Page 24 of Rumpelstilzchen

For the longest moment, neither of them moved. Rumple was glad, and took the time to compose himself.

“Are you familiar with the main types of magick?” he asked, his phrasing deliberately vague.

Boy shook his head—no—and those flaxen curls caught the flickering glow of the lamplight. It gave the illusion that he was wearing a crown of gold. Rumple, as if hypnotised, leaned forward and inhaled deeply. Boy smelled like him, and he kissed the top of his head.

“Just through s-stories, I mean,” Boy corrected himself. “I think some small sp-spirits live in the ground around my homestead, but I’ve never seen magick. U-until you.”

Rumple brought his hand down in front of Boy’s face, palm side up, and commanded his shadows to coalesce into a small ball of smoky wisps. Boy’s fingers twitched in his lap as if he wanted to reach up and touch them. When he had touched Rumple’s shadows earlier, it had sent an unparalleled shiver of arousal through him. Rumple would have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t curious to know if the same thing would happen this time.

“You can touch.” Rumple was still leaning forward when he spoke, and he could hear the excited thump of Boy’s heart.

Gingerly, Boy’s hand crept closer, and when he was no less than a finger depth away, the shadows bridged the short distance to him. A soft gasp escaped Boy, but he didn’t withdraw his fingers, and Rumple felt the exact moment his magick broke free of his command.

They swelled and vibrated on the work-toughened skin of Boy’s palm, and their movements reminded Rumple of how they fed—cruelly and without concern for the life of their victim. Protectively, Rumple clamped his now-empty hand down over Boy’s heart.

There was a moment, between one of Boy’s heartbeats and the next, where Rumple was afraid. He was afraid of the damage his magick could inflict on his Boy. He had told Boy he was safe, and Boy had trusted him—had used Rumple’s word as the foundation for his bravery. Rumple found that above all else, he didn’t want to betray that trust. Primed, he was all set to retract the magick back into his form, when Boy’s enchanting laugh stalled him once more.

Rumple could do nothing but watch in awe as his magick played with Boy’s fingers like a child might with a toy. Had he ever known a person so unburdened by rancour and ill will that it could find nothing to feast upon?

Yet despite this—or maybe because of it— it was drawn to Boy. His magick interacted with this human in a way he had never known before. Last night, his shadows had comforted Boy. Earlier tonight they’d allowed his fingers to pass through them unharmed, and again just now, although Rumple had instructed them into a harmless ball, the magick buried within had developed an organic connection all its own.

Another delightful laugh filled their dark bubble and Rumple’s shadows grew lighter, as if buoyed by the sound. Could it be that his magick wasn’t feeding at all, but rather accepting nourishment—thriving—from Boy’s joyous emotions?

Rumple’s thoughts raced through everything he already knew and came up empty. He hadn’t yet claimed his Heart, so how could his shadows benefit from its amplifying effect? It shouldn’t be possible. How powerful an artefact must his Heart be that his presence alone was enough to vivify him? In the morning, Rumple would double down on his efforts to learn how to claim it.

He’d brought Boy to the spinning wheel selfishly: to demonstrate his magickal prowess, to keep him close by, and—he realised—to keep him interested in Rumple. He wanted Boy to be as enamoured with Rumple as he was with him. But in an unexpected turn of events, it seemed it was Boy who was sharing his own brand of magick with Rumple. And when that laugh rang out again, loud and good and pure, Rumple imagined he could feel the echo of Boy’s heartbeat in his own chest. It hurt with want.

“Do all geists have magick?” Boy’s question helped Rumple re-focus.

He shook his head before he realised that from his position, kneeling between his legs, Boy couldn’t see him. “No, only those who have been around for a long time do.”

“I never thought about it like that before.” Boy’s quiet voice reflected his contemplation. “And this is shadow magick?”

“It is. Just as there has always been light, there has always been dark; one cannot exist without the other.” Rumple commanded his magick back into his palm and then absorbed it.

Boy took Rumple’s gloved hand and turned it this way and that as he sought it out. “I was always taught to fear black magick, but this—”

“As you should!” Rumple’s warning was stern, and Boy retracted his hand.

Not wanting to dampen the mood, Rumple commanded his shadows into a long tendril that trenched across the farmhouse floor and into one of the bays to retrieve a sack of straw. Boy’s head turned to follow as the black limb floated it closer and placed it on the floor beside the spinning wheel.

“An absence of light doesn’t mean an absence of density. The shadows can be a solid…” He commanded the tip of the same tendril to flick at Boy’s hair. “A liquid…” He changed their form into drips that slicked the honeyed strands until saturated. “Or like air…” He transmuted their form again until the hair was dry once more. Boy’s smile was wide.

“But how can they change this…” Boy tugged a dry stem of barley loose from the hessian sack. “Into g-golden thread?”

“That’s the magick.” Rumple couldn’t help himself. He leaned forward and kissed the top of Boy’s head.

He gently took hold of Boy’s wrist and moved his hand that held the stalk of barley closer to the oil lamp. “Do you see its shadow on the floor?”

Boy nodded.

“It exists because the light cannot pass through the stem. But do you know where else the light cannot go?”

Boy was silent for a long moment before he answered. “Inside the stem?”

“Inside the stem,” Rumple confirmed. “And in the darkness, the shadows reign supreme.”

Still holding Boy’s wrist, he sent his magick into the dried barley. “In their most slight form, the shadows can embed themselves within even the most delicate of fibres, and this is where they can change any object into anything else.”