Page 25 of Rumpelstilzchen

Rumple’s shadows sank into each piece of dried straw within the sack and then queued them together, one after another, until they formed a long chain. His hand guiding Boy’s, Rumple secured the single strand of barley to the bobbin, before his foot treadled the spinning wheel. The shadow-infused straw was then drawn into the wheel at a rapid pace, and when strands of pure gold appeared before his eyes, Boy’s heart up-ticked in excitement.

With his shadowy tendrils doing most of the work, it didn’t take long for the bobbin to fill. Rumple removed it from the spinning wheel and handed it to Boy, before he set up another. His shadows got into a routine, and soon, all that could be heard was the steady ticking of the treadle as sack after sack floated in from the bays to be fed onto a bobbin.

Eventually, Boy’s hands—that still clutched the first batch of golden thread—fell lax in his lap, and his head felt heavy against Rumple’s thigh. Once more, Rumple looked up and out of the small window on the opposite side of the Fachhallenhaus, noting the gentle hue of the predawn sky. It was almost time.

Careful not to wake him, Rumple manoeuvred Boy into his magickally cleaned breeches, and lowered him onto the floor. As the sky outside pinkened with the break of yet another day, the last of the golden thread wound onto the bobbin, and Rumple pressed a soft kiss to Boy’s lips.

He had bought them both another day, and he vowed that it would not be their last.

Silently, he slipped into the shadows as the crunch of gravel underfoot filtered through from outside. It was time to leave.

The Queen would know if he stayed.

fourteen

Rumple

The hazy pinkish hue of dawn instilled a false sense of security in the Queen’s serving staff as they made their way to market with their lists of daily acquisitions. Had his mind not been so filled with singular determination, Rumple would have enjoyed taunting them. Instead, he barely noticed as he swept undetected from the Merchant’s Quarters to the Tower, and filtered in through the doorway beside the kitchen.

The lack of any windows in the Tower left the narrow and spiralled steps as little more than a death trap, unless you could see perfectly well in the dark. Rumple ascended rapidly and fluidly. The empty space where his Heart should have been was growing more pronounced with every moment he spent parted from his bewitching human.

And Boy was his.

Rumple melted under the door to the cupola and materialised in his room on the other side. With renewed vigour, he approached the looking glass on the far wall. There must be something he had overlooked. Impatiently, he stepped through and into the shadow realm hidden beyond.

The first thing he noticed was the absence of the soft orange glow from the magick of the older runes. Now, only blues, greens, and reds bathed the rough stone walls of the cave-like antechamber. He bypassed them with sure steps and slipped silently into a narrow crevice beside a luminous purple symbol.

Comparable in size to the throne room of the palace, this was where he kept anything of value—where he would keep Boy, if he could—and in the far corner was the Midnight Tree, which had spread its ancient and thick branches even further since Rumple had last visited, he was sure. The Midnight Tree, so named for its black and silver bark, towering disposition, and leaves that tumbled and swayed in all the colours of the night sky, was the cradle of his existence. His first conscious memories were of the shelter it provided his noncorporeal form, and so it was under its protective canopy that he had chosen to build his sanctuary.

Its gnarled and twisted trunk provided a natural foundation for his ever-growing collection of magickal artefacts. Rustic wooden shelves were mounted high on either side, all of them full to the brim with incantations and possibilities. Rumple didn’t hesitate—he knew exactly where the items he wanted were.

Bypassing the oak barrel, he stepped over a raised root, ignored the ledge where a copper kettle and assortment of crystals were stored, paid no mind to the alcove where various bottles and potions were kept, and ducked under the low-vaulted stone ceiling that eventually took over from the outstretched branches of the tree. Rumple squatted, wiping away the dust from the cabinet that flanked the wall, and produced the iron key that fit the lock. He turned it thrice, and when it gave a satisfying click, he pulled the door open. It groaned on rusty hinges before it revealing the prized possessions within.

Arranged by geographical location, the yellowed scrolls were once heirlooms passed down between generations of the families whose role it was to document spiritual lore. Rumple selected the tomes he had collected from the far east of the kingdom. The way Boy had described his family’s propensity for the older tales gave him hope their parchments would contain the knowledge he sought.

A large cloud of dust rose into the air when he dropped the pile onto the floor. Some of the books were so old that their spines cracked and the bindings came unglued at his rough handling, but Rumple couldn’t find it in him to care. Crossing his legs at the ankles, he settled in beside them and opened those first delicate pages. Something here had to reference the Law of Names—it was too much of a coincidence that Boy’s family had refused to issue individual names to any of their children for Rumple to ignore.

He’d spent his magickal incarceration looking for any direct references to his true name. It had seemed the most important step in reversing the Queen’s spell, and he’d always assumed she must have a parchment secreted away somewhere that had been the source of her knowledge, but what he hadn’t considered was that she could have learned his true name incidentally. Through an overheard campfire song—such as the ones Boy’s brother had entertained him with—or through her servants, the Royal Guard, or even the tithe collectors, who travelled the length and breadth of Falchovari, stopping at taverns to trade wares and tales along the way.

If this was the case, then instead of thinking like a geist, he needed to think differently. How might a human learn his name? And how could the Queen have developed a spell to use it so thoroughly against him?

When the first book had revealed nothing, he’d moved on to the second, and then the third. And when he’d devoured the entire stack before him, and still not learned anything he didn’t already know, the rage that had been quietly simmering was close to boiling over.

He was also acutely aware of the passage of time in the human realm, something else that had changed since he’d found his Heart. Before Boy, all the days had bled into one long and tedious existence, but now he felt each and every hour that passed. He was certain that by now, the Queen would have issued Boy with her new challenge. And she could, because she had more of a claim on Boy—as her prisoner—than he did, despite the fact that he was Rumple’s Heart.

The thought made his corporeal form waver in outrage, and he blinked in and out of existence with aggravated indecision. Rumple could no more kill Queen Schön than he could claim Boy as his own. The situation was maddening.

His shadows thickened with steel-like tension until he snapped, and the thunderous crack of his form splitting apart before knitting back together ricocheted throughout his sanctuary.

The force shook loose an indigo leaf from the Midnight Tree, and it fluttered to the ground beside him. As it drifted down, floating from side to side, its flesh corroded until all that was left when it reached the floor was a toughened grey skeleton. Rumple leaned forward to pick up the delicate stem.

Not so long ago, he had thought himself to be much like this leaf, withered and wraithlike. The only thing preventing him from actually becoming so was the black magick that forcibly infused him. Rumple turned the skeletal leaf carefully between his gloved fingers.

Queen Schön was vain, obsessive, and ruthless. She either possessed or killed—there was no in between. Swiftly, he closed his fist around the leaf and squeezed.

Rumple wasn’t naïve. He had told himself that by spinning the straw into gold he was simply buying more time to learn how to claim his Heart, but that wasn’t true. Not anymore.

The Queen had mistaken his magick for Boy’s, and that all but guaranteed she would covet him for her Collection. If he didn’t find a way to break her spell soon, then all Rumple would have achieved was a delay of the inevitable. Upon the discovery of his deceit, she would kill Boy without hesitation, and with his Heart dead…