Page 3 of Rumpelstilzchen

“I give you so few rules, and yet…”

Another loaded pause.

“It is your sole purpose, is it not? To do as I command?”

Rumple risked the slightest dip of his chin in acknowledgment, and the answering click of Queen Schön’s tongue made the muscles in his core tighten instinctively.

“Tell me, Pet, what is the consequence of your disobedience?”

Forbidden from dematerialising in her presence, Rumple was forced to take his punishment in human form. He knew what was coming, and he steeled himself the best he could. As usual, her attack was swift and savage. His chest—where her black magick dwelled—burned as if filled with brimstone, and his lungs refused to inflate. Trapped in his throat, his breath fuelled the fire, and beads of sweat formed in an instant. Cramps forced him to his knees.

He fisted his hands on the stone floor of his room, and he hated her.

She squeezed the magick tighter, charring his chest cavity from the inside.

He bit back his pain, and he hated her.

She fired one final blast that ignited the space where his Heart should have been and let out a gleeful cackle.

He hated her.

The Queen ended her lesson as quickly as it had begun, and Rumple’s breaths were left raw and ragged as they rasped from between his clenched teeth.

“The tithe collector from the east is due back at the palace soon, and I may require your services, Pet.” No trace of the vicious exertion was evident in her breezy tone. “Rest now. You can redeem yourself later.”

The cupola atop the tower was plunged into darkness when the Queen severed their connection through the looking glass. Rumple knelt there for a long while, waiting for his human form to recover from her attack. She couldn’t kill him. Besides, what would be the point? There wasn’t another geist as old and powerful as he in all the kingdom, and she needed him as much as he needed her.

He huffed out a dark and sarcastic chuckle as he rose to his feet and dusted off the damask fabric of his breeches. Despite it all, he still held out hope. Hope that he would one day discover a way to break the Queen’s hold over him. Hope that the shadows wouldn’t immediately reclaim him when he did. Hope that he would find his Heart, and finally—finally—gain control of his life.

Rumple flexed his fingers in his leather gloves. It was this hope that drove him to step up to the looking glass and meet his gaze head on. The black eyes of the man who stared back swirled with bitter resentment. He’d had a name once, not that anyone had called him by it for a very long time. Alone in the dark, he couldn’t even say it to himself.

Somehow, Queen Schön had learned his true name and spoken it in the spell she cast upon him. This was what made her hold over him so complete. The Law of Names was ancient, possibly as old as he was, and it granted a person power over another. Not only had she invaded the space where his Heart should be with her black magick, but she had also forbidden him from speaking or writing his own name to communicate his desire to be free. But Rumple was confident he could work around that, if only he could find a pre-existing record of his true name.

He reached out and sank his fingers into the shadow realm beyond the looking glass. Reflective surfaces, whether made from polished stone or water, all shared the same common trait—they rejected light and embraced the dark. And this made them portals to the shadow realm: the one place Rumple had ever truly been able to call home. His sanctuary. Only a shadow geist could enter the shadow realm, and now, with an exhale, Rumple stepped through.

Cave-like in appearance, the antechamber that greeted him was small and dark, lit only by the fluorescent runes and markings drawn on the walls to ward against any other shadow geists. Painted using a recipe Rumple had found once in a warlock’s grimoire, the ink would glow for as long as he existed. Yet, here too, some sigils were fading alongside him. Those scribed in the first language—the most primal and long since forgotten tongue—were barely visible. Their faint orange glow, that sealed his sanctuary against intrusion by any other spirit formed back then, served as an unwanted reminder of how alone Rumple was. He was likely all that remained from a once magnificent era, where geists and daemons reigned supreme, and humans trembled at the mention of their names.

Rumple averted his gaze, reached to a high ledge carved into the stone wall, and retrieved the book he needed. Hefting the weighty tome in both his hands, he carefully opened the frayed leather casing and flipped through the pages until he found the place he had left off reading earlier. It was a book he had once stolen from a mystic, who had taken up residence in a complex cave network in the kingdom’s south, and Rumple hoped he would have just enough time to finish the final few pages.

In all his years of searching, he had learned that the writings that originated in the east of Falchovari provided the closest match to his criteria. The more rural folk, those furthest away from the Royal City, still held strong traditions in the old ways. Yet, mention of his true name hadn’t been forthcoming, and Rumple wasn’t sure how many parchments now remained outside of his private collection.

He traced the faded ink on the yellowed pages before him with keen eyes. If anyone had reason to be writing about the shadow realm and the creatures that originated there, then it would be a warlock. But as Rumple reached the bottom of one page, and then the next, without coming close to discovering what he needed, his mood soured.

He kicked at the cave wall with a sudden roar of rage.

Every scroll and artefact he’d found had yielded nothing. He absently rubbed the heel of his palm over his chest in a futile attempt to ease the ache there.

Time was running out. He needed to find either a reference to his true name, or his Heart.

But where else could he look that he hadn’t already searched?

three

Boy

Boy’s left leg had been numb from the hip down for several hours now, so he was relieved when the wagon he’d been travelling in for the last six days finally pulled to a stop. He tried to peer past the other two people he’d journeyed with, to see out of the barred window at the rear of the carriage, but the larger frame of the older passenger obscured his view. Boy didn’t know the man’s name, and he wasn’t about to nudge the sleeping giant awake. No, Boy would wait. After all, they were all prisoners together, all headed for the same destination, and they would all share the same fate. He sat on his hands to hide their tremble.

Boy heard the now-familiar thudding and clanking of the tithe collector and his guards’ boots as they made their way down from the box seat. The predictable and impatient hooves and snorts of the horses who wanted to be set free from their reins drowned out all but some of the muffled conversation between the guards.