count of three.