Page 19 of Rumpelstilzchen

For the longest time, neither of them spoke. All he could hear was the sound of his own laboured breaths. The shadow geist placed no further expectation on him. He didn’t comment on the amount of dirt that slowly changed the water to a murky brown colour, nor did he pay any attention to the obviously thickened cock that hung between Boy’s legs. So focused was the man upon thoroughly cleaning every inch of skin—and so perfunctory were his hand placements—that eventually Boy was able to relax into the odd sense of intimacy that had enveloped them.

“If I asked… ” The quiet words barely disturbed the daze Boy found himself in, and he struggled to bring his mind back from wherever it had drifted. “Would you tell me about your life before you came to the palace?”

The Queen’s Shadow didn’t give him time to process the words, nor form an answer, before he was spun bodily around and the washcloth rubbed in small circles over the backs of his knees. Every brush of the coarse cloth seemed to Boy like letting out the spool of thread attached to a kite, and he felt as though he could float high enough to touch the clouds. But the leather-clad fingers that braced his left hip dug in deep, like the roots of crops, and he was just as certain that he would never leave the ground under the geist’s watchful care.

Boy found himself nodding even though he couldn’t recall the question. He was pretty sure that the Queen’s Shadow could have asked him for anything at that moment, and he would have agreed.

When both the washcloth and the hand on his hip withdrew, Boy swayed where he stood. The water in the basin was refreshed in an instant, and the guiding hand soon returned. It pressed down upon his shoulder, and Boy folded at the knees without hesitation. Encouraged, he tucked himself small enough to sit in the hot water. Objectively, Boy knew it was only possible for him to fit into such a small space because he was too thin, but he was so content with how the warm water eased the muscles in his pelvis and lower back, that he forgot to be self-conscious. He drew his knees up until they tucked under his chin and turned his head to rest his cheek on top of them. The shadow geist’s fingers momentarily dipped the washcloth into the water beside his thigh and then pressed it to the back of Boy’s neck.

“Tell me about your family. Do you have sisters? Brothers?” the Queen’s Shadow prompted.

“Mhm, ’s fourteen of us in total.” Boy’s tongue felt too thick to enunciate clearly, but the man seemed to understand him anyway. “Three different mothers—I’m in the middle.”

Boy often missed his mother. She had died giving birth to what might have been a younger brother, but because he didn’t survive either, no one would ever know. Only two of his sisters shared her with him, and whenever his sorrow had grown to be too much, they would climb under the blanket beside him and hum a lullaby until they all fell asleep. The last time had been the night before the tithe collector arrived at the mill.

The washcloth trailed slowly down his spine, tracing over each notch with a deliberation that made Boy vaguely wonder if the Queen’s Shadow was counting them. He didn’t stop until the pad of his gloved finger sank just inside the cleft of Boy’s buttocks. It stayed there a moment, and the chamber bay around them darkened.

“What was that like?” the geist asked as he slid the cloth back up Boy’s spine.

Boy exhaled. “Hard work. Everyone had a job to do to help out with the mill. I’m smaller than my brothers, so I couldn’t do everything they did.”

Memories of his four older brothers hosting a competition to see who could lift the most hay with a pitchfork flitted through Boy’s mind. Of course Boy had wanted to join in, but he had only been able to lift as much as his oldest sister—she was impressively strong for a young woman—and his brothers had howled with laughter at his efforts. So when it came to deciding which of them would climb the rafters of the mill house and load the bales onto the millstone, Boy had quietly disappeared off to find other tasks to do.

“Tell me about them.”

Boy closed his eyes and a soft smile drew his lips wide. “My oldest brother found a lute once, just out there in the forest while collecting firewood. He fixed it up, and at dusk sometimes we would light a fire at the edge of our land so he could tell us the stories he’d overheard either at the trading post a day’s ride away, or from Grandma.”

“This was how you knew of my legend.” The man’s quiet voice carried a wistful tone that Boy was too cozy to acknowledge beyond the surface level.

Boy nodded. “Schatten der Königin.” His words were muffled by his knees, but speaking the words out loud brought forward a memory with such intense clarity that Boy could almost taste the ash from the bonfire. If he concentrated, he could hear his brother’s terrible plucking of untuned strings as he sang badly about the timeless geists who roamed the forest for all eternity. It filled him with a sense of nostalgic melancholy, and he huffed a quiet chuckle. “As a middle child, I couldn’t ever decide if I wanted to join my older brothers and sisters in laughing at Boy’s ridiculous and embarrassing behaviour, or fall head first into the storytelling and swallow it all down as my younger siblings did.”

The warm cloth squeezed the back of his neck once more, and the Queen’s Shadow asked, “Your older brother is named Boy?”

Boy nodded once more. “All the boys are. And all the girls are named Mädchen.”

“Your name is Boy?”

“Mhm.”

The splash of the washcloth dropping into the basin beside him startled Boy, and his eyes flashed open.

eleven

Rumple

Boy. His Heart’s name was Boy.

Boy was an exceptionally old Falchovarian name, hailing back to an all but forgotten time when only those with wealth and status were awarded individual names at birth. Back when people believed in the mythical creatures who roamed the forest, everyone was either a Haus Boy or a Mädchen, but those days were long gone. Or so Rumple had thought.

Deep brown eyes, open wide, watched him closely. Before he could analyse it, Rumple reached out and tucked a damp lock of hair behind Boy’s ear. His family’s flour mill was in the far east of Falchovari, where many old traditions still guided everyday interactions. Yet Boy showed no great awareness of why it was that his family still followed this archaic practice, and the ease with which he gave his name belied his naivete.

Rumple stared at Boy’s sinewy and naked form in the fading afternoon light. While he was thinner than he ought to be, each notch on his spine far too prominent, it was clear that his family managed better than many others, despite the famine. Likely the children would be of little use in running a flour mill if they were too weak or sick to work, and so feeding them would have been a priority. But the biggest gift his parents had bestowed was in not giving any of their children a true name.

Rumple stroked the back of his gloved knuckles over Boy’s flushed cheeks as his thoughts rampaged within him. His family’s choice not to provide individual names for their offspring meant that there were pockets within the kingdom that still believed in the old ways—in the Law of Names—and this gave Rumple hope.

Maybe a visit to Boy’s homestead was in order. After all, what were the chances that the same family who protected their children from the Law of Names would also be the family that had produced his Heart? The coincidence was too strong to ignore.

Boy shuffled awkwardly in his small basin and leaned into Rumple’s touch. He nuzzled the buttery soft leather of the glove and Rumple sighed in contentment. His Heart was protected. No one would ever be able to hold total power over him, like Queen Schön did with Rumple. Gently, he guided Boy’s head to rest on his thigh so that he could work the tangles from his matted, honeyed hair.