Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, or just Belle for short, was a collector. Her thing was collecting talismans, totems, items with potential magical energy. Strong emotions attracted magic like metal filings to a magnet and magic, or rather the potential for magic, was what attracted Belle. Her enhanced senses could sniff out objects imbued with even the slightest hint of magical potential, usually things associated with important emotional moments in a person's life. If you knew how to sense them you could find such objects all over the Enchanted Forest and it was to her advantage that so few humans could see that what was magically valuable wasn’t necessarily valuable in the usual market value sense.

But wasn’t that your average human all over? Belle thought, always placing value on precisely the wrong things. How many of objects of greatest power in her collection were ones she never even had to strike a bargain for? A shocking number in fact, had been found in rubbish tips. As the Dark Sorceress, La Belle Dame Sans Merci was quite lucky she could enchant her nose not to smell some of the odors, or she would’ve spent a good deal of her object hunting hours being thoroughly sick, considering some of the places she found her curiosities in.

Even though she was immortal, she did possess senses other than the olfactory ones that could be sickened by some of the less salubrious locations she occasionally found herself in.

Still, despite the nature of this particular market day’s trading,the marketplace was a pleasant change. It was soothing in a way, to be surrounded by so much bustling movement, vitality and life after the silence of the Dark Castle.

Although Belle didn't need to eat, she was drawn to a cart selling savoury pastries, similar to the ones she'd had as a girl, hot and fresh enough to scorch a normal human’s fingers at a touch. Belle touched them and felt nothing.

Her gaze drifted to plump chickens and rabbits in wicker cages. There were colourful rugs knotted in intricate patterns, perfect to stare into on a winter's night beside a roaring fire. There were carved icons of gods and goddesses from a multiplicity of faiths and other peddlers shouting out the prices and merits of their wares accompanied by sellers of drums and mouth harps, lutes and other musical instruments demonstrating the full range of their instruments.

It was all so delightfully distracting. She often came to such places to draw herself off from her dark internal musings, the ruminations obsessions of the spirit that lurked within her, always on the look out for ways to sew mischief, always tilling back the soil of long buried resentments in her mind, ready to plant chaos in such fertile soil.

Not that disorder was always a bad thing. Too much order was never any fun. It clamped things down and closed off possibilities. Without a trickster to shake things up now and again, the world would be so boring. Now if only she could convince those blasted fairies of her own necessity to the natural balance of things, she might finally have some peace. All she really wanted, she tried to convince herself, was to be left alone.

Left alone… unbidden thoughts of what waited her in the palace, came back to her. She thought of her silent library then. Libraries were supposed to be quiet, of course, but in hers the only sound that could be heard was the soft whisper of spider legs as busy arachnids wove their webs, and her own soft footfalls on the floor, echoing like giant’s steps, on the cracked marble tiles of vast cavernous rooms, clouds of dust rising up in her wake wherever she trod. She could just see the few dust free areas where she was want to pace by the fire, just hear the tired floorboards creaking under her feet as she ascended the stair, but when she looked down all was straw beneath her feet and the dirt and dust of the market. It was a gloomy, grayish sort of day and lamps hung from poles around some stalls, giving off much needed warmth and light.

She had no need for lamps or lanterns, not anymore. In her true form even the mice scurried to hide from the large, lamp-like eyes that raked over the dark passages of the castle like twin search lights. In velvety darkness her scaley blue skin glowed, a thin rim of gold around each scale. The folk from nearby towns and villages called her home the Dark Castle, not only because of what once transpired within it, but for its present owner’s utter disregard for all sources of artificial illumination.

Rifling through second hand trinkets this otherwise unmemorable Frontlands village, Belle let the scent of desperation overwhelmed her, trying to pinpoint the magical source that had drawn her to this out of the way place. It clung to certain items on the table like sticky tar, still strong and distinctive even after several changes of ownership. To a regular person, the magic contained in such items would remain dormant, potential power untapped, but Belle, both because of what she was and what she had taught herself over the years, knew the secret to coaxing magical energy out of seemingly ordinary objects and more difficult still, how to control and command the magic once released.

Ignoring the pricier offerings of gold and jewels on the table Belle bargained with the peddler for a well-worn toy rabbit, a pair of red dancing shoes and a fake pearl necklace. All told her purchases were hardly worth the trouble of the trip, but she wasn’t ready to write it off yet. The slave auction had yet to start.

The man with the red woolen hat who styled himself a “a procurer of hard to find items” had tipped her off about this particular location. She'd been to it a few times already in different guises in the past month or so, without luck. Perhaps it was time to revisit Smee and take back the reward she'd given him, with a little extra payment for good measure. It wouldn’t do for anyone to think the Sorceress of the Dark Castle was going soft in her dotage now would it?

Chapter Text

Belle regarded the slaves with the large pupiled eyes--daemon fleur her busy mind supplied -- a herb slavers favoured that could be slipped into hot tea. It dissolved easily in warm liquid and in controlled doses it could confer on the user numbness to pain and lower the level of a fever. In higher doses it increased tractibility and surpressed defiance, but it wasn't cheap. Belle bet these poor souls only got to taste that particular nectar of oblivion pre-auction. It was a desperate trick, but she supposed with slaves in ill health it was either a drop or two of pricely daemon fleur or lose the value of the whole shipment altogether.

Despite it all, she let the slaver go about his ruse. She reminded herself that the usage of a banned drug on these poor unfortunates was not the reason she was here. Her purpose, she told herself firmly, was to find the glamour spell amulet. The cruelty of these mortals to one another was of no consequence to her greater objective. And yet…

She wished sometimes she could turn the darkness within her on or off at will; she could use some of the apathy it gave her now, its ability to take the long view, to regard these people around her as transient, their troubles momentary and insignificant. Typical, she thought, the one time she needed to cloak herself in the “merciless” attitude she was so famed for, the cursed spirit within her grew dormant. It was at times like these that felt every one of her 100 plus years weighing heavy on her heart. Though her exterior remained youthful and flawless, inside she felt weary, oh so very weary and older than the most aged crone in the marketplace.

She wondered what they’d say if she turned off her own glamour spell. When she exposed herself in all her scaled glory they would call her a witch, a succubus and agent of darkness among other less illustrious titles. Typical of the small minded, thinking evil to be some big showy thing involving magical curses and demonic appearances. While she did possess huge lamplike eyes that glowed in darkness, scaled skin, immortality and magic, as well as a castle gaurded by gargoyles that occasionally came to life and devoured intruders for breakfast; to her mind evil’s truer aspect was that found among ordinary people in prosaic surroundings like these. True evil didn’t announce itself with a loud bang and a puff of smoke. What made it truly wicked was that it was accepted, so much a part of the fabric of daily existence that people ceased seeing it as wrong, just shrugged if off and said “that’s the way of the world.”

You didn't need to search for a forbidding castle on a hill surrounded by stone monsters to look upon the face of evil. It was here in full force at the market the first Sunday of every month.

Belle tried to ignore the spectacle of mendacity presented by the villagers, who spent their money trying to outdo each other in buying delectable feasts and decorations for fictional dietities who could not appreciate them, while real people starved in chains right here in the town square just because somewhere along the line someone had categorized them as “slave.”

Somehow or other the free folk had managed to truly convince themselves that the people being sold were less than human and could be treated accordingly. Meanwhile, ironically la Belle Dame Sans Merci, the true inhuman, walked among them in noblewoman’s disguise, afforded every politeness and courtesy the villagers and traders could muster.

All this, it reminded Belle far too much of things she had no wish to remember. How could she have so much magic and yet still lack the power to forget her yesterdays. Why couldn’t she do something the tiniest, unschooled newborn infant did with every slumber? It would be so pleasing, so easy to torch this entire village to the ground, just so it would cease to remind her... No! It was best she go, before she attracted the wrong kind of attention.

But then a new group of slaves were brought out. Right away she knew there was something off about the three men and two women now standing in chains upon the stage. For one, they were in far too good condition to be sold in a backwater place like this, showing no signs of the hard travel and deprivation they ought to have. Even dressed in nothing more than strips of fabric that left little to the imagination, didn't even shiver in the cool autumn air. The men and women were all uniformingly young, clear eyed and free from sores, their teeth white and straight, the men well muscled, the women high breasted and strong. Most telling of all they all looked clean and well fed, cleaner and better fed in fact than the villagers milling around. It had been a lean growing season after all and the Duke had taken more than his usual share of the crop at tax time once again. Belle clicked her tongue at the slaver’s foolishness. Anyone with at least an iota of cleverness might have at least aimed for something a tad more believable.

Belle skirted the edge of the crowd until she was around the back of the stage following the scent of magic.

In the wings behind the stage, a middle aged man in a greasy apron sat staring into the empty brass bowl in his lap, bending his head low to whisper into its depths. Him? Belle's extra senses flicked over this unappetizing individual. No, this fellow was simply suffering from a diseased syphyllic mind. This particular village had a surfeit of such poor wretches. She found what she sought in his companion, a seemingly ordinary looking man, with similar facial features, possibly his brother, though she really didn't care. He held an amulet in one hand and a half finished turkey leg in the other.

"Oi there wench, bring me another!" he cried out when he spotted her, glamour-spelled to look like a serving woman.

"Seriously?" Belle had never let one of her ownn glamour spells drop faster. It was quite satisfying seeing the fellow shrink back as she was revealed in all her scaled glory.

"Shit."

"Indeed."

With a wave of her hand Belle the amulet transferred itself to Belle’s hand. She knew the instant its former owner’s spell was broken, from the collective gasp of the crowd clearly audible from the other side of the curtain.

Chapter Text

The enchantment fell.  The crowd let out a collective gasp.

Then came the cries of “Liar!  Mountebank! Charlatan!”  as the villagers surged forth as one.

Unfortunately, the target of their ire was not on the stage.  As soon as he realized Belle had his amulet, the slave trader vacated his place behind the curtain and high-tailed it out of there.  Belle would have frozen him to the spot, if she wasn’t so distracted by the mob.  In their anger the marketgoers had mounted the steps up to the platform and appeared just about ready to take out their rage on the poor wretches for sale.  They were far easier targets than their dishonest seller and well within reach, after all. 

Mobs—Belle had all the experience she needed with them.  In the anonymity of a crowd a man could do anything and get away with it, especially to a woman. The power of an angry mob was something even her dark heart feared.

 Leave!  Leave now! the cursed spirit inside screamed at her.   While the spirit was completely immortal, it could still be scattered to the winds if Belle, its vessel, died. 

“What?  And let the slave trader who caused all this go free?”

Fine, vapourize him, whatever, just get moving.

“But the slaves—“

Not our problem. 

“And the mob?” 

Who cares if they’re torn to pieces? We’re here for the amulet. These wretches are powerless.  They’re of no consequence to us.  

It was that thought that spurred her to action. What La Belle Dame San Merci detested more than anything else in the entire universe was the type of thinking that could write off another person as “being of no consequence.” Just a slave, just a jumped up tinker’s daughter, just a woman—no one who really mattered—meaning nobody with real power to hold another person accountable, nothing but a thing, a beast, an object, with no agency of its own.  No she had not taken the power for that—to be the sort of being that did to others what had once been done to her.

“Really?  That’s all you’ve got?  Who do you think you’ve been living inside these past hundred years?  Do you even know me?” 

My apologies, oh, easily irritated one, what I meant to say was—

“The thing people forget about treating the powerless like they don’t matter is that power can change hands!”

Fine, fine, let justice be served, but let’s be quick about it, alright miss hero?  There’s something about this place that’s doesn’t smell quite right.

“Pfft. You worry too much.  Who are these idiots anyway?  Why would they try to punish the slaves?  Surely they couldn’t imagine these unfortunates were actually colluding in the slave trader’s deception? What would they profit from being sold for a better price?”

This is what shocks you?  Trust me, no one’s ever lost a fortune betting against human stupidity.

“Something to remember the next time I go to the races.”

The crowd was out for blood and it would have it.

“I guess anyone’s blood will do?”

Or maybe they’re just trying to punish the trader by destroying his merchandise. 

And with that disturbing thought foremost in her mind, Belle parted the curtain and stepped on the stage.

The first impression she had wasn’t of the villagers’ faces distorted with anger or the terrified, screaming slaves. 

What struck her, oddly enough was the stage itself.  The boards beneath her feet themselves.  The earth they stood on. 

All of it, a deep, deep well of magical potential, stretching from this moment, far far back into the ancient past.

So much had happened here— Instantly, she was flooded by the emotion; The desperate cries and miserable shufflings of slaves sold at auction, families parted at the sound of a gavel;  Travelling actors drinking in the thunderous ecstasy of applause, laughing, crying in the heat of performance, where pretend situations could easily merge with real feeling; The blood of criminals lashed for punishments they didn’t deserve, soaking into the knots in the timber, never fully cleaned out;  The last gasps of highwaymen about to be hanged; The blood of beheadings; The celebration of name days, feasts in honour of local noble’s marriages, harvest festivals, seasons of plentiful wheat and corn; The fear of young soldiers called forth from this stage by recruiters, conscripted to battle never to be seen again; The strange erotic rites of the ancient worship of a rather singular local fertility goddess, still practiced even now by a select few worshipers upon the summer solstice;  Older, stranger, rituals performed by moonlight, before the stage itself existed, when these boards were trees in a sacred grove; And further back still to the brutal practices of a bygone era; White robed priests weaving a dream-like dance among standing stones of eerie astronomical calculation, so that when the shadows converged the two sacrifices would be led between them, one woman and one man on the rowanwood altar…

Belle swallowed the tasted of bile in her mouth.

 “You animals…” she whispered.  She didn’t even have to call it, the magic drew itself to her like iron filings to a magnet.  With disgust surging inside her, a wave of red and black mist rose up around her.  Then with one wave of her hands, it radiated out in a rush from where she stood like the shockwave of a meteor strike.

“Magic!  Dark ma—“ the crowd’s cries were left incomplete as the wave crashed over them and subsumed them.

The mist of magic dispersed nearly as quickly as it came.  In its wake the only humans left standing, blinking owlishly in surprise were the slaves. 

Where the villagers and traders had stood moments ago, there were now an odd assortment of farm animals; ducks, goats, chickens, sheep, cows and donkeys, all clucking and neighing in shock.  A draft horse who had up until a few seconds before been a tavern keeper, gave a hysterical whinny and tried to run full tilt into the public house, only to find himself stuck in the front door, stomping the ground with huge clumsy hooves. 

Belle flicked aside a patched curtain and emerged on stage with a sarcastic slow-clap of her hands.  “Yes, bravo, bravo.  What a show.  Now wasn’t that amusing?” 

She looked around for confirmation at the group huddled around, listening to the gibbering murmur from cracked and thirsty lips: “La Belle Dame Sans Merci. It’s her, it’s her.” 

From the stage beside her, a woman with tangled filthy hair and a dress of stained rags bowed low at her feet—“Please mistress, don’t hurt us—we’re good, loyal slaves.  We’ll do whatever you want us to do, we will, we will.”  The rest simply nodded and echoed her words. 

Belle just rolled her eyes.  “Oh for goodness sake!  The last thing I need is you lot hanging around cluttering up the castle!” she snapped her fingers and the chains fell off the slaves, crashing metallically to the ground.  “There--- you’re all free—not slaves anymore, in case you want me to spell it out any further.  So you can do whatever you want with these livestock and this—“ she wrinkled her nose like she’d smelled something malodorous, “Village.  It’s yours now if you want it.  See if you can do a better job than they did if you like.  Not that I have any great hopes on that score.  Ah well…” she stepped nimbly over a fallen iron shackle, the amulet still clasped in her hand. 

Chapter Text

“I’d like to say it’s been swell, but—“ Belle’s glib speech faltered for a moment.  Why,  if she had the talisman, was her magic sense still buzzing away in the back of her brain like she’d forgotten something—some item of great power whose source she couldn’t pinpoint—something her senses kept skittering over like an object hidden under a cloth—something she couldn’t see, but whose outline could be dimly perceived.  This feeling, this scent-- suggested… what exactly? 

It doesn’t matter, let’s just get out of here, groused the spirit within her. 

“Wait, if I can only stay a moment longer I think I can figure out—“

She continued to orate for the crowd as the argument went on within her.  She was used to these daily tugs of war with the cursed spirit she lived with.  Usually they found an amicable balance in time..

She gave a quick glance around at the assembled livestock and began again:  “I’d say it’s been a treat, but that would be a lie.  “So long and thanks for all the—“  She spun on her heel and threw up her hand to initiate her teleportation spell, but just as she did so, a voice broke through her speech.   

“Wait!”  It was a man’s voice—a cracked high tenor. “La Belle Dame Sans Merci!  Wait!”  She turned to glare at the former slave who dared to interrupted her.

 Really this is starting to get ridiculous, we’ve wasted enough time in this backwater village as it is. 

He crouched on the stage near the curtain behind her. 

And he just had to use our name in full!  Son of a bitch!

There were certain ancient compulsions worked into the curse that had made her that the spirit within her still found hard to resist. Pausing, she looked down at the man—a desperate soul if there ever was one she judged him, but there was something else there too, like an itch at the back of her mind, what was it? 

He rose to his knees—his gaunt cheeks flushed with fever, but his brown eyes strangely clear, “What about me?”

She looked down at him, possibly the scrawniest, filthiest, most pathetic looking slave of the entire misbegotten bunch.

“Yes, and what about you?”

“My shackle—“ he begged pointing down to the iron cuff around his leg.  It was attached to a chain, the chain padlocked to a ring nailed down to the floor of the stage. Really, if they’d spent half as much money feeding him as they had chaining him, she might’ve only been able to see two or three of his ribs, instead of the whole damn collection.

 “You freed all the others.  Why n-n-not me?  P-p-please …” he stammered, huge brown eyes wide as a puppy’s in his hollow cheeked face.   “At least let me die free.” 

Then, as if cognizant to whom he was voicing such unheard of demands to, he added a few words of flattery as an afterthought; ”Oh beauteous, all knowing all wise, all powerful Lady of a thousand mysteries, mistress of the Castle Dark, guardian of the—“

“Yes, yes yes” she waved the useless flattery away.  It was strange.   Hadn’t she expressedly thrown the spell out to free all the slaves?  Oh well, it was always possible to miss one.    Using the man’s desperation as all the magical fuel she needed, Belle tossed a quick charm at the miserable thing to free him from his chains.   The spell travelled over, hit the former slave and bam! It ricocheted right back at Belle, exploding in her face as it hit her at top speed, sending her sprawling to the ground below nearly ten feet away, flat on her back. 

Luckily, the assembled humans and former-human livestock were too shocked and scared of her to come close or they would’ve realized that she was actually senseless and therefore nearly defenseless for a good two or three seconds.  Any enemy among the thousands she’d made over the years could’ve got the drop on her in that moment of weakness.

She rose to her feet, shaken, but trying not to show it.

What the bloody hell was THAT?  She dusted herself out, trying to think of an explanation.  Had she ever read about anything like this before?  She itched to get home to scour her library for some mention of a spell of this calibre.

Of course the best source of information would be to ask the one who cast it.

She glared accusingly at the slave.  He appeared to be trying to make himself invisible, by sinking further down to the boards, but only succeeded in looking like a puddle of rags.

“You DARE assault ME?  Do you know who I AM?”

“I-I-I-I---“ the man was sobbing now, trembling on the spot.  “I didn’t mean to-- I wasn’t trying t-t-to hurt y-y—“

“As if a wretched thing like you could!” she scoffed.  “I think it’s time you learned exactly what ‘Sans Merci’ truly means.”

Not to mention that she needed to get back to the Dark Castle to regroup and she would have to take the him with her now—because whatever power he’d used to do that to her, she wanted a better look.  If this unassuming slave had been booby trapped with some kind of spell that made her magic rebound on her by one of her enemies it would be dangerous to try another spell on him to teleport him back to the castle. Now how to get him home in one piece?  With a quick wave of her hand, a carriage lounging on the blocks at a repair station, broke free.

Well it’s owner won’t need it, now that he’s a budgie, will he?

“Fair enough.”

The animated wood and metal carriage did what she instructed.  It removed the rebellious slave from the stage-- chain, ring and all, wrapped him up in its window curtains and tossed him into the carriage’s seating area.  The door slammed shut of its own accord and the carriage magically propelled itself down the stage ramp and quickly out of the village. 

It would not rest, Belle knew, until it arrived at the Dark Castle, deep in the Haunted Wood where no one would follow.  Luckily, this particular village was only a day’s journey away by horse.

With a flick of her hand, Belle was back home in the castle.  With immense relief she felt her power and sense of equilibrium return within minutes.   

Now to prepare a welcoming cell for our new “guest.”

Chapter Text

Rumple, you fucking IDIOT!

Had he a free hand he would’ve smacked his own forehead in frustration.  As it was, all he did was give a little wiggle and he rolled off the carriage seat and fell painfully to the floor. Not only was he still wrapped up in the carriage curtain like a human blintz, but now his nose was bleeding all over the crushed red velvet. 

He should have known better.  Understatement of the year.  If anyone in the entire Enchanted Forest should have known the dangers of sticking one’s head out and calling unnecessary attention to oneself, it should have been Rumplestilstkin, former spinner, grifter, soldier and slave. 

The aunts who raised him always said nothing good would ever come of revealing to anyone he had magic.  They urged him to stay with them in their small provincial village,  to inherit their spinning and weaving business and tidy little cottage with the warm hearth and neat vegetable garden in the back.   He could have settled down, found a good woman who didn’t mind so much that her husband did what was traditionally “woman’s work,” loved her and provided for her and made enough money to send at least one child to a proper school.  He was kind and hard-working, an average man to look at, if a tad short of stature—not a terrible catch by any means.  He could have had a perfectly ordinary, normal freeman’s life.

Nothing good ever came of humble folk calling attention to themselves, trying to be something grander than they were, his aunts told him.  It was just looking for trouble to upset the natural order of things.  “Why just look at your father,” they’d say and cluck their tongues and shake their heads. 

But Rumple couldn’t see what was wrong with his father. He thought his father was wonderful, with his bright flashy clothes, the easy grin and talk of the exotic places he’d been, the people he’d met.  More than anything in the world, he wished he could go with his father when he went on his adventures. 

Instead Rumple had to wake up early, tend the sheep and do the chores, the same routine day after day.  He dreamed of going with his father to the royal city to see jousting matches and festivals and hobnob with royalty. 

Every time his father Malcolm, who styled himself a travelling “troubadour,” came to visit ,Rumple tried everything he could to make his papa stay with him.  Still rack his brains as he might, nothing Rumple ever did prevented Papa from leaving yet again. 

If only he could make himself interesting to his father, Rumple thought, then maybe Malcolm would want to take him with on his adventures.   He so, so , so wanted his father to love him.  But all it seemed his father loved aside from drink and travel and women, was gold which was, Papa told him, the only ticket one needed to get the other three.

If he could just help his papa get some gold, then Malcolm would surely take him along, wouldn’t he?  They could be a team, a proper father and son duo.    

At his spinning wheel Rumple dreamed of travelling with Malcolm, how his father would turn to him and say “well done Rumple” after he performed a new song on his lute and ruffle his hair and teach him to ride on horseback (how he’d always wanted to learn!).  Together they would ride on his father’s fine black horse, Rumple holding his father around the tummy as they travelled to distant lands.

Magic feeds off emotion. The strongest feelings of hope and yearning poured from him as he spun, entranced by this imaginary future, lost in his fantasy of being loved.  The power of his young, as yet uncrushed, imagination that could picture so freely the feeling of his father’s big hand smoothing his hair with pride transmuted a piece of wool in his hand into gold.   

As he grew older it happened at other times, too.   As the wheel spun him into a trance he recalled Bess the pub landlord’s daughter wandering by his stall at the market, to buy red yarn to plait through her long black hair.  He dreamed of his own nimble fingers combing through her hair, twining love knots and ribbons and bits of flowers into those soft, silky tresses.  He dreamed of her naked before she put on her shift to go to bed, creamy peach skin and that long black braid hanging down her back, leaving both breasts sinfully bare.  He dreamed of touching those pale breasts in the moonlight… and thread he wove was instantly shot through with gold. 

He could keep it a secret no longer.  He told his Aunt Flora, showed her the strands and demonstrated to her what he could do.  This time he drew the gold forth with another wishful fantasy, one of the life that could be his with his unique talent, of a large house of brick all his own and fine linens for his bed, of servants and clothes made by hands other than his own, a library full of books for him to read, a head full of knowledge so that men of wisdom would travel from far to ask his advice, a world in which he’d show them all that he was more than just a humble spinner, the unwanted son of a shiftless travelling musician.

His Aunt Flora sat upon her wood stool and watched him spin, a strand of pure gold at least a foot long and pursed her mouth.

Rumple was dreaming of his own lavish wedding, attended by his father in a fine suit of clothes and his  good friend the Duke, when his reverie was broken.  “Stop!” said his aunt in a curt voice. 

“What?  Why?  Can you imagine Papa’s face when he finds out I can do this!”

“I don’t mean to be unkind dearie, but I don’t think you should tell anyone least of all your Papa.”  “

“What?”  Rumple stared, flabbergasted.

“He can be a very rash man, that father of yours,” she added hastily.  “Selfish.  He would use your talent for his own gain, even when it wasn’t good for you.”

“You just want to keep me here with you to do all your boring extra chores so you don’t have to!”

“Now you know that’s rubbish,” elderly Aunt Fauna chided him.  “We just want what’s best for you, a good morally upright, stable life, with a trade to call your own.  We truly do care for you dear.” 

Now, lying ignobly on the floor of the carriage, he wondered if his aunt had said “love” instead of “care for” would that have made him stay?

But all that was in the passed now.  Despite their warnings he told his father, unable to keep his amazing secret inside anymore, and with sorrowful hearts his aunts watched him leave with Malcolm the very next day overjoyed to be out of the village at last to seek his fortune. 

Within a few months Rumple was forced to come to the conclusion that his aunts had been right.  His father was selfish.  He didn’t really care about Rumple himself, just about what he could do.  At first Rumple was so filled with joy, just to be chosen to be with Malcolm at last, that he had no trouble turned dozens of balls of yarn into gold, and not just yarn all sorts of things he could weave and spin, even straw when there was nothing else around to work with.  He could twist it into gold braids and bracelets they could sell or trade. 

Malcolm used the money to pay off his creditors and he was free and happy, toasting his son at every lavish meal.   Instead of investing his saving his new surplus or buying a house somewhere for him and his son to settle down in, his unexpected windfall began to burn a hole in his pocket as soon as he got it.  Malcolm quickly spent it on larger wagers, bigger betting houses, more drink and fine food.  Then there were the crazy get-rich-quick schemes that began when Rumple’s gold making began to peter out, culminating in the time Malcolm spent nearly all their money buying apples on the cheap in one town with the intention to sell them in the next town over. Unfortunately, the the apples all went rotten in the transit, this unhappy state of affairs, not helped on at all by Malcolm, who, drunk on homemade cider, accidentally swerved their cart into a gaping hole in the rode and tipped the lot of them over into a ditch.  This incident left Rumple with his first broken nose, though certainly not his last.

“Don’t worry it’ll give you character, son,” was Malcolm’s only comment. 

It gave Rumple character alright; a cynical, miserable character.  And so eventually he didn’t dream of a better life at all, and the only time a few threads of precious metal that came from his fingers, was when he remembered back to his aunties’ cozy kitchen, his belly full of that warm mince pie they used to cook.  He remembered how his aunts used to sing sometimes while they worked, their voices clear pure alto and soprano, overlapping each other like burbling water coursing over pebbles in a clear mountain stream.  He remembered when Aunt Flora made him his cornhusk dolly and tucked him into his little trundle bed at night.  With his hopes and dreams for the future so lost and broken, it seemed the only joyful emotions he could get were from the past, and even those were touched by sadness now, as it was only a wistful sort of joy, resulting nothing more than tarnished silver.

The less Rumple produced the worse the pressure from his father’s creditors got.  The worse the pressure from their creditors got, the more displeased Malcolm grew with Rumple.  The more displeased Malcolm grew with Rumple the sadder Rumple got and the less he produced.  It was a terrible viscous cycle, that Rumple knew would only end with his father taking him back to his aunties.

But that wasn’t where his father took him. 

Yes, Rumple could trace every stroke of bad fortune he’d suffered all these years to that one imprudent decision to reveal his magic to his father. He should have learned that magic would never bring him anything but misery, if not from his treatment by his father, than certainly from his enslavement by the Duke for his part in trying to trick him.  Being forced to weave and spin without pay would have cured any man of ever trusting anyone with his secret ever again.

But it hadn’t cured Rumplestilskin.  He had the idiocy to trust another slave who said she loved him, who plotted with him to escape their masters together.  Cora, who’d abandoned him and left him to suffer a slow death from whatever poison had been leaking into his body from that accursed shackle.

Even the biggest idiot in the entire world would’ve known to be quiet then.  To keep his head down, to hide. 

He always had to speak up at just he worst possible time, to always tell the absolutely worst person he could, culminating in, of all things, telling the bloody Belle Dame Sans Merci to set him free!  What the hell had he been thinking?

I just wanted so badly, oh so badly to be free.  For once not to be the one left out. 

Only he realized now, if he’d not been so rash and just thought about it for a single second—any of the other slaves could have freed him.  Once La Belle Dame Merci was well on her way he could’ve asked nicely, “Would someone please nip down to the blacksmith’s shop for a hammer and chisel and crack this shackle for me?”  Someone would’ve helped.  Or maybe the other former slaves would’ve left him as is, he mused darkly, with no other humans in the village, now that everyone had been turned into barnyard animals, they’d need someone to order around, even someone as pathetic and useless as him. 

Not that it mattered now.  He would be dead within days, he knew—whether at the hands of the dark sorceress or to fever, (he rather hoped the later, personally), but he could feel it now, that he wasn’t long for this world.  He only hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much.  He’d suffered so much these last several years, he only hoped his end might be as painless as possible. 

“So much for Rumplestiltskin, he’d never speak up again in this world at least, that was certain,” he thought as he lay wrapped up in the carpet on the floor of the carriage and cried bitterly to himself.  Tears fell into his ears and mouth and he felt momentarily ashamed, but then again what did it matter? There was no one there to see him and no one to cry on his behalf, no one left to mourn the imminent demise of Rumplestilskin but himself, as if he had ever existed at all, except for a funny old story about a young man whose father told a king he could spin straw into gold and a king who for one moment believed him.

It didn’t matter now, he couldn’t struggle his way free from his binds, he was too weak.  And if he somehow succeeded and flung himself out of the carriage, what could he do but crawl around in the dark, in the cold winter forest all alone?  Better, much better to stay where he was.

It was warm in the carriage, almost pleasantly so, safe from the wind and the freezing rain outside.  The curtains felt snug and cozy around him, almost like the swaddling of a baby. The carriage rocked as it moved, too, a lullying sort of motion. It had been so so so long, since his meatless bones had been properly warm, since he had been allowed an uninterrupted time to sleep.  Even as afraid as he was, , his battered body could sustain a wakeful state no longer.  His consciousness crashed in on itself and he slept, soon he slept deeply, the sleep of the utterly exhausted with life. 

Chapter Text

“Well that certainly took long enough,” said Belle, eyeing the horseless carriage suspiciously. “Now what am I going to with you?”

There was no response from the man resting at the bottom.

Wait a tick, who sits in a carriage like that?

“Well that tears it, he’s dead,” said Belle dispassionately.

“Pfft relax, he’s just sleeping,” squeaky a creaky voice like rusty wheelsprings. “No thanks to you. I had to take him for a drink and nosh in transit didn’t I? Else he really would be dead.”

“You took him for a drink and a snack? Wait, sorry, but exactly who are you? Where are you?”

“Yoo hoo, over here!”

Belle gaped at the recently animated carriage—the one curtain not used to restrain her captive waved at her like a giant hand from the window.

“Great, I thought I animated you with precise instructions to take him to my castle, disgorge him and then lie fallow until I have further need of you. I don’t remember mentioning anything about talking.”

The carriage hoisted itself up and then down again on its rusty springs in what Belle could swear for all the world was an approximation of a shrug like it wanted to say “Eh? What’cha gonna do?”

“How did you get him a snack anyway?”

“As it so happens we were accosted by a group of highwaymen en route. I did my best spooky voice, they scarpered and when they was gone, I spied this lovely little campfire with a jug of ale and rabbit roasting on a spit, so I just disgorged our little traveller here, made sure he partook of a little meat and drink and then we were on our way again. Just in case you’re curious the wine jug’s on the seat. Might as well drink the rest. Spindleshanks here’s a bit of a light weight.”

“Spindle—what?”

“It’s what I call him, my passenger.”

“You named him? Like- like a pet?

“Well, look at you, the great Dark One, knickers all in a knot! You’d think a little thank you might be in order for me having the wherewithal not to let him expire! Besides, it’s just temporary til we find out his real name. I daresay he wouldn’t take too kindly to us calling him that on a regular basis.”

“Us?”

“Really it’s a good thing you animated me because there’s no way he’d ever make it to your castle on his own, he’s so weak, he can barely take two steps on his own without falling over, poor thing.”

Belle glared fiercely at the sleeping man in the bottom of the erratically behaving carriage. Her magic never went this awry before. What was going on? It was him—it had to be. HE was throwing her magic off course, but how? She had to get him to her tower and figure this out before there were any further mishaps.

Belle brought a carrying spell to her fingertips—

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” scolded the carriage in the dulcet tones of rusty axels grinding.

“Lovely, just what I need, another bloody voice in my head.”

I heard that! muttered the cursed spirit darkly within her and went back to sleep.

However, the talking carriage was right. If she tried to use her magic directly on this Spindleshanks person who knew what sort of other enchanted booby traps or curses she might activate? So far she’d been lucky and the ricochet had only momentarily disabled her, but once her enemies discovered it hadn’t worked, who knew what new scheme they’d try? She had to discover what they were planning and this misbegotten slave was her only means of doing so at the moment.

“Stop standing around! Unwrap him!” she commanded the carriage. She could swear the animated hunk of wood and metal did so as slowly and cheekily as it was possible.

As soon as the man was unfurled a pungent odour, not unlike a stinky cheese hit her nostrils at full blast. The man was clad in nothing more than a pair of threadbare trousers. The shackle around his right leg still retained its chain, which was still attached in turn to the wood plank she’d magically torn off the auction stage.

Unwrapped Belle could see that the blasted coach was right, there was no way he’d be following her across the courtyard up the steps to the castle, across the grand hallway and down the spiral staircase to the specially prepared cell she’d just created for him in the dungeon. She wondered why they’d even bothered to shackle and chain him in the first place. Even from a distance she could see his right foot would be no good for walking. She supposed she could drag him downstairs, but try as she might, she couldn’t picture it in her mind in any way that didn’t look ridiculous, or end up with her accidentally squashed under him at the bottom of the stairs. Was this what people without magic had to deal with on a regular basis? It was so easy to forget.

“Oh bother.”

That there might be any difficulty actually getting him to the cell was the one possibility she hadn’t prepared for. He couldn’t make it there under his own power, she couldn’t use her magic to teleport him, and the carriage was too wide to fit through the door of the castle without some serious remodelling. What in the world was she going to do?

She kicked a stone in frustration. It skipped over the path, through the wicker loops that cordoned off the area of the palace grounds she used for her garden. The outer ring of the garden was planted with ordinary flowers, roses mainly, and nonmagical. Still sporting the effects of fall’s first frost, they sparkled in the thin sunlight that signaled the beginning of winter.

Suddenly, Belle had an idea.

Chapter Text

As it turned out, even La Belle Dame San Merci was not impervious to the beauty of flowers. In fact, she actually quite liked gardening, even if some of the plants she grew were of an unconventional and somewhat deadly variety.

Her first order of business was to find something that would allow her to touch him without harming herself. Her eyes lit on a pair of gardening gloves resting atop an abandoned wheelbarrow. Checking the perimeter to make sure no one was there to see, she rolled the wheelbarrow over to the carriage. With the gloves extended their full length up to her elbows for protection and an apron on for good measure to protect her dress from whatever filth the passenger/prisoner was caked in, she approached her quarry.

With an undignified grunt the great and mighty Dark One, most powerful sorceress in all twelve known dimensions, manhandled an unconscious slave in the wheelbarrow through the courtyard to the castle’s back entrance, through the former servants’ doors and hallway and into the grand hall. By the time she got there she was huffing and puffing. It was so easy to forget how much effort everything required without a little magic to assist her. How did ordinary humans survive the frustration? And yet she had once counted herself one, long ago when she was young and innocent… she pushed the old memories away, concentrated on the task at hand.

It would be too difficult, she decided, to cart him down to the dungeon. At any rate what would she do when she needed to experiment on him down there? If she couldn’t teleport him up, then every time she wanted to do anything at all, she’d have to teleport herself and half the contents of her laboratory down. There had to be better way.

She thought briefly of just leaving him in the main hall, but quickly nixed the idea. There were far too many of her prizes on display for him to knock about in his clumsy maneuverings. She wanted to keep that golden fleece in pristine condition, dammit. What was needed was somewhere he could be safely contained and couldn’t do any damage, somewhere within easy reach of her laboratory. There were plenty of rooms on the top floor previously used to house members of the royal household she’d taken the castle from. Surely, one of those capacious chambers could accommodate such a meagre specimen. But how to get him up there?

Just then she remembered the grand dining room. The room was enormous. It had a high vaulted ceiling that sported a rather unique feature; a three tiered crystal chandelier hanging from the gilded jawbones of the very last Frontlands dragon. Not that they had existed in the wild for close to a century. The specimen the chandelier was made from had once been the highlight of the royal menagerie, a pet who’d died of natural causes. Belle knew all this because she never took up ownership of a castle without first reading up on its history and this particular castle had quite the storied past.

She searched the purple flocked wallpaper for the tell-tale sign of a hidden door. It had to be here, she was certain this was where the shaft she’d found behind a small door on the top floor led down to.

It was a moment’s work to move the fancy sideboards and gilded chairs away from the walls with her powers. Ah! There it was, a tiny, brass knob previously hidden by a cabinet. Exposed now, it twinkled with reflected candlelight in the corner of the room

Belle opened the door. It squeaked a little on its hinges, but the sturdy metal tray and pulleys inside seemed sound when she worked them. The counterweights were present and in working order. The device was of a kind she remembered from her time at the Marshlands castle, where she and her father had lived when they’d been in the Duke’s employ. It was called a “dumbwaiter” and the servants used it to deliver food from the kitchens in the sub-basement to the main floor for meals and then to the noble’s rooms upstairs for private, less formal meals; although, as she’d discovered on one particularly revealing late night perambulation around the Duke’s castle, food wasn’t the only thing it could deliver. She’d seen a scantily clad maid hoisted up on the tray to be taken to the Duke’s rakish young son by his valet, much like a cold joint of meat for a midnight snack.

Luckily, this particular dumbwaiter was more than sufficiently wide to fit the still unconscious slave—she would not call him Spindleshanks—inside. She yanked on the pulley rope and the counterweights did the rest. Then she locked her pulley rope and teleported herself and the wheelbarrow upstairs. It was an awkward bit of business unloading the slave from the dumbwaiter into the wheelbarrow, but finally she was able to trundle him down the hall to be deposited in the nearest room that featured a still serviceable bed.

A flick of her fingers dispelled the dust and cobwebs-- she did so hate doing magic in surroundings that weren’t pristine, it mucked with the results—and dumped the man out of the wheelbarrow, onto the bed.

She gave him a quick once over. He was still covered in a thick layer of vile smelling dirt and grime and she certainly had little interest in discovering the true origins of the brown smear running up his back. Belle absolutely drew the line at giving this miscreant a bath with her own hands, but then how could she get close enough to test the nature of his magic if he retained such a rancid smell? What to do?

Approaching cautiously she focused all her magic on the particles of dirt themselves, ignoring the hair, flesh and clothes they clung to. It took a great deal more time and effort but she succeeded in separating the filth from the man and vapourizing it as soon as it fell off him into the air.

The only bits she removed from him that she did not vapourize directly were a clod of clay and a single louse she sent to a specially prepared box in her laboratory. She wanted to be careful just in case lice and dirt were the vessels her enemies had used to house their magic booby trap and not the man himself.

Now that the dirt and bugs were blasted off him, she could see his skin was a pinkish tan colour and his hair appeared naturally mud brown, flecked with gray. She likewise vapourized the set of threadbare trousers he wore to preserve his modesty for the villagers at the auction. At least his private parts seemed in good working order and unaffected by whatever seemed to have blighted his chained leg.

She turned to this last of all because she had suspicions about magical interference there. She was pretty sure now that he had not put the chain on himself and it disgusted her that her enemies might have taken some poor soul they deemed “expendable” and made him into an unwilling delivery system for a magic bomb, just to take her out.

Still, even this explanation, couldn’t fully account for the man’s condition and the effect he had on her magic. In whatever condition he was in though, he presented a threat. Watching him, perfectly at her mercy as he slept naked on the coverlet, she knew there were countless nonmagical ways she could snuff out his paltry existence—
--- throw a rock on him, use a hammer, a sword, I mean you have an actual working guilliotine in the basement for fuck’s sake—
babbled the cursed spirit frantically. She had never heard it so terrified.
--eliminate the threat NOW, while you still can, before he wakes up!

But Belle, being Belle, couldn’t do it—she had to KNOW.

“He’s a living breathing puzzle,” she told the cursed spirit. “If I don’t find out how he works, it’ll torment me for the rest of my days.”

-If he wakes up and kills you, you won’t have many of those left!

“Pshaw!” she snorted back at it. “What’s the point of being La Belle Dame Sans Merci, if I don’t pursue knowledge to its ultimate length? I hold truck with no superstition, am bound by no promise to man or god to curb my curiosity. Why be practically immortal if I’m going to attack or run from everything that startles or confuses me like a frightened animal? Wasn’t it you who told me once you merged with me, I’d never have to be frightened of anything or anyone ever again?”

-Well perhaps I overstated that last just a bit! There’s something fishy about him, mark my words!

La Belle Dame Sans Merci laughed, a peal of cold, clear bells that echoed through the gray chamber.

Daringly, just to irritate the dark spirit, she let her hand trail down along the length of the chain attached the shackle.

No! No! No!
She felt a staticky charge and braced for a magical attack. Then the static faded and nothing happened. Really, she wasn’t completely surprised the dark spirit was a coward at heart. The more she thought about it, the more she questioned the spirits quick appraisal of the situation.
If the chain was magical and crafted solely to take her out, then why did the chain itself look so old? Not to mention, that the slave looked like he’d been wearing the thing for ages. His deformed foot and ankle looked more like the result of years of some bizarre type of slow progressing disease than something that occurred overnight. What enemy would know that far in advance she would be coming to that particular slave auction at that particular village when she herself didn’t know until a month or so before?

There were seers of course, and magicians that specialized in prognostications of the future, but even in possession of such foreknowledge what would-be revenger would go about a mission in such a haphazard manner? Stories in books were always filled with villains tying heroes up to drown slowly or be eaten by venomous crocodiles and then walking away without witnessing the coup de grace, (La Belle Dame Sans Merci always saw her enemies dispatched right away with the minimum of baroque weaponry, thank you very much), but this beggared belief.

Still, whatever magic had made the shackle, do that to him, she wanted to avoid being next—while still curious about how it was done. Now how to remove it without using her magic directly on his person?

Putting up all the magical shields she knew how to make, she opened a tiny hole in her shielding, just a hair’s width to send out a thin tendril of magic spell. It was a simple incantation to speed up the advancement of rust applied to a tiny portion of the metal ring. It wasn’t quick, not at this thickness, and Belle worried the man would wake up, but he remained fast asleep as the spell worked and ate away at the iron ring around his ankle for fifteen minutes, until at last it went right through.

It opened and fell with an audible clank beside him on the bed.

The man did not wake up despite the clanking, only sighed deeply. Belle stole a glance at his face. Even in sleep it contained a look of irritated consternation, drawn in brows and clenched teeth. Now, by rapid degrees his face grew slack and his clenched jaw loosened. A relieved smile played about the corners of his upturned lips as he exhaled.

“Like he’s breathing out something he’s been holding in for years,” she thought and felt something tight unwind in herself at the same time.

Suddenly, she was aware of his nakedness. Even in sleep his arms were drawn in over himself, his legs folded as if to make himself small and protect his vulnerable body. A door opened in her mind, one that hadn’t budged for centuries. Once she’d been where he was now, naked, injured and vulnerable beneath another who held all the power.
Whatever suggestions the dark spirit might make in that direction, and despite what her name might suggest, Belle was not completely without mercy. The stories and ballads depicted mortals who begged favour of La Belle Dame Sans Merci requesting things like magical red roses to win the hand of a true love or cursed crowns to magically hasten the death of royal rivals.

The truth was actually quite different. For one, Belle couldn’t make anyone fall in love. Those who did contact her about such matters got her standard shpeil about just treating the woman they fancied like a human being, for example, asking her about her opinions, showing interest in her as an actual person rather than just the quickest route to title, heirs and a good roll in the hay, and that often worked just as well.

Not to mention that most people weren’t willing to call on a dark sorceress who demanded such notoriously steep payments for things like greater wealth or higher position—not when there were usually so many more practical ways of achieving it through bribery, blackmail, assassination or the defamation of one’s superiors. In most cases rumours that someone had achieved unexpected success or inherited a title only thanks to Belle were baseless.

The actual people who summoned La Belle Dame Sans Merci tended to be the truly, truly desperate, usually those without means or resources, people who couldn’t afford the recourse of the law, medics or mercenaries to fight their battles for them, peasants mostly, or people of means who had tried every other solution they could buy, looking to Belle as their ultimate last resort; people willing to literally sell anything, risk anything, for the fulfillment of their request.

In all the years Belle had been granting favours and keeping records, the strongest requests were always from people wishing to dispel pain or illness; Parents begging her to heal a sick child, others to save the life of a partner, family member or friend, to lift a famine or allow a maimed man to heal and work again so he’d have food for his family. Those were the usual requests, not the fanciful ones in the stories.

Still, in all her years curing nearly every type wound and disease, she had never seen anything like the slave’s affliction.

The foot beneath where the metal cuff had been was withered and grayish-brown, strangely flat and curling under and in on itself like a dry, dying leaf. Above the colour was almost as bad, but as it went up, the withered gray gradually mottled to a pinker colour, until it became fully flesh toned and normal below the knee.

The human body, just didn’t do that—didn’t turn into some curled up dead leaf textured sort of thing-- not even when injured or diseased. Whether he’d done this to himself, or if it was done to him against his will or even by mistake, she knew magic when she saw it.

Belle instructed the sheets to pull themselves out and up to cover him up to his shoulders. Not because she felt badly for gawking, not at all, there was just no point in him dying of a chill before she could test his magic, that was all.

Then she took a pair of tongs from the fireplace and used them to lift the shackle and chain without risking touching the irons directly lest they inflict the same damage on her.

Instructing the fire to light itself on her way out, (once again simply because she had no wish for her new test subject to die of chill, not because she was concerned in the least about his welfare), she closed the door with a fastening spell so that it would only open for her. She walked to her lab quickly with the shackle and chain, carrying them far away from her body with the tongs like one would handle a snake.

In her lab, hours later after applying test after test, she stared at the device gobsmacked. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about it. It was exactly what it looked like, a plain iron chain and shackle, a little bit of corrosion and rust marring its black surface and nothing more. Just plain cold iron.

A further puzzle. She glanced off into the distance, thinking. From somewhere in the castle she heard the faint sound of china clinking against itself. Probably just Mrs. Potts playing with Chip in the kitchen again, she told herself absently, and went back to a particularly juicy selection on the alchemy of iron by Prospero.

Chapter Text

In his sleep Rumplestilskin felt wonderfully light and free. 

The chain that held him tethered to the ground fell away and he glided effortlessly through a peaceful white mist. The clouds were soft and the lack of pain was a calming, pleasurable sensation in and of itself.  All this time he’d been straining against it for so long that once released he literally flew, floating up into the air, free free free free! 

He zoomed up through the moist clouds until he reached the clear blue sky and felt the warm sun on his back.  He rolled out the knotted muscles of his shoulders.   The lash marks smoothed themselves away and his body grew strong again.  Now that he had control of his flight, he let himself glide slowly downward until he met the ocean.  Lazily he glided over the surface and trailed his fingers through the sparkling water.  Fish leapt up to greet him from the water and the rising sun painted the waves in a palette of pink, yellow and gold.    

Tired at last, he came to rest on an outcropping of smooth, water-worn rock. Feeling completely relaxed and at ease, he rubbed himself up against the sun-warmed moss.  Tension mounted in his nether regions as he continued to rub and then suddenly, released as the ocean rushed in once more, wet and warm up to his waist. 

He awoke with a smile on his lips. 

The room around him was strange, the bed much better than anything he was used to and oddly… sticky?

He lifted the sheet and blushed down to the tip of his nose and not just because he was naked beneath it.

How many years had it been since that happened? 

Then he remembered her, La Belle Dame Sans Merci.  This must be her castle and she would not be please, oh no…

He scrambled to get out of the bed, which was far to good for the likes of him anyway, forgot that rich people’s beds tended to be quite high up took a step down and put his foot into some kind of porcelain bowl thing, (a chamberpot, his mind corrected him).  He stumbled and fell down flat on the floor, completely off balance.

He squirmed out of the sheet he’d got himself twisted in and looked down in astonishment.  

He was CLEAN.  Even under his nails, the black ridges of dirt were gone! He was suddenly aware that he desperately needed to have a slash.  Unfortunately, the chamberpot had rolled halfway across the room.  He moved to get his legs under him so he could crawl after it and froze… what was this? No grating clink clink sound?  His right leg felt strangely light.  The awful, torturing weight that had been his constant company all those long long years was just… gone?

He stretched his leg out carefully, afraid his mind was playing tricks on him. 

But no, the shackle really had disappeared, vanished into thin air!

With trembling hands he felt his foot and ankle, still unable to believe it wasn’t a trick, that his prayers had really been answered. 

He rarely touched his damaged foot.  It disturbed him to touch a part of his own body and only feel it with his hands, like he was touching any other object; not to mention that the skin itself that looked and felt quite unlike normal human skin should. 

He had always secretly wondered if it would return to normal if the horrible shackle was ever removed.  Well, he supposed he now had his answer.  Still, he was free of the iron and the torture it caused.  Even if he was a prisoner of a dark sorceress, it beat what he had been the day before. 

Suddenly, he was filled with energy and purpose.

He located the chamberpot and did his business. 

This done, the next order of business was getting some food in him.  His was so hungry he’d grown nauseous and shaky.  His stomach growled like a beast within him.  As if in response to his unvoiced wish, a bowl of oatmeal, a piece of bread and a cup of tea appeared by his side on a tray.

He jumped, startled and the tray tipped over. Ravenous, he crouched down to lick its contents off the floor.  It was cleaner than most of the plates he’d eaten from as a slave anyway.  He sipped the tea straight down to the dregs and then ate those too. 

By then the weak winter daylight streaming in from the window had begun to wain.  With only a sheet to keep him warm, Rumplestilskin began to shiver.  Instantly a warm, soft robe wrapped itself around him like a cozy hug.  Then the embers of the fire that had gone out stoked itself back into flame and he could’ve sworn when he looked up that the two cushiony, highbacked lounge chairs now sitting by the fire’s warm glow hadn’t been there when he first woke up. 

He dragged himself towards the closest of the two and pushed himself up onto the plushest seat he’d ever sat upon.   A thick fur materialized out of nowhere and wrapped itself about his shoulders. Drowsy once more, his head nodded against the arm rest as he watched the flames. 

Really, he mused, this all had to be a dream. 

Chapter Text

Rumple was awake again, but he remained huddled in a ball on the huge armchair, under the warm fur blanket, by the glow of the fire.

He didn’t want to open his eyes, not yet, for fear it was all a dream or an enchantment and if he opened his eyes to look it would all be gone, melted away into the mist, and he would be back sleeping on a floor of dirty straw in a cold barn with the animals, still chained and shackled to a post. 

Thinking of the chain and shackle again he instinctively flexed his right leg to hear the clink of the links. The sound of nothing but the soft swish of animal skin was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. 

Feeling braver now, he opened one eye just a crack and took in the room, the armchairs, the fireplace and bed laid out in  fine linen, the chamberpot and remains of his hastily gobbled repast.

So it hadn’t been a dream.

And then he became aware that there were other sounds in the room—muffled like conversation heard from the other side of a wall.  He concentrated and bizarrely, the voices became clearer. 

“Poor boy,” tutted a woman.  “Looks like he’s been through the bloody wringer, he has.”

“What d’ye think she wants with him?” asked a grumpy voice.

“Don’t know.”

“She’s never brought anyone else to stay.”

“Jefferson—“

“For one night now and again—“

“That doctor man, him with the odd colouring—“

“Not to stay, indefinitely.”

“D’ye think he’s magic then?”

Rumple shivered at this suggestion, but remained in place.  After all the misery disclosing his magic had caused him in his life, he wasn’t going to make the same mistake ever again, besides the fact that whatever slight magic he had once possessed it had surely been driven away by his harsh treatment at the hands of the slavers these past few years. 

“Him?  You’ve got to be bloody kidding.  Just look at the wee blighter— he were magic, y’think he’d let himself get in such a state as this?  No, she’s probably got some other fate in store for him.  Dragonbait or some such. ” 

“Now, Cogs, don’t be cruel.”

“’m not cruel, it’s just the truth.”

There was a brief crackling flare from the fireplace and another voice joined the conversation.

“Stop eet you two.  Gossiping like a bunch of fish wives.  He’s not a prisoner, he’s our guest.”

“Our guest?”

“Eh,” Rumple could almost hear the shrug in the other man’s accented voice, “well, that’s what the mistress said and you know—“

“Our magic extends as far as she says—“

 “Looks like, we’ve been given carte blanche by the mistress to make him comfortable.”

“I don’t like the direction this is going, Lumos we can’t have you getting carried away,“ worried the grumpy voiced one.

“Don’t be a puissant, haven’t you ever wondered what we could do if we were ever really allowed to let loose?”

“The mistress won’t be best please.”

“Quel domage, we’re not her slaves, if she don’t like it, she can get herself anozher enchanted castle.”

“Maybe we should talk about this a wee moment before—“

They were interrupted by the sound of a dog barking. It started out oddly muffled to Rumple’s ear as the voices had before, but as he focused on it it became louder and sharper and suddenly there was another sound, one he didn’t have to struggle to hear, like wooden table legs scuffling and scratching on the wooden door.  How very odd. 

“Oh well now ye’ve done it.  That’s Otto then, he’ll be wanting to come in.”

“Then open ze door.”

“I will not!”

There were several clinks like that of china tea set moving across the floor on a rolling tray.  Rumple opened an eye a crack--- it WAS a china tea set moving across the floor!  A blue patterned teapot stretched up from the rolling tray, did something to the doorknob and the door was flung open by an ottoman with four wooden legs, like a squat, broad chair.  It had dirty red upholstery with bedraggled golden tassels on two of its sides.  The ottoman burst into the room yapping and barking, snuffling around with one tasseled end for all the world exactly like a dog’s snout. 

Now Rumple had spent enough time as a runaway slave to know the dog was not a runaway’s friend; he’d seen others caught and nearly torn to pieces by the hunter’s packs sent out to find those like him.  He’d been lucky to escape that particular fate with little more than another broken nose— his last master had had an elderly female hound, excellent sense of smell, but pretty much toothless by the time she got a hold of Rumple, and still better fed and treated than the human “property” on the estate.

No wonder Rumple screamed and scrambled off the couch, falling to the floor in a heap once he heard the barking.

He held his hands up to his face, forgetting the ruse of being asleep in his panic—“Please please leave off—I’m not trying to escape!  I’m not!  N-n-nice d-d-doggie,” he stammered as he backed away unaware that he was moving in the direction of the fireplace.

“Arête!” shouted a crackling voice in a language he didn’t understand.

“Stop!  Watch where you’re going!” the tetchy voice located somewhere over the mantle screamed.

The command cut through the panic and Rumple stopped just before his bottom touched the fire. 

“Merci messieur,” said the magnanamous voice from the fireplace.  “Had you continued you vould most certainly ‘ave smothered me with your derriere.“

“Smothered?“  Rumple twisted to peer at the fire.  It had been damped down in anticipation of being smothered by his invading bottom, but now it flared back up into life again, crackling merrily. 

Rumple studied the flickering flames.  There was definitely something odd about them.  The gaps, where he could see the gray stone of the fireplace behind seemed to fall into the places where shadows would naturally occur in a brightly lit face.  The fire, despite its constantly moving, flickering, falling flames, never seemed to touch those spaces much, while concentrating the brightest of its light into certain spaces, so that if you unfocused your eyes a bit, the resemblance to a narrow, long nosed, friendly face was quite uncanny.

He reached out a hand—not to touch, but just to feel if it gave off real heat and the face opened its mouth and said quite flatly:

“Allo!”

In shock Rumple fell back in the other direction, but his head didn’t hit the floor.  He was caught, buoyed up by the strange dog-like ottoman and nudged, not ungently into a sitting position. 

Then the wet tassel-snout came snuffling around him.  Rumple stayed perfectly still as the knotted part nuzzled up against his ribs.  Against his better judgement he put his arm around it, like one would a friendly pet and was rewarded by the thumping of a longer, tail-like tassel on the other side. 

“You can talk!” he said to the fire.

A mantelclock with a semblance of a human face oddly superimposed on its clock face peered down from its height on the mantelpiece, the numbers “10” and “2” scrunched up in an expression of sarcastic scorn.  “Hmph, this one catches on fast doesn’t he?”

“Oh take no notice of Cogs, he’s always grumpy,” clucked a maternal voice.  Rumple’s gaze swivelled to the teapot on the wheely cart. 

“Always grumpy,” confirmed the little chipped teacup sitting beside her on the tray in a higher pitched child-like voice.  

“Now I just bet you’d like something a little more nourishing that whatever gruel it is you just had here am I right? Why don’t you just follow us down and we’ll show you the kitchen and the rest of the place?” she suggested as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

“I’d love that, but I’m hardly d-d-decent,” Rumple stammered.   “Have you anything around?  A few spare rags a fellow like me could wear?  I don’t think the Dark Lady would take kindly to me dragging her lovely bear skin through the castle.”

“Hmm, let’s see what we can do—“ whistled the teapot.  “But introductions first, m’dear.  I’m Mrs. Potts, housekeeper of this castle and this here is my son, Chip.”

“’Evening!” chirped Chip.

“Lumos is the fellow down there in the fireplace—“

“Enchante—“ bowed the fire in the grate.

“Does he stay there all the time?” Rumple couldn’t help asking questions in spite of himself.

“Oh no, he can travel to any fire in the castle, just as Cogs here can manifest himself in any timepiece on the grounds.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” grumbled the clock, “manifest, like a bloody apparition!” 

“Oh don’t mind him, he just woke up on the wrong side of the Prime Meridian.  Now let’s see what we can do about scrounging up some clothes for you.”

There was a sparkle like mineral dust in the air and suddenly the sheets were twisting themselves off the bed and the long curtains off the windows.  Rumple coughed in the dust, but barely had time to blink before he found the material, held by no earthly hands that he could discern, wrapping itself around him, circling his arms and legs and the narrow width of his chest, stretching him out, lifting him to stand.

“Help please!  What’s going on?” he protested in vain as the bed linens transformed themselves into a shirt, small clothes and stockings—the tailor in him appreciating how it seemed toall  be of one piece with no seams at all.  Then the faded velvet curtains, with their deep claret colour and white fleur de lise motif shed the hooks that had held them onto the curtain rods, like a dog shaking off a spray of water.  He watched amazed as the material, folded, scrunched, split and stretched as Mrs. Potts muttered about her hopelessness with modern fashion.  Pieces separated off until he could discern the clear shape of a jacket and pair of breeches.

Terrified of these apparently haunted items of apparel he huddled even tighter under his thick fur blanket, but there was no stopping the castle servants’ impressive powers of hospitality.  The clothing flew at him, like hawks diving into a field to catch their prey, swiftly encasing him before he had an opportunity to squirm away, shirts popping over his head and breeches sliding up his thighs with an alarming show of independence, hems and collars adjusting to his height and length without a tailor in sight to take them in. 

It was the lack of physical tailors to make the alternations, more than anything that astonished him, this being the human endeavor he was most knowledgeable about. Seeing the fabric buckled and stretched to fit him before his eyes, made it perfectly clear that whatever magic he was dealing with here was very very powerful.

In the weeks that would follow in Dark Castle of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, even when talking clocks, fires and china pots weren’t in view, just touching the sleeve of his own jacket, which still retained its thick, curtain style fabric and overlarge fleur de lis pattern was a constant remind that all that surrounded him was indeed magic, and, more importantly that it was all real.  Rumplestilskin hadn’t survived as a slave for as long as he had without reason.  A clever man, he knew would tread carefully in this place, and quietly too. 

Unfortunately, as it turned out, that wasn’t an option he had. 

Chapter Text

“Alright, now you can follow us downstairs without fear of shame.  Look lively now, we don’t have all day.  Who knows when the mistress might pop ‘round and—“

“Wait—I—might need some—“  Rumple made a grasping motion with his hand as if holding a stick.  “Stick of some kind, or two  if you have a couple?  Only if it’s not be too much trouble.”   

Actually back before he’d come to the castle he hadn’t had one.  When the damage to his foot became too great for him to walk easily they just gave him a small pallet of straw and a bucket to do his business beside the spinning wheel.  As long as he could sit and work, whether he could walk outside the little barn without assistance was of no concern to his owners.  The other slaves helped him out when they could, but he was always so ashamed to ask to be helped outside and worried what would happen if any of the overseers took notice of him, that he seldom voiced the question.  Only at night did he dare creep over to the little open window in the barn to watch the moon and stars come out.  He breathed in the scent of moist grass and remembered playing in the dew speckled fields as a boy, the smell of the fresh grass and tree bark after the rain.

“Well he’ll be useless as a proper house servant,” pronounced Cogs.  “Told you that’s not what she wanted him for.”

Rumple really wished they’d stop talking about him as if he was still asleep or couldn’t understand them. 

“Per’aps she haz fallen madly in love with him and wants him for her boudoir!” said Lumos with a flourish of sparks.

“Pish and tish,” tutted Cogs.  “You know if she needed a servant of the flesh she could’ve picked one with a more appealing odor or at least someone whose face wasn’t composed almost entirely of nose.  Though she is odd in her ways, I’ll give her that.”

“Cogs you’re the absolute definition of horrid!”  admonished Mrs. Potts.  “I think he looks sweet.  All the poor dear needs is a little feeding up and a good soak in the tub.  Maybe someone to be kind and gentle with him for once instead of—“

“He’s not a stray dog for you to coddle you know.   The mistress never does anything without a purpose and she’s going to want us not to interact with him until she establishes some proper rules and regulation surrounding his upkeep and purpose here.” 

“Well listen to you, Mr. Official-brown noser,” puffed Mrs. Potts.

“Why mademoiselle Potts, how unladylike an observation!” said Lumos. “I must admit I do concur.” 

“Et tu Lumos?”

 “Here—“ Lumos gestured with a sweep of a fiery hand.  “Take some pokers from my fire.” 

Rumple stared.  Why did the sight of the awful black metal things make him physically sick to his stomach? He himself had never been branded, but he’d seen them do it to others.  Still, it wasn’t just that, there was something about the metal implements that made his skin itch and his scalp crawl. 

“Please—I c-can’t.  I can’t have those--” he stammered as the black sticks floated threateningly closer. 

“What?  Why?”

 “Jeez Lumos you really are an idiot! How do you expect him to move around with those heavy things, look at those scrawny arms, he could barely lift Mrs. Potts to serve tea let alone two full size iron pokers,” humphed Cogs.

“Oh, yes, my apologies, it’s been so long since we were human that—Well once we get you downstairs we’ll see what we can find.”

“Amateurs,” scolded Cogs.  “As head butler I believe this is my purvey. Stay put and I’ll be back in a tic.”

 “And I believe zat’s our cue!” sang Lumos and his fiery face disappeared from the grate in a puff of ash. 

Mrs. Potts gave a cough and a sigh.  “Thirty years and he still forgets not to do that!” Chip hovered over her with a tea towel to clean off the worst of the smudges.  “He so loves to wind Cogs up, he does,” she said with a shake of her lid.

“A clock joke!  I’ll have to save that one for the next time he calls me hot-headed,” laughed Chip. 

“Now that’s enough Chip.  Otto!” whistled Mrs. Potts, and the Ottoman leapt up and under Rumple.  “Now you’ve ridden a horse bareback before haven’t you me lad?” she asked Rumple.

“Uh—“ to tell the truth the closest thing he’d ever got was being allowed on another child’s pony as a six year old. 

“Straddle the beast and hang on tight to his mane!” she directed him, with a wave of her spout.

Rumple look around for some kind of mane, but ended up grabbing the ottoman’s front tassel as the closest thing available.  “Now what?”

“Now you tell him ‘Otto, downstairs—‘ He understands that much, whether a dog or piece of furniture—“

“Ot-tto,” said Rumple uncertainly, his voice cracking on the syllables, “Downstai—“

But before he could even finish the word, Otto the canine ottoman was off like a shot with Rumple bumping up and down on his back, hanging on for dear life to the front tassel, while the back tassel thrashed around behind him, like a tail wagging with doggy happiness.

Otto flew out the door down the hall to the landing.

“Wait, wait!”  cried a terrified Rumple, but this apparently wasn’t a direction it understood.  Rumple closed his eyes tight as they rushed towards the stairs. 

BUMP BUMP BUMP and more bumps.  As the air whooshed past his cheeks he felt his heart leap into his mouth. 

And then just as suddenly, squat wooden chair legs were skittering along the marble floor below.  Rumple opened his eyes to find they had landed securely on the main floor and were bouncing off in a slightly more sedate fashion towards the enticing smells of the kitchen. 

Chapter Text

Belle heard a slight shifting of the gears in the clock on the mantle of her laboratory. A face appeared in the clock, a nose growing quickly out of the round circle where the minute and hour hand were affixed to, numbers two and eleven morphing into eye-like shapes.

“Cogs, is it dinner already?”

“Past Madame,” the butler, with his patented gravitas.

“What are we having then?”

“Cook had whipped up a delicious kidney pie and venison stew with a side dish of lemon risotto and a chocolate gateau with raspberry crumble for desert.”

“Hmm, well I am quite busy testing the metal of this chain with a variety of magical solvents. Perhaps it might be better if I just ported it up.” She extended her hand to prepare for a magical teleportation, the purple light of her power glowing in her palm moving down towards her fingers for the release of the spell, when---

“No, no no, Mistress—“

“What?”

“Um, I said had whipped up because, there was, um, a slight problem.”

“A slight problem? How could there be a problem? This castle runs on magic, don’t tell me the food was burnt because I won’t—“

“Your prisoner my lady—“

“He’s awake,” she finished for him.

“It appears so.”

She gripped the edge of the table an unfamiliar emotion sweeping over her, fear, anger… excitement?

It really had been too long since anything had stirred up her routine, since any puzzle had truly challenged her vast mental resources in the least. Still, if the peasant had touched any of her priceless treasures…

“What has he done?” she asked, letting anger colour her voice.

“Um,” the little pendulum in the belly of the clock bobbed up and down as Cogs gave an anxious gulp. “Ate most of your supper?”

XXXXXXX

Cogs’s clock face emerged silently back into the kitchen to look over the terrible spectacle.

The “guest” had eaten most of the mistress’s dinner, although where he could have possibly stored it in his scrawny, underfed body, Cogs had no idea. Perhaps he was completely hollow?

Not only had he eaten it, he hadn’t even used any of the appropriate silverware. Cogs shuddered as he watched this Rumplestilskin upstart lick gelatinous raspberry smears off his fingers with a disturbingly long tongue, that brought to his mind the image of a lizard.

“I d-d-don’t think I’ve been this full since I was a lad!” Rumple smiled, looking up from his meal.

“You have raspberry on your nose!” laughed little Chip.

Rumple glance at his wobbly reflection in a shiny metal plate. “Oooh, I suppose I do,” he laughed and rubbed it off, leaving a great red smear across one of the mistress’s fine linen napkins.

“And I suppose you’re pleased with y’self are you?” humphed Cogs. “Having eaten your hostess’s supper and dirtied her dishes and linen. Some guest you are!”

“Oh dear!” Rumple’s face fell. “I didn’t know. What am I going to do?”

“Oh don’t fret so!” said Mrs. Potts with a sharp glance at Cogs. “Belle eats maybe a quarter of this food every night and the rest gets vapourized since none of us eat. Being a tea kettle really does a number on one’s appetite you see.”

“There’s still the matter of the mess,” said Cogs sourly.

“Well that’s no problem,” said Rumple with a small smile. “I’ll just tidy it up. I mean look at the cobwebs in the corners and the limescale all over that sink. I used to do a lot of cleaning back when I was a---“ He stopped short of saying slave. The word still made him feel ashamed and he wasn’t sure if his new friends were aware of his origins. Best he not tell them, or they might treat him differently, he thought. “A house servant,” he finished. “I would really like a chance to earn my keep around here.”

“Hmmm, well you might at least try to look the part,” grumbled Cogs with a grudging glance at Rumple’s shoes. “But you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, I suppose.”

Rumple looked down in dismay. After raiding the completely mud free “servants’ mud room” downstairs with Lumos’s help he’d found a serviceable pair of black leather shoes with tarnished brass buckles that fit perfectly, on his good foot anyway. Even with the application of the servants’ household magics, the only thing that would stay on the other foot was a woman’s satin dancing slipper with long lacy ribbons that criss-crossed up the calf. He discovered the lacing ribbons were actually quite helpful for holding the shoe in place and was actually quite pleased with the result. This mismatched pair were the first real shoes Rumple had worn in years, since before he’d been brought to the Duke in fact, when his father pawned the old wooden soled ones his aunts had bought him. When his outfit was completed with a pair of spiffy, but quite functional gold handled walking sticks they’d found languishing in a cracked umbrella stand Rumple had thought his get-up quite smart. Obviously he still had a long way to go.

He did so want to at least try to look the part of respectable caretaker and servant for such a large and distinguished estate. But who was he kidding if he couldn’t even convince a talking clock? The situation was hopeless. And after everyone had been so nice to him too!

Rumple put his face in his hands, his shoulders slumped with defeat.

Suddenly, he felt the cool touch of porcelain on his cheek. “There, there now,” crooned Mrs. Potts’s friendly voice. “Don’t listen to that old grump. You’re going to do fine! After all, you have us to help you now.”

“I guess,” answered Rumple uncertainly.

“Now, let’s have a think a figure out what you could do to make the Mistress happy?”

“Maybe she’ll feel better if I clean up a bit.!”

“There now that’s the ticket!” cheered Mrs. Potts. “Chip, why don’t you give him a hand with the supplies, you need the practice.”

“Sure Momma!” Chip found it a little more difficult to use magic than the adults around him did. Scrunching his eyes up and squeezing his tiny porcelain body down with effort until he looked more like a plate than a cup, he gave a little hiccup, and then in a flash, a series of cleaning implements popped into existence around the sink.

“Well done Chip!” applauded Lumos with two flaming candlesticks. “You know I’ve never seen him move that many objects at once before!”

“I never had cause,” smiled Chip shyly.

Energized by his new friends’ show of confidence, Rumple pushed himself up and made his way over to the water pump and sink.

It was only much later that Rumple realized that far from creating liquid soap from mid-air, Chip had taken a shortcut. Only years later did, Rumple recognize the purple sea sponges and personal collection of shampoos and bubble baths as expenisve objects belonging to Belle’s toiletry items. But at that moment Rumple was blissfully unaware as Chip, Lumos and Mrs. Potts passed him the dirty pots and dishes with their magic. He was pleased to discover he could keep both hands free, standing up for as long as he wanted, with the helpful addition of a chair to rest his right knee on.

In time he got into a rhythm washing the dishes. With Mrs. Potts an Lumos heating the water and Chip jumping in and out of the sink like a child in a swimming pond, Rumple soon found himself quite merry indeed and so, when Mrs. Potts and Chip began to sing a silly children’s ditty, he found himself naturally joining in.

Belle gazed down the stairwell to the kitchen as, for the first time in centuries, the song “Froggie Came A-Courting and he did Ride” assailed her ears and shook her head in amazement. Even as the scents of her favourite soap and bubble bath emerged from the steamy air coming out of the kitchen she couldn’t really dredge up the necessary indignation the situation required.

Instead she lingered just beyond the doorway, in shadow where the little group in the kitchen couldn’t see her, her head cocked like a curious cocker spaniel’s and listened.

How in the world had she chosen to invite such chaos into her well ordered world? Why did a simple children song suddenly make her feel awake for the first time in years?

Chapter Text

Rumple, Lumos, Mrs. Potts and Chip were singing and washing up in the kitchen.

“The next to come in was a big black sna---“

Suddenly, Chip stopped singing in the middle of a lyric. His eyes darted to the side and he waggled his painted porcelain eyebrows expressively at his mother.

“The Mistress—“ Mrs. Potts mouthed silently to Lumos who was still blithely singing.

He quickly clammed up, too, leaving Rumple’s cracked tenor, the only instrument to carry the melody.

Rumple raised his gaze from a large serving dish, distracted. “What? Why’d you stop?”

Lumos silently motioned one of his candlestick arms over to the doorway behind them.

“Aah—“ Rumple nearly staggered back in distress, luckily remembering he had one knee on a chair, just in time to save himself from an embarrassing spill.

“M’lady.” Edging his knee off the chair, a wet tea cup still held in one hand, the other gripping the ledge of the sink he sketched an awkward bow. It was not meant to be so deep and Rumple had some difficult in rising, the sweat trickling down his back between his shoulder blades at his latest fumble.

A small half-smile flickered momentarily inching up La Belle Dame Sans Merci’s pale white cheek. She hid it quickly though quickly as soon as Rumple raised his head.

“Don’t stop on my account,” she said, in a voice like cool cut glass. The accent was class all the way, thought Rumple, but regionless. She could have been from next door to the Frontlands or a million miles away. Like her dragonscale armour, that covered her up to her neck, her voice gave nothing away, other than power, it’s echoing range, something a little more than the normal human voicebox was capable of.

“May I present Rumplestilskin, your new caretaker—“ announced Lumos, faking confidence Rumple thought he did not possess.

“What’s he wearing?”

“Eh, we thought it pertinent to outfit him for his new duties, Mistress, hence the use of your curtains, and the liberation of a few, um, unused items from the mudroom.”

She walked closer to Rumple as she spoke, something oddly serpentine about her graceful movements.

“Ah, well I suppose he couldn’t go about in those rags he arrived him, certainly wouldn’t add to my status in the community if we had any visitors, now would it?”

“No M’Lady.”

“Although taking two gold handled walking sticks was a little bit greedy, don’t you think?”

“It’s alright, he needs them for walking otherwise he’d just be hopping around and couldn’t do the cleaning. There’s something wrong with his foot—it looks like a dried up leaf and doesn’t do anything. Maybe you could fix him like you mended me when I fell off the shelf?” hinted Chip. “Then he could be better at sweeping and carrying stuff.”

Rumple couldn’t really be angry with the innocent little teacup, not for pointing out the truth in his child-like way, but he still blushed fiercely under the Belle Dame Sans Merci’s gaze. He studied the minute stitches in the monogrammed hem of his new linen shirt, well aware of Belle moving closer, standing right next to him now, her eyes roving over every inch of his meagre person, invading his personal space. He winced as sharp clawed fingers walked themselves down his shoulder, a strong grip stretching out his thin arm turning it this way and that. Every second he braced for those terrifying claws to dig into his flesh and run him through, but though uncomfortably near, she didn’t so much as scratch him.

When she left off touching him, it was odd, but he almost wished she’d continue. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind so much, just a little bit of a scratch. Suddenly, his mind was flying off to old memories, overheard stories in the pubs his father used to frequent with him in tow; stronger men than he would ever be, laughing with bawdy delight, pulling up a rough workshirt to show four thin scrapes on his back, scratches on the sides of his ribs, and even as a child Rumple knew marks of passion when he saw them. “Now that the wife’s with child—by the gods is she gasping for it, all the time every night. Never seen anyting like it. I tell you, if it weren’t for what comes after, I’d get that bird pregnant more often.”

Belle quirked an eyebrow at Rumple’s distant gaze, time to bring him back to the room. She grasped his chin in one of her claws, firmly, but without hurting him.

“Hmmmmm… I think I prefer you as you are, won’t have to worry about you running off very far now, will I?”

“Yes M’lady!”

She cocked her head like a slightly bemused parrot. “You mean I WILL have to worry about you running off?”

“No M’lady! Er yes, I mean yes I can’t run off, so no you won’t have to worry, aye. But I—I didn’t mean—I mean, even if I could, I- I wouldn’t, I mean, where would I go? Your servants have clothed and fed me! You gave me a bed to sleep in in your castle and food by the fire and real shoes and sticks to hold myself up again and I won’t be useless to you, I promise! If you let me live, if you let me stay, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll work so hard and—and I’ll never forget. I couldn’t, not ever, even if you didn’t mean it. You and Lumos and Mrs. Potts and Chip and even Cogs—you treated me like a person and helped me and you’re the first one to do anything for me, the first one in forever and don’t think if you let me stay I’ll ever forget!” declared Rumple.

His eyes were wet with tears, but he held them back and closed his mouth not sure where the sudden stream of words had come from. He’d really messed it up now, he thought. It was bad enough to have a lame servant, let alone one with the defect of speaking his mind entirely too freely and yet---

And yet, he wanted her to know—to know that her kindness MATTERED. In this unending ocean of darkness and cruelty that had been his life for far too many years, her generosity was like a beacon of light drawing him up and onward. Her light, bestowed unintentionally, bringing him back to life-- oh, he would run toward it, that light, if only he could.

Chapter Text

“So?” twittered Belle sweeping into the room in a gown with a skirt made of four giant months’ wings and a bustier made out of a single enormous fly thorax. “What do you think?”

Jefferson gave the ensemble a critical once over. “Needs a hat.”

“You always say that.”

“How else do you think I stay in business?” He took a tidy sip of his tea and shrugged.

“Touche.”

“Excellent tea by the way. I was expecting that usual magic brown sludge you put up with, but this is rather nice. I detect notes of—“ he smacked his lips. “Mmmmm, cranberry and cocoa bean if I’m not mistaken.”

Behind the door where he lurked unobtrusively eavesdropping while ostensibly polishing a crystal vase, Rumple blushed with pride. The combination had been his concoction from Belle’s own garden.

“You know,” said Jefferson with a meditative lingering sip, “I don’t think I’ve ever actually been summoned to the dark castle by you before.”

“Hmmmm…” hummed Belle in what she hoped a neutral expression of mild interest.

“It’s always me knocking on your door with something to trade—a favour to request—never in all our history together as—“ he couldn’t quite bring himself to say “friends,” La Belle Dame Sans Merci didn’t have anything so prosaic as friends, but hesitated on the words “business associates.” That sounded too much like equals and might insult her. Colleuges wasn’t quite right either. While they did do business with each other on occasion their association had more to do with the overlapping enemies they shared than anything else. He decided on “collaborators” as the least likely term to give offense.

“Never in our history as collaborators have you summoned me yourself.”

“Is that so?” She stirred her tea languidly in its cup.

“And I’ve been itching to know why,” he continued. “Why an enchanted and between ourselves, rather Chatty Cathy, carriage practically dragged me here making me think I’d arrive to find the whole place ablaze and your garden lain to waste and not only do I arrive to find not a stone out of place, but apparently you’ve hired on new help! I know I have no right to ask you dearest sphinx for an explanation, but I’m just a shade perplexed.”

“Well, don’t get your knickers in a knot. I just wanted your opinion about something.”

“I already told you, the dress—“

“Honestly Jefferson, really?”

“What?”

“That’s too cute. You think I give a fig what anyone thinks about what I wear after all these years? I’m the bloody Belle Dame Sans Merci. I wear whatever I like and people are too busy being petrified, knocking their knees in fear of my terrifying reptilian visage to notice my appreciation for fine tailoring.”

“I notice.”

“And that is why dearest Hatter, you are one in a million.”

“Trues of course, but what do you wish my opinion for my lady? If it’s the tea then—“

“Not the tea, the one who made it.”

“Ah, your new caretaker. Like I said, he makes a good cuppa.”

“He answered the door, took your coat and you followed him in to my parlour. You had time to look at him. Anything that stood out as peculiar in your eyes?

“Nothing sinister, I just wondered why you would hire a lame butler, that’s all.”

She shrugged, an elegant, almost serpentine motion of scaled shoulders. “Maybe I like to keep people waiting. Also, as you said, he makes good tea. Anything else stand out about him? Anything, mmmhhh---how best to say it—supernatural, otherworldly, weird?”

Jefferson snorted. “You can’t be serious! I mean he sounds like a Frontlands peasant, common as dirt on the ground in the right environment, nothing unusual. Why are you asking me? Shut my mouth!” He put his cup and saucer down on the table with a clatter. “Don’t tell me he’s the secret heir to the throne of Misthaven or something! Because good lord, if that’s the case then have you got your work cut out for you”!

Belle laughed, the sound like many sets of dissonant bells tinkling, high pitched and out of time, otherworldy and weird. It made even Jefferson, the hardened adventurer of a thousand dimensions shiver.

“Oh you are too ridiculous! What plays have you been attending I’d like to know! I’m asking because you’re the only person I know who has travelled to the other realms, journey into untold new worlds through countless dimensions unknown. You would know, if no one else does-- does he look, smell or sound anything like people do in any of those other places you’ve been to?”

“You are asking me if he is something more or less than a normal human from this world.”

“You said his accent sounds like a Frontlands peasant. Rack your brains, are you absolutely certain it couldn’t be anything else?”

“Why?”

“If I tell you I’ll have to bind the words to you.”

“Come now we’ve known each other for how long? When have I betrayed you? You can trust me!”

“And I do, but I have many enemies. They have powers to extract the information from you, even if you don’t wish to disclose it. If I bind the words to you, you will not be able to speak what I tell you to another living soul as long as you live. Then only I will be able to unbind the words and extract the secret from you. Do you consent to the binding?”

“When you make it sound so comfortable how could I demure?” he asked sarcastically. “I assume you will have a task for me, one that I’ll be handsomely rewarded for if I consent to this?”

“Yes.”

“Then fine, I consent.”

“Jefferson Madden, walker between dimensions, heir to the hat historic of Wonderland, I bind thee by this name and all others you may possess, until such time as I release you from your secret, agreed?” She spoke the incantation rapidly.

“Agreed,” he said and bowed his head.

A brief sparkle of gold left her finger tips and flew across the room towards him. Before he had a chance to recant his vow it found him, darted between his parted lips and slipped down his gullet, feeling warm and vaguely cinnamon tasting, like a sip of hot tea.

“My apologies,” she said with a nervous gesture of the hands. Distantly, he reflected how characteristic this was of her, to appear uncomfortable with these small, intimate displays of magic performed in private in ways she never seemed to be in public, with her grand sweeping gestures and large acts of magic. “But it was necessary to protect myself.”

“From him?”

“Possibly, but the more I grow to know him, sense his lack of animosity towards me, the more I feel the danger would likely arise from those who’d find a way to use him against me. Once they know the monster’s weakness who knows what they’ll think they can do?” She called herself “monster” flippantly and bared her pointed teeth in a self-deprecating grin at him, but there was something in the gesture that almost made him feel sad for her.

Her weakness…

Looking up over the rim of the teacup Jefferson’s gaze softened as he looked at her face, her attention distracted by something at the bottom of her teacup, her expression for once unguarded. There seemed something gentler about her cutting remarks today, though perhaps he was just imagining it. The bronze scales on her face which denoting the place of eyebrows in a mere mortal, turned down in incipient ferocity just as much as they always had and yet, here she was, admitting that this simple man, common as dirt, was her weakness. How was that possible? What was the only weakness someone as powerful as her could ever have? Love. That had been his. Love for his wife. Then love his daughter. Hadn’t the Queen of Hearts told him as much—love is weakness. It let them have something to hold over your head. He of all people should know.

“You love him,” he marvelled out loud to her. “You’re worried someone might kidnap him to try to draw you out and trap you.”

“What?” she laughed, no longer like tinkling bells, but like the twittering of an entire flock of starlings greeting the dawn. “Are you mad? No, no no don’t answer that, I already know. Jefferson, I always figured you for a romantic, but that’s a bit of a stretch even for you. La Belle Sans Merci doesn’t DO love. But…” and here she drummed her sharp black talons upon the table. “He does seem to confound my magic. Somehow, whatever magic I try to perform upon his person backfires on me. Other spells I try to execute-- just with him in the general vicinity go wrong, teleports winding up off target, that sort of thing. Nothing I can do through magic can touch him.”

“Which is why you have a limping butler. You can’t fix whatever’s wrong with him.”

“Ah, and there’s another mystery. I discovered him as a slave. While I released the others using magic, my spells didn’t work to release him. Initially I thought his shackle was cursed or contained some sort of poison that had seeped into his flesh and damaged him over time. But I tested the shackle, the chain, the leg iron and all the rest of the apparatus and could detect not the faintest trace of magic. It was a perfectly ordinary piece of iron without a single spell upon it. Which lead me to the conclusion that it’s nothing to do with the shackle, but with the man himself. He is something I can’t classify, something I’ve never encountered before and I want you to find out what he is— and then perhaps if there are more of his kind, and they are not so benign as he is, then I can discover some way to protect myself and my magic.”

“Aaaalright, how do you propose I do this? Have you tried just asking him what he is where he comes from?”

“Of course,” she tapped irritably on the table. “Administer truth serum was the first thing I did, but even that—it doesn’t seem to be processed by his body the same way you or I would process it. I think he was telling me the truth about all he knew of his origins, and yet—I couldn’t help but feel there was something—something missing if you know what I mean?”

“Not really.”

“Let’s face the facts. I’m supposedly a demon from your worst nightmares according to most humans, not the ideal confidante by any stretch of the imagination. Why would he tell me anything at all of his own volition? The moment I walk into a room people feel threatened, dogs’ hackles rise. But you? You’re handsome, you’re charming, a little eccentric perhaps, but still a regular, relatable guy.”

“Ah my Lady you flatter me, but don’t forget the realm-jumping through the magic hat bit.”

“Well yes, but other than the hat thing, I was just thinking that …. Maybe, maybe he’d talk to you. He’s so quiet with me and—“

“So you want me to take him out to a tavern, get him stinking and hope he’ll confess the secret of his anti-magic while drunk?”

“Um, okay, if that’s how you want to do it, but I really think it might work best if you spent a little time with him. He’s been maltreated, you see, so he’s rather skittish. It takes a while to earn his trust.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“Well, I have an assignment I might send you two off on. Nothing requiring too complicated magic, only a bit of shrinking mushroom and some talent with a needle and thread. I believe you have the requisite funghi and skill.”

“That I do, but what justification would you have for letting him tag along with me?”

“Mmmm… he might be a bit of a needle and thread man himself.”

“You don’t say.”

Chapter Text

Jefferson went out to the terrace overlooking the garden with La Belle Dame Sans Merci.  Exotic foliage of a thousand worlds spread out beneath them and birds unheard of in natural local forests sang from the high boughs of the trees that grew beside the steps he would have to descend to the garden.   Though,  “deadly jungle compressed into  single half-acre of land” might be a more apt expression than merely “garden” for it.

“He’s down there?”

“Of course.”

“Aren’t you a little concerned about him, what with all the carnivorous plants around?"   "Oh, he’s a grown man, he can take care of himself.  Really, I’ve had to rescue him from the Venusian Mega-fauna section only once.  For all their fearsome reputation, the flytraps are rather undiscerning, not having eyes or a brain you see.  They merely digested his clothes and left him unharmed if a little shaken.”

Jefferson’s wasn’t sure what to think about that. Picturing the caretaker falling naked to the ground, emitted by a slimy belch from Venusian Mega-Flytrap, right in front of the most powerful sorceress in the land, he felt acutely self-conscious for the obviously shy man, despite having never even been in the vicinity when the incident occurred.  Belle, had that effect on people he supposed, made you check to make sure your undergarments weren’t suddenly on the outside for some reason. “How do you suggest I proceed with him?” he asked her. 

She trailed a black talon through the water of a bird bath on the terrace.  He knew it was a bird bath because dozens of birds had been bathing in its crystal waters when they opened the double doors to go outside.  He had noticed more than once, taking tea with her in the courtyard outdoors that the moment birds spied La Belle Dame Sans Merci, or even sensed she was close they fled her presence. 

“Silly things,” she laughed as she watched them fly away over the treetops, pointed teeth gleaming in the sunlight. “I’ll chalk it up to their nasty habit of consorting with fairies.  You know how those damned creatures talk.  As to how you’ll proceed with him, and by that I assume with my reticent caretaker, well,” she gave an eloquent shrug.   “You’re creative, I’m sure you’ll think of something.  Enjoy the garden. “ She waved her hand and the smoke of teleportation began to envelope her, “Just don’t touch the roses.”

“What happens if I--?”  but by then she was gone.

Jefferson walked down the winding garden path, further into Belle’s artificially created jungle. Though there was no glass to suggest a greenhouse, somehow she had contrived to keep the humidity levels unpleasantly sticky for someone dressed in a top hat, thick cravat and wool lined coat.  Folding his coat over his arm, Jefferson rolled up his shirt sleeves and opened his brightly coloured plaid vest.  For someone who took pains to cultivate the aura of being at home in a thousand realms he felt uncharacteristically uncomfortable.

Over the hum of insects and the twittering of birds, came the distinct sounds of Frontlands curse words, muttered in the characteristic peasant accent.  If the caretaker really was from another world, Jefferson thought, his act was flawless.  Now what had been that dratted man’s name?  Now that he thought about it he wondered if La Belle Dame Sans Merci had even mentioned it.  Typical her.  Did he know any common Frontlands names?  Hector?  Robert? James? Fernando?  Alloyious?   No, none of those seemed right. 

But before he could figure it out, the path took an unexpected bend, (one he could’ve sworn hadn’t been there before), and Jefferson came directly upon the caretaker in question or rather, under him.

Ascending to the heights of the second story of the dark castle was a complex scaffolding structure.  Dizzyingly tall poles of criss-crossed bamboo sticks supported climbing plants with large leaves the size of a human hand.  Jefferson saw enormous pea pods, the length of his forearm clustered around the tops of the vines, heavy with mature peas, each the size of a small fist.  

Strangest of all, hovering up there among the giant pea pods, kneeling on a fully mature, unbelievably rare Agrabanian four-tasselled carpet, was the caretaker, with a straw basket on his back, hands encased in thick leather gloves, wielding a huge pair of pruning shears.   As Jefferson watched the caretaker cut one of the pea pods off.  He caught it nimbly in one gloved hand as it fell, tossed it into the straw basket on his back in one fluid motion, while still making sure to pull back the carpet with his other hand.  In a practiced motion the caretaker and carpet-creature dodged as a strange whip-like vine emerged from the oozing part of the stem where he had made the cut.  It uncurled and sprang out with a terrible SNAP to whip the air where the caretaker had been not a moment before.

Not expecting this Jefferson jumped back and screamed, stumbling over some trailing roots lying on the path behind him.  He fell in an undignified heap on the flagstones.  Distracted by the sound, the caretaker looked down.  When the whip-like vine snapped again he only managed to dart back in time to avoid the brunt of its force.  The tip of the pale whip still managed to flick the caretaker across the cheek, though he seemed not to notice it as he the carpet he knelt on shot down to Jefferson’s level with stomach-dropping speed.

“M-m-master Jefferson,” he stammered.  “Are you—are you alright?”

Chapter Text

XX

“M-m-master Jefferson,” he stammered.  “Are you—are you alright?”

“Fine, fine, nothing injured but my pride and a custom made suit of clothes.” Frankly Jefferson would’ve rather emerged with a slight physical injury, rather than soil his new pair of striped trousers, he’d had specifically tailored for this Belle-visiting occasion, to excentuate his--- now how had the tailor put it--- “glorious bottom.”  Personally, he thought they were a little tight around the waist, but who was he to prove an obstacle to fashion?  To Jefferson’s mind, it was the duty of a haberdasher, milner and closet realm-jumper to serve as a walking advertisement of his wares.  For friends in the garment trade, he provided visibility to their latest styles and they returned the favour, making sure to be seen in all his best, most expensive hats.  It was a complex business, built on reciprocal favours of favours of favours over many years, one that clearly—running his gaze over the caretaker by his side, this particular fellow had never heard of. 

Idly, he wondered, if given some time and several choice bolts of cloth, what sort of ensemble might best suit the caretaker’s meagre form.  It was a game he frequently played in his mind with other people to keep from getting bored, but he did tend to play it at the wrong times, giving him a rather “spaced-out” air to those who didn’t know any better.  In reality he had quite a sharp, if somewhat rambling intellect, but appearances could be deceiving.

“Are you sure you aren’t hurt?” asked the worried caretaker.  From his perch on the floating carpet somewhere above Jefferson’s head he held out a gloved hand.   “Would you let me help you up?”

Jefferson let himself be helped back onto his feet, surprised at the unexpected strength in the thin man’s grasp.    Standing now, he withdrew his hand, only to find it sticky with the giant pea plant’s sap.   He tried to brush the gooey mess off on his trousers, only to find his hand stuck on the cloth at his hip.  Undeterred, Jefferson gave his hand a good yank.  There was a tearing sound of popping seams.  He had managed to unstick his hand, but now his trousers were torn up the side. 

“Oh of all the silly--!”  Jefferson exclaimed in frustration.

Rumple cringed away from the shouts, clearly terrified.  “I’m sorry,” his voice wobbled.  “I should’ve warned you.  I d-d-din’t think to—“

“Don’t worry, easily mended.”

 “T-t-terribly sorry.  I—we—the Mistress so rarely have visitors, you took me by surprsie.  Wha—what are you doing here?” he asked, perplexed.  Suddenly, a second thought occurred to him and he blanched down to the tip of his sunburnt nose in fear.   “Belle—the Mistress—is she all right?  What’s happened?  Please, sir is she ill, does she need my help?”

Jefferson cocked his head at the caretaker.  He would’ve laughed at the thought of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the infamous, immortal Dark Lady, the most powerful user of dark magic their world had seen in thousands of years in need of rescue by this tiny, crippled caretaker, if not for the look in the man’s large brown eyes. There was none of that common male arrogance there, only concern, caring and was that…love?  

It seemed impossible, but Jefferson would’ve bet money on it now—That small, awkward man, would’ve thrown himself at a fire breathing dragon for her, and not because like many a knight, overconfident in his abilities he believed he’d best the beast in combat--he clearly had no illusions on that score—but simply because… he loved her?  Was it possible? 

Although Jefferson had traipsed the boundaries of a thousand realms, inside he was still an ordinary man, with fairly common desires.  What Jefferson possessed that other men did not was an unusually large perspective.  When you have seen the results of the same natural human drives played out again and again against the backdrops of vastly different societies and civilizations by people of every conceivable level of status and power you gain a distance from common emotional entanglements, not enough to change your own fate much, he was the first to admit, but enough to discern patterns, to gain some degree of understanding.   What you lost, unfortunately, was the ability to simply exist in the moment of passion, to go with the flow of lust and love without worrying about the future.  It was difficult to leave all planning at the door where romance was concerned and let things take their natural course.

A person like La Belle Dame Merci, ageless and all powerful, he thought could not be loved in the conventional sense.  She inspired fear and awe on behalf of the populace, yes, perhaps mixed with a dash of the lust for the unattainable, combined with and instinctual envy and hate of such injudiciously bestowed power, wielded by a woman in their male dominated society, but this emotion was not love.  The hatter had gone snark hunting in the innermost forests of Wonderland.  He knew of men who sought out creatures of terrible beauty like the flaming tigress of the High Nile because they wish to possess it, to prove their power, men who would attempt touch the unattainable dragon of heaven and try to tame it and steal its pearls of wisdom for themselves, not to become wise, but simply to prove that they could do it.  Plenty of men had tried to possess Belle, had wished to control her power, and she had delighted in their destruction, but none, as far as he knew had ever loved her. An ordinary person did not, could not love a being like La Belle Dame Sans Merci. He’d always assumed she was above such emotions and had no wish to be brought down to earth by such trivial human attachment. She was the type of woman who liked to keep even her closest friends at a distance.   Even he was wary of getting to close to her.  The worms in her garden soil were testament to the transformative fate that awaited those that overstepped their bounds.  

So this man’s feelings for her, could they be the result of a a glamour then?  It was a common enough usage of magic, but he’d never heard of Belle utilize her power to inspire love or mindless devotion  from someone else.  She’d always seemed hesitant to use her magic to coersce another person, even in the mildest of ways.  The ever-perceptive Hatter had always surmised that there was something more to that hesitancy.  There had to be, when every practitioner of dark magic seemed to take up the wand for that power alone and really, the spells for obedience were some of the easiest to craft and come by.  It had always struck him as odd that she would go out of her way to avoid them, using complicated, convoluted means to achieve a result that could have been had with a single, simple command spell.

Jefferson had long suspected a spell like that might’ve been used on her once, back when she was human-- or perhaps some other method of coercision, even more barbaric, to take from her the one thing she didn’t want to give up.  He knew this about her, that she had been human at one point, long, long ago.  She had been careful to erase the traces of her past, but Jefferson needed to know exactly whom he dealt with.  If he was going to risk his life procuring rare treasures for someone from distant lands, he’d prefer the items not be put to uses he found morally repugnant at a bare minimum. He was not a complete mercenary, after all. 

The little caretaker stared down at Jefferson worriedly from his place on the carpet.   “Mistress Belle--?”

“What, no, she’s fine,” Jefferson dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand.

“Oh, that’s good, um---  I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of making your formal acquaintance.”

“Jefferson the Hatter, realm jumper and haberdasher to the stars, at your service,” said Jefferson with a deep bow and a sweep of his tall top hat from his curling wild hair.  “And you are?”

Rumple blushed at having to recount his ridiculously long name to a stranger.  He tended to alternate between being completely silent and babbling in a frightful rush when nervous.   Jefferson was the first person in human form he’d seen in months since he’d come to work for Belle and so today his introductions came out in a rush: “Um, Rumple, I mean it’s really Rumplestilskin, but everybody says oh that’s a mouthful, which you know, I understand, so people call me Rumple or Rum for short, which is fine too, I don’t mind.  I mean, people used to call me all sorts of really horrid names, the nicer ones just called me Hobblefoot-- which I hated, because I know I have this foot, but it’s not like I enjoy being reminded of it all the time and it’s not my name, not who I actually am, you know? But I was a sla—servant back then for some very unpleasant people, so I didn’t really have much say in the matter and name-calling was really the least of it.  I mean, I’m a kind of servant here too, being the caretaker and all that, but it’s very different, Lady Belle doesn’t treat me like a—I mean she isn’t like my former masters at all and she---“

“I think I get the picture,” said the hatter, his eyes twinkling back up at Rumple.  “You know what?  I think we’re going to have an interesting day together.”

“To-g-gether? Wait, I thought you were going back to--”

“Well, Belle’s gone off on an errand and she thought, since you’ve been here all this time with no one to talk to but the cutlery it might please you to hit the town with me.”

“The town?” the caretaker squeaked almost falling off his carpet.  “Hit the t-t-town--?”

“I mere figure of speech.  I meant, maybe we could take a break from the castle, go for a pint at the pub, check out the market, you know?”

“But I’m not allowed to leave the castle!” Rumple protested.  “What would Belle say if she discovered I’d run away?”

“Nothing, because you’re not going to ‘run away.’  You’re just going with me to the village for some supplies and a friendly beer at the pub and then straight back home.”

“I have to ask Belle, this can’t possibly be alright with her.

Just then, as if on que Belle appeared in a flash of smoke before them.  “Seriously Rumple,” she said, “it’s completely alright. I trust you and Jefferson, as long as you’re together.  Go into the village and listen around at the pub. As you can see, I can’t very well go there myself without terrifying everyone and I do so like to hear the gossip and news about what’s going on in my little town.  Those people are under my protection, you know, and I can’t very well tend to them and protect them if I don’t know what their problems are and they’re not likely to tell me their issues honestly if I appear before them in a cloud of sulfur, staring at them with eyes like a monstrous reptile, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not monstrous,” whispered Rumple faintly,  so that only Jefferson could hear,  “never monstrous.”

“What’s that?” asked Belle, brow furrowed.

Oh, he’s got it bad, thought Jefferson.   Who’s going to break it to the poor fellow?  “He says he’s totally up for it,” replied Jefferson, “but was just wondering if we could take the carriage.”

“By all means,” Belle answered with a generous wave of her hand.  “Chatty Cathy’s out in the front drive. Aurevoir.” she waved of her other hand and vanished in a swirl of smoke once again.

Rumple’s eyes goggled out angrily at Jefferson as the smoke dispersed, all display of servile politeness gone.   “Why’s she suddenly want me to leave?   What’s happening here?  You—you put her up to this.  I can’t—I can’t leave the castle!” 

“Woah there, you shouldn’t be mad!  In fact you should be thanking me!  I just handed you your get out of jail free card!”

“What’s a get out of jail free card?”

“Sometimes one forgets, this realm has never heard of Milton Bradley.” 

“Who’s Milton Bradley?” 

“Forget I mentioned it.  Honestly though, I don’t see why you have to get your back up.”

“Because this isn’t a jail!”

“But I thought you were forbidden to leave.”

“So what? It doesn’t make it—“

 “Even a palace can be a prison if you’re not free to come and go if you please.  Don’t you want to make your own choices?”

“PFfT!  Shows what you know!   That—out there!  That world’s the prison!”

Chapter Text

“PFfT!  Shows what you know!   That—out there!  That world’s the prison!  People take advantage of you out there if you’re—if you’re—“

“An escaped slave?” suggested Jefferson.

Rumple’s eyes flashed angrily.  “I was going to say ‘if you’re poor.’ You think that’s all I am? Honestly, you look at me and think I was always the way I am now?  I was born a freeman, just like you, the only difference being I was born poor.”

“My dear fellow, you don’t know me.  I hardly grew up in a castle. “

Rumplestilskin’s voice suddenly took on a different tone.  The obsequious cowering quavering high pitched tone was gone.  As he spoke now his voiced grew deeper, each word bit off like some hard flavourless biscuit, all the rarely expressed fury Rumple had always felt about his fate in life compressed itself into a near-snarl;  “But you didn’t grow up like me.  Didn’t grow up small, ‘cause you never had enough to eat. Didn’t have to spend part of your life as someone else’s property because your father was so in debt he had to sell his own son.  You weren’t never owned body and soul by a master, with no say over where you went or what happened to you, mistreated until your body broke, until all that was left was a crippled shell.  You never had everything taken from you, your body, your mind, your very freedom, by someone you trusted, somebody you loved.”

Those last words echoed in Jefferson’s mind as Rumple suddenly fell silent.  In truth Rumple had shocked himself to find his own voice speaking the thoughts he had only ever entertained in his own mind out loud to this stranger and instantly wished he could take them back.

They both moved silently onward, afraid to look at one another.  The only sound to be heard, the drone of bees in the flowers and slight swish of fabric as the carpet-creature Rumple rode, hovered along beside Jefferson on the cobblestone path.

“How do you know?” said Jefferson at last, his voice faint as if coming from far away.

“How do I know what?” asked Rumple. 

“How do you know I didn’t have everyone taken from me, by someone who professed to love me?  How do you know I was not betrayed? Do not presume to tell me you know all the ways a ruthless person might exercise to break a body and soul and yet take pains to make it look like nothing had been broken.” 

Rumple stared at the hatter unsure of what he was talking about.  He had a tendency to talk, almost as if in riddles, speaking around a thing, without diving directly into it.  Once, a very long time ago he had known a seer who spoke in similar fashion.  As Rumple thought of her, her strange blue eyes that seemed to hover before him even now, he shivered and distracted himself by looking directly at Jefferson as the hatter unwound the scarf from around his neck.

It was a beautiful thing, that scarf, all made of brightly coloured patchwork pieces, some glittering with patterns of gold or silver, some velvety soft to the touch, some satin, some inlaid with tiny mirrors that winked in the light as he unwound them, others embroidered with minute depiction of exotic birds and curling clouds of strange design—a marvelous thing, the careful, tidy creation of hard work and nimble hands-- a thing to catch the eye, to make the attention linger on tiny details.  To distract, Rumple now saw, from the ruined of the neck beneath. 

A deep ragged gash ran clear around the hatter’s neck, or more accurately right through, a scar almost as wide as the palm of his hand.  And now that Rumple could see it more closely he could tell that whatever magic had affixed the chopped through neck back together again-- because it had to be magic, no bone setter he’d ever seen could fix that-- it hadn’t been able to undo all the damage—for beside the dreadful beheading scar, Jefferson’s head had been put back on his body just slightly off kilter, so that he always had to turn his torso ever so slightly to one side to allow his chin to appear in alignment with the midline of his body, a feat that went mostly unnoticed by other people.  It was also the reason that he never quite seemed to manage to look anyone in the eyes and why his opinions often tended to be just slightly off kilter, along with his eyeline. From his vantage point you could see the absurdity and ridiculous in almost anything if you just looked.

 Rumple let out of whoosh of breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding in. 

 “I had a daughter once, a wife,” said Jefferson with as much emotion as if he was discussing a pair of galoshes he’d once owned.  It was an illusion of course, much the like scarf.  He had trained his voice over the years to sound flippant rather than betray the slightest emotion.  He knew from bitter experience now that to even broach the edge of the well of his sorrow was an invitation to madness, to the unending abyss of despair that would suck him in and rob him of months of better spent effort.

“Where are they now?”

“Where do you think?  Lost, taken, dead, who knows?”  He shrugged as if it was all the same to him. 

“Sometimes  I don’t know what’s worse,  the days I despair or the days I feel hopeful.”

“How does that make sense?”

“When I hope I know I have to keep working, that I can never rest, even for a minute.  I have to keep realm-jumping, traveling and traveling until I find them or I die, whichever happens first.  And then when I inevitably fail—well then you see, the despair is all the worse,”  said the hatter and gave a rather disconcerting giggle.

“And that’s why you began working for Belle?” asked Rumple.

“Hmmm, not at first,” responded the hatter, thoughtful as he rewound the amazing scarf around  the horror of his neck.  “You see all this traveling and seeking for clues is not without its expenses, and then there’s locator magics and hat fuel—“

“Hat fuel?”

“Raw magic in liquid form, exceedingly rare.  It’s not a cheap process.  Belle has requests for objects that she needs from other realms.  I go there and get them.  Whatever else I’m about while I’m there is my own business as long as I deliver the goods.  And there’s the small matter of revenge on the person who did this to me--  Belle’s been immeasurably helpful in that regard.  You might consider taking up something in that line.  If you’ve been  wronged as you say, then  you certainly have just cause and I wouldn’t imagine Belle would charge you much, seeing how much you do for her without pay as it is.”

“No revenge—well, it wouldn’t work.”

“Eh?   And how’s that?  Don’t you want to stop whoever did this to you before they get a chance to do it to someone else?”

“What if it’s not just one person?  What if it’s a whole world of people, a system that keeps people in chains that none of them started but no one is seriously trying to stop.  What if it’s a world that thinks it’s okay to say a whole bunch of people are just rubbish for no reason, to write them off and never give them a chance to be heard or make a difference in the way things are run.  If I killed the man who bought me and the slave sellers who chained me what real difference would it make?  There are thousands to take their place ready to chain and sell others.”

“Yes, but the person who did that to you would be gone and you’d be free.”

“Free to do what?  Work in the fields when I can’t walk?”

“Well maybe not that—“

“Teach in a university when I have no formal education?” 

“I was told you could sew.”

“I can,” offered Rumple sitting taller on his perch on the carpet-creature.

“Then tailoring perhaps?”

“And would you take me on as an apprentice?  At my age?  A tailor's apprentice has to be nimble, to move swiftly around whatever person has come in to be measured. How would I do that? Not to mention, even if I could, knowing I might be an escaped slave with a master still on the hunt for me-- who would ever hired me? ”

“Hum. I see your point.”

“Look Hatter, I’m not a fool.  I know exactly where I’d end up if I left the employ of La Belle Dame sans Merci.  A traveling beggar, rejected and shunned from one town to the next, trying to survive on the kindness of strangers, beat up and robbed on the highways and tossed in every duke’s cells whenever the next ‘clean-up the streets’ initiative came through.  Trust me, I know exactly where I fall in the pecking order out there.”  Rumple waved dismissively at the world beyond the ivy covered walls around Belle’s palace.   “Not interested.”

Chapter Text

And yet, somehow, despite professing himself uninterested, that very night Rumple found himself bumping along the road in Chatty Cathy with Jefferson, wondering how he got there.

“Now make sure to make use of those blankets, now, I had them just cleaned and put in this morning” Cathy advised, clucking like a mother hen over her charges.

Rumple dutifully pulled a plaid blanket up over his legs, as the carriage hummed her approval.

“And you’’ll be wanted one to go around your shoulders too Mr. Jefferson,” she cooed over the Hatter.

“It’s Mr. Madden, Jefferson’s my first name. Stop that!”

Some stray pieces of wood had come out of the walls like hands to wrap a fur snuggly around Jefferson’s shoulders as Rumple, sitting across from him sniggered softly into the thick red muffler the carriage had insisted he wear.

“Look, I appreciate the effort, but I’m really not very cold so if you could kindly desist in—“

The wooden hand that had come out of the wall, which would have been creepy had it come from anything else other than the eager-to-please carriage—now plucked the Hatter’s hat off and tried to exchange it for what looked like a giant flat turban made of thick black fur.

“I’m not wearing that hat!”

“It’s not just any hat, it’s a stroimel.”

I don’t care what you call it! My hat is a high velocity inter-dimensional object and a family heirloom and I won’t have it handled by a carriage that just came to life five months ago, now give it back!

“Are you sure? The other is bound to be so much toastier!”

“Gggrrrr!”

“So why did the Mistress want us to come to this place?” Rumple broke in worriedly.

“She wants us to collect information,” the Hatter informed him as he beat the carriage’s disembodied hand with one of ten nearby scatter cushion provided expressedly for their comfort.

“Apparently, the shoemaker and his wife in the village have come upon hard times. La Belle Dame Sans Merci owes the family a favour and would like us to find a way to assist them.”

“But surely, she could just give them some money—“

“It would be used up in a fortnight,” said the Hatter.

“But if she gave enough money—“

“They might stop being shoemakers entirely then and that is not in her interest.”

“Oh.”

“What we need to do, is find a way to make sure the family stay shoemakers, but become prosperous and in demand enough to feed themselves and slightly enlarge their business—but not by too much.”

“Well that is rather specific, but surely the Dark Lady—“

“Has other things to worry about. That’s why she’s dispatched us, along with a small piece of mushroom to address the problem. What we’re to do requires very little magic, but quite a lot of expertise with a needle and thread and fashion design. Whereas her specialty is the opposite-- quite a lot of magic with very little sewing or care for fashion.”

“Really? I’ve always thought she looks so well put together.”

“That’s because as well as collecting magical items from distant realms for her, I also design most of her outfits.”

“Ah, well good on you then, but I really don’t see how we’re meant to help these people and what going to a pub has to do with anything. Couldn’t we just hide out behind their shop and help from there where no one can see us, or better yet, work remotely from the castle?”

“No. Rumple, listen to me, as a friend—“

“We’ve known each other less than a day—“

“Haven’t you ever thought that this is your chance?”

“My chance to do what?”

“You don’t have to serve her, you know. If you left now I doubt she would do anything. This is your chance to be free if you so choose. What if you don’t get another again? I know you told me before, this world is likely to be harsh to you because of your injury, but it’s not necessarily so. What if you had all the money you needed to make a life for yourself out there whether you worked or not?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I could give you this—“ He opened the wooden box and showed the bit of mushroom to Rumple in the fading daylight that streamed through the carriage window.

“Cor! Now that’s a proper Vesalvis microscopicus!” announced the carriage to no one in particular. “Worth a pretty penny, that is!”

“You could take it and sell it at the market for, I don’t know—maybe two or three thousand guilders. You could hardly call yourself a beggar then, with that sort of largesse.

“I couldn’t steal that from Belle! She’d know anyway!”

“Well, you just think about it, I’ll see if we have some more left over after the mission to give to you. I could just say we had to use it all, that’s all. She wouldn’t have given it to me unless she expected us to use the lot.”

“Why would you help me to be free anyway?”

“Because, I know what it’s like to be trapped in one place and a guilded cage is still a cage and a cage is no place for a human being. You may not feel the bars now, because what you knew before was so much worse, but trust me, it’s true.”

“If I wanted your advice about my situation,” remarked Rumple, “I’d ask for it.”

Chapter Text

One Week Ago
 
The Dark Spirit was sulking.  Dark Spirit or Sorceress, Magician or Beast. It had endless names, plus a few insulting ones Belle saved for when she was particularly frustrated with the creature she shared her small, scale covered frame with.

Usually, La Belle Dame Sans Merci was happy to have of break from the Beast’s endless, negative running commentary on her life, her choices and the people around her.  The Beast had the amazing ability to just shut down all her enthusiasms and joys with one well placed snarky comment and she hated it. The extra paranoia that usually crept into her thoughts and behavior when the Dark Spirit was in the ascension usually had a way of rebounding on her to bite her in the back later on, too, when the Spirit was dormant, leaving her to deal with the fallout.

If the Beast had just been content to sit back quietly and let Belle go about her business, it wouldn’t have been such a problem, but just to let Belle know she was actually still there and seriously pissed off at her host, the Spirit had taken to messing with Belle’s magic.

For the past month it had been happening with increasing frequency.

While Belle was incanting some spell that needed very precise wording, the beastly spirit would suddenly take over and mess up the whole thing with a sudden “shit” or “damn” just when the spell was really starting to get going, causing the magic to fizzle out or transform into something completely unpredictable. So far, magical mishaps of this manner had made a complete mess of Belle’s library and relocated her laboratory to her garden conservatory half a mile away. The conservatory was now where the laboratory used to be and she knew Rumple wasn’t the only one bothered by the inconvenience of sharing the second floor with noisy Artemisian Screaming Lilies, Brachius Trumpets and Tap-Dancing Ladyslippers. Belle had a good idea what was annoying the Dark Spirit, but she let the thing tell her in its own time. They’d survived this long by avoiding direct confrontation wherever possible. Sometimes its annoyance would dissipate like the weather if she waited it out.
 But now they were at an impasse, with Belle unable to do magic properly and the Spirit unable to fully access Belle’s senses until it stopped interfering with her magic.
A tete a tete was the only thing to break the stalemate and it wasn’t something Belle was looking forward to.

Her little caretaker would have to be got out of the way first, just in case things went badly with the Beast. To this end she employed a particularly stubborn and stinky concoction of tomato paste, red wine, wild boar blood, squashed toad, enchanted squid ink and liquefied giant durian of advanced age, to stain the cream-coloured library carpet.

“There, that should keep him occupied,” she thought with great satisfaction and retired to her private apartments.  

Then she stripped down to her shift and chanting a few select calming words fell back into a trance on her bed, letting her gaze travel round and round the hypnotic mandalas she had painted on her ceiling specifically for this purpose.

The spirit rushed in quickly like water through a sluice gate. Belle shoved down her panic as she felt herself drowning in it, the rising ice water, like a cold fist clenched round her heart, a black lake on a dark, deadly cold night in midwinter and here she was plunging through the ice into its endless freezing depths that seemed to go on forever colder and colder and colder, its chill oozing into her mouth and eyes and ears, invading her in her most private of private places-- in body, but most of all in mind. 

Chapter Text

“Now that’s more like it,” a demonic voice thrummed appreciatively up the base of her skull. She could feel the foreignness of its tendrils snaking down her nerves, sharing in her electrical impulses, gorging itself on feeling, sensation, delighting in the access she gave it to having senses once again, to experiencing the world around it through sound, taste, touch, and so many more sense than humans even thought about. 

There are so many senses humans didn’t even think about, but once denied to you, realize how much you miss, having a sense of the passage of time, of the three dimensional world around you, of your body at rest and at motion—sensation is everything.

The Spirit moved through her experimentally inflating and deflating her lungs in an awkwardly timed unaccustomed breath, tasting the tangy quality of real air with its darting lizard-like tongue, all the while knowing Belle was just tempting it with access to her senses and it hated her for that, as it always did.

Part of it longed to take over, to obliterate Belle and have this gloriously sensitive body to itself, but it felt her pulling it back in.  The Spirit whined like a dog on a leash as it felt Belle’s control bring her spirit to heel.  

Slowly, gently Belle brought the spirit’s attention back to the reason she had summoned it forth to begin with.

“What do you want?” it snarled back at her and snapped the teeth in Belle’s mouth in consternation.  Belle ducked her tongue in lest it be bitten off by the creature’s annoyance.   The beast would never destroy its vessel, but she knew from bitter experience that it wasn’t above causing her harm and pain to make a point.  Even if she could heal herself easily now and erase any damage, the memory of it still clung to her brain and body in ways she knew helped the beast control her.  At times like these she hated it more than ever. 

“Tell me what is bothering you, my friend?” she crooned to it, stroking it with her mind, the way one would a sleek pelt of mink, calming it with soothing, flattering words into an approximation of, if not actual, submission.  “You’ve been so distant from me of late. Pray tell why?”

The beast was momentarily caught off guard. It had expected to be chastised, rather than spoken to in such a solicitous manner and was momentarily surprised into honesty.   

“It’s him!” it snarled. 

“Oh who could you mean?” asked Belle innocently.

“That servant!” spat the Beast.  “Rumpled-foreskin or whatever you call him.  It’s high time you—I mean we were rid of him.  It has to be.  For both our sakes.  Belle Marie Frontenac, you know what I speak of.”

It was a dirty trick of the Sorceress Spirit, this, Belle thought to bind her attention through the use of her full name.  Names had power.

“It’s the best for both of us,” the Spirit explained.  “You know what I mean.”

“Ah.”  She had been wondering when the Spirited Beast would take umbrage at how much space the little caretaker had begun to occupy in her thoughts of late. 

The predictable creature was nothing if not jealous to the core of any part of Belle it could not occupy with itself.  It had been alone, without a body for a long time and had long lost the taste for romantic partnership and friendship that so marked the human species.  “Love is weakness,” it often chided her and Belle did not doubt it spoke the truth, at least some of the time.

She worried about the little caretaker.  She knew she had enemies, powerful enemies.  If any of them ever found out how much she actually cared for Rumple, they could hurt him to get to her.  He was not immortal.  The brisk tap-tap stick sound he made as he moved through her castle and the hesitant slowed-down sound of his sticks hitting stone as he attempted to muffle the noise whenever he was around the door to her work room, were a sobering reminder of this fact.  And yet the sounds he made were also an unexpected comfort to her in her loneliness.   Even when he said nothing, and tried to shrink into the shadows or make himself inconspicuous, that little noise was part of him.  She could choose to hear it if listened closely whenever she felt lonely even if he was as far away as the most distant corner of her garden. 

All she had to do was tune her unnatural hearing in his direction and she could hearing him softly humming his strange little Frontlands ditties as he tied the roses to their poles and pinched the rosehips off for use in her potions.   Just to know he was there, caring for her castle, that she saw as an extension of herself in a way, moving within it, simply existing in his sweet, gentle-natured uncomplicated way filled her with a warm, pleasant feeling, in her chest like a sip of sweet tea. 

But it was swiftly followed by a clutching feeling of anxiety.  She could never forget that he was the one person her magic could not touch.  She could never properly protect him.  If anyone ever found out who he was or what he did, they could torture him to learn her secrets and Rumple had been hurt enough for one lifetime, in her opinion.  In fact, in her opinion she would like it very much if she could set up the world in a way that he would never be hurt ever again as long as he lived.

As long as nobody knew whom he worked for or how much he mattered to her, she reasoned, he was safe—a peasant in appearance, not even worth taking to make a soldier out of, due to his bent foot—the last person in the world you’d wager to be kidnapped and ransomed, of no obvious value to anyone. 

And for now, no one would ever guess that one such as him knew anything at all about the dark castle or its mysterious magical inhabitant. 

But… the longer Rumple stayed, the more the castle revealed of itself to him, the more knowledge he’d have for some unscrupulous person to extract if they so chose—or for him to sell—remarked the dark spirit harshly.  Don’t forget that.  You never did get the truth serum to work on him.  You have no idea what he may be keeping from you or what his motivations are in staying here.

Belle was pretty sure Rumple’s motivations were the very transparent human ones of staying warm and not starving to death instead of taking his chances out there with a world that seemed more likely to stomp him into the dust than treat him like a human being—but the spirit didn’t always see things in terms of basic human needs. 

And Belle knew, though the experience was long ago, from the love her father had bestowed on her, that love for another person and belief in what they could do could be a power too.   

Even if her love for her poor inventor father had been used to hurt her and make her do things that repulsed her in order to protect him, it didn’t cancel out the fact that his love had given her the strength to triumph and endure even that in the end.  He had helped her take the power rather than keep it to save himself.  His love had forced her to survive, to gather her strength to her and endure.  Still, in a tiny, untainted corner of her being she still wished to make him proud of her, as silly as that now seemed.  After what he had given her she could not turn her back on love entirely. 

Anything, even something that made you strong, could be forged into weapon when wielded by one who meant to hurt or wound you, her experience taught her.  And even something that looked like a weakness to the outside world, could be a source of unexpected strength in the right hands. 

So then, was Rumple a weakness or a strength?

The longer he stayed the more attached she grew to him.  And attachments, the spirit reminded her were something they could not afford.  Not if they were to do what they’d been trying to do for the past hundred years— and their mission must take ultimate importance—or else what was all this collecting and searching for magical items in aid of?

The thing Belle and the Beast sought was the means to free them from each other.  The Beast  had made a pact early on with its host—Belle’s very first deal, the deal to end all others.  The Beast would give Belle all the power she craved and Belle would allow it free access to the human senses and sensations it craved. 

Such an agreement sufficed, but only in the short term. Ultimately, neither one was satisfied with this life of constant struggle, with each striving to take more power and rise to the fore, fighting for access to Belle’s single human body and domain over her thoughts and external behaviours. Even if Belle could spend the rest of her magically lengthened life fighting it, the power of the sorceress beast would burn through her body eventually.  Even a body preternaturally strengthened through magic had its limits.  The magician had no desire to lose its home and be forced to seek out another host, one who might not be so accommodating or able to instinctively understand magic with such speed and ability as Belle.

 A two body solution was what was required, but there were rules as to what each party would accept. Belle wanted to have her body to herself again, but still hold onto a large portion of the magic she got through her association with the dark spirit.  She was willing to become fully mortal she said, but not to give up her magic completely.  She had not forgotten her old life as a maid and just the thought of going back to being so powerless terrified her to the core.  Even if the ones who had hurt her as a young woman had not been dispatched in her fury, enough time had passed that anyone who had known her before her transformation was long since dead and she could barely remember what it felt like to feel physical pain anymore and yet… the hurt and betrayal remained and her fury at those who had hurt her still lingered despite everything.   Even a woman possessed of great wealth was still a woman, a lesser being in the eyes of most in their world.

The Beast needed a body, but not a host.  It was done with fighting tooth and nail just to get access to a few paltry physical sensations.   The spirit would be in possession full time or nothing, it stressed to Belle.   It needed a fully functional body that would let it experience all the sensation, without an already resident consciousness to muck it up and interfere.  It too knew morality might be the price of such a boon, but it was willing to live a time limited life, if it was one that provided the sensations the sorceress craved.  Oh, and a little magical power on the side, so it didn’t have to live as the basest humans did wouldn’t go amiss.  It had seen enough of the lives of slaves and vassals to realize that an existence on the bottom of the heap wasn’t worth its time.  Just because it wanted all the sensations a normal human had, didn’t mean it want to live the way most of them did.

Those were the terms of the deal they struck with each other and Belle and the dark spirit had been looking for the means to divide themselves ever since.  Even with magic and the aid of Jefferson, the realm-jumper, they knew it would be a difficult desire to fill, but they were patient, they had time.  As the years went by La Belle Dame Sans Merci learned how to play the long game.

Chapter Text

“This Rumple,” snorted the dark spirit, “he is nothing but a distraction at best and at worst is a tool that could be used to harm us.  I am just trying to protect us! Just think of my—of our best interests and you will see the decision is clear.”

But Belle wasn’t thinking of herself or the power she shared her body with just then.   Instead she thought of Rumple. Really, he had only just got a sliver of his old life back after living as a slave for so many years.  At best if he remained with her, he’d always have his job as a servant, but she, who’d always been able to see to the heart of a person, even before her transformation, didn’t need magic to see he could be so much more, if only given a bit of a chance and a hand up in the world.  He would always be crippled it seemed, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a rich and comfortable existence with a wife and family, a prosperous business and a high position somewhere, where the taint of his former slavery wouldn’t stain his status in other’s eyes.  She couldn’t change anything about his person with magic, but she could create a false identity for him with ease, with her vast resources and long accumulated wealth. 

She’d noticed he had nervous hands as she did, hands that could never seem to stay still, always craving a cloth for polishing or a bit of mending to occupy them.  Like her, he wasn’t the sort who’d be content to just sit back and indulge in a life of leisure.  Such a life without movement, activity or purpose would grate on him, she knew.   

She thought she could see him being quite comfortable as the master of a dozen spinning apprentices though, or perhaps a wealthy merchant or leader of a weavers’ guild. There was a wide gulf between being forced to work to death, never knowing where your next meal or spot of rest is coming from and a life where you controlled how much or how little you worked, where you worked for love, rather than subsistence.

If he stayed and remained as her servant, she knew one of her many enemies was bound to find him and torture and kill him into revealing her secrets. 

Chapter Text

“So you’ll help me get rid of him?” prompted the dark spirit. 

Belle did not answer.

“Yes or no?”

“Fine, but we need to do it my way.”

“Whatever.”

“Seriously!”  

“Like I said, sure.”

“You said whatever!”

“Same thing.”

“And we need to get rid of him in a way that doesn’t hurt him.”

“We need to get rid of him in a way that doesn’t harm our reputation is what we have to do! If you style yourself as ‘The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy’ you can’t be letting a captive once taken go free just because you pity him!“

“No! It’s not because I—“  She wanted to say, it wasn’t because she felt pity for him, but another emotion entirely, but quickly realize it was better not to follow that train of thought in conversation with the Beast.  She didn’t want to open that Pandora’s box with the dark spirit, who knew what the beast might try to get her to do to him then.  “—I mean who would he tell?” she finished lamely.

“We don’t know,” it snarled in frustration.  “We still know next to nothing about him!  Which is why he can’t know that it’s us letting him go. That won’t do at all.  How can you maintain people’s fear and awe of you if they think it’s so easy to get you to soften up and sympathize with them?  We’ll have every pitiable waif and crippled stray begging at the castle door in no time looking for a blasted handout!  You want to run some Blessed Lady of the Dark Castle charity convent here, you can count me out! What sort of example does that set?  Do you want everyone we ever sign a contract with reneging on their payments?  Where will we be with our plan then?”

“Yes, you’re right.”  Belle felt the spirit preen under her recognition of its righteousness.  It was predictable in its love of getting its own way. “What do you suggest, oh wise sorceress?”

If the spirit detected a note of sarcasm in Belle’s appeal, she couldn’t tell by its straightforward answer.  “He will have to make a cunning escape, that is all.  As long as he knows we didn’t set him free and thinks it was all his own idea to escape from the ferocious beast of the dark castle we should be fine.”

“The outside world, let me remind you, has not been kind to him and he has everything he needs here.  Why would he try to escape?”

“Because humans like to run free?”

“That’s the best you’ve got?”

“Well how should I know, I haven’t been human in gods know how long.  You’re the one who’s supposed to know what motivates them.”

“Hmmmm… I suppose we can just give him the opportunity and see where it goes.” 

“It’s a place to start anyway.”

Chapter Text

At sunrise, the next morning Belle left the window to the kitchen open.  She made sure, of course, that it was the ground floor window and that the small, two foot drop to the ground below was fully overgrown overnight with the softest and least stinging form of plant life she had at hand in her garden, so that Rumple was most unlikely to injure himself dropping the to the ground from the casement. 

Next she made sure there was plenty of gold lying about in the kitchen for him to take and that the gate door in the wall surrounding the castle was clearly free from all magical barriers—not that the blocking spells she’d placed around the castle wall would actually keep Rumple from leaving if he chose to vault over the wall, since her magic didn’t work on him.  She depended on the tall stone wall itself for that.

Unfortunately, the door in the wall did have a naughty habit of closing back in on itself when it got windy out.  If it swung back in it would stay resolutely closed unless you really pushed it hard with your shoulder at a specific spot.  Its what came of getting the castle used, she supposed. 

She used a small spell on the metal ring that opened the door to keep it from closing back on itself if someone touched it. 

The Beast within her nodded appreciatively as they turned back towards the castle. 

The sun rose and with her supernaturally acute hearing, La Belle Dame Sans Merci heard her caretaker begin to stir into wakefulness in his bedroom and rub the sleep out of his eyes.  She imagined how his hair might look in the morning, sticking up this way and that.  She wondered if the pillow left crease marks on his cheek when he woke up, and knew now that she’d never get a chance to find out.  Such mortal pleasures were not her due, not if she chose to keep her power.

It would be good for him to leave.  He upset things, stirred up eddies of sediment, these sentimental emotions in the depths of her soul she’d thought long, long, since turned to rock, pressed to hardness under all the pressure of everything that had happened since the days she was human, sealed over and fossilized to stone.  It was disturbing in a way to realize those desires still dwelled inside her and that what she once thought was unimpeachable stone, was really molten.  The restless magma beneath her calm surface moved and churned in ways undeniable.

From the kitchen the sound of a whistling kettle, told her that Mrs. Potts had brewed the tea. 

It would have to stop. She couldn’t continue this way.    

She couldn't risk opening her heart again.

Look what it had once cost her.

Chapter Text

Rumple spent the first part of the morning completely preoccupied with a dollhouse, Belle had forgotten she’d asked him to dust the week before.  Of course, like many objects in the castle, it hadn’t started out as a dollhouse, but rather a regular sized house she’d been offer the deed to as payment in a deal. 

As the caretaker wondered out loud of the miracle of miniaturization and craftsman ship the house presented to the casual observer and lovingly wiped down every tiny toilet and fluffed the itty bitty thumbnail-sized pillows on the teensy beds, Belle paced her bedroom on the floor above him with undisguised impatience. 

Finally, finally Rumple made his way down to the kitchen, before the spirit tried once again to try to convince her that a few accurately placed kicks would do wonders to speeding up the process.     

Noting the gold scattered about amid the pots and pans he carefully gathered it all up in a casserole dish and put it aside to give to Belle later when he was done with preparing and serving her meal.  As Rumple stopped to give Chip and the other teacups their daily bath, he noticed the open window, which he didn’t remember leaving ajar before, but as the teacups had no modesty to preserve and the weather around Belle’s castle was never drafty even for one with as little meat on his bones as himself,  he merely opened the other side of the window to let in more of the beautiful scents of Belle’s dogwood roses and then, inspired went to the garden to cut a few to put in a pretty vase for Belle at dinner. 

While wandering about the grounds, looking for some smaller blooms to add to the large roses (they were the size of tea saucers in Belle’s garden)  he remembered a patch of forget-me-nots he’d noticed growing near the big wooden door by the western gate of the castle.  Hefting his basket onto his shoulder he quickly located the flowers he sought.

Looking up from cutting the  small blue blooms, he was shocked to notice the gate to the outside world hanging wide open.

“Well, this will never do,” he tutted to Chip who’d accompanied him on this outing, despite his mother’s protestations, that he would catch cold if he wasn’t properly dried off with a tea towel.  Putting the porcelain cup-child down delicately on the ground and advising him to watch the flowers Rumple reached up with his right hand to pull the large metal ring on the door in to close it—only to realize his mistake as he gripped tightly onto the metal circle— the metal did something weird to his hands—he felt his palm burning as if he’d touched molten lead.  He sprung back with a scream, his left hand instinctively reaching for his singed right palm as he lost both his walking sticks and fell, bottom first onto the ground, cradling his injured hand.  Only later did he realized he’d squashed the basket of flowers meant for Belle. 

There was a sound like the crack of thunder.  He looked up and Belle appeared in a puff of blue smoke, eyes large and wild. 

“What. Did. You. Do?” asked Belle severely, exhaling out more blue-purple smoke with a snort. Her nostrils flared like those of the dragon she sometimes appeared to be, her large pupilled eyes inhumanely huge and close to his face. 

Rumple flinched away from her gaze and inched backwards in fear.   Miserably, he felt the smashed flowers grind themselves into the fabric of his trouser bottom.  Now that was going to be annoying to clean, he thought, assuming of course he survived La Belle Dame Sans Merci’s wrath.  Now what did he have to go and reach for that handle for? 

“Look at me Rumplestilskin!” her voice rasped harshly in his ears. 

He did as he was told, acutely aware of how her blue-gold scaled skin gleamed in the bright sunlight and how pointed and sharp the black talons she had for fingernails suddenly seemed. It was so easy to forget, when she wore fancy dresses and talked in her elegantly accented voice,  how quickly she could eviscerate him with a simple swipe of her hand. 

She cupped his chin in one of those deadly claws now and it took every ounce of his control not to flinch or try to dart away.  He knew it would only hurt all the more if he did.  Instead, he tried to calm his nerves, breathed slowly and listen.

“Are you alright?”  she asked.

“Wha—what?”

“Are you hurt?” she asked again, more impatiently this time. 

“N-n-no,” he lied, hiding his still-stinging hand guiltily behind his back as she peered down at him with those huge yellow eyes like someone trying to figure out a particularly aggravating bit of clockwork in a broken watch.

“Good!” she trilled and released his face, allowing him to sink back down with relief.  “Now spit spot—off to the kitchen to get yourself cleaned up!”  She swiveled on one pointed shoe and turned to walk away, but paused to look back. 

He cringed—what could she want now? 

She cocked her head, glowing yellow eyes bright like an owl’s-- “Oh ah, you needn’t bother with dinner tonight.  It’ll be alright, I’m not hungry.”  

 “B-b-but  I-I-I”  he tried to tell her he’d already got it almost all prepared, that it would be easier to serve it now than clean up what he had already made, but couldn’t seem to muster the words.

“Seriously, it’s alright.”

“Uh-huh.”

He was aware of her eyes on him, the power of her gaze causing him to sweat, as he fumbled about, searching for his sticks.  They rolled gently over to him of their own accord--her magic, he knew.

He hesitated to grip the right one, knowing it would hurt his hand to hold it bare.  Probably once she left he could wind his shirt around his hand or something and manage alright, but he couldn’t do it with her watching.  She’d know he’d lied.  What to do?

He looked up at the sound of a swish of fabric.  She’d glided forward suddenly, so that she now stood directly over him once more. A very human eyebrow quirked up on her scaled face.  “Need a hand?”  He watched her extend a black taloned hand out towards him.  There was a flash of what might have been concern in the look of those strange inhuman eyes, beneath feminine lashes, long and dark. 

It was hard to look away from that hypnotic gaze, but still hiding the palm of his singed hand from view, Rumple shrank back.   Something deep inside him, the voice of self-preservation perhaps screamed out—Don’t let her see!  Don’t let her know what that metal does to you!  She can’t know of your magic!  Every time you’ve told it’s hurt you!  Almost killed you!  No one can know!  NO ONE!

She looked down at her hand, hanging there in midair with a distracted expression, as if realizing for the first time the sharpness of the talons, talons that wouldn't have looked out of place on some kind of massive predatory bird or carnivorous lizard.

How could you think sticking your claws out at him would come across as anything but threatening? laughed the Spirit, with dark glee. What? Did you think you were still human or something? Come on Belle, get a clue.  How many years has it been?

With a snap of her fanged jaws, Belle retracted her offending hand and turned to go.  Rumple couldn’t see the expression on her face, how she tried to school her eyes not to cry, the fury she felt that she couldn’t even offer this tiny bit of normal human assistance to someone without them thinking she was trying to hurt them—how cold and alone it was to be the only one like you in the whole world, for no one to understand--  “I understand,” whispered the Beast softly, pulling itself around her like a comforting, protective cloak, smothering in its inhumanity and desire for control. Mentally, Belle tore it from herself with a feeling like the pain of tearing off an old, well-afixed bandage. 

Don’t worry, I’ll send Carpet to fetch you,” she called back coldly, over her shoulder.  Rumple watched her stalk off back towards her castle, wondering why she didn’t just teleport.

But Belle needed a good stomping walk, full of kicking errant, offending pebbles and bits of recaltriant shrubbery.  She dug her offending claws into the capacious pockets of her gown, enjoying the stress and give as the sharp talons broke through the thick, expensive fabric. By the time she had reached her apartments on the upper floor of the castle, the entire garment was shredded to ribbons and she felt much better.  It was time, she mused, to call the tailor.  Maybe he would have an answer.   

By the now closed door in the tall stone wall surrounding the Dark Castle, Rumple sat waiting for the throbbing in his hand to subside a little before he tried wrapping it in the tea towel Chip had fetched from the kitchen. 

“You could’ve just told her,” the little cup muttered disapprovingly as it squeezed the water out of the towel and proffered it to Rumple. 

The caretaker bowed his head. “No, I couldn’t. Too much the coward, me.” 

Chapter Text

Present Day

It was cold in the village.

Rumple remembered this kind of weather, from his childhood home with his aunts in the northern most part of the Frontlands.  Gazing out the window as they arrived in the town, Rumple noticed the light layer of snow that lay upon the houses and trees, sparkling in the sun like icing on a frosted cake.   The beauty of it made him ache with nostalgia, of memories of making snow angels and skating on a frozen pond; of drinking hot mulled cider by a cheery fire and long ago holiday markets in a northern town, even as his much abused joints in the present ached and stiffened up with the cold draft that seeped through the gap in the carriage door.  

As the carriage stopped, he remained seated as Jefferson bounded down the steps.  Rumple watched the hatter from the doorway, as he slipped and skidded to a stop some ways away from where he had first stepped down, laughing and unharmed.

Underneath that thin skin of snow, Rumple’s sinking heart saw the layer of gray ice lying thick and deadly on the ground, ready to trip up the fool who’d try to limp across on sticks. 

Every year back in his aunt’s village, the winter, whose first snow the children cheered and romped in, whose coming they celebrated with their solisitice festival on the longest night of the year, was a mindless force and truly, truly without mercy. When the snow began to melt on the first days of warmer weather and the snow bound paths were unblocked at last, his aunts ventured cautiously around to the houses of their neighbours, bracing themselves, not only against the still present chill in the air, but against what they might find when they checked in. Each year Winter passed through town like Death with a scythe, culling the newly born, the elderly, the sick and the lame; leaving on the only the strong still standing in its wake.    

Rumple knew which group he fell into now as he stood in the doorway of the carriage, his sharp, thin, shoulders shivering under a cloak of borrowed furs, his hands, their fingertips burning with cold, lost in the capascious sleeves of the coat Chatty Cathy had insisted he wear.  It was tailored for someone with longer measurements, bigger bones and wider shoulders than his, but of course, that applied to pretty much everybody.  If he had lived in a wintry village like this as the man he was today, Rumple knew, without a doubt he would have been one of those who didn't survive to see the summer. He wouldn’t have deserved to. It was a sobering thought.

Why in the world he had consented to this ridiculous “mission” with the Hatter? he thought with growing irritation.  The fact that anyone would think anyone as weak and useless as he was would be a help, rather than a hindrance on any kind of important project was laughable.   Right now he thought he’d be pretty impressed with himself if he managed to make it to the door of the inn without falling on his ass, but he doubted Belle would think that much of a feat.

He cursed his stupid pride for letting him believe there was anything remotely special that he of all people, could do to help La Belle Dame Sans Merci.  Just because you wished with all your heart for something, didn’t mean you could twist reality to fit your wish, no matter how powerful. He should be old enough now to face reality, but as always he was too stupid, too dreamy not to live at least partly in his imagination.    

He was heartily glad it never snowed in Belle’s realm, not unless she needed it for something specific.  She said it interfered with the growth of her plants.   She said they never grew as well as when he tended them and his heart felt like it would nearly burst out of his chest at that small compliment.  That’s where he should be, thought Rumple, there with the plants in a warm garden, instead of this cold place that stiffened his poor body up in all the wrong places.  Plants were so easy for him.  He never felt rushed, or awkward or startled there.  Green things never taunted or made fun, never grew impatient when he took too long. He felt so useful and right in the garden and almost graceful with his nimble fingers on stalks and stems, so comfortable with growing quiet things.  He thought dreamily of those lovely forest of green, of soft, rubbery, flesh-like pink flowers, of razor sharp thorns like talons, so deadly to the wrong person, but if one only knew how to touch a stem or flower gently, never roughly, and only in the right places, to be patient and work with, rather than against their essential plantly nature, to coax them into their growing, you could get the results you wanted, if you were only patient, and very, very gentle…

“Oi, Rumple, need a hand?” Jefferson asked, breaking into Rumple’s contemplation of unseen roses. 

Rumple nodded, and suddenly felt himself sucked back into himself, back to timid and useless once again.    

If Jefferson registered a change in his friend’s mood, he didn’t say. 

“I’m going to lift you up, okay?”

“I-I-I guess,” answered Rumple uncertainly.

Jefferson stepped upon the lowest stair of the carriage and gave a very surprised Rumple  a ig bear hug around the waist.  Solid, surprisingly muscular arms that he wouldn’t have thought a foppish personage like Jefferson could possibly possess, lifted the breathless caretaker up and out of the carriage, over the steps and down to the ground. 

“Lean against dear Cathy over here,” the Hatter told him, “I’ll go grab your sticks, alright?”

“Alright,” repeated Rumple. 

Rumple’s eyes watered from the cold bite of the wind.  It skirled around tossing up eddies of snow that swirled around his legs, dumping wetness down the tops of his boots. 

Jefferson returned with Rumple's walking sticks, as he promised.  Rumple tried to disguise his relief as he watched the Hatter's long, patchwork scarf whip around behind him in the breeze like a tail.  Jefferson’s nose and mouth were hidden below the layer of fabric, but Rumple could see the twinkle in his mischevious eyes; it disturbed him.  Rumple didn’t trust that merry look.  Whenever an unusual dose of merriment seemed to flow around Rumple in the past, it was usually because "mock the cripple" was on the menu.  “Aah now tonight is a night for a nourishing brother of pea soup with ham and of course a healthy mug of hot mulled cider,” announced his companion rubbing his hands. "Time to get to that cozy tavern, over yonder, eh?" Rumple didn't budge.

“Onwards and upwards, brave Rumple!” the Hatter shouted and put his gloved hand over Rumple's mittened one, making like they were two boys about to jump hand and hand into a summer lake.  Rumple didn't move an inch. 

  Aside from the risk of falling on the ice, Rumple found the Hatter's sudden rush of exuberance somewhat terrifying.  He tried to be brave.  He closed his eyes and told himself he’d let go once he got to ten.  He got to ten and remained fixed to the carriage, too scared to try his luck with the ice and snow, absolutely positive his sticks wouldn't hold him. 

“Don’t worry Rumple, you’ll be alright,” he heard a confidential woody voice say in his ear.  Rumple felt a gentle nudge in his ribs from Cathy the carriage, and the squeak of axles as she shifted on her wooden wheels.  “Go on, luv, I'm right here behind you.  You won’t fall.”

“For gods’ sakes, I’m not a child,” Rumple snapped techtily and pushed off from Chatty Cathy.  “Come along Hatter, let’s get this over with.”  

Jefferson’s eyes crinkled with a scarf-concealed grin as Rumple limped off in the direction of the tavern.  "After you dear."  

Buttery light spilled out from the frosted windows of the tavern, with a warm, enticing glow, urging them on.

Chapter Text

Rumple’s wobbly sticks skittered trying to find purchase on the ice.  Images of himself broken in a million pieces on the ground seized his mind.  He was fairly certain he nearly had twenty heart attacks in the time it took for him to go from skidding out of control over a patch of frozen cobblestones to leaning with his sticks like two ski poles in a snow drift by the side of the road.  At least on the margin, it was snow all the way down with no treacherous ice to intervene between. Unfortunately, this left him to pick his way through snow drifts nearly up to his knees.  He pulled one stick experimentally out of a wind sculpted drift and placed it down into another. 

It appeared he would survive to struggle onward to the pub, no thanks to Jefferson of course, who just had to bring him along on this ridiculous journey, that seemed determined to finish him off. 

“I h-h-hate you!” stammered Rumple, shaking with what he hoped came off as cold, but was just as much fear as anything else. “I-I t-t-told you I didn’t want to leave the castle!  But you just had to go and convince Belle that I needed to get out and—“

“Oh come on,” said Jefferson expansively.  “I thought everybody wanted a adventure in the great wide somewhere!  You should be thanking me for adding a little spice to your humdrum servant’s life1”

 “My boots are wet and I’m cold and—and--“

“It’s not that bad—“

“I’m going to die here, on this stupid patch of ice outside some shitty tavern with my pockets full of questionable mushrooms and only my fleas will mourn me!” moaned Rumple. 

“You have fleas?”

“That’s not the point!  You brought me out here on this icy road to kill me!”

“Oh don’t be such a drama king.  You’re not going to die.  Why if you slip and fall at most you might break a leg,” remarked Jefferson with a shrug.  “Maybe an arm… or both wrists— of course you could crack your head--“

“Not helping,” gritted out Rumple as he stabbed one of his canes through the snow, imagining it was Jefferson’s vulnerable throat.  

“You don’t have to go that way through all that snow,” said Jefferson.  “I could carry you.”

“Over that ice?   No thanks.  You almost fell three times already.  I doubt you’d be any more stable with me on your back and then I would just be squished beneath you.”

“How do you know you wouldn’t squish me?”

“Because I am a tiny little man and you are not.”

“Ah, fair point.  Fine, then what do you want me to do?” asked Jefferson flexing his hands in their pockets impatiently.  “I can’t just stand here and watch you do that for an hour.”

“No one said you had to watch.”    

“Belle did.  She said I’m to look after you and if anything happened to you, she’d re-decapitate me herself.”

“She did?” 

Jefferson could’ve sworn a dreamy sort of look sprang instantly into Rumple’s large brown eyes.  But was it at the mention of Belle's thoughtfulness towards her little caretaker or the mention of Jefferson's re-decapitation?  The Hatter really couldn't tell. 

“So tell me how I can help?”

“Why don’t you—oh I don’t know—entertain me, how about that?” proffered Rumple.

“Entertain you,” repeated the Hatter thoughtfully.  “Hmmmm…Do you like music?”

“I guess,” shrugged Rumple.

“Oh goody!” cried the Hatter and did a careless pivot on the ice that nearly sent him flying.  “I’ve been working on this song for weeks, but I’ve not had anyone to try it out on.  You may not know this, but folk music’s a bit of a hobby of mine.  Making up rhymes passes the time when I’m travelling between realms and keeps me from thinking about murder.”

“Uh…”

Then, to Rumple’s horror, the Hatter he extracted a harmonica from one of his numerous pockets and began to play the opening bars of what turned out to be a lengthy song about a tragically unsuccessful winged monkey protest action in what he gathered was a northern mining town called Oz. 

As the hatter’s deep, out of tune voice sang entered into the second poorly rhymed couplet, Rumple thought wistfully of the four dear walls of his tidy kitchen back at the Dark Castle. He yearned with his entire being for his cozy safe little world, where Mrs. Potts whistled away on the hob and Lumiere chatted with him by the fireplace.  Suddenly, his home felt distressingly far away.  

His home?  Why he had only been there for a few months, or was it nearly a year now?  And when was the last time he’d thought of a place as home before? 

It was odd, but even the thought of his old checkered dish cloth, skimming over Belle’s beautiful porcelain dishes without him, nearly brought tears to his eyes.  In Belle’s kitchen Rumple felt safe and when had he last felt that?   Just picturing himself standing at the sink with his knee resting on his favourite wooden chair, his clever hands free to go about their busy work, relaxed him. 

So what if the whole process had grown a little routine?  Boredom was the absolute last thing on his mind, Rumple firmly told himself.   He was certainly not excited to be out of the castle for the first time in months!

He knew from hard won experience that change was usually not for the better. Somehow events and his own cursed luck only seemed to cause any new venture to sour and leave him all the worse off in the end. Better to not court change at all, and to be content with things as they were, rather than risk what you had for some effemral chance at an improvement in your situation.   

If the harsh facts of his life had taught him anything, it was that even when you think things are as bad as they can be, they can always get worse. 

But even if when he tried to keep things the same, they seemed determined to change, despite his best efforts. 

For example, Belle had discovered he knew how to read.

He hadn’t volunteered the information but, she’d discovered it anyway.  It was patently obviously, once he’d alphabetized her poetry books.  He just couldn’t help himself when it came to organizing.  The political pamphlet drawer came next and before he knew it she’d given him some light book-keeping duties.  Keeping the files on all the people she’d made deals with over the years was quite the task.  And if his eye occasionally strayed to details of the transaction, rather than just the name signed on the bottom that he needed for filing it away, Belle didn’t seem to mind that he wasn’t fast, just that he get it all done eventually.  In fact she seemed keen to encourage his curiosity and often quizzed him on books she caught him reading or engaged him in conversation about their merits.

The only stipulation she’d made upon discovering he was literate was this:  “If you have some ability, information or knowledge you think I would be interested you must promise you’ll tell me.  Not all deceptions are made to another in words. The worst lies they say, are those told in silence—which means by the with-holding of strategic information and trust me, Rumplestilskin, I know exactly how effective that can be.” 

She inspected her claws as she spoke, trying to feign disinterest, but Rumple squirmed, knowing this was an unusually specific direction for his mistress to give him.  

He wondered then if she suspected anything.  Could she tell he had magic?  He’d probably had all the magic beat out of him anyway, so what was the point in telling her now? But she must suspect something, or else why would she say that?  What else could it be?  But, his mind countered, he hadn’t turned anything to gold for years and it was never anything he really controlled, just an occasional fluke, a stupid trick that never worked when he needed it to anyway.  That wasn’t real magic, not like what Belle had.  And in the end it brought him nothing but pain and suffering, anyway. Telling her would only cause him more problems, and spoil what little good fortune he now had. 

In the library Belle had trailed one hand over his shoulder in feigned carelessness, but he knew her ways.  She didn’t ordinarily touch people. Only when she wanted them to feel threatened did she impose herself on anyone.

Suddenly, he felt sure down to the fibres of his bones that she knew, but then logic came to his rescue, stating it was impossible, she couldn’t read minds, or see his past; there was no way she could know.

“So tell me Rumple, are you sure there aren’t any other little secrets you’ve been keeping from me?” she asked softly, a sweet smiled hiding her small pointed teeth.

Rumple felt his pulse race and his face grown hot.  “I-I- you know those cherries you had me pick and put into jars to store in the cold cellar?”

She quirked an eyebrow at him.  “Yes?”

“Um, yes, well originally there were 24, not 23 like I said.”

“And what happened to the other jar you didn’t tell me about?” she asked, her apprehension hanging in the air, like a knife about to fall.

“I ate it.”

Belle let out a snort of laughter.  “He ate it,” she repeated, as if explaining something to a simpleton.  “He ate it! You hear that?”  she announced, as if speaking to someone else in the room he could not see.  “Obviously, a fellow steeped in the devious arts.  Best to be on our guard around this one, oh yes! I win the wager so ha ha aha!  Go take a nap!”   

“Thank you, dear boy,” she remarked to Rumple in a stage whisper, her red lips curled up to reveal a happy fanged smile. “You’ve just made my week.” 

All in all, it had been one of the oddest conversations he had ever taken part in, especially since Belle seemed to act like there were three people involved in it, instead of the two he could clearly see and she seemed pleased he had eaten the cherries rather than furious as he had worried she’d be, as if somehow that proved some point to someone about him.   He wondered if she was talking to a ghost or she just went mad like that sometimes.   She could be so unpredictable at times. 

Rumple was just glad she hadn’t bothered to check up on all the materials he was reading.

Rumple was secretly doing research on a subject he was intimately familiar with; himself.   There was so much he didn’t understand about what had happened to him, all those events that had swept down on him like waves, like a tsunami he could do nothing to prevent, merely experience as his body was flung into the waves to be tossed about this way and that as the ocean liked. There wasn’t much time to investigate matters when you were just trying to keep your head above water and survive. 

He didn’t really believe he could regain his ability to make gold again or fix his oddly withered foot, not to mention the insurmountable challenge of abolishing slavery in even one prefecture of the Frontlands. Still, he thought, maybe even if he couldn’t change anything, he could at least feel some measure of control over it through understanding why it happened. He wouldn’t feel so stupid and powerless if only he could understand why; what made these things the way they were?  And was there ever the possibility for them to be any other way?

“Well done!  You made it!”

“Wh-what?” Rumple stammered.  He hadn’t noticed the Hatter finish his song.

“Lets go inside.”

Rumple, realized with a start, that while he’d been distracted, thinking about his research and odd encounter with Belle the week before, he’d somehow managed to walk all the way from the carriage to the door of the public house, with the minimum of panic and zero slips or falls.

Would wonders never cease.  He couldn’t help but give himself a little internal cheer.  Now all he had to do was stay upright long enough to get back into the Cathy the carriage at the end of the night.  Of course between that time and now he would have to tolerate the prying eyes of several unfamiliar townspersons, not to mention Jefferson plying him with enough food to make a lightweight like him sleepy.  And then at a place like this there was usually alcohol.  Lots of alcohol.  Then Rumple remembered, from his pre-slavery days just how great he was at holding his drink.  Crap.

Chapter Text

“So,” said the Hatter over his flagon of mead, “you know why we’re here don’t you?”

“Something about a mission for La Belle Dame Sans Merci, I gather.”

“In the Southend there’s a couple. They’re shoemakers and their shop is having trouble staying in business. They’re down to their last scrap of leather. If they don’t start making some money soon, they’ll lose their business. They have no other trade and are already in debt with their landlord. If they can’t pay he’ll turn them into indentured servants. La Belle Dame says he’s driving business away on purpose. Duke Fillion wants them to work in his armory, making leather armour, but ther philosify is pacifist. So far they have refused to work for him, but if they lose their shop they won’t have a choice, if they want to survive.

Rumple nodded. In the Frontlands debt was the commonest route to servitude, soldiering or slavery. It was the same in every land he’d visited.

“Mrs. Shoemaker, she did the proper rites, came when the moon was ripe in full desperation of her mortal soul to beg the Dark Lady’s intervention. La Belle Dame Noir has heard her plea and decided to intervene.”

“That’s noble of her, aye, but what are we doing here? Why not just magic up a pot of gold for them? Our Lady is more than capable of—”

“Look, Rum-- can I call you Rum for short?”

“No, if you’re going to call me anything for short, why not just—"

“Anyway Rum, how’m I supposed to know why our mysterious mistress does what she does, all I know is she—”

They were interrupted by a clattering sound. Rumple jumped.

“Relax.” Jefferson, put a calming hand on Rumple’s arm. Rumple looked down to see a woman on the floor, having tripped, much to his mortification, on his walking sticks. This was odd because he’d been purposely conscientious about keeping them out of the way. The last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself or Jefferson. Their strange accents and clothes made it nearly impossible to be unobtrusive.

He thought he’d done a decent job of keeping them tucked away, where they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way, but it was a crowded tavern, and dark with cheap tallow candles the only illumination. It really was strange though, he’d been certain they’d been propped up against the wall beside him. He hated the idea of them anywhere out of reach, lest he be required to beat a hasty retreat. Perhaps he hadn’t been as careful as he’d thought. He peered down from his seat, created out of a carved out barrel, at the woman as she rose.

“My humblest apologies fine sir,” she said, her head lowered, her hands grasping hold of the sticks on the floor before he could get them. “Let me get these for you. Are you a soldier returned from the front, kind sir? Was you at the Eastern front luv? They’re battling the ogre legions over there I hear. Was you crippled there? Ah, no shame, no shame in wounds earned in the name of our king. Did you ever work with D company? My son is there. My own little bright boy. I haven’t heard from my Benny is a brinding’s year. His papa and me, we’re just desperate for news of—"

“N-n-no, I don’t know him, please just give me back my—I n-n-need-- I need—" stammered Rumple. He was just about to apologize to her for tripping her up, but the sight of his walking sticks in someone else’s hands operated in a strange way on him. The canes were like part of his body now. Although he’d only been using them for five or six months, he couldn’t imagine going back to a life without them. An image of himself crawling out of the tavern in his knees in the snow or being carried out by the Hatter fixed itself like a piece of grit stuck under one’s eyelid that wouldn’t go away. Worse still, was the mention of the war, wounds earned in “honourable” combat. His injury could claim no such hallowed provenence.

It had been a long time since he’d felt so helpless and vulnerable. The realization that he could still be made to feel this way by someone else and with such relative ease infuriated him.

He made a quick grab for his canes, but she stepped back, so only ending up yanking her shawl, exposing the top part of her breasts.

“Ow! Oi! What are you trying on with me there? I’m a decent, respectin’ woman, I am!” she shouted back at him. Heads turned. Even though they were in a dingy corner of the tavern, Rumple suddenly felt like he was a boy, in the throne room of the king again, braziers lit all around, the multitudinous eyes of the court all turned to scrutinize and bore into him. Suddenly, he was aware of how quiet the crowd at the tavern had suddenly become. He shrank back down against his seat, his palms leaving sweaty prints upon the wood, his walking sticks still achingly far away.

“I’m s-sorry—I di-di-didn’t mean to—please—"

“What my friend means, is ‘thank you,’” replied the Hatter smoothly. Long arms, with cuffs dripping in intricate patterns of woven lace easily plucked the canes from her hands and returned them to their proper place by Rumple’s side. It took all Rumple’s self-control not to immediately clutch them to his bosom for safe-keeping. “There, there, no harm done. Come Mi’lady, why don’t I buy you a drink for your pains.” The Hatter motioned her over to the seat he had now vacated as he headed to the bar.

The woman curtsied and took his place beside Rumple. Seeing no fisticuffs were in the offing, the patrons turned back to their dice and drinks and the companionable din of the tavern resumed its former pitch.

Rumple stared resolutely down at the brownish gold liquid in his tankard. Something about the woman was giving him a prickling sense of foreboding, even now, with the tension diffused between them.

He’d worked with his father in taverns like these enough times before to know the signs of a grifter when he saw one. Travellers and drunkards were easy prey for chancers, fibsters and scoundrels. As a boy he’d seen his father try every variation of the “oh let me just take your coat” or “I’ll carry your bag, Miss” scam until the angry tavern keepers ran them out of town, (or worse, asked for a cut of the proceeds) and then it was on to the next unsuspecting town full of dupes. It was an odd way to make a living. He supposed his father would’ve been at it still, but for the magic mirrors, which had come into their lands from the east only these past ten years. The mirrors allowed one village to communicate with another and, it was rumoured to spy on each other and their own subjects if manipulated by an unscrupulous mirror master.

In Rumple’s childhood though, such magical items had been few and far between, seen only in the wealthiest palaces of the port cities, never in the sort of one-tavern town where his father would ply his shyster’s trade.

Rumple had always hated being on the con, and had only participated grudgingly when they were completely skint, but as his gold making powers began to wane, they had come to rely on tricking drunks and strangers to a degree Rumple had never been comfortable with.

Chapter Text

Rumple traced a nervous finger around the rim of his unglazed clay cup, watching it dip down every time it hit a chip in the clay.  He didn’t want to look the woman in the eye, hoping if he avoided her gaze she would avoid his.

“I’m in haberdashery myself,” said the Hatter by way of introduction. “We’re just here in this humble neck of the woods looking for some particular shoes to go with a dress and hat I’m making up for a client of mine-- a Duchess of the Midlands if you must know.  The Shoemakers in this town came highly recommended to me by a friend.  Do you know where their shop is by any chance?”

“No, I’m a stranger here meself,” she said.  “But perhaps our road might be more comfortable if we strangers could share it together.  Have you procured a room in the inn for the night from the landlord?”

“We weren’t planning on staying long.”

“But surely long enough to let a fellow wayward soul show you how we make strangers feel at home in this part of the world.”

Jefferson leaned in closer to her, the light of the lantern on the table making his eyes flicker madly, as if considering possibilities far stranger than any ordinary bawdy human of this world could conjure.

What had the Hatter seen with those strange, mismatched eyes of his, Rumple couldn’t help but wonder.  And what had he done with those nervous fluttering hands of his?  And more importantly, what had been done to him?   Sometimes it looked to Rumple’s observant eyes, as if the Hatter's constantly roving eyes were searching for something nonstop. But what was he looking for? He always had black circles under his eyes and his erratic moods, morose and quiet one second and ebulliant and verbose the next made Rumple think he had trouble sleeping.

As they worked together over the next few days, Rumple watched his friend be taken aback by the simple act of moving through the prosaic world itself, in a way both charming and deeply odd, as if he had come from a different world; In one instance smiling in surprise at some simple thing, like a leaf or the texture of a floor tile, a moment later flinching away from some ordinary sound or situation as if pained beyond all reason. 

“You know,” the Hatter replied in a drowsy half-whisper, “there are times, especially in ‘this part of the world’ where I don’t feel a part of this world at all.  Like I could lose touch with the few slight things that ground me to this Earth and just float away like a petal in the breeze.”

“Sounds lovely.”  

“I assure you it’s anything but.  In fact, it’s absolutely terrifying—those moments when this reality feels like a soap bubble and if you just pressed your hand against it and it could snap and stretch and you think if you just …”

He placed his hand, palm flat against the air, as if it met resistance there, though there was nothing Rumple could see to stop it. 

“…. Tip your head the right way, you might be in another place entirely.”

She frowned in dismay, clearly her point wasn’t getting across, but she wouldn’t with trying at least one more tactic.   “You sound… troubled,” she offered, charitably, though Rumple was sure, she thought the Hatter more than halfway to madness; a judgement, Rumple , despite his growing affection for his travelling companion, had to concede was possibly correct.

“You mean mad,” said the Hatter, with a bitter laugh.  “But that’s alright,” he touched her hand as if to comfort her.  “We are all mad here.  There too, as well,” he giggled into his cup. 

“Perhaps I could find a way to ease your mind,” she purred as she placed other hand over his and stroked his knuckles. 

“Not unless you can change the past.”

“Maybe not the past,” she replied eagerly, seeing her opening, “But for a few florins I could tell you your future.”

“What?  How?”

“If you must know I’m a fortune teller by trade, a natural born seer.”

“A what?” asked Rumple abruptly. 

In answer, she turned her hand over and opened her palm.  Rumple stared at what, to his mounting horror appeared to be a human eye, nestled in the hollow of her hand.

Chapter Text

“A Seer? Really?” asked Jefferson from under corrugated brows. “Because I could’ve sworn you were propositioning me to—”

“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” growled Rumple. Rumple had never touched a woman (or man for that matter) in anger, but without thinking he struck the Seer’s hand away.

Something flew up in the air, winked in the light and crashed down to the floor, shattering into pieces, the largest of which finally came to rest under their table, it’s rolling progress halted by the side of Rumple’s boot.

Rumple picked it up off the floor.

Just a piece of glass, a dollop of glue still adhering to the back.

The “eye” wasn’t even blue.

He felt his heart rate slowly begin to return to normal, even if all around, the uproar was only beginning.

“C’mon let’s get out of here,” hissed the Hatter in his ear. Rumple had never been so glad to be dragged away from a warm fire and thrust into the frigid air of a winter night in his life.

XXX

“So, how’d it go?” asked Cathy as they rattled away from the tavern, down the cobblestone path towards the centre of the village. Jefferson had stressed “Top pitchfork wielding mob fleeing speed” and Cathy was eager to fulfill his bidding.

Almost too eager, thought Rumple as he bumped about on his seat, cursing his stupid over-active imagination, still trying not to recall the echoing voice, still ever-present in the back of his mind, despite all the time and events that had passed, like it was yesterday:

I see you on the field. It is red as your own fresh blood…

“Just keep us rolling,” ordered the Hatter through gritted teeth as they bumped along.

“That bad, eh? What did you say?”

“What did I say? What about this lunatic over here?” He waived an aggrieved sleeve at Rumple. “What the bloody hell was that?”

“She wasn’t a real seer,” replied Rumple stoutly.

“What? Really?” exclaimed Jefferson in mock indignation.

“You knew?”

“Well, of course I knew!”

“How?”

“Because they aren’t any Seers anymore. Haven’t been for hundreds of years and all those reports are just from old manuscripts which might’ve been made up or misinterpreted. It’s just pretend, Rumple, something to frighten kids. If it ever existed their species is extinct now. I mean, have you ever come across anyone, anyone at all in your journey from the Frontlands to here, who had their fortune told by a real seer?”

“Yes.”

“Really? Because I’d like to meet him.”

“You already have.”

“Who--?”

“Me.”

“You? Really?”

“Yes, me,” Rumple gritted out. “Why do you find that so hard to believe?”

Chapter Text

“Yes, me,” Rumple gritted out. “Why do you find that so hard to believe?”

“Because you were a—um, at least I think you were—”

“A slave? It’s not a sin to say it, though I wasn’t at the time.”

“Well?” Jefferson leaned in breathlessly, ready for all the good gossip.

“Well, what?” asked Rumple, quite aware of the Hatter’s rapt attention suddenly focused like a spotlight on him.

“What did the Seer say?”

He looked back, through the window of his mind and it was as clear as if it had happened a day before.  The girl with the ruined face, the stink of the military camp, the flapping sound of the tent canvas, and then her voice, like the rushing of blood in his ears...

>>>
I see you on the field. It is red as your own fresh blood…

"What- what happens to me in the battle?"

Abandoned by your comrade at the first sign of danger,
Chased down by those who would do you harm—

"The ogres."   He shivered. "I’ve heard they tear men limb from limb."

He gulped, terrified to ask the next question, but unable to stop himself. If he was truly to decide tonight, he had to know.

"Do they—do they kill me, tomorrow, in the battle?"

No. Your thread is not cut there.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but then, to his horror, she continued.

I see you captured, crippled, enslaved and starved.

I see you crawl in chains, a servant to monsters

And you will never fly above your station.

They will make you lick the dust

And still they will never accept you as one of them.

And for merely taking a single rose in hand

they will release you from this world forever.  

But even then, in the World to Come,

you will still be maimed as you once were,

still lost as you are now,

Cursed and incomplete,

Doomed to wander the world

on spindle legs of wood and wire

Still searching for what won’t be found.

<<<

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“It was bad, wasn’t it,” said Cathy, oozing sympathy. “Poor thing. But seriously, have you ever considered that maybe it’s best you do talk about it, especially if it’s bothering you. I mean what’s mentionable is manageable, right?”

“It’s not bothering me!” sniffed Rumple.

“Oh come on, you can tell me!” pressured Jefferson. “I won’t judge or tell anyone! Right Cathy? I mean I never told Rumple about your horse fancying thing."

“What?”

“Anyway, You can’t lead with something like that and then clam up on us!”

Rumple’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “Watch me.”

And despite their entreaties he didn’t say anything more until they arrived at the Shoemakers’ cottage.

Chapter Text

The Shoemakers

The Shoemaker and his wife had very little in the world—a tiny shop with a kitchen in the back and a loft above it with a ceiling too low to stand up in, a woven straw mat to sleep on and a single threadbare quilt to cover the both of them.

But this was all old news to them—it had always been thus. What was new, was that business had been terrible lately. Somehow, only a few people in the village seemed to need their shoes mended that winter and no one had bought a new pair in months, a highly unusual trend for the season.

Finally business got so bad that they only had two pieces of leather left to make uppers on a single pair of boots. The material was kid leather from the finest softest baby goat hide tanned to a buttery soft perfection. Mr. Shoemaker had bought it on a whim a few years previously at the Royal Market in the capital, back when business was good. He’d fancied on using it to make delicate dancing shoes for a noblewoman or rich merchant’s daughter. Unfortunately, there were no such types to buy shoes of that nature in their modest farming village and their funds were too low and the weather too bad to undertake the long, expensive journey to one of the bigger market towns.

In the town of Hogarth, the demand was for plain, sturdy shoes with thick, hard soles, not frivolous dancing slippers, that could wear out in an evening.

Although they couldn’t think who would possibly buy such items, it was the last piece of leather they had. If they didn’t make new shoes with it, they might as well just give up and turn themselves over to the Debt Squad for enslavement.

“Maybe the snow will melt a little in time for us to breach the path between the mountains to the next town,” suggested Mrs. Shoemaker, trying to give her husband a little hope.

“Yes, of course, we can sell the shoes there and make enough to keep us comfortably for the
winter,” said Mr. Shoemaker, afraid to disappoint his poor wife.

Both of them knew the snow rarely melted this late in the year, but whatever future might come, they knew it was wrong to surrender to fate without giving it one last try and they truly loved making shoes. If this was the last time they would be able to practice their profession, then they might as well go out with a bang. At least it would give them something to do.

Comfort, utility and beauty were the three words on the Shoemakers’ Guild crest , and they would live true to those sentiments until the last, they vowed to one another.

That night before bed, they laid out the tools of their trade upon the work table. Aprons were placed over chairs to await the morning and the buttery soft kid leather was carefully draped over the wooden shoe models.

Then they climbed upstairs to their little attic bedroom with heavy hearts.

Chapter Text

The shoemaker was a pious man and like all good people in the village, prayed only to the fairies.  That night he burned the last of his dried  dustflower seeds in the brazier and spoke the traditional incantations, going over the archaic words twice, just as his ancestors had, to ensure not a single syllable was spoken in error, which would give great offense to any fairy listening.  He sprinkled the remaining few precious droplets of dustflower oil over the shoemaking leathers and tools before going to sleep that night, hoping against hope for a fairy visitor to take pity on him and his wife an accept his humble offering.   

The fairies were etheral, female creatures with shimmering gossamer wings who lived in a golden land of immortal trees known as Pixie Hollow, far beyond the borders of all human habitation.  If a person treated the shrines of the fairies with the proper respect and daubed dustflower oil across the doorposts of his house, the good fairies of the Enchanted Forest would always protect him.  When times got tough all honest men turned to the blue light of the north star to guide them, the symbol of the Queen of the Fairies, known in some lands as Titania, or her high servant, the Rheul Ghorm.

It was said that if you treated the fairies with the reverance they deserved and gave them daily offerings of dust, they would sometimes intervene in the affairs of men and take your part against an enemy.  The Fae, the old tales told, had extensive powers.  In the ancient tales of Hogarth county, they would shroud the enemies of the righteous in a sudden mist, so that the small Hogarthian army could ambush more numerous, and better equiped invaders from the north.  In other legends the Fae glamoured an entire squadron of armed Faltesean chariots into crashing to pieces into cracks they could open up in the earth that had never been there before, that just as suddenly would close up again, swallowing, horses, men and machinery whole.

However much as men touted the benficense of the fairies though, women's faith in the fairies wasn't always so absolute.  Since ancient times there had been rumours of strange females who emerged from the forests to seduced even the most faithful of husbands away from devoted wives.  The fairies were known to be jealous creatures and if they so chose could make their magics deadly to humans who had something they wanted or those they suspected of shortchanging them.  Legend said that if a parent was careless or let a crawling baby or walking toddler wander out of sight, a fairy might kidnap it and swap it for a changeling. Changelings were babies or children who resembled humans from a distance, but upon closer inspection were revealed to be deformed hybrid creatures, half human and half of some other magical species, but nobody really knew for sure. Few had ever seen a real changeling. Usually what the common people called a “changeling child” was really only a poor human infant born with a birth defect, illness or injury.

Some said if you ate the food offered to you by a fairy you would be endowed with great strength or wisdom, but others said that a human who tasted the exquisite perfection of fairy food would never again consent to let a piece of earthy human faire cross their lips and would starve and wither away rather than besmirch the purity of that experience. 

The oldest stories told of men who'd had carnal knowledge of seductive fairy women.  Some would lose their wits thereafter, and others spend the rest of their lives, searching, searching always searching to recapture that one experience of perfect, ethereal, ecstasy never able to settle down, no matter how hard they tried, spoiled by the glamour of a fairy, cursed to a life of restlessness forever. 

The reports of worshipers who encountered fairies often disagreed as to the size of such beings.  Some said they were as big as a man and others as tiny as a thimble.  There was much disagreement too as to their exact colouration.  Some said they looked almost exactly like humans except for the wings and pointed ears, brown or peach coloured skin of little difference to that of the woman you'd meet in any village.  Others swore they were iridescent blue-green like the wings of hummingbirds.  But what they all agreed upon was that the fairies were female, and most unmistakably so.  No verified encounter ever described a male fairy, which made most humans suspect the rumours of their mating with human males were true.  If fairies were not immortal, (and that was a possibility much argued about), then they needed the sperm of a human male to procreate, which made the women's fears of fairies coming to steal their mates, seemingly all the more realistic.

This was of course poppycock.  Fairies and humans had diverged enough from their original ancestor to be two distinct species.  Female fairies didn't need human males to propegate the species any more than human males needed fairy women to make more humans.

Male fairies existed. They were known amongst their own kind as "sparrowmin.”  They were flightless, possessed only limited inborn magic and were somewhat oppressed in most fairy societies, physically bound to their hometrees, their occupations limited to defense of the tree, tending the young and processing raw dustflower pollen and seeds into consumable, magic enchancing food.  

Which is not to say, the human women were entirely in the wrong and the free-ranging winged fairy females didn't sometimes fuck the occasional human male.  They just didn't need to and most (though not all), found human men kind of gross. 

And so, to hedge their bets, the women sometimes secretly prayed to other gods, rather than strictly to the fairies alone.  Evidence and hearsay seemed to indicate that they needed a back-up plan.  And this, dear reader, is precisely where the Lady of the Dark castle came in.   

XXXX

The shoemaker's wife lay beside him with the warm brick from the fire wrapped in clean linen at her feet. It kept their toes and bodies warm in the chill of the night. It was the first night of the year they had to use the brick and she knew it wouldn’t be the last.

She did a few careful mental calculations. She knew exactly how many candles they had left, (two), how many loaves of black bread,(one), how many turnips, (three and a half if you counted the tiny one), a single carrot, four handfuls of rice and two handfuls of beans. She knew how to make such meagre faire last—how to parcel out and water down to help things last and mitigate a bit of the coming hunger, but there was really only so much she could do.

The cold was another problem they would soon have to face. They could chop up their old wooden chairs, footstool and table to keep the fire going and there was one scrawny dead tree outside in the yard they could use or sell for firewood to woodsman to buy a few scraps more of food, but at the most it would last them would only buy them one week more, that is if they didn’t freeze first.

The obstacles of the future were like the snowfall, the white flakes tumbling past her window by the last rays of candle light; they kept coming and coming, and no matter how much effort you expended trying to clear a path forward, the snow effortlessly smothered all your hard work in a handful of minutes, in a thick smothering blanket, layer upon layer until all sounds were stifled below.

She shut her eyes. She was so tired. For once she was glad they’d never managed to have any children, much as she’d always hoped for them. It would have been a double agony to see her precious babies brought low by illness and hunger. In such dire straits parents were forced to make despicable choices; to sell their children into slavery, not knowing their fates or to let them succumb to the cold, hunger and disease.

There was no one to disappoint. No one to blame, but the gods and their own mistakes in planning. Still how could you predict the future? As she lay there looking out at the cloudy sky, she scanned her memories looking for some solution to their current dilemma. Somehow or other they had always survived before, but none of those past solutions seemed to fit today’s problem.

Chapter Text

She was about to fall into a much needed sleep when she thought of the old legend of the Lady of the Dark Castle. The Dark Castle on the hilltop outside the village had been abandoned for ages.

Hundreds of years ago, they said it had been the Castle of Light, wreathed in gold, whose very stones glowed in the night so it could be seen from miles and miles away, flowering all over with wild roses and splendorous statues of birds and angels. In those days it had been home to a tyrannical Sorcerer who taxed the heart and soul out of the townsfolk and stole the farmers’ harvests to feed the many guests at the lavish balls he threw for the other nobles. It was said that all the high born folk from all around especially loved to visit the castle in the coldest months of the year, for it was never winter there and all was summer forever and ever in the Sorcerer’s enchanted garden. Or so said the common folk who worked as servants in the castle. But after so many years, perhaps the stories had exaggerated or maybe those long ago servants had only told their friends and relatives what the Sorcerer wanted them to hear, so he could lure even more of them up the hill to toil for him in his palace of glowing white stone.

Then one day there was a great surge of lightning around the castle and storm the likes of which the country had never seen before shook the ground all around. Turrets tumbled and windows of exquisite stain glass exploded out into the night. The stones turned dark and mighty thorn bushes a mile deep rose out of the grew out of the ground in one night. A path opened up in the thorns and most of the servants walked out. Then it closed up again. From that day forward no one ever came in and no one ever came out. For a while the castle was completely dark. The darkness crept up the stones and withered the flowers. Gleaming brass and gold leaf flaked off and turned to blackened dust.

Anyone who tried to enter the castle was blocked by the mighty thorn bushes which magically grew back as soon as they were hacked at. The castle itself lay in ruins with only the main body of the building and the westmost tower still rising up from the rubble, visible even from behind the thorns and walls now covered with creeping venomous vines.

But while the castle lay forgotten in ruins, the townspeople below rejoiced in seasons of plenty, at last able to keep their hard earned wages and produce to themselves. Their markets grew strong and prosperous and they used their surplus to take care of the most vulnerable members of the community.

The villagers and farmers feared that with the Sorcerer gone, dukes from neighbouring lands would come to take over the area and demand tribute from them, but strangely enough this never happened. The area around the Dark Castle remained a place of free folk who for the most part looked after each other. They were conscripted to no wars, never forced to build structures for tyrants and as long as they shared with the poorer members of the community as well, got to appreciate all the fruits of their labour.

But even in such a place, despair will sometimes take up residence next door to prosperity. Wealth cannot always subdue ill health. And the Dark Castle wasn’t always dark.

Someone noticed that if you stared up at the westmost tower on a moonless night you could see a light in the topmost window and over that light, a dark shape would sometimes appear, a humanish sort of silhouette of what some said was a demon, others an enchantress, a magical lady moving and flickering against the glowing light from the topmost window. It was said that if a truly desperate soul saw the Dark Lady’s silhouette and called to her, she would come to you and offer you a deal.

The Shoemaker’s wife slipped out of bed and kneeled by the window. She looked for the light and there it was. She looked for the silhouette of the Dark Lady and although she’d looked for it many times before, for the first time she saw it clearly. She closed her eyes and with all the desperate longing in her heart she made her wish.

Please, let us just get through the winter. Somehow.

Nothing happened. No Dark Lady came to her rescue. It was a silly superstition after all.

She looked at the tower, blinked and the silhouette was gone.

Her feet were cold and she could see her breath against the window pane. Disappointed she went back to bed.

Chapter Text

Rumple should’ve known he was in trouble when the Hatter began doling out the mushrooms. He’d gotten into his aunts’ “special” mushroom stash long ago as a child and had lived to regret it.

Needless to say after spending 18 hours with an eight year old accidentally tripping balls on hallucinogens meant for grown adults and tjose schooled to a state of full mental readiness for a life-altering experience by a professional shaman no less, they made sure they materials were kept far far away from their precocious nephew from then on.

Not that he had any desire to go anywhere near even the most innocent mushroom from that day forward.

But here he was, suddenly being encouraged by a crazy man in an even crazier hat to take off his clothes and eat a piece of mushroom from a magic box. Why did he do it? Later he suspected that “Belle said we have to” and “Belle does it all the time” lines may have played a role in forced his hand on the mushroom front. But he’d be damned if he got naked in front of Jefferson.

“Are you sure you won’t remove your garments?” ask the Hatter for the umpteenth time as he shimmied nimbly out of a pair of too-tight leather pants.

Rumple vehemently shook his head. “Strip off in front of you? Right here? Now? Not in this lifetime. Are you mad?”

The Hatter cocked his off-kilter head. “Well, that is what it says on the tin…”

“Tin? What’s made of tin? Why must you always go on and on talking rubbish?” grumped the beleaguered caretaker. There was no way in hell he was letting the Hatter of all people see him naked.

Jefferson was just the sort of person to let drop some kind of embarrassing comment to Belle about the size and dimensions of her servant’s penis. After having survived slavery and enchanted metal poisoning, Rumple would sooner not die of sheer embarrassment if he could help it.

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Jefferson winked. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather---”

“I bloody well would not.”

“You’ll regret it.”

“Not in this century, I won’t!” shot back Rumple.

The Hatter was right of course, he would live to regret keeping his clothes on.

Chapter Text

Concerning the aforementioned push for nudity, the Hatter was correct.

No sooner were the words “Not in this century I won’t” out of Rumple’s mouth, but Rumple began to notice a change in his walking sticks. Somehow, they seemed larger and a bit heavier than they had just moments before.

The Hatter was busy folding up and storing his clothes beneath a shrub that suddenly seemed to loom over him, doubling and tripling in size as the seconds ticked by on a watch the Hatter drew from his pocket and placed on the pile, that was suddenly as big as a dinner plate in his tiny hand. The ticking grew louder too, the black second hand bigger than the Hatter’s own hand and swelling larger as Rumple watched, aghast. The entire world seemed to be expanding around them at a dizzying pace.

No, he amended, it wasn’t the world getting bigger. He and the Mad hatter were getting smaller, much smaller. Soon Rumple had to drop his sticks due to their increasing heaviness and height. Moments later his clothes pooled around him, entangling and tripping him int heir folds. Soon the folds of fabric themselves rose so high above him that he felt like he was swimming in drifts of snow. He tried to push them away, but in his current tiny, weakened state he could barely budge them. The folds of his trousers toppled over his head and shut out the light, nearly smothering him, but before he could panic a hand reached in and pulled him out.

He sat in the dirt, naked, despite himself, wishing he could wipe that smirk off the Hatter’s silly face.

“So this is why you wanted my clothes off? Why didn’t you just explain it ahead of time instead of letting me almost drown in a pair of giant trousers?”

“They are not giant trousers. They are regular sized. It is you who are now tiny, as am I.”

“No kidding. You couldn’t have just said?”

The Hatter shrugged. “Honestly, didn’t think I’d have that much trouble getting you to strip down. I mean nudity is our natural state as human creatures. It is modesty that is unnatural. Haven’t you heard the saying, ‘We’re all born naked. All the rest is just drag!”

“Shows how much you know.  Whenever I strip down people—well people do that!”

“What?”

“That!”

“What?”

“What you’re doing.  Stop it.”

“Stop what? I’m not doing anything.”

“Yes you are!  You’re staring at me!  Stop it”

“Oh.”  Guilty, the Hatter turned his gaze to the treetops and tried to look interested in a cluster of twigs that may or may not have been a bird’s nest, but against his own volition his eyes darted back, desperate to slake the thirst of his curiosity and, it startled him to realize, attraction. 

Rumple's type wasn't ordinarily the Hatter's cup of tea, but seeing Belle so besotted with him, the Hatter couldn't resist, but take a second look at all his charms, and those, despite his lack of size in other regions couldn't be completely discounted.  Of course, he supposed Belle hadn't meant him to report back on that aspect of Rumple when she wished him to win the former slave's confidence and prompt Rumple to tell him all his secrets.  Of well, thought he, if that wasn't what she wanted she should have been more precise in her asking. 

“You’re doing it again!”

“Look, Rumple, we’ll never get anywhere like this.  We can’t do what we have to do if I’m not allowed to look at you at all.  We have to co-ordinate our efforts to help these people and we’re not going to be able to do it if I have to stare at the ceiling every time we’re together.  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you self-conscious.”

Chapter Text

“Look, Rumple, we’ll never get anywhere like this. We can’t do what we have to do if I’m not allowed to look at you at all. We have to co-ordinate our efforts to help these people and we’re not going to be able to do it if I have to stare at the ceiling every time we’re together. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you self-conscious, it’s human nature.”

“Oh? Is it now?”

“Don’t act so innocent. I’ve seen you staring too. In fact, if I actually thought your desires were inclined to those of my sex, I fear I might have lost my head altogether,” said the Hatter with a saucy wink.

“Touche,” replied Rumple grumpily.

Loathe as he was to admit it, the Hatter was telling the truth. Rumple, though he hated when people stared at him, hypocrite that he was, had indeed been staring at his friend in turn.

It was impossible not to. Jefferson’s crudely stitched together head and neck, like some kind of poorly mended ragged doll couldn’t help but draw and then repel the eye. The juxtaposition of the disturbing appearance of the hacked through neck itself, still impossibly raw as a piece of fresh chop from the butcher’s block, juxtaposed with that angelic, near-perfect face, with its soft halo of girlish brown-gold curls and large, long-lashed eyes, that would’ve had a painter swooning in a second, was a rather arresting sight, to say the least.

Rumple wasn’t typically attracted to men, but damn he was human. He had eyes. This was far, far, too much skin for him to take in all of a sudden. The last people he saw to be so naked were his former slave companions.

As a slave he had never been “naked,” as a choice, but rather “exposed” against his will with all the rest, their abused and beaten bodies revealed to the world in all their weakness and vulnerability. They had been put on display in such a way because their overseers merely saw them as beasts. Clothing them unduly was considered a waste of good fabric, to those who saw them as nothing more than pigs or horses, that didn’t need shirts to protect their skin from the beating sun or to ease the sting of the whip.

Rumple knew he was much stronger now than he was when he first arrived at the castle. With a little more fullness to his face, his nose no longer seemed quite so prominent and his body, especially his chest and arms had become firmly muscled from all his work in the garden, wrestling recaltriant plants. Removing his nightshirt before the mirror in the morning, he was startled to see a man in the reflection who, if not classically handsome, at least looked hale, hearty and strong.

His leg never did get any better, but it also never seemed to get any worse after that day when Belle removed his shackle. The odd gray colour and whithered leaf texture remained, but the creeping blight that had been ascending with progressive speed up his body from the ankle had stopped completely. Whatever the metal had done to poison the rest of his body, its influence gradually seeped away with good food, rest and interesting tasks to keep him active and busy.

He had long stopped feeling dizzy when he rose from sitting. Exhaustion, nausea, fuzzy headedness and a kind of lurching clumsiness about all his movements were no longer his constant companions. He felt a sense of purpose, energy and drive now that he had not felt since childhood. The quality of his soul had changed. He had grown calmer less habitually terrified and apt to startle at sounds as the days passed.

Yet whatever the magic of Belle’s castle had done for him—next to Jefferson he realized he must still appear like a withered sapling next to a strong fir tree (even if it was one half-hewed by an ax in the uppermost section).

Despite the Hatter’s maimed neck, Rumple could not help admire his fit friend. He could only fantasize and imagine himself with a physique like the Hatter’s; his scrawny underfed body, made beefer with muscle, legs whole and powerful, back unbowed by the years of toil, the instinct to curl in on himself to protect himself from pain or someone else’s malign notice, no longer extant. They were probably of similar ages, but Rumple knew all he had been through had aged him somewhat prematurely and his skin showed signs of a lifetime spent outdoors, quite an unfashionable characteristic for a man in high society.

Rumple wasn’t entirely sure what Belle’s relationship was with the Hatter. Were they friends; employer and employee or something far closer? He hadn’t detected a sexual vibe between them, but whatever Belle felt for Jefferson he fancied it went beyond anything she thought of him, that is if she noticed him at all, other than when he was particularly clumsy. Rumple coveted that closeness to Belle that Jefferson seemed to take for granted as his due. What he wouldn’t have given to be such a person in her estimation, even one who, like the Hatter could never seem to look in exactly the right direction.

Rumple knew that no matter how he fared in the house of Belle he could never be anything more than a former slave, a servant. His heart’s innermost wish was that he could be seen by her, really seen, the way the Hatter was seen as a person almost as full as her. Although, to be perfectly honest, when she did fix her carefully scrutinizing lantern-like gaze upon his poor weathered features, his overpowering instinct was still to flee and hide. Even when he stood his ground under that searing, preternatural stare, he would find he suddenly no longer knew what to do with his hands or how to comport his facial features in a way that didn’t seem contrived or utterly ridiculous.

Jefferson said the mushrooms worked by moving through the blood stream, whatever that was. It meant that as you ingested them and they moved through your body, you shrunk, but not your clothes because your clothes were not part of your body. Yet the Hatter’s hat remained of proportionate size to the Hatter himself. He shrunk and it shrunk along with him, which had to mean it was—what exactly? A part of him somehow? A part of him he could leave on a table or hang on a hook when he went indoors—how did that work exactly? Rumple shook his head. It was all too much to think about for his recently shrunken brain.

“Tish and pish, don’t let it trouble you,” dismissed the Hatter. “After this little adventure together is over and we have resumed our ordinary physical dimensions, rest assured I will suffer you to ask me any question you like about the oddity of my physical appearance, rude or otherwise. Whether you wish to extend the same courtesy to me is entirely up to you.”

“Uh, alright,” replied Rumple, still trying to unpick the tangle of the Hatter’s fancy words to try to decipher his meaning and intentions. Best to just get things over with and get back to the castle where he felt safe, and best of all normal sized.

Chapter Text

The baby carpet which had accompanied them in their carriage ride to town, was happy to get out of Cathy the coach to stretch its tiny tassels at last.

Although, lounging with its mother by Belle’s large fire in the Dark Castle, it had seemed the veritable runt of the litter to Rumple just days before, now it loomed up before him, the size of a small whale.

“Baby’s still just learning to fly,” Rumple squeaked in alarm. “Maybe we shouldn’t trust it to take us into—“

But Jefferson took no notice of Rumple’s protests as he stepped confidently onto the young carpet. Thrilled to be out on its own and on its first big mission, the over-excited carpet began to rise into the air with Rumple still seated on the ground.

“Hey! Hey! Get back here!”

“Just give me your hand,” said the Hatter.

Rumple regarded the carpet, rising in a jerking, uncertain motion and the naked, wild-eyed Hatter with his outstretched hand with rising panic. From someplace deep inside, that surprised even himself, Rumple found the courage to grab hold and let his friend pull him up.

Together they rose in a dizzying, exhilarating fashion, and Rumple found himself clutching the Hatter by the arm, as they darted under a gap in the doorway. It yawned as wide as a black chasm in front of them, before it swallowed them up, into a dark hallway.

How the carpet navigated through that dark space, Rumple could not tell, but at one point the Hatter yelled “Duck!” Rumple jerked downwards as he felt something thick and vast pass overhead. They emerged into a large open space, which he now saw was a workroom lit by a single magical hearth-light, gleaming through a lantern of grimy glass . Chairs and a stove rose unsettingly up to meet them as the careless little carpet romped around the room with little regard to the tiny shrunken humans clinging desperately to its back.

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Rumple gripped on tight to the fibres of the carpet, which were now as long as table legs in his tiny hands. Though they were inside now, he found he had to speak loudly just to be heard over the sound of the air rushing around them as they flew, whipping his hair into his eyes and mouth.

“I still don’t understand why we can’t go back and shrink my sticks as well!”

“You won’t need them for this job.”

“Says you. I’d feel a lot more comfortable if I could at least move freely once we’re there!”

“I told you, the mushroom doesn’t work on inorganic material.”

“Then why is your hat—-“

“Who says Mathilda isn’t organic!”

“Are you saying that thing is alive?”

“Of course.”

“What is it— some kind of animal?”

“Of course not.”

“But you just said—“

“Mathilda is a fungus, a mushroom of the mycorrhizae variety.”

“You have a giant mushroom you just let live on your head.”

“A giant, perfectly camaflouged mushroom, might I add and I am hardly unique in the matter. All my people do. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. They are partially nourished by our scalp flakes, the dead ends of our hair and we help them spread their species. They in turn, keep us warm in the winter and protected from the sun in the summer by their essential hat-ly nature and when worn to bed give us pleasant dreams. Another benefit is that we never have to spend money on haircuts.”

“And all of your magical hat-wearing people can travel between realms as you do?”

“What? No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. Most of my people are no more magical than a constipated zebra! As for myself, any abilities I have are probably only related to fungal-human communication." Jefferson patted the hat above his head in a loving, tender gesture. “Mathilda, here is the special one. She is unique for one of her species, in that she has developed a somewhat peculiar taste for the dandruff of people with magic in them. She's been passed down in my family for generations. The realm jumping is simply a side effect of her digestive properties. Think of it as a magical burp if you will.”

“A burp?”

“Or a fart. Whichever you like.”

But Rumple had little opportunity to marvel over the inherent weirdness of the answer as they were now closing in on the table that was their destination.

There were important reasons they had to be small for this mission, Jefferson explained to Rumple as they travelled. Firstly, two strange, full sized men sneaking into a house at night could easily be mistaken as thieves by the householders and murdered in self-defense. Also, although it felt, due to their small size that they were graveling for eons, this was in reality a comparitively small cottage for a full sized humans to work together in. The Shoemakers slept in close proximity to their work area and were bound to be awakened by the loud noises of two full grown persons bumping up against chairs and tables and hammering away. At least in their tiny size they could work with mostly tiny tools that made little sound. Their new voices would not alert the usual observer, sounding like little more than the squeakings of mice, of which the house had plenty. Rumple shivered to hear this from the Hatter, afraid of sharp teeth and scratching claws, acutely aware of his own limited capacity for scampering. Mice that were previously tiny, would be as huge as bears to him now, he estimated, their two front teeth as big as butcher knives.

But as they zoomed past on the baby carpet, he caught sight of the very same creatures fleeing in panic into the cracks in the floorboards and the gaps in the planks of the walls and realized there wasn’t much reason to be afraid. The mice were not actually bear sized, but more like the size of cows to him in comparison. Not to say that Rumple wasn’t afraid of cows, as well, after having seen one trample a milkmaid when he was child, but less so than bears.

Seemingly attuned to Rumple’s thoughts, the Hatter said, “Don’t mind them. The only thing you have to watch out for is don’t get in their way when they’re frightened. They’ll flatten anything without compunction that stands between them and their bolt holes. Trust me, I speak from personal experience.”

The second reason, for their current reduction in size, Jefferson explained, as they zoomed straight up a vertical table leg, was that the shoes they were about to make really had to be true spectacular. It wasn’t enough for the materials to be good and the style refined. The sign of really well made footwear was the fine stitching—the finer and more invisible the stitches the better. And who, Belle reasoned, could work on a scale that tiny and delicate, but actual tiny people? Of course, the people in question would have to be good with a needle and thread to begin with, practiced in the art of the cloth for long enough that muscle memory could take over if the mushroom eating experience proved too discombobulating for the mental faculties. This mentally discombobulating was often the result of a person’s first experience with this particular mushroom species, Jefferson said to Rumple.

“Which is funny,” Rumple replied, “as I seem to be the least discombobulated one here.”

“Well, well,” tutted Jefferson, “perhaps you are immune to some of the more inebriating side effects.”

“Or maybe you just can’t hold your mushroom.”

“Slow down!” Jefferson said to the carpet. To Rumple he said, “Also, probably true. Luckily, I have developed at least some tolerance to the trippier side effects.” He gave Rumple a slightly cock-eyed stare. “You did have horns when we first got on the carpet, didn’t you?”

“I will not dignify that with a reply,” Rumple snorted, but Jefferson seemed otherwise occupied.

“Carpet, slow down! Why is he not—“

“He’s not stopping! Carpet! Carpet! Why won’t he listen?” Rumple despaired.

“Have you ever met a toddler that did? Sorry Rumple, it looks like we’ll have to jump down lest we overshoot the table top! Take my hand.”

“I can’t ju—“

But before Rumple could do anything about it, the Hatter grabbed his hand and leapt.

Rumple squeezed his eyes shut as the table rose up too fast to meet them and they fell at a dizzying speed. Distantly he hoped his scream wasn’t loud enough to wake the shoemakers.

Luckily, the table was covered in cut up bits of fabric, loose bits of horse hair, balls of wool and folds of soft, supple leather. Rumple tumbled head over heals over behind the Hatter like a human pillbug, rolling down a mountain of folded leather, until he finally came to rest beside an unused pincushion. He sat up, astonished and strangely exhilarated, to find himself no worse for wear.

“Uh, whaaa——!”

“Alright!” exclaimed Jefferson, barely pausing to take a breath and dust off Mathilda. “Let’s get to work!”

And work they did. Under Jefferson’s direction a still dazed Rumple cut out the the upper part of one shoe, then another using the shoemaker’s scissors, quite a task as they were now nearly as long as he was tall. At least the needles, which Jefferson extracted from within his mysterious hat, whose protection during the shrinking process had rendered them proportionate to human size, were easier for him to manage. It was easy for one trained in spinning and tailoring such as he to stitch the pieces of soft kid leather together.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

As Rumple and the Hatter worked, the Blue Fairy travelled to the Shoemakers’ humble cottage, wand in hand, but she took her time in coming. She expected to find the Shoemaker and his wife asleep, having never checked with her greatest enemy to learn that she too, had been called upon by this desperate couple.

Azuli had thoroughly cased the workshop the week before and knew where the leather and tools would be laid out. She planned to enchant the leather stretcher so that every time the shoemaker removed a piece of leather from the stretcher to create a shoe, a new piece would take its place, so that he wouldn’t have to spend precious money on new material.

Their small amount of coin, which they kept in a jug hidden in the cold cellar, she planned to fill to the brim with fairy gold that would last at least until the spring. (Thereafter it would turn into stones, like all untended fairy gold usually did, but by then it would have done its work).

She planned to enchant the dented pot hanging over the last embers of the fire to never go empty, providing hot, nourishing stews throughout the winter.

Imagining the couple’s gratitude upon the morn, she smiled. They would be more than happy to oblige in future if she called upon them for a favour.

The shoes they crafted out of the enchanted leather would magically find their way to royal feet in the capital. The spells in the leather would should her the paths the royals took in their daily travels and if they went anywhere they shouldn’t be.

Knowledge of illicit visits to mistresses and stableboys was a valuable commodity. The royal family would do much to keep that sort of thing a secret. It also helped to know if the highborn houses met with each other, without the fairies’ knowledge. Any plots that were afoot between the humans to leverage their greater united power against fairy-kind had to be foiled before they could start. A delicate touch that couldn’t be directly connected to herself had served her well in such matters before. Fairy law only allowed a fairy to meddle so much in the affairs of humans without authorization from Queen Titania.

Now that Titania was older and weaker, her hold on her underlings had eroded somewhat, but it wouldn’t do for her to be aware of Blue’s disregard for her rules until the matter of succession was fully hammered out.

Succession, succession, succession. It was all anyone talked about back at court. The whispers filled every vein and artery of the Hometrees of the Grove. The Blue Fairy had to be on her best behavior at all times. As Titania was so maddeningly fond of telling her, her succession to the throne was not a given and the will of the Fairy Queen was absolute in this matter. No fairy in the Court Circle could trust another, this close to the Queen naming her heir. It was an event that hadn’t happened for over three hundred years.

The transfer of power among the Fair Folk was always a tricky business and had in the past been accompanied by bloodshed and Titania’s rule had mostly been one of peace. Most agreed that it was good the rulers only changed every three hundred years or so, instead of the chaotic games of constant musical chairs the humans seemed to prefer when choosing leaders. Thankfully, For all their delicacy of appearance fairies were extremely hardy creatures and long lived and nearly impervious to assassination. Not so human leaders. It often made it hard for her to remember who was in charge of any given human kingdom from one week to the next. Not to mention all the other systems of governance they went in for that weren’t even based on inheritance. She shuddered at the thought.

Chapter Text

Rumple mainly watched and copied what the Hatter did at first, but soon his rusty sewing skills started to come back to him. He was clumsy for the first few stitches, but with each pass of the needle his hands grew swifter, his aim surer. It had been many years since he’d thought about his sewing and spinning lessons at his aunties’ knees as a wee lad. Those had been happy years and it hurt when he was a slave to remember, the contrast was too great and his guilt at leaving them too keen for the memories to be a comfort.

But now, leaning into the memories and trusting his muscle memory felt right. The less he actively thought about what he was doing and let his hands to go about their business on their own, the better results he got. The names of the knots and stitches were mostly gone, but his body still remembered the motions.

A memory flashed upon his mind’s eye: Aunt Flora’s nimble fingers as they darted about with her shiny quick needle moving and flashing in the light like something alive, like something magic, the nearly transluscent skin, blue veins and swollen joints of her larger hands as they held his small childish fingers, guiding them gently as they took up the needle. He remembered how he’d marveled at her calloused fingertips, roughened from a lifetime of work, spinning, weaving, stitching, pulling up roots to make into soup and ropes to bring the water bucket to the surface at the well.

He wondered how old she’d been when she first started teaching him. Twice his own age perhaps, though the palms of his own hands were even more calloused than hers had been now after years of using his hands to help him get around.

Engrossed in his work, the strange surroundings, the discombobulating effects of the mushrooms and his self-consciousness embarrassment about his naked body faded into the background.

His shiny silver needle darted in and out of the soft black leather, following the pattern the Hatter had drawn with his chalk as if possessed. Instinctively, Rumple traced fanciful swirls, curlicues and unfurling frond-like plant designs with miniscule stitches in yellow thread, adding his own flourishes of trumpet-like flowers and blue-bells which though big to him now, would be so minute on the finished shoe that it would be impossible for the purchaser to even notice the complexity of the detail.

In between his work elaborating on the holes for the laces, Rumple paused to admire his handiwork. Even if no one else noticed how detailed the plant-like flourishes in yellow thread would be against the supple black leather, he was pleased with his creation. A warm glow of pride rose inside him like a thrum of warm mead in his belly.

Chapter Text

The leather was stretched out upon a wooden model of a foot to help hold the shape as he stitched the uppers together.  The Hatter helped Rumple tip the wood form over on its side so he could crawl over it to complete his work. First he whip stitched it up with black thread to form a sturdy seam.  The shoes had to be beautiful, of course, but it wouldn’t do for them to fall apart the moment the owner danced in them.   To properly cloth a person wasn’t just to create a useless confection of beauty, but something that was comfortable and durable as well.  When the seams were done and he’d tested them out to make sure they wouldn’t tear, he went over them with a thinner, golden yellow thread to add the decorations.

Jefferson had drawn a few rough shapes in chalk to give Rumple an idea what was required. Unfortunately, what with small-sized Rumple being forced to crawl over the now giant sized piece of leather with his entire body, these had mostly worn away into an indifferent smudges of chalkdust.  He looked over at the Hatter who appeared fully absorbed in his own work of cutting out the soles of the shoes and lining them in padded fabric. They had to work quickly, before the sun came up and the Shoemakers returned to their workroom.

No matter, he could supply the forms from his own imagination.  Yellow thread flew through his hands as his tiny needle flashed in the candlelight. He worked feverishly through the night, picking out vine tendrils and trumpet-like morning glory flowers.  He added  new leaves curled in upon themselves, on the cusp of getting ready to unfurl, so real looking some even had drops of dew.  Out of one stem came leaves and flowers of many different species, such as would never be found grouped together in nature.  The one unifying element being that they were all plants that grew in  forth grew leaves of all different flower species, in La Belle Dame Sans Merci’s greenhouse, an extensive elaboration on the simple forms Jefferson had chalked out for him to stitch.  He hadn’t even realized he was recreating his mistress’s garden in miniature until he pushed the shoe still pinned to its wooden foot, upright and sat back to look at it from a distance himself.    

He touched the stem of the rose that ran up the seam in the back of the shoe with care, as if the tiny thorns made of thread would prick his finger for real, entranced with his own handiwork. 

I made this. 

 This is the real magic of this world, he thought, his heart swelling with awe and wonder and disbelief that such a marvellous thing had come from his own rough hands.   The illusion of life made out of lifeless fibre.

What had been separate bits of leather, glue and thread mere moments before, was now transformed into the image of a living plant, into something that could bring pleasure and joy at its beauty, something that had not existed as anything except an image in his mind until this moment, a piece of his imagination made real, tangible, perceptible to other people.  

This was true magic, the ability every ordinary human had to create something that hadn’t been there, a beautiful thing in the world that wouldn’t exist but for his own two hands.  The ability every human had to create an illusion that could outdo reality. 

Magic, yes this  magic, thought to himself and he thrilled with delight at his mastery of it. 

It felt powerful, this ability every ordinary human could master, to make other people feel something and to control what they felt to some degree. 

And perhaps if a man made something beautiful, another person might feel something other than pity mixed with disgust when she thought of him. 

It was a strange presumption idea, but the notion floated through his head all the same, that he wished Bellecould see it.  He was shy and wary of too much attention to his person, knowing from experience that such attention usually only led to mockery and pain, but just at that moment he wished she’d look at him now.  And silently, he wondered, without allowing himself to think too much about it, if there was ever any sort of chance, even the slightest, that one day, she might think of him as a person worthy to love her.  At any rate, he knew, even if she never saw him as anything more than her caretaker and it was the height of ridiculousness to think he’d ever come close to her estimation, he could still love her secretly in his heart, and find pleasure in his fantasies pleased all the same.  

Chapter Text

As his pride in his creation swelled and he imagined with growing excitement Belle’s joy at seeing her instructions carried out so effectively,  the warm glow in his belly grew. It rose and  rushed through his body, moving with a warmly pleasurable liquid sensation into all his four limbs, the energy pulsing out into his furthermost extremities.  The warmth travelled through him, releasing a small burst of energy as it left his body.  He shivered with an odd frisson of pleasure in its wake.     

Then Rumple’s reverie broke and he realized he was still touching the yellow thread.  

And suddenly, with absolute, heart thudding certainty he knew what he’d find when he lifted his hand, knew before he even saw it. 

Once experienced, you didn’t forget the feeling. 

Magic.

He lifted his arm, though it suddenly seemed to weigh a ton.  He could have looked away without checking, but he had know.   

It wouldn’t change anything, he steeled himself, wouldn’t make anything that had happened to him in the past, un-happen, still he had to know.   For years, he’d convinced himself the whole gold thing had been some sort of hallucination on his part, a delusion fed by his father and then Cora later on.  He’d been so impressionable and eager for his father’s regard the first time  and  later his head was turned by love.  He would’ve believed anything they wanted him to believe, if only for them to stay and never leave him, no matter how impossible, no matter if it strained what he knew with his own eyes to be true. He would have bent and broken himself into whatever shape they asked of him if only they continued to love him. To believe a story about gold powers was certainly not the most far fetched thing he had been told. Still, by the harsh light of reality, it beggared belief that the most precious metal in the world come out of someone like him, literaly the lowest of the low of human society. 

Not to mention, in all the folk tales he’d heard as a child and all the magics talked about in the stories he heard from every other slaves from Agrabah to Misthaven no one ever spoke about a power such as the one he possessed, which left him to think it had all been a fantasy after all.

Only there it was a piece of gold stood out from the base yellow thread, shining brilliant and pure.  He moved his head to see if it was just a trick of the light, but it was as real as his hand before his face.  A brief spasm of joy ran through his body like a shiver and tears pricked the inside of his eyelids.       

He closed his eyes.  How could it be?  Not after so long!  He opened his eyes, but the gold was there still, glinting in the light, mocking him.  Even as a freeman he had been of low birth, his father a travelling minstrel, a drunkard, and owner of nothing.  His mother less than that according to his father.  Someone like him did not possess magic.  It was against the natural order of things.  Hadn’t what happened with the king and his father proved the arrogant falsehood of such a notion?  If he had been able to do magic all along, why hadn’t he used it to save himself?  Why, when he tried so hard to drawn on it to free himself had it remained inert?  If he could have turned his shackle to gold all along, why had the shackle stayed the same poisonous metal all those years?  Why had he let it slowly destroy his body and sicken him until he’d nearly died?    

But the proof of his own eyes was inrefutable.  What had he done differently this time than all those desperate times before?  He hadn’t tried to change the thread, hadn’t thought about it in the least. So did it work only when he wasn’t thinking about it?  He didn’t spend much time thinking of magic, but this hadn’t happened for years. Magic that was random and unpredictable was more dangerous to a person than no magic at all, he thought.   Magic only worked if you could depend on it. Whatever it was that brought the gold had failed him every time it was truly needed. He couldn’t trust it and he certainly couldn’t tell Belle.

Neither could he confess his power to Jefferson, of that he was sure as well.   Whatever the Hatter knew would go straight to her.  It wouldn’t do, not when he didn’t know if he could reproduce it.  Maybe it would be ten years again before he turned some other small object into gold and then where would he be?

He glanced around to make sure the Hatter was occupied as he carefully stitched a piece of yellow thread over the small piece of gold.  No one would ever notice; his work was professional and exacting.

Still, his heart thumped nervously at his deception.   He remembered his mistress’s words to him in the library, that if he ever concealed anything from her again, especially with regards to magic, even if it was only through being silent and not a direct lie, she would cast him out. 

Still, he argued with himself, there was no way she’d  know.  Hiding such a small amount of magic wouldn’t really harm anything.  If he revealed to her that he had magic and then couldn’t do it on command, what would the point to endangering himself and his position be anyway?   He would be throwing away all he’d gained for nothing.  If he’d learned anything from his past mistakes, it was not to be too honest.  It didn’t do to volunteer information about yourself when you didn’t have to.  It only made it easier for unscrupulous people to ferret out your weaknesses. 

 But if she realized he’d had magic all along and that he hid it from her, lied and deceived her as he drank her wine and ate her bread, what would she do?   It Just didn’t feel right to hide it.  

But again perhaps it didn’t have to be an all or nothing thing.   His magic might return to full strength, but then again it might go underground not to be drawn upon for another ten years.  Best to wait and see what the future had in store before he went running to the mistress with news of this development.  Yes, to wait and see would be the best policy, he told himself.

Chapter Text

Suddenly, the Hatter broke through Rumple’s personal thoughts, by lobbing a chunk of mushroom at his head. 

“That just about wraps it up.  Catch!” Rumple’s head popped up, just as a huge chunk of mushroom came flying at his forehead. 

But he was beginning to grow used to the Hatter and his abrupt ways and plucked the bit of fungus from the air with nimble fingers before it could reach its target. 

“Your reflexes seem undulled by this night’s activities I see,” remarked Jefferson.  “Most people would not take a shortening size so easily.”  

“I guess it doesn’t come as much of a shock when you don’t come from a high station.  I don’t know if I would be alright with getting much smaller than this without discombobulating the universe or something.”

The Hatter glanced at the bit of mushroom in his own hand and laughed.  “Oh no doubt, no doubt, the universe doesn’t need the headache of another runaway discombobulation.  But

this mushroom isn’t to further en-smallify you, it is to embiggen you, make you bigly of size, e— oh what is the right term?”

“Enlarge you,” offered Rumple drily.

“What?  No, no, no, I’ve seen your nether regions and they are fully adequate let me tell you.” 

Rumple blushed and cast his eyes downward.  Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that he was naked and was now staring directly at the nether regions in question.   The Hatter snorted with  laughter as Rumple blushed an even deeper shade of red.   

Rumple sniffed the mushroom experimentally.  It smelled the same and was identical in appearance to the mushroom he ate before entering the Shoemakers’ house. 

“But how can this make me— make me— big— make me grow in size if this is the same mushroom as before?  It is the same one isn’t it?”

The Hatter removed a something that looked like a miniature telescope from his hat, and adjusted the lens of his eye.  “Mmmmhhmmm,” he hummed in ascent.  “The same one, no doubt.”

“So?”

Jefferson wiped the lens on the brim of his hat before replacing it inside.  “This piece is from the southward facing side of the mushroom and the other that you had before was from the northward side.”  The Hatter nodded as if the conclusion to be draw, thereafter was plain as the nose on his face. 

“So?”

The Hatter peered down at him as if he was a particularly thick child and slowed his speech to explain, what for him seemed patently obvious.  “Well, everybody knows that when you eat from one side of the mushroom you grow bigger, you eat from the other side you grow smaller.”

“But that’s ridiculous!  If I eat one part of a carrot it does the same thing to my body as the other part.”

“Does it?  Really?  How odd.    What exactly does it do?”

“I don’t know.  It’s a carrot!  Everybody’s had a carrot.  Haven’t you?”

A faraway look came into the Hatter’s eyes.  “It’s been many years since I ingested any fruits or vegetables that didn’t originate from seeds brought from Wonderland.  I’ve found, as an unexpected side-effect of my head’s re-attchment, that the native plants of this world make me unbearably nauseous.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“I keep a rather full garden grow from seeds and cuttings brought from Wonderland for that express purpose.”

Jefferson looked at Rumple in full then, with both eyes focused,  and suddenly, the aloof Hatter seemed quite vulnerable in a way the former slave could fully comprehend. 

 Would you be interested in seeing it sometime?   I’ve though for a while that Belle might like some of those plants in her garden.  They have special properties she might find useful.  I’ve never brought it up with her before, because she never really had a proper gardener and they require special care.  The seeds are precious as you can see,  because I need them to survive, but if I knew they would thrive in soil outside my own habitation, it might actually benefit me.”

Now the Hatter bent down very close to where Rumple sat, glancing briefly around to the right and left of him for beings Rumple could not see.    His voice came out in a near whisper, his words quick like steam forced through the hole of a kettle, his breathing fast, as if pushed out by high pressure from inside the vessel.   “I have enemies you see, powerful enemies who would burn my garden if they could, who wouldn’t care if I starved.   Don’t cheat the fair folk, whatever you do.  Don’t try to get away with things.  They figure it out, they always do and they live forever in those trees of theirs and will chase and chase and chase and chase you all your days until—“”

But then just abruptly as  began, the Hatter stopped in mid-sentence, smoothed down a waistcoat that wasn’t there and stood back up to his full height, far out of Rumple’s earshot, muttering to himself.  It was in a language Rumple didn’t understand, but from Jefferson’s tone, he thought the man was berating himself and swearing.   Rumple looked on in alarm.  

Instinctively he placed his hand on the Hatter’s arm and pulled himself up to standing, leaning on his friend harder than he needed to.  

Suddenly, the Hatter seemed aware of himself again and looked down at Rumple as if he’d only just noticed him there. Rumple could almost see the exact moment the Hatter’s whirling mind fell back down into his body from wherever it had gone, reminded back into physical reality by the simple application of touch.  

“Thanks,” Rumple said.

The Hatter’s eyes grew large as he realized what Rumple had done for him.  “You’re welcome,” he replied.  That’s what his words said, but his tone was full of gratitude.   

Rumple broke away from the Hatter.  He didn’t really need to lean on Jefferson to pull himself up. Despite the fact that his one leg was mostly useless, he could actually stand up from sitting on his own quicker and more efficiently than with someone else’s help.  Usually, Rumple liked to be as independent as possible.  It was a matter of pride and control for him.  So Rumple felt as surprised as anyone that he’d stooped to taking the Hatter’s arm to help him up. It seemed such a reversal of his usual process.  It was just that something about Jefferson looked terribly lost then and in need of steadying.  The soul-rendering desperation and howling loneliness in Jefferson’s haunted gaze, awoke Rumple’s recognition.  How many nights had he himself spent mired in those same emotions in his previous life before Belle’s intervention?  Just seeing Jefferson like that brought the feelings and memories of those days back a little too strongly for Rumple’s liking.  It felt more important than anything else in that moment to make that pain stop, or be pulled down into the depths once again.   

But now that the threat had receded he felt it pertinent to remind the Hatter that he was perfectly capable of managing on his own. In fact, once he had his sticks back, he relished the thought of being shot of the Hatter entirely, at least for a little while.   The Hatter’s changeable nature made long periods of time spent in his presence rather exhausting.  And Rumple, for all his recent healing and strengthening in body, still felt his mind grow tired of interactions with other people more easily than it had in his youth.  

Oblivious to his companion’s thoughts, the Hatter held up the piece of mushroom.  “Chin chin,” he toasted Rumple and took a sizeable bite.  With a gulp of trepidation Rumple did likewise.  It wasn’t bad, the mushroom.  In fact it had an earthy sort of flavour and a chewy texture that weren’t completely repugnant.

He smiled a bit as he felt his body tense and coil with unspent energy as it prepared to stretch out to full length once more.  

“Shouldn’t we be getting on the carpet now?”

”Oh, right, sorry!” Was the HAtter’s only reply as he called the carpet to heel.  

Chapter Text

Rumple and Jefferson left the newly constructed shoes on the table for the Shoemakers to find as the pink fingers of dawn inched up over the windowsill.   

The baby carpet flew them quickly to the door just as their size began to change.  They hid behind the bushes and changed into their clothes once more.  Rumple’s senses were at their most alert, trying to ascertain whether Jefferson had noticed his little trick with the gold thread, but Jefferson still seemed quite effected by whatever voyage his strange mind had returned from.  Rumple thought of asking him about it, about what he’d seen in Wonderland and how he’d come to the Enchanted Forest, but he was tired after a long night’s work and the Hatter seemed in a prickly mood.

Rumple lay down without removing his clothes as the Hatter changed into a nightshirt.  Apparently, Jefferson brought it along in anticipation, having known beforehand they were going to spend the night. Rumple felt grumpy, having had no knowledge beforehand that they would be spending more than a day in the village. He really would have loved a change of clothes.

The Hatter favoured him with a wry smile.  “You know you might take your boots off and leave your sticks under the bed.”

Rumple blanched at him, shoving his booted feet under the covers and clutching his sticks closer to his chest. 

“Suit yourself, but they’re covered mud.  The chambermaid is going to have a hell of a time cleaning it all up.” 

“Oh,” said Rumple, feeling guilty, having not thought about the servants of the place, forced to do extra cleaning, and placed his sticks under the bed.  He aimed a warning glare at Jefferson. “If you touch them—“

“You’ll re-decapitate me yourself, I know, I know” said the Hatter, holding up his hands.  “Don’t worry, the thought never even crossed my mind.”

Rumple shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed. “It’s not you, it’s just in the past, before I came to work for Belle—“

“I get it,” the Hatter interrupted him.  “Some habits die hard.”

Rumple nodded, grateful the Hatter hadn’t required further elaboration and focused on removing his boots.  He’d bound his bad foot in strips of cloth so it would stay in the shoe.

Even though it all looked the same below his knee, with its odd, gray, bark-like skin, it wasn’t all uniformly senseless.  

The poison that had spread from the shackle around his ankle had mostly travelled downward, pulled more by gravity than the movement of blood through the veins.   His foot, which had withered, flattened and curled in on itself like a dried up leaf was dead to everything, but the parts of him that had been poisoned only shortly before his release from the shackle were still somewhat alive.  Although he couldn’t feel a breeze on the wood-like skin of his calf or sense a light touch, but if he squeezed it  he could still felt some sensation deep inside.  The strong pressure from the cloth strips around his ankle and calf would irritate it after awhile and the release from the binds felt good.  He didn’t understand why that should be so, but he was working on it.

Secretly, Rumple read books about the human body and its many maladies and cures in Belle’s library.  Although none of the accounts he found ever exactly matched his particular malady, there were things he read about that could apply to his situation.  He’d read that through vigorously massaging a few times a day, a paralyzed limb could sometimes be restored.  There had been other claims in the book that seemed to strain credulity so Rumple took its suggestions with a grain of salt, but thought it wouldn’t hurt to try at least.  The massages  were easy enough to learn to do on himself thanks to the diagrams in the books, even if he felt somewhat foolish performing them.  Every day he checked, and thought perhaps he had observed some tiny degree of change, at least in sensation, but then again, perhaps it was all just wishful thinking.  He wished there was some objective way to know for sure. 

Rumple glanced over at the Hatter to confirm that he was sleeping before he began his massage ritual.  Luckily, the Hatter was truly out, out, lying sprawled out on his bed, snoring softly. 

Even if the massages did nothing in the long term and felt a little silly doing them, they still felt good.    Before he’d come to Belle, he’d hated even looking at his leg, let alone touching it.  He always  worried the sickly skin would transfer some of its contaminating properties to the rest of his body and sicken the rest of him.  Now that he knew that wouldn’t be the case, it didn’t bother him so much, which he supposed was progress of a kind.  At least if the massage never did a thing to restore it to its former state, at least it felt more familiar to him now, like a normal, integrated part of him.   Even if the physical feeling didn’t change, how it felt to him in his mind already had. 

Suddenly, the Hatter cutoff in mid-snore and rolled over and spoke, as if as thought had just just occurred to him.    

“You know Rumple, I knew someone— someone like you—“. His hand moved hazily in the air above his head as if he could physically grasp the elusive memory.  “You remind me so much of— now why can’t I remember that name?” 

Rumple stopped, frozen in mid-motion, pinned down by the Hatter’s unfocused voice. 

“Like me how?” 

But instead of answering forthrightly, he merely waved his hand in the air to some sort of internal beat.  Presently he sang along with his motion, his voice, slow, liquid and confidential, different in quality, somehow to the sound of it outdoors on the way to the tavern:

“I heard there was a secret chord, a fairy played and she taught a lord, and ever after drew him to her.

She took him to her bower there and tied him up and had his heir?  Breathed his air?

Or was it cut his hair?   Mmm… something something something lips of halleluyah.  Halleluyah.  Halleluyah.”

Rumple snorted and lay down.  Halleluyah indeed.  What did that even mean?   Of course it was just more of the Hatter’s old nonsense, a silly song full of made up words and borrowings from other languages.  It was ridiculous to hope it would be anything more than that.  Rumple turned away from his friend and went to sleep. 

Chapter Text

In a palace miles away from the Shoemakers’ humble cottage a golden clock on the top of a tower struck two in the morning.  King George woke with a start. Some noise had awakened him, but when he peered through the gauzy curtains surrounding his bed nothing seemed amiss.  All was as it should be, not a creature stirring and everything in its place.  He was just plumping his goose down pillows and on his way back to sleep, when a chipper voice sang out in his ear: 

“Morning luv!  Rise and shine!”

The King jumped nearly a foot in the air.

“What in thunder—”

He swiveled his head to see a pair of eyes looking back at him from above, barely an inch from his face.  Someone was hanging upside down from the bedframe, poised like a lizard among its heroic wooden carvings.  The braziers outside his bed were lit, and the firelight made the stranger’s visage glitter with metallic scales of blue and gold.  The King’s eyes nearly goggled out of his head at the sight and the face made its eyes goggle out in reply. They were huge eyes, glowing like yellow lamps in the shadows with wide, dilated pupils as big as an owl’s.

“W-w-who are you?” stammered the King.

“That’s not important,” a sharp taloned, yet strangely feminine claw emerged from a cloak to wave away the question.  “What’s more important is whooooo are yoooou and whooooom do you want to be?”

“I’m King George the II of Sevarn, father of Princesses Ruby, Emerald and Pearl.”

“And James, don’t forget James,” added the creature lazily.

“What? There is no James. No son have I.”

“But you will.”

“I will? It would be a miracle now. My wife has just this night informed me that despite her relative youth her monthly bleeding has stopped.”

The creature laughed.

“It’s not funny,” said the King miserably.  “Why am I telling you this anyway?”  

“It’s the truth spell, just roll with it,” replied the odd creature dismissively. 

King George sighed.  He wasn’t sure if there really was a truth spell, but the longing to unburden himself to someone completely unrelated to his family was strong within him.   “If I have no son,” he explained, “then the crown will go to my brother’s child, a vile pernicious brat, for the crown must only go to the fist male child of the line.”

“Got it.  And I think… maybe I can help you out with that.”

“Seriously?”

“Can you read?”

“Who are you?”

“Lady of the Dark Castle ring a bell?”

“What?”

“La Belle Dame Sans Merci?”

“Mer-what—”

“Eh, don’t worry about it. Just read and sign and I’ll do the rest.” 

A scroll of paper suddenly materialized in the creature’s black- nailed hand.

“If I could just have a touch of light—”

Belle blew her hair out of her eyes, snapped her talons together and a fireball bloomed in her palm, illuminating the proceedings.

“So Georgie, may I call you Georgie?” she said, placing her other arm, the one not holding the fireball, uninvited around his shoulders. “Here’s the deal, I will give you a son.”

“But I told you my wife—”

“Will have to go through that tedious thing men like to call pregnancy, but I suppose 9 months of inconvenience is nothing in comparison to knowing the family line is secure.  That and you get to stiff your annoying brother and his bothersome brat, so I suppose that’s a bonus, eh?”  She tapped him in a distressingly familiar way on the chest.

“How dare you touch the royal person!”

She drew back her hand and studied her black clawed nails, looking bored.  “Look Georgie, I don’t have a lot of time to hang out here.” 

She let the fireball roll across her knuckles like a coin in a magician’s trick, shrugged it across her shoulders to her other hand and back again. 

He scrunched back against the bed frame, afraid of being singed, but the fire she conjured did no damage and barely gave off any heat.  It truly was witchcraft, he realized which only rattled the poor king even further.    

“You say my wife will be pregnant with a son.”

“Oh yeah.” 

“But will he be of royal blood?”

“Sure, whatever.”

“Don’t jest!  Surely you know the importance of keeping our line pure.  We are the tenth generation born of King Horus the Great, annointed by the gods themselves during our illustrious forefather’s victory upon the plains of Ab—”  

“Uh-huh. You have any idea how many of your so-called illustrious ancestors were fostered by attendenat knights, men disguised as ladies in waiting, not to mention, court jesters over the years?” 

“How dare you madame!  I’ll have you thrown out of this room and into the dungeon this instant!  Guard---”

But he didn’t finish his shout as a strange purple mist enveloped his head and a second later he saw his tongue held in the claws of the intruder as he gasped, trying to shout for his guards without success.

Tears formed in his eyes as he began to panic. 

Then the mist rose up again and his tongue was back in his head. He covered his mouth, feeling his teeth with his tongue, tasting the roof of his mouth just to know he could.  Tears of gratitude cascaded down his round cheeks and Belle sighed. 

This really was taking too much time out of her night.

“Now hold your tongue or I’ll be forced to hold it for you,” she smirked, mirth dancing in her eyes. 

“Just think of it this way—you spend very little time with the Queen. You have your lovers and affairs, why shouldn’t she be allowed the same?

“B-b-but a proper noblewoman has no interest in that sort of thing.  Please, my queen is a religious woman.  Matters of a—of such a—of a carnal nature beyond procreation are wholely foreign to her!” he protested.

Belle snorted. 

“Who—I mean in theory, you know—if she had to entice a man into her boudoir in order for us to have a son who could take over—who would it have to be for it to be a success?”

“I wouldn’t worry, I think she’s had that part taken care of for a few years now.”

“How dare you—" 

Belle shot him a warning glance and he covered his mouth.  When he removed his hands again, he was more composed, but still livid. 

“I will execute her for such treachery!  The King cannot be made a cuckold in his own castle!  And now that you’ve informed me of such, I should just, what—let her carry on with this fellow?”

“It’s not like you’ve been faithful,” Belle shrugged.

“But-- But I’m—I’m a man!”

“A man without a son.”

“She’ll be discreet. It’s not like anyone else’ll know other than me, you, her and her boy-toy.  Your brother and his spawn will back off and you get to keep the crown in your family’s hot little hands.  She won’t care who you diddle on the side.  Might as well let her be happy.”

“But--give her permission to carry on an affair under my nose and in my own house?”

“Uh-huh.”

“For the possibility of a son? Who everyone else would accept as my heir, but who wouldn’t really be—that is to say his blood wouldn’t truly be noble.”

“Oh he’d be of noble blood alright, just not yours exactly.  But hey, it all bleeds red in the end doesn’t it?”

“And he will be a son, guaranteed one hundred percent.”

“Or your money back!”

“But still, he would be this upstart’s child!”

“Not if you took him under your wing, taught him everything you know, and influenced him completely.  Nurture’s powerful stuff you know. 

“But whose child would this boy be? The son of some common drudge? A butler, a page boy?  I would like to know that much at least.” 

“Why?  So you can do away with his sire? Uh-uh uh,” she wagged an admonishing finger at him.  “But, it’s as I said-- nurture not nature that controls these things. You bring the boy up how you were brought up and trust me, he’ll turn out exactly like you.”

“Exactly like me?”

“In behvaiour temperament and morals identical. Like your own mental reflection.”

“Exactly?”

“You have my word.  The boy will be yours, to raise as you please.  Your wife and her paramour will leave you to it, undisturbed and no one will ever question the line of succession, I promise you that.”

“And what do you get from the deal, eh, Mi’lady of the Dark Castle?”

“Meh. Not much, hardly a trifle, and besides I prefer La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”

“So what is this trifle that I must bring you in exchange for my son?”

“Glad you asked at last.  As a favour to me, you will  ride to a specific location of my choosing, a village let us just say, whose name and location on a map I shall provide you with today.  You will arrive at first line in the village and go straight to the shoemaker’s cottage, where you will buy a pair of lady’s dancing slippers for 50 guilders.”   

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“That’s kind of oddly specific don’t you think?”

“You think you can’t do it?”

“Oh no, I can do it.  I will do it!” he decided firmly.  “But a pair of shoes you say.  How will I know which ones to choose?”

“There’ll be only one pair left for sale.”

“Well, I guess these shoes are very in demand.”

“Indubitably.  Now after you buy the shoes and bring them home, give them to your eldest daughter and make sure she wears them to the ball tomorrow night and shows them off to everyone.  If you can convince her to do this, your wish for a son to inherit the thorne will be fulfilled.”

“And if I do all that and still execute the queen for her treachery?  I mean I can still just marry someone else and try again you know.”

“Oh, trust me I know.  But it won’t do any good.  Both you and I know the real reason your wife hasn’t got with child in the past ten years, is lying right there between your legs.”

The king blushed crimson at this, but still managed to hold his tongue, fearing what Belle would do to him. 

“If you kill or hurt the queen or separate her from her lover there won’t be a son or a daughter either.  And then your daughters and your queen will probably be done away with once your nephew comes to power, just to make sure there won’t be any competition because he’s that sort of chap you know?   And although I don’t care particularly, what happens to you lot, the people will clearly suffer under his indompetent administration. I mean the man couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery am I right?”

The king nodded dumbly.  He had never heard it described quite like that, but he had to admit, despite the vulgar turn of phrase, it was an apt comparison.   

“Your brother and his nephew lack all compassion when dealing with the people who farm their lands. They spend the peasants’ taxes on their own pleasures, rather than improving the wells and protecting the farms from invading armies.    And you—poor husband and lover though you may be, are at least a ruler who tries to do right by the common folk under your command.  You at least attempt to judge their affairs with a fair and reasonable hand.”

“And I suppose I should thank you for such a gracious estimation of my qualities?”

“You’d be surprised how rare they are, especially in one who rules.  No matter his sire, if you teach your son to rule as you do, the land will be the richer for it, the small folk healthier and happier.”

“I was just wondering—” spoke up King George cautiously.  “These shoes you speak of, they won’t hurt my daughter.  I mean they’re not— magical or cursed or anything?”

“Oh no, but they are purported to be very stylish and highly functional.”

“Purported?”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve actually seen them myself, but trust me, I know the makers personally and stand by their handiwork one hundred percent.”

“And they won’t start dancing and dancing without stopping until their feet fall off or anything?

“No. Why on Earth would anybody curse shoes to do that?”

“Well you know, you hear rumours.”

Chapter Text

A few moments later La Belle Dame Sans Merci reappeared in a puff of purple smoke in the bedchamber of the Queen.  The queen didn’t notice at first, being otherwise occupied with her children’s music teacher,  the famous Dolphous Penniver, making music of an entirely different kind than that he customarily taught his pupils. 

Belle watched the queen’s large breasts bob up and down, smacking her torso as her lover ravished her tender regions from behind with the zest of a much younger and fitter man.  She splayed her arms against the wall and shoved herself backwards and forwards in a well practiced rhythmic motion.   

They moved with such passion, one could have thought it the last tryst either thought they would have with one another. And perhaps it was. They were well aware that the King was closing in on their illicit activities. 

Soon the lie that the queen had entered early menopause would be realized and her illicit pregnancy would be revealed.  As she hadn’t had physical relations with the king for over a year, certain conclusions would be drawn by her husband.  Generations ago, saying things like “I’ve been impregnanted by Zeus in the guise of a swan” provided decent cover for lovers such as them, but these days with belief in the gods of old at an all time low, the mystical pregnancy trope just didn’t cut the mustard. 

“Sooooo anyway,” drawled Belle by way of introduction.    The queen and her lover squeaked and covered their private parts with random bits of crockery.  Somewhere a tipped over chamber pot rolled across the floor. 

With a moue of distaste, Belle nudged it away with the toe of one high heeled boot. 

“Your prayers have been answered.”

“What are—who are you?” gasped the naked Queen, the bright pink sex flush across her ample chest, her ripe red lips and pink cheeks confessing more about her private pursuits than mere nakedness could suggest. 

Oddly enough, there something Belle didn’t totally hate about her, despite her mendacity and high station.  She always had a crumb of sympathy for the sort of woman who would commandeer a bite of pleasure for herself despite society’s attempts to deny to her.  It took a certain subversive vitality that Belle herself could envy.

I wouldn’t admire her too much, snorted the Dark Spirit.  She pads her bum and bosom. 

-And he pads his thighs and hose. 

You see, they’re made for each other. 

She laughed to herself.  It was rare the spirit was in such a playful mood, but there were times when it was not completely without a sense of humour. 

As the creature bared its sharp, pointed teeth, in a disturbing imitation of a human smile, the queen and her music teacher of a grin, the queen and her music teacher shrank back against the wall. 

“Please, by all means continue.  No need to stop on my account,” said Belle breezily. 

The man’s skinny legs shook with fear and Belle wondered exactly how much he spent on padding his hose with fake muscles per year. 

She clambered disdainfully up the bedpost like a lizard ascending a palm tree and curled up at the top of the canopy, grinning down at them from her perch, doing little to hide the sharp teeth and claws that frightened them so much. 

“Sorry to drop in on you like this, but you should know, the deal is sealed.”

“What?” gasped the Queen, with the flush across her her pale-peach skin receding now as she pushed tendrils of sweaty baby-hair back into her wig.  The wig itself was askew, sticking wetly to her scalp.  Her lover’s wig had slid completely down his back, revealing tufts of natural gray hair.

“You two get to keep your love nest and your child gets to be the future king. Just keep it discreet if you know what I mean.  Oh and let the king raise him.”

“Him?  You mean its going to be a boy?”

“Looks like.”

“Wait how did you manage this? What’s the catch?”

“Like I said, you let the king take over his care and raise him as he sees fit without interference. That’s your part of the deal.”

“Seriously?  We can just carry on as we have been this whole time and we don’t even have to worry about raising the child?  Why whoever styled you La Belle Dame Sans Merci?  You have given me all that I asked for and more!” cried the joyful queen.  “Thank you for relieving us of this burden!”

“Yes thank you!” whispered the music teacher, still in awe of the strange and terrifying creature, that crouched like a predatory beast above him.  “This is more than we could have hoped for.”

“Some parents wouldn’t take it so lightly,” said Belle drily. 

She supposed she did in fact hate the queen and her paramour after all.  She really hoped the king would loved the child, despite his awkward origins, because the queen and her lover really didn’t seem the most inclined to parental duties at the moment.  Perhaps after three daughters her supply of love and nurturing had run out.  Belle wondered, idly if her mother and father had had more children than her alone, would they have doted on her quite as much.  If her father had sired a son, would he have taught her all that he had in her youth.  It was a moot point now.  The man was gone and his bones blown to dust by now.  She was centuries older now than her father had ever been.  The thought, though not unfamiliar still disturbed her.

“Hey there, what’s that supposed to mean?” demanded the Queen, offended. 

But Belle had already wrapped her cloak around herself and vanished, leaving the queen and her lover to choke on the smoke she left in her wake.    

Chapter Text

King George was saddle sore and still trying to process all he had learned about his queen and ancestors, his head spinning with confusion as the sun rose over the quiet fields outside Hogarth-town the next morning.    The roosters crowed and the people began to emerge from their hovels and he sped his horse onward, eager to evade detection by the common throng. 

Part of him wondered if the appearance of La Belle Dame Sans Merci in his bed chamber had all really been just a dream brought on by eating venison before slumber, still, for the chance at a son and an approved heir to keep the power in his family and away from his brother’s there was little he would not do.  He arrived at the Shoemaker’s cottage at the edge of town, and rapped impatiently on the door, eager to leave the poor village, with its muddy streets, wandering goats and unappetizing odors, as soon as possible. 

In their bedroom in the loft above their workspace, the Shoemaker and his wife had already started dressing for the day, though neither had gone downstairs to stoke the fire or try to make breakfast.  No one was looking forward to the paltry sticks of wood left for the fire, or the nearly bare pantry.  It promised to be another day of making do with little and hoping against hope for salvation, they now knew had never come.  Their separate prayers, hers to the Dark Lady and his to the Blue Fairy had remained unanswered.  It seemed even the beings of last resort had abandoned them to their fate. 

“It must be Sally from next door, come to borrow a cup of flour,” said Mrs. Shoemaker wearily. “I already told her yesterday we have nothing, but still she thinks I’m holding out on her.  Maybe she’ll want me to show her our bare cupboards to prove it this time!”  Listlessly, she fastened her bonnet over her disheveled hair. 

The knocking at the door below grew in urgency.  The Shoemaker’s wife, blew her straggling hairs out of her eyes as she climbed down the ladder, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on.   “Alright, alright, keep your hair on Sally,” she muttered as she opened the door.

She could feel the beginnings of a headache coming on as she opened the door expecting to see her neighbor.

But the man waiting on the door step, caught with his arm raised mid-knock was not Sally or anyone else she knew.  Had the richly attired visitor placed his face in profile against the rising sun though, he would not have needed to explain his identity.  His was the visage seen upon all recent coins of the realm; the face of their King.   

The Shoemaker made his way down the ladder himself just in time to see his wife kneel at the feet of the most unexpected customer he’d ever had.  “Your majesty,” murmured his wife from the floor and the Shoemaker himself bowed low realizing to his complete and utter amazement that King George of all people had chosen fit to grace their humble cottage with his presence. 

“Your Majesty, what can we do for you?”

“You are shoemakers, are you not?  I mean I saw the symbol with the boot painted above your door, so I assumed.”

“Yes, your highness.”

“Oh good, that’s part of the problem solved then.  Now I require a pair of dancing shoes for my daughter to wear to a ball tonight and I need them right away.”

The Shoemaker glanced at his wife in alarm.  Of all the times for a wealthy royal to want shoes from their humble shop, for it to be the one time when they had no shoes ready to sell, and on the very day they were in such desperate need of funds, was an irony too great to contemplate!  There was still the piece of leather, he remembered anxiously, but it would take a day at least to turn it into a pair of shoes worthy of a princess, maybe longer.   How could fate be so cruel?  Perhaps if he could stall the king, it would give him enough time to make the shoes and then—

“Oh, are these them then?” asked the King as he strode into the house towards the area to the occupied by the Shoemaker’s workbench and tools of the trade. 

The Shoemaker and his wife stared open mouthed as the king picked up a boot, one of a pair they could have sworn had not been there when they went to bed the night before. King George turned it over in his hands and examined the fine needlework and tiny stitches that held the shoe together with growing satisfaction.  Princess Emerald would like it he knew, as he studied the delicate riot of flowers picked out on the miraculously soft black leather.  The needle worked glinted with gold in the warm buttery sunlight streaming through the morning windows.  The shoes were perfect, almost too perfect.  Not a seam could be seen with the naked eye.

“She said they weren’t enchanted,” the King repeated, not wholey convinced as he turned the boots to examine them in the light.  The needlework flowers looked real enough to pick.   Still, there was his son and the well-being of the kingdom to think of. 

He handed the stunned Shoemaker and his wife a sack of gold from his belt and was off on his horse again before they rightly knew what had happened. 

They sat down heavily on their stools by their simple table and stared with incomprehension at the bulging sack. 

“There’s money enough for leather for a hundred more pairs!”   

“I’ll buy all the flour we’ll need for the winter and lend Sally all she requires!”

“But where did the shoes come from?” the Shoemaker wondered.

“Surely, dear husband you weren’t awake and working all this past night?”

“No, my dear I was sound asleep in bed beside you the whole night through.  And you, my love, you weren’t down here performing such a miracle of needlework by the light of our single tallow candle all night were you?”

“No, it’s impossible.  Did you see how tiny those stitches were?  No woman’s hand, no matter how skilled, could have sewed so fine!”  

“No human woman’s hand, that is,” said her husband. 

“Oooh, you mean--- do you think it’s possible-- magic?  Like ghosts?”

“Fairies maybe.”

“Or elves,” Mrs. Shoemaker whispered and pointed to the workbench. 

As part of the curing process for the leather, the Shoemakers using lanolin, a waxy substance found on sheep’s wool that helped make the material impervious to water.  When it was heated it could be combined with animal fat.  The mixture would congeal into cakes like bars of soap that were easy to rub upon the stretched leather.  Blobs of waxy lanolin that had flaked off during the process of application over the years now speckled the work surface. 

In one area, where a large, flat piece of lanolin mixture was half-melted into the wooden surface of the table, she could see small regular indentations the size of an animal’s pawprints.  From a distance it looked like a mouse had scampered across, leaving its prints as surely as the impression of a thumb in a piece of warm candle wax.   

Looking more closely though, with the magnifying glass she used for her more intricate needlework projects, Mrs. Shoemaker saw that the footprints looked nothing like those of an animal.  Though tiny, they were clearly human, each with five distinct toes.  She handed the glass over to her husband.  “Look!  Maybe it really was elves or fairies!”

“I wonder if they’ll come back,” her husband said wistfully studying the impossibly tiny human footprints.  They criss-crossed all over the waxy surface, two at regular intervals like they would if a man were pacing, albeit a very tiny man indeed.  The other set was smudgier and he could only see the left side of the footprints clearly. 

“Perhaps, If we hide up in the loft tonight and look down through that knot in the floorboard—”

“The one I’m always tripping on, that you said you would fix—”

“Yes, yes—we could use it to watch and see—”

“If they come back tonight—”

“What manner of creatures they might be.”

Chapter Text

One of the truths about La Belle Dame Sands Merci was that she liked to watch.  It had been true even before, when she was a mortal woman, and when she was a girl before that.  She always loved to play “spies.” She didn’t have many friends due to her family’s position as strangers in the village she grew up in.  It seemed such a trivial thing now, when she was covered like a dragon in miniature with blue and gold scales, her fingers tipped with razor sharp claws and her teeth as sharp as needles, but the villagers she’d grown up with always thought her and her father as foreigners, despite being of the village for two generations, all because of their unusual (for that particular area anyway),  colouring and manner of god-worship. 

As a child, other children, with their rough play, callous words and alarming disregard for books intimidated her.  They didn’t understand her references to the novels she read or the characters she pretended to be in their play.  They were mostly illiterate and interpreted her honest assumptions about their knowledge as her trying to rub it in their faces that she was better than them.  It confused her, because she had never intended to be snobbish.  After all, they were the ones who made fun of her tattered clothing, saying her father was just throwing his money away buying her useless books, when they both went around town dressed no better than common serfs. 

Her father called spying “observation” and he did it himself, testing out and observing the half-broken machines that littered their house and the rest of their property.  In the village no one called Maurice by his family name of Frontenac.  To everyone in their town and all the towns around on their route during, he was “Maurice the Tinker.”  During the week he and Belle travelled in their little wagon to all the neighbouring farming towns to mending broken machines and sharpen their axes and knives on the steam-powered automated metal grindstone they ran out of the back of their cart.  The cart itself had been as much their home as their house had been in those days and despite his semi-foreign origins the townsfolk always welcomed a visit by Maurice.  More than for the machines, they flocked to him to hear the latest gossip from the faraway towns to spice up the tedium of their daily lives. 

Maurice was garrulous and love to talk and had great skill in spinning a story.   Few townsfolk knew the source of Maurice’s intelligence about the neighbouring villages and wondered out loud if he had magic to know such things.  Maurice was as bereft of magic as any of them though.  All the gossip was supplied by the ever observant Belle and her little notebook.  People said things to each other in front of Belle, who even at fourteen was still small and child-like in appearance, because they didn’t think she would understand.  Only her father understood how truly perceptive and intelligent she was.  He often told her she was much smarter than he would ever be,  and lamented his inability to afford her an education worthy of her intellect and promised one day, in the future when they were rich to send her to one of the elite women’s universities in the capitol.   In the meantime he kept her well stocked with all the books he could get his hands on and with notebooks and writing materials to record her thoughts and observations.  This, for her was sufficient and would have been forever she thought; all she needed were interesting things to learn and material with which to write down her own thoughts about them in return and another person who understood and valued the things she loved, encouraged her and talked to her about them with love and respect.  Although she read books of romance at a very young age, like she read everything else, she’d never been able to relate any of the feelings she read about to things she herself had felt.  These books confused and disturbed her.  They spoke of wonderful vistas of sensation beyond a wall her young mind had previously been unaware of.    And yet the wall seemed impervious, her cautious attempts to understand the land beyond fruitless.   Being able to know a thing in fact, but not to understand what it felt like was disturbing in a way as was the assumption that once understood, this world of romance would alter her, remove her from herself and put back in a place some sort of vapid creature that only cared for giggling about boys, wedding night’s dresses and having babies.  She thought perhaps it didn’t have to be that way, that some grown women at least seemed to hold onto what made them themselves, but the scale of the wall and scope of the land beyond frightened her.  She saw that all who travelled beyond seemed changed and not always in the best of ways.  She saw how her father suffered, through missing her mother and how the few times he did fall for other women in other towns, how disappointment, anger and humiliation so often followed romance in its wake. 

And so, Belle horded secrets.  She knew such behavior was spoke of as immoral in the halls of religion, but she couldn’t help herself.  Whether with books or with people, she always had to know more.  They sang hymns at the prayer halls about “knowing thy place.”

 “The rich man in his castle,
   The poor man at his gate,
   He made them, high or lowly,
   And ordered their estate.”

Was one of their favourites, but Belle could never buy into it, despite her every effort to try. 

It seemed too conveniant by far to the upper classes.  And far from the gods making them as they were, she’d seen of how they’d increased their wealth through driving off peasant farmers.  The illiterate farmers, confused when the noble’s thugs chased them off their land brought Maurice the documents they’d been tricked into signing, papers in convoluted legal language which Maurice had the sad task of explaining to them, meant the farmland held by their family for generations, was now legally the property of the lord because they had been a day late on their loan payments.   

She’d been to the noble’s houses now and again with her father to help him repair clocks and other complex, expensive machines.  The houses contained many wonders including delightful little automatons that could mimic certain motions of the human body in miniature, until they broke a spring or ran out of power.  The nobles liked to horde such trinkets while the villagers made do, with next to nothing, but to her shock she came to realize that the nobles, despite their fine clothes and fancy houses were made of the same stuff as every other human in the poorest rural village.  They even had toilets for gods’ sake!  Any person who had to shit once a day  couldn’t really be her divinely ordained master, of that she was pretty sure. 

And they were the ones who mocked her father’s word pronounciations to his face and laughed amongst each other about her eccentric  “foreign” ways and “suspiciously coloured” appearance, so unlike that of a proper gentlewoman.    

She supposed she had solved that all now, nothing to link her to that “suspicious” culture, other than a marked tendency to hang back and observe, rather than dive right in and a continuing irritation with societies that defined themselves by their exclusivity, rather than what they had to offer to humanity. 

Becoming one with the Dark Spirit did nothing to reduce her distrust of the higher ups.   As superstitious and prejudiced as many of the common folk were, they had few ways of accumulating more information that might change their mistaken opinions.  The nobles on the other hand, could mostly read and write and even travel to other lands to learn more about their fellow creatures.   Sadly though, most frowned on intellectual curiosity and went on in the same vein as their forefathers, making the same old mistakes as their sires had made before them.  And now they elevated  those repeated mistakes into doctrine and tradition, without questioning whether they had ever made sense in the first place. 

Belle like to watch and learn about her subjects, before she took any action that might be prejudiced by just such pre-conceived notions.  To this end she had countless eyes and ears dotted through innumerable kingdoms.  Mirrors, she’d learned from the Dark Beast in her breast, could be enchanted to work like windows.  In time as her magic grew, she was able to do the trick with any material that was reflective in the slightest, from metal to water, of any size.

Any place in the realms of Enchanted Forest with so much as a cloudy puddle a centimeter in diameter was open for viewing to her spells.  Nowadays she could watch and listen to heart’s content and even, after some practice, communicate clearly with whoever lay on the other side of the glass.  She could step through if she chose,  or pull people from one mirrored surface to the other halfway across the world if she thought it worth the effort. 

It was true there were gaps in this power.   The surfaces of vast oceans, despite the reflective properties of their surfaces, for some reason never worked in her favour.   And then there were the unnatural pockets of blindness which she knew to be the work of other magic users, from magical relics left over from the ancient Magicians’ Wars or spells cast recently, specifically aimed at blocking her power. 

She had investigated how most of the blocks occurred and understood them.  It was important to know who was out there who might challenge her power and what natural geological formations might be used in future wars to reduce the offensive power of her magic. 

Where the blocks were caused by other magically enhanced persons, she offered them the things they most desired and won their fealty through manipulation.  When that wasn’t possible, she destroyed them and took what was theirs.  She’d acquired her castle in one such altercation.  Over hundreds of years she had managed to break through to most.  They either survived as her allies or ended their days as trinkets on her shelves. 

But there were still blank spots on her globe that repelled even her best efforts.  One of these, she knew, turning it and letting it spin along the fingers of one long talloned hand was the Pixie Hollow, the home country of the fairies the setting of many myths and legends.  The spells hiding it from her were old, cunning and powerful, the creatures within likewise. 

And all of them wanted to kill her. 

Well not Belle, exactly, they were more interested in the Beastly Spirit, but she was its host and as the Spirit was fond of reminding her, she had invited it in, taken it on willing, so she supposed they weren’t too happy with her either.  That was assuming they had any notion at all of Belle Marie de Frontenac as a separate being apart from their mortal enemy, the Dark One.

As for their antipathy towards the Dark One, that was perfectly justified.  The Beast of a Spirit had explained it quite calmly to her—it had killed thousands of their number, young and old, fairy and sparrowmin alike and destroyed their home to take their power.  It was the only way for a human or something that had once been a human, at any rate, to accumulate such a huge volume of magic. 

So a few fairy trees and their denizens were destroyed to release all that lovely, lovely locked up magic? So what?  The gnats had been hording, refining the stuff for eons, leaving it to just sit there, food stored for a winter that never came, like bees in a honeycomb, skimming all the magic off the rest of the world to profit them alone.  Killing them to free the magic was the only way to give back to the world what should never have been taken in the first place.  Of course, a powerful magical weapon had been used, the most powerful devised in all the lands.  Being the Highest Mage in all the world, it was my task to perfect it.  I did.  I made it work. 

But with one unexpected side effect. 

The magic taken from the fairies was never released freely back into the world, but instead concentrated into a dark swirling mass around the being who wielded the weapon, leaving the Dark Spirit behind where a human magician had once stood, hungry for a body to possess as its own.

And the Dark One and the remaining Fairies had remained mortal enemies ever since.  Their united magics were the only power in all the realms that could subvert the Dark One’s will.  They had proved it, when they killed the Dark Spirit’s previous host eight hundred years ago.  They had tried to kill the Dark Spirit too, but it could not be subdued.  In the end they had to make do with imprisoning it, helpless and senseless without a body, in a secret enchanted vault deep within the earth. 

And it would’ve stayed there for all the rest of recorded history, if not for a convenient   earthquake and the endlessly frustrating (to fairies at least), curiosity of human beings.  

Sometimes Belle wished she had never become subsumed in it, but when she reflected on what her life might have been, had she not united with the Beastly Spirit, she knew it wouldn’t have been happy. 

Once upon a time, someone had contrived to slam every door in the room of her life, save one,  to force her to go through it, with no other choices, but to move towards the kind of future she told them she did not want for herself.  And still those who should’ve pitied her hadn’t demurred, but instead went further, shutting every window, filled in every crack in the walls around, thinking they’d left no avenue for escape, so sure that she follow their advice and do her duty.   But Belle’s unique combination of desperation and cleverness was one they hadn’t counted on.  And Belle had opened a previously unknown trap door in the ceiling of her life and made good her escape.   

It was only later, much later that she had a chance to mourn some of the relationships she had left behind and realize how impossible they would be to replace. 

For centuries the only relationships she nurtured with other people, other than the animate furnishings of her castle were transactional ones of mutual benefit.   She was the distant, unknowable Beast, sometimes bestowing favours on the chosen and others meeting out tricks and punishments to the foolish and unwary. 

She knew why, initially she had sought out Jefferson. That part wasn’t hard to figure out.  There weren’t many realm jumpers of his kind left in her world anymore. 

In her mission to find a way to separate herself from the Dark Spirit, she had come upon the mention of a certain item of great power in an ancient grimoire.  Unfortunately, it was located in a world she was completely unfamiliar with.  She needed a guide, or better still someone to go into the other world and get it for her. 

Jefferson could get what she wanted.  He would not be hard to convince.  Her observations showed her what he sought—his wife, and his child restored to him.  She might be able to give him something to help on his quest if he would steal the thing she needed for hers. 

It should have been a one time only deal.  But then, by the time she’d actually met Jefferson, she realized he wouldn’t be useless to her in the current shape he was in. 

Everything had gone to pot after he failed to procure an item a particularly aggressive customer had paid him for in advance.  When the fellow found him and demanded a return on his money, the Hatter was forced to admit he had spent it all on fake magic beans he’d hoped would take him to the cloud kingdoms and mushrooms of questionable provenance. 

The customer then promised the Hatter he would “Knock his block off for that!”  And had then proceed to do just that. 

The Hatter, whose “block” wasn’t terribly well affixed to his shoulders these days even at the best of times, had been left in a right mess for days, trying unsuccessfully to reattach himself with nothing but nonmagical thread and a weakly enchanted needle. 

When Belle found him, he was just coming off his latest failure, his poor head stuck rolling in miserable circles around his own feet. 

“Well this is a right mess, and no mistake,” she told him.  “How’d you ever get in this state?”  He tried to explain, but his mouth just opened and closed like the mouth of the fish. 

“Why oh why do I have to do everything myself?” sighed La Belle Dame Sans Merci and with a swirled of dark fog she transported the two pieces of the Hatter along with his magical hat back to her workroom at the Dark Castle. 

Reattaching his head had been an interesting intellectual challenge due to the combination of two world’s magics used in the spell.  For the mental entertainment alone, she would have been grateful to him.  Things had been so tedious and routine of late. 

Once he had his head back and could make descent, (if rather bizarre and discursive) conversation she found him to be a rather amusing guest and kept him until his health was as fully returned as possible, causing the Dark Spirit to grumble “You know he’s not one of your father’s broken machines.” 

“Well I can’t have him going and losing his head at the least provocation while going about our business can I?  I’m only trying to make him a more effective field operative and anyway, it’s an interesting exercise, from a magical perspective, you know.”

Eventually, after a few weeks of work, Belle had worked out a spell to ensure Jefferson’s head could no longer be removed by being jostled or punched, for which he was embarrassingly grateful.  The spell involved painting a red star upon his upper left arm with enchanted paint that would never fade which he quickly consented to.  Belle didn’t tell him that among other things, the star would inform her of his whereabouts at all times and allow her effortless magical access to every mildly reflective thing in his vaccinity without her ever having to bother with a spell, but she figured it was all on a need to know basis.  The Spirit approved of that bit very much at any rate and she always felt better, with more access to her magical energy when she gave it these little tidbits to keep it pleased and well-fed.  It let her get away with things then that she knew it would constrain her from, were it not so well satiated.    

She didn’t renege on her promise to Jefferson, even if the item he provided her never lived up to its promise in the grimoire.  She gave him a piece of magic mirror that would allow him to spy on the Queen’s chambers in Wonderland.    Unfortunately, the news it delivered hadn’t been very good.  Although you could never be completely sure in a tricky, upside down place like Wonderland, where head reattachment magic was apparently do-able, but it seemed Jefferson’s wife, Alice, had been killed by the Red Queen some time ago.   As she hadn’t been seen walking around, even walking around with a giant gash through her neck like the Hatter had, Belle was pretty sure, she was well and truly dusted, even if the Hatter still didn’t accept it.  The daughter’s whereabouts remained unknown, which seemed more hopeful, to Belle’s mind at least. 

Using the star and the mirror Belle looked in on him from time to time to see how his quest was progressing and gave him work procuring things for her from other worlds where she could.  She didn’t know much about Wonderland.   The place from the little she had read seemed chaotic for her tastes.  The Dark Spirit counselled her that her magic in such a land might be too unpredictable to provide a good defense and where would that leave her? 

Realm jumping was rare in the Enchanted Forest.  In addition, Wonderland was not a place that even the handful of realm jumpers who went there wrote about much.  Surviving travel diaries were few and far between.   More often than not any sane person who found one, thought it to be the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic bound to cause increased moral degeneracy and had the items destroyed on sight as the priests recommended. 

The three surviving diaries she’d come across “Through the Looking Glass,”  “Alistair’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Miyuki-chan in (something untranslatable)” were full of conflicting reports and puzzling incidents.  Apparently, this was a common issue for any tales featuring the place that crossed over into their realm.  

The head-in-the-cloud-ish-ness that she had at first assumed to be a side effect of Jefferson’s semi-decapitated state, she realized was a more common side effect in people who returned from Wonderland than she’d thought.  It seemed that going there and coming back to one’s original place, did things to the mind that made writing sensible travel guides aimed at other-world audiences rather difficult.  Perhaps that was the point.  It was a bizarre form of defensive magic, if that’s what it was, but for Wonderland, it did seem to be rather wonderfully on brand. 

XXXX

Jefferson was not a morning person.  He collected mushrooms after all, and they grew in the cool, dark and damp.  The night before had been exhausting and he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the flattened dried fruit squares and biscuits he’d pack for breakfast.  Belle had done something magical to some of the food at her palace and had given him some of that too to tide himself over, but it wasn’t the same as the things he was able to cook at home, with easy access to his edible garden.  At least tea was something he could always stomach, no matter where he found it.  There was a kettle left thoughtfully by the door on a tray.  He picked it up and was pleased to note that the water inside hadn’t completely lost all heat.  

He sipped and nibbled in silence, sitting on his bed.  Across from him, Rumple’s empty bed mocked him, all traces of the little caretaker removed. The Hatter hadn’t even heard him leave. Jefferson drew a hand across his haggard face.   

It had been the Dark Lady’s intention after all, to leave her servant with a way out if he desired it, but Jefferson knew, deep down that she wouldn’t be pleased.  He’d sworn to he the man wouldn’t dare take it.  Oh well, one lost some bets, won others.  Perhaps he wasn’t as good a judge of character as he’d once been.

A bird singing on a tree branch outside caught his attention.  The weather had suddenly, turned warm he realized.  Perhaps the first day of spring had come at last.  The seasons changed so fast in this world, he hadn’t expected it.   He opened the shutters to let in the fresh air and looked down on the courtyard below.   

Due to the pleasant weather and bright light, the women of the house were doing their spinning and sewing out of doors for the day.  Skeins of thread lay wound up on bobbins in baskets and by the feet of one woman, which the other would then use to sew patches on the clothes in her basket.  It seemed like dull work and the women chatted as they went, fully absorbed in their gossip. 

Off in a corner of the courtyard Rumple lay on his back on a pile of hay, warming himself in the sunlight.  The Hatter noticed he was holding something in his hand. It looked like a spool of yellow thread, of the sort they had used on the shoes the night before.  As the Hatter watched, the caretaker held up the spool to the light and turned it gently, this way and that.  Then he pulled it close, right in front of his eyes, then held it far away to the full length of his arm, scrutinizing it with such bizarre intensity that he didn’t even notice the Hatter staring down at him.  Next he shut his eyes tight together as if trying in vain to move some sort of enormous object with all his might.  He opened his eyes and looked at the spool again, which to Jefferson’s view looked perfectly unchanged.  If he hadn’t thought the idea completely ridiculous at the time, he would’ve sworn the little caretaker was trying, unsuccessfully to do… magic? 

The Hatter clicked his tongue.  “Tsk, and people think I’m strange.”

Chapter Text

“Ahem!”  said a female voice emanating from the basin at his elbow. 

Jefferson looked down to see La Belle Dame Sans Merci’s reptilian visage, looking back at him from the rippling water.   

“Aaaah!”

Jefferson, always jumpy at the best of times nearly flew a foot in the air, but luckily only managed to spill a few drops of the water.

“For goodness sake Jefferson, calm down.” 

“Good morning mistress Belle,” he said, carefully modulating his voice,  favouring her with a slight bow from the waist.

“Much better.”

“So what do you have to report?”

“The mission was a success as far as I can gather.  We made the shoes for the Shoemakers to find in the morning. Hopefully they’ll find someone in this little Podunk town willing to buy them.  I mean I’m not sure dancing shoes were the best choice for—”

“Don’t worry, that part has already been taken care of.  King George was seen coming from their hovel this morning, carrying your gorgeous handiwork off to give as a gift to his eldest daughter.”

“Oh, well,” blushed the Hatter at this flattery, “I can take sole ownership for it.  Your caretaker was indispensible.  Seriously, he can really sew!” 

“Hhmm!  I’ll keep that in mind.  Anything else you noticed about him?   Oh, he’s not there in the room or anything, is he?”  she asked hurriedly.

Jefferson rolled his eyes.  The most powerful sorceress in all the land and she was worried that Rumple of all people, would know she was asking about him.  Really, how could she not realize how transparent she was?    “No, he’s not here.”

“Oh good!”   She sat down on the bed in her room in the castle, letting her skirts balloon out around her as she crossed her legs underneath and leaned forward towards the bowl with undisguised eagerness.   “So, what’s the T?”

Jefferson, studied the teak coloured water in the cup in his hand.  “I dunno, Orange Pekoe?”

“Ah! Stop being so bloody coy! What did you notice about him?”

Jefferson sipped meditatively, trying to give himself a little time to thing of the best way of phrasing his observations.    There really wasn’t a good way of saying it.  “He’s—well he’s afraid of everything, nearly all the time.”

“Cowardly you mean?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t say that necessarily, it’s just he looks at everyone like they’re going to start beating and yelling at him if he puts a foot wrong.  He’s always apologizing all over himself.    I think he’d rather just scurry away and disappear, than have anyone look at him for over a second and you know, how people are like to stare at someone who doesn’t look like the common sort.  Being around strangers in an unfamiliar place clearly puts him on edge.  It’s like he thinks they’re going to jump him in alley the first chance they get.  Was he…” he tried to phrase it as delicately as possible, without implicating Belle in anyway,  “ill-treated sometime before?” 

“Not by me, never,” she said, with a surge of anger to her voice.

“No, no, I would never ever assume that of you--- don’t even think—”

“But when I found him, before I brought him back with me to the castle—yes, he’d been very badly treated indeed.”

Jefferson nodded, because he could relate.  “You were the first person to really treat him like a human being in a long, long time.” 

Belle peered up from fingering a brocaded design on her skirt.  She knew, somehow that Jefferson was talking about himself in part and something in that secret part of her soul that the Dark Spirit had never touched, felt moved and honoured by this semi-confession. 

“Did he explain to you, what happened to his foot?”

“No.  He never told you?”

“He told me he doesn’t know.  They put him in a shackle and slowly over time, he grew sick and his leg withered away from the place the shackle touched.  I thought it might be poisoned, but I examined it and it was not.   It was perfectly ordinary metal, not a single spell on it.  I have tried to cure it, but something about him--- resists my magic, as you know.  Do you think it’s a lie, what he told me?” 

“I don’t think so.  From what I gathered he was an indentured soldier and then somehow became of slave, but he was born a freeman.  His father offended the king or owed money or something, he wasn’t precise about it.  I know this sounds weird, but I’ve been to Wonderland and I’ve seen things that don’t exist in this world, strange forms of magic—it seems magical to me, a curse perhaps, of some foreign kind.   A person, even a wounded person, doesn’t just start turning into tree bark and then abruptly stop because you freed them from slavery.  It smacks of a spell to me.   A punishment maybe?  For trying to desert the king’s army?”

“Does he seem to you like he was important enough for a king to pay a high mage to enact such a curse over?”

“No. A fairy curse then?”

“I can’t imagine he would be of much interest to them, being not of noble birth, with little influence in court.  Dessertation isn’t uncommon in the army for common-folk.  Whoever they fight for, the lord in charge isn’t likely to care whether one poor farmer lives or dies after all, as long as that death serves the greater purpose.”

“Maybe to make an example of him, as a lesson to others?”

“Why not just go the usual route, then?  Put him in the stocks. I’ve heard they publicly hobble men like that in some divisions, as a warning to others, that this is what happens if you try to run.  Most don’t survive the process.  Surely a large mallet would suffice.  Why use magic? Why magic? Why magic?”  she asked herself over and over again, although now it seemed she spoke more to herself than Jefferson. 

“I don’t know.  Maybe they wanted to attract your attention.”

“Hmmmm.  Well, that someone has certainly done. Anything unusual happen when you were together?” 

“You mean other than the usual mushroom-taking and size shrinking?”

“Jefferson, please be serious.”

“We went to a pub.  There was a woman there, said she was a seer.  “

“A what?”  Belle’s voice seemed to snap all of a sudden like a rubber band.

“What, you too?  I was taught they are a myth.”

“Oh, seers are real enough, just shockingly rare and highly coveted by the wealthy and powerful.”

“Well yeah anyway this one was a fake, just some local prostitute with painted eyes on her hands—but your little caretaker there—my god, he completely lost it on her—like I’ve never seen such fury in all my life spring up out of nothing,  just grabbed her and started freaking out and then he saw the eyes on her hands were just glass, stuck on with glue and he seemed to feel really contrite.  Of course, when I asked what he was on about he clammed right up and wouldn’t explain it.”

Hnmmmmmm… definitely a mystery to uncover there.  Perhaps another visit to the Shoemakers is in order for you two.

The Hatter groaned. 

“What do you think of making two pairs of shoes instead of one?”  

XXX

The next night they were back at the Shoemakers’ house, their tools stowed safely in the Hatter’s hat.  Now that they knew what they were about, the work went by more quickly and they were able to finish two pairs instead of the one they had completely before. 

The Hatter had also had the foresight to ply Rumple with some coffee he’d ground himself, out of special (supposedly non-magical) beans he received in trade from the Queen of Sehba.  The clever Queen of Sehba had initially got him interested when she’d claimed a potion concocted from the beans was guaranteed to make an ordinary man work two times as fast and stay awake twice as long with twice the level of alertness than he had before.  Keen to prove her claim false, Jefferson was quite shocked to discover that she wasn’t kidding about the innocuous looking brown beans’ properties.   He now drank a cup of the liquid per day and found he could keep himself up and working speedily at all hours of the day or night now.  Unfortunately, this also meant he had just a slight chemical dependency on the liquid and so, now found himself continually bringing the Queen new and wonderful things to give her in exchange for the precious beans, which no matter how hard Jefferson tried to cultivate them himself, would never grow in any soil outside that of her land, which he supposed had been her plan all along. 

As Jefferson watched Rumple’s needle fly through the leather with double its customary speed, he realized he’d never told Belle the other thing he’d noticed about her caretaker, how he was clearly inexpertly attempting to do some sort of magic, that day before in the courtyard.  He supposed it didn’t really matter as he clearly hadn’t been successful and the whole attempt seemed more likely to embarrass the shy man, than anything else.  Clearly, he worshiped Belle, so was it any wonder he tried so hard, in his slightly sad, pathetic little way to imitate her? 

XXX

And so the two “elves” worked away at the shoes, oblivious that they were being watched.  In the loft above them the Shoemaker and took turns looking down at them through the hole in the floor. 

“Oh that’s so sad,” murmured the wife, who had a reputation around town for being quite soft hearted.  “Here they are, helping us so industriously, to make the shoes we sell, when they haven’t a pair themselves, nor a stitch of clothing to keep out the cold!  It’s not right!  The poor dears, we really should help them!”

Taking his own turn at the peephole, the Shoemaker was gratified to see his detective skills had been accurate.  One didn’t get to be shoemaker of a town for thirty years, without noticing a thing or two about gait and footprints.  One of the elves walked upright, with a steady gait, while the other seemed to hop around a bit more, leaning its weight on its left side, leaving a heavy left footprint in the lanolin and a shadowy smudge behind on the right.  Suddenly, an idea occurred to him and he wondered if in the short time they had until the next night, if they were lucky and the elves visited again, he might be able to make it work.  

XXXX

On the third night Jefferson and Rumple arrived to work at the Shoemakers cottage only to find, laid out on the workbench, two tiny pairs of clothes and shoes, exactly the right size to fit them in their miniaturized state. 

Rumple pointed to little stick figure drawings sketched in chalk next to each stack of neatly folding clothing. 

Jefferson was depicted as a little stick man in a top hat.  Rumple’s stick man had a folded up stick foot. 

“I guess we know which man is meant for which clothes,” said Rumple.

“Aaaah!” squealed Jefferson, holding a tiny velvet jacket made of plush purple fabric up to his chest.  “It’s perfect!  How did they know purple was my colour?”  

“Your hat is purple, maybe they crafted it to match,” said Rumple with a grin.  He pulled on his own newly made shirt, amazed by the softness of the cotton, the generous flow of the sleeves and the elegant tiny stitches at the cuffs.  He knew no magic had been involved and the thought of clumsy, large human hands and fingers working all day to create these delightful little ensembles, just for them, made him smile from ear to ear at the sheer kindness and thoughtfulness involved. 

Rumple watched the Hatter slip on the silk high heeled shoes with their shiny brass buckles, that twinkled at his ankles as he moved.  Rumple could see, thanks to some marks still left on the brass, had probably come from someone carefully melting down a full sized button off their own coat.  The care with which this must have been done, the sacrifice, all for such a tiny nearly insignificant detail, nearly brought tears to his eyes. 

He looked down at the shoes the Shoemakers had left for him, knowing they probably wouldn’t fit him the way the Hatter’s fit his, but ready to appreciate whatever they had made for him all the same. 

Rumple saw that they had provided him with boots instead of shoes and boots of a particularly long kind.  He pulled the left one on, noticing how soft and supple the leather was, taking care with the complicated laces which when fully done up cris-crossed his calf all the way up to the knee.   As he began to pull the right boot, he immediately noticed something different.  Although they looked nearly identical from the outside, when he pulled it on, he could tell, right away that the boot had some sort of material sewn into it and the leather was thicker and stiffer.  The sole was built up with some sort of harder material on the outside to hold its shape and stuffed with soft cotton on the inside to cushion his small, withered foot and fill out the shoe, so that from the outside, it was hard to tell that both feet weren’t roughly the same size and shape. 

As he laced the boot up, he could feel it firming up the weak calf of his bad leg, holding it straight and strong like a brace. He wondered if perhaps, in this strange tall boot, the leg wouldn’t skitter out from under and fold beneath him like it usually did.  The idea that he might be able to put some weight on it, while it was held together so stiffly, became irresistable to him.  Perhaps, he could, he thought, just try it once, just for a second, to see if it was possible. 

He pulled himself up on a large spool of thread.  "So far so good," he breathed.  Then, taking care that the Hatter wasn’t watching, lest he fall on his face,  Rumple forced himself, while every instinct borne of painful experience from the past few years, screamed at him that he was an idiot to even think about it, to put both feet on the ground, legs spread without hitching up his right side.

He couldn’t fully do it at first, his body, after years of training, no longer seemed to want to go that way, afraid he’d fall.  Slowly but surely, though he placed the right boot down on the ground and let it take half his weight.  The sensation was a little peculiar, because the foot in the boot still had no feeling, and he didn’t completely trust it not to fold under him like it had a thousand times before.  Still, the tall boot kept it stiff and straight and he didn’t fall over.  He wondered how long he’d been standing like that, staring at his own feet, in their same-sized boots planted firmly on the ground beneath him when he looked up and saw the Hatter watching him, smiling warmly, genuinely pleased for him. 

“Good on you mate.”

Rumple grinned back at his friend and ducked his head bashfully.  He realized his cheeks hurt all of a sudden and it occurred to him that he hadn’t smiled so widely , for such a long time, since he’d been a little boy.     

Chapter Text

It had all been going so well.  Blue touched down in all her glory outside the Shoemaker’s cottage, all prepared to go into the hovel, and shine her beneficent light on the benighted shoemaker couple, when something disturbing caught her attention.

She smelled death. She scented the air again-- death and decay. 

The imminent death of a fairy, somewhere close at hand!

How was that possible?  In this place?  So far away from the Hometrees? 

Three Hometrees; Three trunks, six major branches to each trunk, eighteen minor branches from each major branch, each minor branch composed of a few dozen individuals at a time. 

She knew every fairy and sparrowmin of the Hometrees by house and name.   

It seemed a lot to remember, but she’d had hundreds of years of practice.  Pixie Grove Hollow was sealed off from the rest of the Enchanted Forest, by many layers of enchantment, held in place by the magic of hundreds of fairies.  If anyone left without authorization by the Queen’s council, they would know about it instantaneously.   Not to mention, that one had to fly to leave the tree.  Treebound sparrowmin never ventured outside the sacred bubble.    

And yet…

The Blue Fairy hovered above the ground, senses alert to every sight, smell and sound.

Somewhere nearby, one of her kind was dying.

The smell was very faint and mixed with something odd and decidedly un-fairy-like, but still it persisted in the air unchanged.   Only one of her kind would have been able to smell it so keenly.  Humans were apparently oblivious to the smell of decaying fairy flesh or else, in a disgusting irony, actually found the smell appealing.  The thought was enough to turn her stomach. 

She looked around for the source and came upon a clump of overgrown bushes leaning against the shoemaker’s hovel.   A small scrap of brightly coloured cloth caught her eye.  She flew closer to investigate as the aroma grew stronger— crushed roses and fallen apples turning brown, sweetness fermenting. 

The clothes hidden under the bush seemed like normal human garments; shirts, pants, jackets, a brightly patched scarf and some shoes.  One was marked with a red star on the left arm that seemed familiar, though she couldn’t recall what magic text she’d seen it in.  The clothes seemed fairly clean, without the greenish black stains that fairy blood left upon cloth, that Azulii had been so afraid of finding. 

There was no corpse, or even a part of one, the only indication of the dying fairy left in the area was a handful of small gray flakes too small for a human’s eye to detect.   They looked like tiny chips of wood, but she knew what they were all too clearly. 

This strange, wood-like substance was what happened to fairy flesh when a fairy died.  It was exceedingly rare that any of them died by violence and there were no infectious diseases among them.  They were extraordinarily long lived compared to humans and other human-like creatures they shared an ancient ancestor with, but despite humans’ beliefs.  They were still mortal.  Eventually, with time, the processes of the body became less and less efficient and more chaotic and error-prone.  Things ran slower and slower until they finally ground to a halt, and a fairy or sparrowmin went back to the tree.

“Going back to the tree” was not a euphemism. 

The Hometrees, which had once been like ordinary trees, eons ago, before any fairy now alive had drawn breath, didn’t grow like ordinary trees anymore.  Over thousands and thousands of years dying fairies and sparrowmin had grafted themselves into the bark as they hardened into death until the living tree itself had disappeared underneath.

At an advanced enough age a fairy reached a point where her body began to root itself to a Hometree and the flesh slowly but surely took on a bark-like appearance, dying gradually from the skin outside into her core, her life blood slowly down and growing thick and treacly like sap, until in the very end she was another piece of bark in a vaguely fairy-like shape, grown into a tough, imobile shield that even in death would protect the nest of babies, that lay at the hometree’s heart. 

Gradually, over time, new bark would grow over the silvery-grey wooden looking material that was the fairy’s body and then she would become one with the tree and her fairy ancestors completely.   Unlike with a human, it was hard to know exactly when a fairy was fully gone.  It was said that the consciousness of every fairy who had passed away lived on in the tree.  Legend had it that individual fairy queen’s of the past, could be called upon by the learned and the wise fairies in times of crisis to give advice and offer up their own experience in way of counsel.

There was a place within Azulii’s  hometree, in the courtroom of the Queen, where the bark was deeply cut into to expose the living heartwood, still green with the living parts of the tree within.

Titania said the barrier between the fairies who’d passed away, into the tree and the fairies still alive and flying, she sensed was thinner there.  Through Titania you could talk to the ones from the past who still retained some aspect of separate consciousness there, and had not dissolved completely into the tree with the rest, but the price was that exposure to it would immediately bring on the change to bark if one didn’t have strength of mind and purpose and even then, the change would still happen as a result, only more slowly.   She knew Queen Titania, who hadn’t left the tree in a decade and was now currently rooted closer and closer into the walls of her own throne room was paying that price now.  Even still, after hundreds of years on the throne, she continued on, holding herself apart from her final surrender, rather than having the good grace to melt swiftly into the tree, to make room for her younger followers as she should have long ago, thought Blue grimly. 

Though she didn’t pay much attention to these things as a rule, it seemed a sparrowmin’s life followed a similar trajectory.  Only, unable to fly, he would never leave the tree and so his body would begin grafting itself onto the tree a few hundred years sooner and with greater speed.  It was said that the average sparrowmin’s life rarely went beyond seven hundred years, while a few fairies had been know to survive beyond one thousand.   

The Blue Fairy couldn’t tell, from such a paucity of evidence whether the dying or perhaps now dead fairy was a some kind of renegade fairy or a kidnapped sparrowmin.  The idea that a sparrowmin could have been taken so far from his hometree was alarming to say the least.  The dozen or so fairies currently on assignment in the human world that she knew of were in lands far distant from the shoemaker’s cottage and had reported back with expected frequency.  If anyone tried to go it on their own, surely Titania would be aware. 

But then maybe Titania was aware and had just not thought to share her knowledge with any of the others.   Were there other operatives out there then, ones that she had no idea existed?  Could Titania have her own small private force the council had been kept in the dark about?   Surely, even then, a fairy leaving the tree on undisclosed business would have been too noticeable. 

How then could she have—?   and then, the other shoe dropped. 

Literally.  Azulii was holding a boot in her hand, the one that the strongest dead-fairy smelling seemed to be emanating from, when the mild odor that had mingled with the other, the one she couldn’t quite place, that had been so distinctly un-fairy-like came roaring into her consciousness as she heard a soft sound from behind her and saw, out of the corner of her eye, a curl of dense, red-black smoke wind itself upwards from the ground. A woman’s hazy form took shape from the smoke below the fairy as she raised her wand and launched into a defensive spell. 

“You!”

A feral smile lit up the Dark One’s reptilian features.  “Did ya miss me?” 

Chapter Text

XXX

Five minutes before:

Rumple and Jefferson stood staring at each other in their new finery grinning like fools. 

When suddenly their reverie was interrupted by a harsh voice, emanating from a pair of scissors.

“Stay right where you are!”

The two false elves jumped in their new shoes and glanced around for the source of the voice.  It took Rumple a moment to realize it was Belle; her voice sounded so unlike her usual self.  The words came out clipped and oddly accented, almost as if she were frightened.   Her face in the reflection of the scissor blades contorted in an expression that could be mistaken for one of terror, by someone who didn’t know who she was,

But such a thing Rumple and the Hatter knew to be impossible.  She was la Belle Dame Sans Merci and she didn’t do fear, unless she was the one causing it.  After all, what mere mortal in all the realms could even scratch her impervious hide? She was the Beast that scared the bravest men into hiding in their beds like little children afraid of the darkness.  La Belle Dame Sans could melt the heart of both slave and sovereign alike as the sun melts an ice cube if she chose to. 

It was her servants who were mortal and could face danger if an enemy knew who they were.  Their vulnerability, out there away from the protection of Belle’s castle.  They were at risk here in a way Belle couldn’t foresee or protect them from.  The thought sent a shiver up the small caretaker’s spine as he and Jefferson turned towards the door to the cottage.  On the other side, sounds of someone who was not Belle, crowing her triumph over their mistress suddenly disturbed the air. 

Rumple put his rough hand on Jefferson’s shoulder.  “That person on the other side,  whoever it is, we have to fight her. She’s trying to kill Belle! We’ve got to help her!”

“If that person is strong enough to take on Belle, I doubt we’ll be able to do much.”

Rumple twisted the cloth of his new shirt in his hands, “I know, but at least we’ve got to try. Please Hater.”

Jefferson said nothing.

“Give me the mushroom,” demanded Rumple.  “Let me see what I can do.”

Jefferson gave him a quick once over.  In his new boots, standing tall, the caretaker did look quite a bit stronger, but underneath, Jefferson thought, he was still Rumple. What could he do, stab the villain to death with a needle??

His mind made up Jefferson, took the mushroom from his hat and crammed the whole thing into his own mouth. 

“Hatter!” screamed Rumple as the Hatter leapt onto the carpet, leaving Rumple to snatch at the air where he had stood.  “You can’t leave me behind! Don't do this to me!  Please!”

The Hatter knew he had mere seconds before the accelerated pace of the size change would take over.  He had to get to Belle fast.  He didn’t look back as he flew towards the door, Rumple’s furious, terrified voice following him like a ghostly echo, still begging him to stay, though they both knew it would be impossible now.

“Hatter! Please!”

Chapter Text

Ten Minutes Before:

La Belle Dame Sans Merci was taking a bath.  She preferred her baths to be scalding, literally.  The water she soaked in would have boiled the skin of a soft little human, but her natural scaled form found pleasure in the heat, as it softened and polished her to a brilliant shine.   

She stretched and preened in the faintly scented water now, much to the delight of the Cursed Spirit.  At such times as these, Belle felt it safe to let the Beast out to play.  In the tub it could do little damage to another person and it gained much sustenance from the varied and heightened sensations it could experience while getting soft-boiled. 

Meanwhile Belle herself was happy to take sit back in her own mind for a while, and enjoy herself as the active Spirit led her on into rubbing her hidden private regions along the bubbling jets of the miniature hot springs.  She had enchanted the tub with them for just such a purpose.  Basking in the senses shattering feeling of multiple orgasms always cleared her head and made her brain work its best.  As creative possibilities unspooled in her mind, undistracted by anything else but her mounting pleasure, her rapture was abruptly disturbed by the blast of an unearthly chime.  On the stand by the bath, her red-star amulet, which she’d luckily carried into the bathroom with her was blazing brightly with a pulsing inner glow.  Instantly, the bath evaporated around her.  The Dark Spirit clothed her in the blink of an eye in her most forbidding looking spiked armour as she reached to pick up the star amulet.  The star shaped was screaming now, telling her Jefferson’s life was in imminent danger and she knew if the Hatter was in peril, then Rumple would be too. 

Her magic swirled up around her and instantly transported her to the garden of the Shoemaker’s cottage.  As she moved she used half her power to leave a curt message to Jefferson and Rumple to stay where they were.   The red star’s sound, she knew meant that the danger was closing in, but had still not yet arrived at the Hatter’s location.  If she could cut whatever being was endangering her employees off before it got to them as quickly as possible, they could be saved.

The key was for them to stay put while she put out the fire outside, she thought to herself, with a nod.  It shouldn’t be that difficult to dispatch whatever threat presented itself. 

But you don’t really know, do you?” asked the Spirit with a lazy sort of pragmatism, “What is truly going on here? We shouldn’t go about this half-cocked, running heedlessly into danger.  You only really know about the Hatter.  For all we can tell Rumple is already dead and all this haste is unnecessary.”

“Shut up!”

As her magic swirled her through the ether to the spot that the red star called out from, she swore with all her might at the Spirit, calling it every filthy name in the book in an effort to get it out of her head.  Of course, this only delighted it all the more, and it increased its tormenting by showing her all manner  of magical and nonmagical possibilities for Jefferson and Rumple. 

But even the Dark Spirit, whose cynicism about humanity had no end and no beginning, but encompassed every ethereal fibre of its nonexistent being hadn’t predicted what the danger would prove to be when they arrived.

There, fluttering calmly towards the Shoemaker’s cottage as if she had all the time in the world was the Blue Fairy. 

Belle felt its shock like a bucket of cold water dumped on her psyche. 

The Spirit dissolved within her into a writhing mass of fury and terror, leaving her momentarily blindsided. 

“Oh, I see, when push come to shove, the most powerful dark sorcerer in the world, turns into a screaming ninny.  Well, thanks for nothing!”  Belle growled at it.  “If I want anything done right, clearly I can’t depend on you!”

At least, so far, it appeared she remained undetected by the fairy.  No thanks to you, Captain Usless!  she admonished the Spirit with all the savagery it had previously unleashed on her. 

But the Spirit wouldn’t even offer a single word in its own defense. It had folded itself very small into the tiniest corner of her mind, shaking and quivering like a terrified pudding.   The lack of the usual cruel retort from it, was what alarmed Belle the most. 

She knew the fairies hated the Spirit and would try on priniciple to frustrate any of the Dark One’s pursuits, but usually they left her alone, only working against her from a distance, through proxy agents. 

Creatures with a reputation for goodness and light couldn’t be seen getting their hands dirty after all, she’d thought snidely of the vile beings.   As a human she’d always found the stories about the fairies rather contradictory and the cults around their existence, with their flower and butterfly sacrifices, ones that preyed on the stupidest and most credulous of the common folk. They were beautiful, most certainly, but vacuous seeming in a way, like simple children, eager for answers without ambiguity.  People like her had too many questions to really belong to groups like that. 

Now, she wondered about reasons for their behavior, she had previously overlooked. 

There had been war between the Dark Spirit and the Fairies in the past, this she knew.  As the new Dark One, the Spirit had coached her in no uncertain terms that she was to avoid the fluttering creatures wherever possible. 

As the two oldest and strongest magical powers in the Enchanted Forest, they danced around each other, never daring a direct confrontation.  Although the Spirit went on and on about the Dark One’s invincibility and power and its many historical victories over various enemies wielding magical objects of mighty strength beyond all known to the modern world, she knew that at some point it had been subdued and caged.  She guessed from hints it had let drop over the years that the fairies had been a major part of the plot that separated it from its old host and caged it.  Also, indirectly, she gathered that it prided itself on having taken down plenty of their number in the fight as well.

In fact, when she had first fused with it, a few hundred years ago, it initially assumed that the entire fairy race had gone extinct and refused to believe her when she said they still existed.  It had only grudgingly accepted the truth after being confronted with physical evidence-- the remains of actual fairy spells, recently performed.   

It seemed to Belle that whenever the fairies and the Dark One had gone to war with each other in the past, mutually assured destruction had always been on the table.  As she had no wish to be destroyed until she could acquire a body for the spirit and send it on its merry way, (leaving her with at least half of its magical powers, of course), to deal with the fairies or not at its leisure, the best course of action was to studiously avoid the creatures while subtly undercutting their power in ways that couldn’t be directly traced to her. 

Though they had never conversed on the subject, this seemed the tactic they favoured as well.  They had spent two hundred years now avoiding stepping on each other’s toes. 

But now, here was a fairy, the first Belle had ever met directly, face to the Dark One’s new face.  Despite her long aquaintence with the Dark One’s powers and its many memories, Belle had never faced one of their number in battle.    battle. 

It was tinier than she expected, but then it enlarged itself to study some clothing left under a bush, exclaiming to itself as it finger the fabric.  Rumple’s clothing, Belle recognized, and her blood boiled within her hotter than it had in the scalding waters of her tub. 

If that filthy gnat laid a hand on—

In her sudden rush of anger she forgot to disguise the sound of her footsteps.  The creature swiveled around upon hearing the sand.

The fairy’s mouth gaped open, its expression one of complete shock.  

Good, snarled the Beast within her, returned from wherever it had been hiding itself.  Tell me I’m not too late.  Suddenly, it was raring for battle. 

Chapter Text

The Blue Fairy stared aghast at the apparition before her. 

She knew the name of the creature before it introduced itself.   How could you not know? 

She’d seen the drawings in the towns, hidden from the priests.  She’d heard the descriptions passed by word of mouth from the lips of one peasant to another.  At first the rumours were not believed.  Such tall tales and legends came up now and again, vestiges of old beliefs and superstitions from the days when the Dark One’s shadow had stalked the land, before it had been locked away forever, never to disturb the good world again. 

But then its magical traces began showing up in more and more places.  Eventually the pieces of evidence became too numerous for the high council to ignore.   

Uncertainty rang through the Hometrees in those days, as the people questioned what they’d been told.  Titania, the Green Fairy in those days before she assumed the crown, was shrewd enough to capitalize on it. She was just a lowly fairy of the Second Circle then, and far from Queen Oberna's handpicked successor.  

The previous queen's mistake, was that she only sought to appease and calm her subjects, fearing the truth would lead them into chaos and a war they could not possibly win.  For all her advanced age, Oberna had not been wise.  Ignoring the problem of the Dark One did not make it go away.  As the agents in the field gathered more information, the truth of their own eyes could no longer be brushed aside so easily. And the Truth contradicted all that Queen Oberna kept telling them; the Dark One had to be back.

But it was Titania who discovered the inconrevertable truth that the Queen had lied to all of them. She alone had the nerve to seek out the Dark One’s Vault for herself.  Few knew the location and no one other than Oberna had visited the cursed place in centuries, but Titania, through careful questioning and studies of the old recordshad found it out. 

She went to the Vault and saw what Oberna had hidden from them all.  The Dark One had escaped and not recently either.  It had been out in the world in a new body spinning its dark webs of treachery unimpeded for decades by then.    Had Oberna told them the truth, allowing the council to assemble all its magics and act when the Dark One had only recently escaped and fused with its new host, back when it was still weak they might’ve been able to stop it.  But Oberna was too busy trying to cover up her own culpability in letting the Dark One escape to let the rest of them know the danger. 

Now it was loose and the chaos and subversion of order it delighted in causing would only grow with time.   It had already claimed a castle and fortified it with powerful spells of protection which no fairy could break.  They were unlikely now to catch it unprepared. 

The only way they would ever get the drop on the Dark One at so late a date now, was if it could be lured out of its protective place and stripped of its powerful magical protections somehow. 

Queen Titania had plotted their way forward.  They were advised to keep away from it, letting it busy itself exerting its influence over a small section of the Enchanted Forest, believing itself to be unstoppable.  In the meantime the Fairies would build up their stockpiles of magical objects and cultivate allies so that the next time, the inevitable confrontation would see their side triumphant and the Dark One finally eliminated for all time. 

The day when the fairy powers would be strong enough in Titania’s estimation to take on the Dark One was still far off.  With their united strength as a group the Fairies would be well matched, but one fairy on her own, even one as strong and highly favoured for ascendency as Azulii was no match for the Dark One. 

And especially a Dark One, who was capable of this kind of travesty. This horrible, unspeakable act of depravity and abomination that Blue had just discovered evidence of outside the prosaic Shoemaker’s house shook her to the core. How had Belle even got hold of a fairy, let alone tortured one?

She stared at Belle in shock, the possibilities unfolding, unfurling in her mind. The extent of the horror came upon her like a tiny square cloth revealing itself to be a giant blanket, growing larger and large with each successive unfolding, as the full ramifications of her discovery revealed themselves in all their hideous repugnance. As afraid as she was of a creature that could do such a thing, such an obvious challenge could not go unanswered, even at risk to her own life.

The tip of Azullii's wand glowed blue as thick vines burst violently forth from the ground twining themselves around the Dark One’s legs, arms and neck.  Blue thought perhaps she could trap the Dark One there, long enough for her to get away, back to Pixie Hollow to warn her the others.  

The stems of the vines grew as thick as tree trunks, covering Belle’s entire form in a matter of seconds. 

The Blue Fairy knew she should flee the second Belle seemed to go under, but she had to know, for the good of the Hometrees, for the safety of her people, what exactly was going.  How had Belle captured a fairy?

Perhaps Titania had been wrong, the Blue Fairy thought, as Belle stopped struggling against the vines that writhed and climbed all over her. Perhaps, this new Dark One was weaker than the old.  Perhaps she, Azulii could kill it!  If she could, she knew they would crown her Queen on the spot-- no fight for succession, no quarellsome factions blocking her ascent or sniping like vipers trying to take away what was hers. She began to hope and that hope was a dangerous and deceptive thing, for the Dark One cleaved to desperate, foolish hope more than desperation itself.

“So, I see the great Dark One isn’t the formidable powerhouse, we were told.  Pity, I was hoping for a more challenging fight,” she crooned trying to bait the Beast, to see if it was truly vanquished.  “Too noble and gentle to fight back are we?”

The mound of enchanted vines in front of her gave no indication it had heard, but she knew it was unlikely she had completely smothered the Dark One’s host.   Or had she? 

Azulii carefully released her hold on the vines around the Dark One’s face. They peeled back to reveal a bowed head, the huge eyes downcast and modest, hideous pointed teeth hidden behind gold painted, feminine lips.  The scaled skin could not be disguised though, proof of the human host’s infestation with the Dark Spirit.  This time the scales were blue with gold edging, prettier and more delicate than the blood red and black depicted in the ancient frescos. The hair was red-brown; curled and styled in a slightly girlish way.  Thick tresses undulated in strange, mobile waves, roiling away from the scalp in all directions.  

“What did you do?” the Blue Fairy hissed at her.  “Who did you kill?  Why? How?”

The head snapped up now, the eyes wide and sardonic, the fang-like teeth on full, smiling display.  “Inquiring minds want to know the scoop, eh?” the Beast laughed coolly

“Answer me!”

“Right, right, so when you want to know whom I killed do you want that organized by which host I was in?  By oldest to newest victim?  Or recent to most ancient?  Hmmm, I suppose alphabetical order traditionally works best.” Clawed fingers shredded through the Blue Fairy’s magical vines like they were tissue paper.  The Dark One began to count on her fingers, “Number one, Abellard, the butcher from Tizdale, no last name, for annoying us with his singing.  Number two, Ackwitta the Snakewoman who tried to steal our twenty-league boots for her employer.  Number three,  Acxelrod the axmaker whose apprentice quite politely—”

“No you idiot!”  The Blue Fairy shook the pair of trousers with their sickly sweet aroma of decay still clinging to them as proof in the face of this insidious, mocking creature.  “This!  Here!  Who did you do this to!  Be… spe-ci-fic!” the Blue Fairy shouted, enunciating each syllable of the word, putting magic into the command, making it a compulsion. 

“I’m sorry,” said the Dark One, cultured voice dripping with scorn and counterfit pity, “But I have no idea what in the blazes you’re talking about.  You are clearly mad.  No matter, I suppose.  Now if you’ll leave to let me go about my business here, and move along I will restrain myself from killing you.  If you persist in plaguing me with your insane conspiracy theories though, I will  remove you from this location in the most permenant way possible, do I make myself clear?” 

The Blue Fairy ignored the threat and the Dark One remained trapped in the vines.  “What sort of sick dark magic is this?  What did you do to create this trap?  Why go to the trouble to lure me in with these fake creations?”

“Fake creations?  Now that’s just hurtful,” it touched its breast, as if offended. “I assure you, the shoes created by my servants, though admittedly fabulous are absolutely real, but I suppose creatures who buzz about like flies, pestering honest folk, wouldn’t have any notion about that.  Now would they, little gnat?” asked the Dark One, her voice snapping with sinister intent. 

As she said the word gnat she twisted one of her hands. At that exact moment the fairy finally felt the concusive strength of the Dark One’s magic, moving towards her at high speed, looming over her like a wave. She threw up her defensives, but was unable to stop the brute force of it from crashing down upon her, disrupting the ordinary molecules of reality around her body as it did. 

The Blue Fairy transformed into a mosquito, as the shards of shattered plant life broke like eggshells and melted away from the body of La Belle Dame Sans Merci. 

The Dark One stepped forth flicking the last clinging bits of fairy magic off her gleaming black armour like embers from a fire.

The mosquito that was once the Blue Fairy, hovered in the air, helpless to flee, frozen to the spot.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci stepped forward, chuckling her sinister, guttural chuckle. 

With her new, insectoid vision, the Blue Fairy saw her doom coming on in multiple faceted images and she knew the Dark One would be true to her new name, and destroy her without a speck of mercy. 

Chapter Text

XXXX

“Belle!” screamed a voice, interrupting the fairy’s impending doom. 

“Jefferson!”  Belle lost her focus for a second as she glanced around unable to find him. “ Where are you?”  She saw him then, still tiny-sized and approaching at full speed, riding the baby carpet.  A sudden terror clutched at her chest  as she realized he was all alone. 

For a millisecond she stopped focusing on the spell that held the immobility sphere inviolate. “Jefferson, where’s Rumple?”

In response, Jefferson swirled into a being of full height in front of her in a matter of seconds.   The sound of ripping clothing rent the air as tiny buttons, seams and bits of fabric burst with the off his body.   

A metal buckle hit the sphere of immobility currently holding the fairy-mosquito in place.  The sphere went careening off in another direction.   

The Hatter stood in front of Belle now, blinking stupidly at being so quickly re-sized, the last shreds of the Shoemaker’s beautiful clothes still clinging in ruins to his shoulders. 

“What’s going on? Why are you here?”

Belle looked back towards her captive, realizing in a split second just what the Hatter's distraction had cost her.

-Your distraction, you mean, snarled the Dark Spirit. Worrying about that sniveling little caretaker!  I told you--

She ignored the Dark Spirit's admonitions as it prattled on.  Her preternatural eyes tracked the sphere as it flew away, moving faster than it should have. 

The fairy had found the chink in the magic’s armour and was using her power to fly the sphere out to the forest as quicly as she could. Belle knew, once the creature got to the Enchanted Forest, the fairy’s magical affinity with the trees and the assistance of her cousins, the dryads, would boost her ability to transport her back to her home.  And once the fairy made the leap to its secret portal in the forest, Belle would be lucky if she ever got a chance to catch one of that species again.  Maybe something good could be salvaged out of this disaster, though if she could find the magical doorway to the Pixie Grove Hollow it might be worth it.  To find the nest of the Fair Folk would change everything, tip the balance in her favour.  

 “Jefferson!  The sphere!”

But Jefferson couldn’t see the sphere of immobility.  It was completely transparent and the mosquito that had been the Blue Fairy just looked like any other mosquito as it rushed past his head, before Belle’s magic could get a hold of it. 

"If you want something done--"

Don't let your mortal servants do it--

Belle soared after it.  If the fairy got to her kin and shared what intelligence she had on the La Belle Dame Sans Merci they would all be in big trouble. 

There was a small burst of light from up ahead and then, nothing.  Fairy and immobility sphere were gone as if they'd never existed.  The residual smell of fairy magic wafted over Belle as the Dark Spirit roared with frustration and disgust within her.  It took all her power to hold her physical form together from the onslaught.  

She flew in circles a few times just to let it cool down.  As it was, she knew she'd have a hard time restraining herself when she returned to confront the Hatter and Rumple. 

Oh!  Where was Rumple? 

It was only thanks to the Dark One’s preternatural hearing that Belle discerned the faint squeak of reply coming from inside the cottage below her.

“I’m here!  I’m here!” 

She landed in a cloud of dust by the Shoemakers' front door and pushed past the Hatter into the cottage.  Rumple was still there, still tiny sized, standing and waving at her from the worktable. 

“Oh thank the gods!”

“Trust me,” muttered the Spirit within her.  “The gods had nothing to do with it.”

Chapter Text

Rumple hopped to the edge of the table and jumped up, trying to grab at the carpet as it rose above the surface of the table. One finger grazed the edge of a tassel, but he fell painfully back down in a heap over a pile of cloth.

He shouted as the Hatter flew away, but Jefferson ignored Rumple’s screams as if he couldn’t hear them, as if Rumple wasn’t even there.

Left behind. Again.

Abandoned by his friend, while Belle, the woman he loved, was in grave danger. She might well be dying out there, all on her own!

Hot tears of shame and terror trickled down his weathered cheeks.

And now whatever was out there would come for him. If it could defeat a sorceress as powerful as La Belle Dame Sans Merci, then what resistance could Rumplestilskin, disgraced soldier and ex-slave offer?

If he died now, so be it, but he’d be damned if he let someone who hurt Belle get away without a scratch. He picked up one of the large, human sized needles from the ground and used it to push himself up to standing. The point was sharp enough to poke out an eye at least, he guessed and would suffice for a sword for a man of his current dimensions.

He caught sight of his own reflection in the metal of a thimble.

Oh gods, who are you kidding? You’re useless. Completely and utterly—

“Rumple!” boomed a voice like thunder.

He looked up to see Belle, striding into the room, her face contorted with worry. Before he could think, she’d scooped him up in her claws, taking care not to hurt him with their pointed ends.

“You’re alright!” she gasped in relief. “You’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine!” he squeaked back up at her, unable to mask his delight.

“You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” she said, her voice quavering imperceptibly.

“Me too,” he yelled back up to her, beaming to see her well and unharmed. “I was so worried. I thought that horrible creature had—had—” he sniffed, unable to finish the thought, it was so horrible.

She brought him up to her face and he could swear there was a peculiar sort of emotion in her enormous eyes, something soft and tender and unlike anything she’d ever showed him before. Looking into them in his tiny sized form was amazing. The flecks of yellow and gold and the slotted pupil contracting in an almost hypnotizing way. He’d never realized there were so many colours in her eyes before. They glowed with inner light, like dragon’s fire.

“You were concerned? About me?” she asked, astonished.

He nodded.

“About me?” she inquired once more, as if she’d not heard him the first time.

He nodded again, not trusting himself to speak for fear of breaking out into unmanly sobs, his emotions ran so high.

She looked down at him, tilting her head like a curious puppy as she held him to her breast.

Then her claws opened, palms opening and flattening out like the centre of a lotus flower until there was space enough for him to stand up.

He pulled himself up on one of her fingers to his full height, which had always been on the small side, but was now barely bigger than her thumb, and tried to look like the kind of man who’d protect a woman in danger.

“Oh Rumple,” she sighed and his hair blew back like he was riding in the wind. “You silly, amazing man. Whatever am I going to do with you? You know I’ll always be fine no matter what. It was you I was afraid of losing.”

“Oh,” he blushed. “Come now, you could find a better servant any day of the week.”

“No Rumple,” she said, looking at him directly and he nearly fell into the tunnel of her eye. “You aren’t like everyone else.” He looked away.

“I’m common as dirt, you know that,” he snorted.

She shook her head. “No, you’re not. I feel like you could go anywhere, in space or time in any world that Hatter’s hat could take you and you would always, always be exactly yourself, as you are now-- kind, unassuming, gentle. Trust me, that is a rare quality, for a person’s humanity to be that strong, that unassailable. And you are so beautiful. No tarnish the world could try to put upon you could hide that— not from me.”

“Thank you, my lady,” he whispered huskily and before he could think better of it, kissed her.

It was on the tip of her nose, but still, he’d done it. He sank back to his feet, his head spinning. His eyes shut tight, his shoulders hunched, waiting for the blow to fall for daring to presume to touch his mistress’s person.

He would surely be changed into a slug for this and no mistake. What the hell was he thinking?

“I-I-I’m sorry!” he squeaked. “I should have asked first! P-p-please, don’t chop off my head! I won’t ever—”

“Ssssssshhhh…” she breathed and brought him up closer to her face.

In his new boots, his knees knocked together, but somehow he remained upright. His blood thrummed in his ears and rushed dizzyingly through his head as he felt her breath, like a sweet breeze around him. Her lips parted. Was she going to eat him? But then something of the most exquisite softness he had ever experienced lightly brushed the top of his head. When it was all over his hair was moist as if with dew and he realized… she had kissed him back!

Then her fingers closed over him to protect him and he was aware of her moving, but cared not where they were going.

Belle had kissed him back!

Chapter Text

The Hatter was excellent at avoiding confrontation. He was a member of a subspecies of humanity that were symbiotic with creatures that liked to camouflage themselves to look like hats, so in a way it came with the territory. His people were lovers, (and to tell the truth, often thieves and shysters), but not fighters. His own hat, Mathilda, whose peculiar taste including magical foods, including the dead skin cells shed by magical people, had always helped him avoid any form of violence.

Through no fault of his own the Hatter had let Belle’s enemy escape. Plus, he had left Rumple behind in the cottage on his own. They were both bound to be angry at him and though he feared Belle more, Rumple probably had the more justified grievance, to the Hatter’s mind.

It would have been uncharacteristic of Jefferson to stick around to explain himself. One did not wait around for a powerful sorceress like La Belle Dame Sans Merci whose name literally meant “beautiful woman without mercy” to decide whether you deserved to be punished or not.

In stunned shock, Jefferson watched Belle take off after the mosquito/fairy into the forest.

Knowing he might not get another chance, he used Mathilda to open a portal. But as he squatted on his haunches watching the hat spin across the grass where he threw it, he noticed something glittering, on the ground, half hidden by a patch of clover. It shimmered with barely suppressed magic, making the clovers glow a bit around the edges. The Hatter stared, mouth gaping. Lying where it had fallen in the clover, he saw what he was sure had to be a fairy’s wand. What else could it be? It was impossibly small and still aglow with recent use. The magical instrument was pale blue with gold veins like a piece of lapis lazuli. He glanced around, but Belle still hadn’t reappeared.

He pocketed the trinket before he could second guess himself and hopped into Mathilda’s portal.

Hopefully, whatever animosity Belle felt towards him would dissipate soon and she’d employ him again some day. Regardless, it would still help to have something to offer her in exchange

Chapter Text

Belle was unsurprised to find the Hatter had scarpered by the time she left the cottage with Rumple cupped tightly in her hand to her chest. She put him down gently on the floor of the carriage and told him to remove his new clothes. While he went about that, she picked his old clothes off the ground, gave them a quick magical cleaning and brought them back.

Rumple removed the new clothes wistfully, taking the boots and the fancy trousers off last of all. He really would miss those boots.

Belle handed a piece of mushroom to Cathy the carriage. Cathy folded it up in one of her animated curtains and brought it down to the floor of the carriage where tiny Rumple sat naked and shivering, trying not to feel too embarrassed. He reminded himself that the carriage couldn’t see inside herself, or at least he assumed she couldn’t. He nibbled on the piece of mushroom. In moments he grew to full size. Despite the Hatter’s warnings he didn’t feel discombobulated in the slightest by the size change. As strange as it should have been, something about changing size in this way almost felt natural to him.

His old clothes, neatly folded and recently cleaned by magic, floated up and into the carriage, through Cathy’s open window.

“Thank you,” Rumple said to Belle, trying to imbdue each syllable with the full extent of the enormous gratitude he felt to her; for saving his life, for seeing something in him others, including himself had never seen, for taking him in her hands and kissing him… And whether that continued or not, he reminded himself, to be kissed once by La Belle Dame Sans Merci had to be better than spending a lifetime kissing anyone else.

Though they were much finer than any clothes he had owned before he came to live with Belle, he still put his old garments on with a feeling of regret. There was something special about this place, about these clothes. They were the clothes he’d kissed Belle in and would be associated with that moment forever in his mind. He’d never let them go, even if they were tiny now and too small to even be used as rags.

He carefully picked them up and placed them in his front pocket. If nothing else, they’d be a reminder of his recent adventure and some work he did that he was pretty proud of. And that kiss. He smiled. He’d never forget that part, not if he lived a million years.

“So,” said Cathy as the carriage wheels started to roll, “why so quiet mister? Aren’t you acting like the cat who stole all the cream. What was it like in there? And where’s the Hatter? C’mon, tell me all about it!”

Cathy began to roll and Rumple looked out the window of the carriage to watch the village of Hogarth recede from view, the Shoemakers’ cottage getting smaller and smaller, as if it too had eaten the Hatter’s “smallifying” mushrooms.

Rumple looked forward, thinking about Chip and Mrs. Potts and Lumiere and Cogs and all the strange stories he’d tell them about his adventures in the village with the Hatter.

Chapter Text

Looking back a few months later, Rumple cursed himself out in bitter frustration for waking up much later than usual the morning after he returned from the village.

But in his more compassionate moments towards himself, he had to admit that it stood to reason he’d have a long lie in that particular morning.

After all, so much had happened in the last three days. It was quite a lot to process.

Why, the tiny sizing alone-- the Hatter had said it was enough to make most people go a “little wibbly wobbly in the noggy bogginy” whatever the silly man had meant by that.

But being shrunk down to the size of a thimble, recovering his gold magic, becoming an expert shoemaker in a night and nearly witnessing Belle in hand to hand combat with an actual fairy—none of those strange shocks had been the most unexpected thing he’d experienced in the past few days.

He’d kissed Belle.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci herself. He’d kissed her.
She’d kissed him.
Hadn’t she?
Or was it all just a dream. Things weren’t always what they seemed in Belle’s castle.
How else could he explain it? That he, Rumplestilskin, base born motherless son of a musician and drifter, Rumplestilskin, imposter mage, disgraced soldier, shackled slave and sometime spinner had actually kissed La Belle Dame Sans Merci!

He’d never kissed a woman first in his life! Every other time, even with village girls, even with Cora in the army camp—every time the woman had moved first. And of all the women in the world to be the initiator with—he chose the world’s most powerful! It made no sense.

The person his aunts used to say wouldn’t even say boo to a goose had possessed the temerity to put his lips on the strongest weilder of magic the world have ever known.

Like a man bewitched by the beauty of the flames he’d put his hand in the raging fire—and emerged unburned? What in the ever living fuck had possessed him?

The only possibility he could think of was that like a fly, too miniscule and worthless for her to bother with, she’d just let him be, rather than snuff his pathetic self out of existence for daring to invade her space in such a way.

But—a tiny voice within him still insisted—she did kiss you back.

Why? Why feed the foolish hopes of one so pathetic? Maybe it was because he was a touch pitiful? Did she wonder if she rejected his advances would he have shattered into pieces? Why would she have cared what happened to him anyway?

He sank back against his pillows. It was a pleasure to be human size again. Even such little things like wriggling about in the blankets gave him renewed joy.

And perhaps it didn’t matter why she’d let him do it or why she’d done it back. He licked his lips, and closed his eyes, imagining the sensation again. Belle had kissed him back!

It wasn’t a dream— as dreamlike as his entire time being tiny sized with Jefferson had seemed he knew it— the sensual memory of her lips all over him—strangely soft in her scaled face—her hands cupped around his tiny sized body, holding him everywhere at once. The sensation was overwhelming, the touch all consuming, the ultimate caress.

His fragile tiny sized being held there, poised high above the distant floor in the palms of her hands, her dagger sharp claws protecting him with greater care and tenderness than he’d ever been treated with before in his regular life.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t a dream— as dreamlike as his entire time being tiny sized with Jefferson had seemed he knew it— the sensual memory of her lips all over him—strangely soft in her scaled face—her hands cupped around his tiny sized body, holding him everywhere at once. The sensation was overwhelming, the touch all consuming, the ultimate caress.

His fragile tiny sized being held there, poised high above the distant floor in the palms of her hands, her dagger sharp claws protecting him with greater care and tenderness than he’d ever been treated with before in his regular life.

Without even thinking it— he realized with some small amount of mortification that his hand was already grasping tight around his bulging shaft. He squeezed and his erection bucked up against the delicious pressure of the mattress below him, the friction as he rubbed his entire body back and forth along it concentrating on that one place in his body, the power of the sensation concentrating the entire world into a single vanishing point. He thrust hard against his hand and was pleased to see that the Hatter’s mushrooms had no long term ill effects on this part of his anatomy at least. His eggs drew up close to his body now, tight and tensing for their release. The strain on his muscles was nearly painful now, his whole body tightened taut like a bow string about to break.

He grabbed the small basin by his bedside just in time, as a fountain of cum gushed forth from him, pumping out into the silver receptacle, sticky and dripping like dew at the tip of his penis. He rubbed his hand surrepticously over the shaft to remove the goo when the ejaculation was done. The scent of it intoxicated him. With a quick, guilty movement of his darting tongue he licked the milky white substance off his fingers. The familiar salty taste, recalled old memories-- times before he’d been enslaved—it had been so long since he’d taken any physical pleasure in himself. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it.

Chapter Text

His mind unclouded by lust for a moment, Rumple took stock of his situation.

Belle had not killed him, bespelled or imprisoned him.

She had not turned him into a piece of furniture or cutlery. That at least, was a good sign.

He’d watched enough women cope with unwanted advances from other men to know it hadn’t been unwanted, at least not in the moment. Personally, he’d never seen the appeal in forcing one’s presence on an uninterested woman, and he had little enough in confidence to assume that was what women felt when they look at him. Uninterested being a kind way of putting it, especially these past years. Pity and disgust at his smell and state as a slave seemed the more appropriate words, he thought ruefully.

He’d always been too timid to even approach a woman when he was a free man, unable to stop his stuttering when he tried to speak. Cora was the one who approached him first all those years ago in the army’s slave camp. After he was housed in the women’s tent, she’d zeroed in on him like a trained archer. Sometimes he wondered if she had ever been interested in him at all, other than as someone to use and discard like a dirty cloth when he had served his purpose. Had it really meant nothing to her though, even in the height of passion? He’d seen how she could fein it for the soldiers that fed and clothed her, and it had seemed different when she’d been with him, something real, or maybe he had just been imagining it—

He smacked his head to get himself out of these old ruminations. He’d spent years in his shackles wondering and reworking every conversation they’d had together before that fateful betrayal, predicted so long ago. It didn’t matter anymore. He had a new life now and a second chance.
Sometimes he wish he could just forget—it would be so easily if Belle was the first woman he ever met. It would be so easy to trust his feelings then and let himself go.

He could not BELIEVE he was hard… AGAIN!

Whatever his time in chains had cost him, leaving him too weak to even been roused by the frequent nudity of the women surrounding him, his lust seemed to be rushing back into him now, along with his long absent magic.

It seemed remarkable to him now that his whole outlook on life had felt so gray and dry mere months ago. Back then when he looked at the future it seemed to stretch out before him day after day of slavery like a grey desert of parched broken ground without a single sprout of green. And now his mind reeled with colours and possibilities of strange and wonderful worlds and futures he’d never have even guessed could exist before. It was a little disorienting at times.

So maybe Belle was… okay with it, with him kissing her. Maybe, maybe he wondered had this been what she’d been after all along— a sexual relationship with no strings with someone who would make no claim or demands on her or tryst o make a proper wife or mother out of her— someone pliable and receptive to instruction— well if that was it so he felt he would gladly fill that role.

He had heard of wealthy young ladies married off to rich older merchants in town who were known to court young labourers and male servants when the older husbands were away, paramoures they called them.

However, the poor men chosen to warm the beds of wealthy women were usually young, handsome, working men of robust and virile character. Or young, educated, but scions of penniless noble families, third or fourth sons who would inherit nothing but their fine speech and expensive tastes from their aristocratic parents, who made their livings teaching manners, art, music and ancient languages to the children of the wealthy.

Rumple knew he didn’t fit that mold, though the idea of Belle as the daughter of a wealthy merchant once upon a time, somehow seemed to fit? How very odd. What had made him think of that? And if for some reason it was true, how in the world had a merchant’s daughter become the greatest sorceress the world had ever known?

Searching for his sticks, he realized they had rolled under the bed, again. Perhaps he had tossed them down there a little more strongly than he had before when he went to bed.

Crawling under the bed, trying not to eat all the dust bunnies he found them quickly enough.

Still, it got him to wondering, why were all inborn magics so impractical? The ability to make dust vanish at the snap of one’s fingers was so much more useful than an erratic and highly undependable talent for turning random small objects into gold. As he'd once heard Chip say to his Mrs. Potts, "Why was that even a thing?"

He got his sticks under him again and made his toilette, basically a quick face wash and mouth scrub with the little brush he’d found by the basin. He was relieved that none of the items in his personal chambers seemed to be alive the way Chip and Mrs. Potts were. Their existence here was a mystery he still had to solve he remembered. If Belle had indeed enchanted them into their current states, which what she’d implied to him on a few occasions and which he had to admit, she appeared perfectly capable of doing, (Cathy the carriage was a case in point), then why did they seem to actually like her? You’d think if she was the one to do that to them, they’d serve her, but only in the most desultory fashion, and not with such love and care. It was a puzzle to be sure. And yet he was certain, based on hints he’d noticed from them in conversation that their case and that of Coggs and Lumos wasn’t like that of Cathy, who’d been brought to life by errant magic; that they had been human in days passed. He wondered if he asked them frankly about their story, what sort of answer they might give him. He’d been too afraid to broach the subject with them before, but now, all of a sudden, he felt he might tempt fate and ask.

Putting his breeches on and pulling up his stockings, Rumple remembered suddenly with a shot of tenderness the little clothes and shoes the kindly shoemakers had made for him and Jefferson. He looked at the little doll sized clothes as they lay on the dresser and wished he could wear them instead of the ones he now had on. Leaning against the dresser he turned the tiny right boot over in hands. It was a shame everything was so little now. He’d stood on his own and walked so well in that tall boot. Even if he’d only had it a short time, it was hard to go back to the way he’d been before. It seemed a shame after they’d made it with such care.

Somehow, when he’d had it on as his tiny self, he’d entertained daydreams of walking in one morning to Belle in the dining room, carrying his tray—or perhaps her chancing to find him dusting her bookshelves in that odd pair of leather trousers she liked to see him in so much, that showed off his tight backside.

“Notice anything different?” his imaginary self might say with a saucy wink, he’d never attempt in his day to day life.

“Oh, your hair, no maybe it’s your cravat—” she’d stumble and say and he’d just continue on dusting, winking at her as her eyes trailed down from his waist in full appreciation of his trim form.

In his fantasy she might rest a hand on his buttocks or maybe rake a single claw across the stretched leather letting him hear the pop-pop-pop of the lace up stitches along the side of his breeches as they broke under the pressure one by one.

He knew she was strong, thanks to the magic flowing in easterly through her enchanted being. Sometimes just in fantasy because in real life he was still afraid of all violence and startled easily from just loud sounds or sudden movements-- he imagined those talons tearing his clothes off him, ripping them to shreds in a frenzy to get her body on top of his, to feel his heat and closeness in her body more completely.

By the gods and the fairies who was he today? Had it only taken one kiss to unleash all this mad desire rising up in him that had been pent up all those long long years of drought?

Well he wasn’t a shoemaker, at any rate, but he had enough knowledge of tailoring to make a start and he had this sample to reverse engineer his way through. There was enough spare leather and other materials around in some of the dustier rooms where Belle never seemed to go and the tomes in Belle’s library contained more than just instructions on magic. There were books full of information about all sorts of arts and trades, as well. Maybe one of those might supply further details for him to make a similar shoe for himself.

He would ask Belle for permission to use one of her magnifying lens. It might take some time, but if he worked on every day after his work in the kitchen and the garden, he thought maybe he could make something that worked inside of a week. After all, he’d finished a pair of boots a night when he’d worked with the Hatter, and the man had only delayed his progressed.

Uncharacteristically, for Rumple at least, the sensitive spinner was being overly optimistic. Perhaps he was unaware that time passes differently when one is under the influence of Wonderland Mushrooms. Aside from the shrinking effect, in certain subspecies of human, the mushrooms have been known to mimic the effects of coffee or a mild form of iocane powder.

Thinking about the shoes and how to make them was a useful exercise. It kept his mind occupied as he made his way down to Belle’s breakfast room, so he wouldn’t dwell on the nervousness currently eating away at his heart. His mind was running from his fears of what he’d find when he met Belle again face to face. How would she react, now that she’d had a night to reflect on what they’d done together? Would she regret it or… would she want more?

Chapter Text

Belle’s Reflection

She called it the Speaker in Darkness for a reason.

The times it spoke most clearly to her were always at night, in the dark, when she was alone. It was hardest to defend herself against it there. The Speaker could focus its power the best when she had no other distractions to occupy her senses and there was something about full exposure in front of other people that the Dark Spirit shrank from, though she wasn’t sure exactly what it was, that made it so shy.  You could run and run from it your entire life, from one brightly coloured interesting occupation to another—you could fill your senses up with music and delicious food and strange sights and things out to the touch, but in the end, even La Belle Dame Sans Merci ran out of energy.  Even she needed to rest and with rest came weakness… vulnerability to the Thing that Haunted her Dreams that whispered into the darkest places in her soul.

It came sneaking… speaking… and she heard her own voice rise up in the thick blackness of her room like a visible thing, in accents she’d never spoken before she’d acquired that cursed dagger…   knife…

So when do we kill him? the Speaker rasped.

“What?”

Oh give us a bloody break.  This isn’t a pantomime you know.  I’m right here inside you. I know you haven’t slept a wink since you brought your little pet back from the Shoemakers.

It stretched itself, louche and loose limbed, relishing the way her hatred flared when it called Rumple “Little Pet.” How she detested that fake childish, mocking lilt of its voice, denigrating something it didn’t understand, making everything she felt seem so trivial and ugly!  Her fists clenched in the sheets but she remained quiet, hoping it would lose interest and leave her to sleep. 

Oh don’t give me the silent treatment.  Come on.  I know exactly what you are thinking.  Your brain is where I live, remember.  Now tell me, I’ll be patient.  Wasn’t the point of this whole endeavor with the Shoemakers to get the peasant to leave?  I thought we agreed that you don’t need the distraction.  

“You mean you don’t need the distraction,” she retorted through clenched teeth.    

Mmmm… getting cold feet are we?  So late in the game?  Tsk tsk.  Wouldn’t have thought that of you.

I guess you don’t really waaaant the power, do you?  Oh well.  Perhaps I’ll just leave—find another, more worthy vessel and you can go back to that asshole with the antler fetish.  Gary was it?  Or Gordon?  No it was—

“Gaston,” her preternatural eyes glowed like embers, seething into flames in the darkness. 

A yes, that was it.  Clever girl to remember, but I don’t suppose one ever forgets their first time---

“How dare you!”  Her voice came out in a growl. 

Had the voice a body of its own it would have rested on back on its hands and smiled a smug little smile. 

So you haven’t forgotten. 

It whispered now, knowing it had her attention, would always have her attention, that she could not escape, even if she wanted to. 

“I have not.”

And today is our anniversary and yet you’ve done little to mark it—other than suck face with that slave boy. 

She laughed a harsh tinkling laugh, as cold as cracking ice.  “Are you jealous?  You?  Really?”

Do think he can break the spell?  Is that it?  True love’s kiss?”

But now her laughter went on and on, dark and sharp as jagged pieces of obsidian and the Dark Spirit suddenly felt wrong footed. 

“Puh-lease!  I never believed that and you don’t either!  Like a curse can tell the difference between true love and lust—when half the time humans can’t tell the difference themselves?    How long have you lived and you think love is—what?  Just some static thing, unchanging in the vicissitudes of time?  You have true love and it just stays like that forever, static, without getting deeper or shallower or breaking apart or coming more closely together? That's not a real relationship! Come on. Anyway, wasn't it that fortune teller at that carnival in Guildford 178 years ago who told us that your power over me would only be broken by the one who freed my servants? At least that was all she got out before you had the temerity to murder her! Thanks ever so much, by the way. And no, I won't let you forget it. And I freed my servants and they still work for me besides and guess what? I'm still stuck with YOU! So don't fucking tell me what love is. For someone who's been around so long you have a pathetically slim grasp of what it consists of! ” 

And you know so much, thanks to your extensive experience with the brutish antler worshiper?

Not from him.  My parents--

Pssh!  Dearie, you never even saw your father and mother together for a second.  I can see your memories, you know.   Your pathetic father loved a ghost, a fiction, nothing more—

He wasn’t pathetic! And his emotion was real enough. 

She was dead--

Emotions don’t respect death.   Even when revenge is complete hate—

Hate goes on and on, the Dark Spirit hummed with a smile, as if it was the rhyming couplet to the end of a song Belle felt she ought to know.  The words hung in the air, like ghosts, and though they fit the rhythm, something in her knew they were the wrong ones.  

Chapter Text

Then if not to break the spell why—

Why ever did she kiss him? 

She was certain it was her, who had kissed Rumple, her senses must have deceived her initially that it was the other way around, she was sure for there was no way she could imagined that a normal human possessed of his full slate of wits would have kissed her.  What being could ever be desperate enough to bring soft lips to her inhumanly scaled face of his own volition?

“It was unplanned, but you are right we cannot be distracted from our purpose for the Fair Folk certainly won’t be distracted from theirs.”

They live long lives. Their hatred of us lives long too.  They’re not like humans; so quick to breed, so easy for you to forget.  

Belle thought that was wrong. Even as a human, there were certain things one didn't forget. 

“Do we then?  Mmmmhhhmm.  Funny, you should mention that, I seem to recall that if it wasn’t for your actions-- murdering the majority of their kin before we were ever even acquainted to obtain your power, then we wouldn’t currently be under threat from them now. 

Hmmmph! If I hadn’t exterminated most of their vile race, to take the power they unfairly horded from the rest of us, then my dagger wouldn’t have been there to comfort you in your time of need.  Stop complaining, Dearie.  You’re complicit as well—or would you rather walk away from all this and return to being as powerless as your sniveling little friend, just another flesh hole for another Gaston to slake his lust in, hmmm?

The fires flared in the grates nearby, the only indication of Belle's white hot rage. To the Speaker in Darkness she said nothing.  

She wouldn’t let herself speak angrily to it. Confrontation was what it fed on. To engage andd confront it would be to open her mind to its powers of deception, which were considerable. It had been at this for several of her life times at it constantly reminded her. Once engaged it was nearly impossible to break away until it secured what it wanted for itself.  For now the walls she’d built up against it remained unbreached.  The revelation she’d come to during her confrontation with the fairy, outside the Shoemakers’ cottage, still remained unshared, sealed away at the back of her mind.  Let it speak its disgusting words and leave her to sleep, she prayed. 

But now that it had got itself on the subject of the Fair Folk it was working itself into a lather.  She half listened to its rehashing of old grievances, battles, ancient losses and meaningless forgotten victories to fairies long since dead and kept her shields firmly in place.

She didn’t care about the past the way that the Speaker in the Darkness did. 

Her father had taught her Natural History when she was young, all about the food chain and the web of existence that bound one creature to another.  Plants converted the sun’s energy into sustenance in their leaves, producing food. Herbivorous animals consumed the food the plants produced to give themselves energy.  Predators consumed the grazing animals and each other to get even more energy.  And with every step up the pyramid, the energy, the power grew more and more concentrated-- Until the apex predator at the top of the pyramid died and became food for a million scattered worms and scavengers and the power was dispersed widely once more.

So it was with magic.  There were the tiny, weak bits of raw, natural, unrefined Magic that occurred in abundance everywhere, tiny molecules for example that gave beauty to a flower or helped a fish confuse a crustacean with a rude sort of glamour for a second or two; the bits in the flowers, trees and the tiny animacules of the water; magic unconscious and passive, done by reflex and instinct; Undirected by any organizing intelligence to any specific conscious purpose.  

Some beings could sense natural magic in its raw, unrefined form.  They sought it out and consumed it with their food, refining it through the processes of their bodies, accumulating it and unlocking its powers into usable power that they could direct and call on, semi-consciously when in distress.   This was the traditional, time tested way of using magic in the natural world. Scholars had originally called it “light magic” because it was weak and did not tax the body so heavily as artificial magic was wont to do and tended to create a signature in the air that looked a bit like sunlight. Naturally magic-consuming creatures who were sentient could use Light Magic like this with intent and purpose. Light Magic was comparatively weak when used by one individual, but in a herd or a hive, with many creatures working cooperatively together towards a common goal, Light Magic could become very powerful indeed.  

And then there was what traditionally magical beings called Dark Magic—the powerful magic unlocked by one or two beings who possessed little to no natural magic of their own. This could be done by killing creatures strong in Light Magic and consuming them in specific ways. Dark Magic, that took much from its user, taxing the natural body not meant to contain such power was the magic of sentient creatures. Clever creatures that had no magic of their own or any natural way to process the magic they consumed from their environment, but were happy to use artificial means to process the magic, refine it and use it for raw unnaturally potent power.  Dark Magic was the magic of humans, tool users and inventors, with a great thirst to claim the raw power of this land, to usurp its natural rulers, but no inborn way to do it.

Long ago among the early ancestors of the first humans to arrive in their world, a group became geographically isolated from the rest on an island area, barren of digestible animal sustenance, but rich in magical plant life.  As generations past they turned away from their omnivorous ways, shrank in size and came to rely on a diet heavy in raw, natural magic, to the point that their bodies developed new, efficient structures to aid in its processing.  They became the Fair Folk, the only members of the human genus who could perform Light Magic.  Their females eventually developed the ability to fly and then, in flying rediscovered their related human kin on the other side of the world. Seeing the potential of their former brethren, they used their newfound powers to dominate all the human subspecies they found that lived in the Earth, the dust and the water. After all, they were literally beneath them.

Not ones to shirk competition or power, some humans grew cunning in the ways of Dark Magic in an attempt to throw off the yoke of the fairies' tyranny. They learned to extract the magic of the world around them, because they had nothing else to fight with. Teaching themselves the art of preserving it in objects for later use, and passed on their techniques through oral histories and another human invention— writing.  They distilled Dark Magic further as time went on and concentrated its powers through chemical and supernatural means, their hunger for new power insatiable, until they’d leached a great deal of enchantment out of the world.  Gradually many creatures that fed on the raw, natural magic of world changed so that they no longer had need of so much of it for their survival or died out completely.   

But when the other, easy to catch sources of light magical creatures dried up, human practitioners of dark magic turned towards other creatures.  Fairies, due to their human level intelligence were far more difficult to ensnare, but the rewards for one who managed to liberate the magic of a fairy were far, far greater.     

These facts of nature Belle had learned from her father and her own research over the years.  Part of being a long lived vessel of the Dark Spirit was that she could perform experiments that took a hundred years and see them to their conclusion—speed up time and slow it down with specific magical bubbles in her domain—study tiny objects close up or watch distant worlds from far away. 

She was glad, that unlike other Dark Spirit avatars of the past, her view of what she was remained unclouded by superstition and conjecture.  She had taught the Speaker in Darkness this new, clear eyed “scientific” style of thinking and it had taken to it fairly well.  

There was no magic that was the product of sin or evil or curses. Nor heavenly reward or punishment for the actions one took. Only different creatures sharing one enchanted planet, struggling for survival, each evolved to take advantage of different food supplies and maximize their chances. 

It rejoiced in her depiction of such a world and yet… there was a coldness in that description of life, that had always bothered her as much as comforted.  It seemed so lonely, so wasteful, even if it was true.  She knew, as other vessels had not, that the Dark Spirit was not some being from a netherworld dimension. It had been a human once just as she had and of this world. It had parted many fairies from their lives and consumed their power.  It had bartered them for a brand of immortality, but in its greed had allowed itself to be unwittingly caged by the rules of an enchanted fairy dagger.  It had ensnared her with said weapon, used the lure of its power and what she could do with it, to blind her to its drawbacks.   She had not asked the questions she should have when the opportunity presented itself to her.  Truthfully, she would have done it, even had she known.  In that place at that time there had been no other choice. 

And there was some comfort in the voice that gently held her and told her to rest and lay down her burden, “it’s not your fault" it gently told her when the rest of the world seemed content to blame and condemn, to see her for something she was not. If there was one thing at least-- the Dark Spirit understood her in away no one else ever could and protected her, sometimes even from her own self. "Lay down," it told her when her instinct was to push herself to brink and beyond. Even when she hated it, it pulled her back and made her rest.

She let herself sleep for a while. 

She came to again a few hours later to the uncomfortable feeling of something tickling on the edge of her consciousness.  Something was rifling through her soul— working its untidy way through her her recent memories— and she thought she knew what.   It wasn’t the first time and it knew its way around— no matter how she tried to conceal her heart from it-- it always ALWAYS knew where to find her most buried and uncomfortable thoughts (and truths maybe?  Or did it just try to make her think they were true). 

The spectral eyes of the Dark Spirit grew wide, for it still thought of emotion in partially physical terms; Despite how long it had been without a body the habits of the flesh are tenacious.     

The flesh, the flesh, something about the flesh— the fairy flesh-- it picked at the loose thread of memory and association in its host’s mind— something about the flesh and the way certain types of dark magic worked on it— or failed to work on it rather.

  It had a hard time keeping a consistent consciousness sometimes. 

The Spirit in Darkness tried to hide that fact from Belle, but Belle knew and the Speaker, knew she knew.  The Speaker in the Dark had trouble keeping itself separate from all the minds it had shared its existence with since its discorporation.  Sometimes it confused itself with its own name even, refering to itself one day as the Speaker in Darkness and on another as the Dark Spirit. It had had so many, many names. Every time it lost a vessel part of its own soul, its precious store of memories and ancient wisdom and knowledge of magic died with it.  The longer the contact with a host the more intertwined its own self became with the self of the living host body, the more it lost of itself when the human host died.  And it had been with Belle for ages.  She was the strongest the Spirit had ever encountered.  Belle had contained the Spirit’s power the longest without burning out, but the Speaker in Darkness had paid a hefty price for the use of Belle’s body and voice.  It had given so much of itself to Belle over the years that it knew it would dissolve and lose itself forever if Belle was ever destroy.  If she died it would die with her.  They both knew this at some level.  That was why it was so imperative that it get a body of its own sooner rather than later. If someone killed Belle, that would be the end of the Speaker in Darkness as well, unless it could manage the jump to someone else and now, with the dagger bound up in the process it didn't know how that could be accomplished.

The Speaker in Darkness had struck a deal with La Belle Dame Sans Merci, as she now styled their combined self and this dalliance with this insignificant caretaker was just slowing down plans that had already taken centuries to create. It was certain the fairies were growing wise to its current machinations.  No slowdown could be afforded. 

The Speaker groped wildly for memories of its past lives that weren’t automatically at hand— sometimes memories needed searching for in Belle’s files—they did tend to mix and mingle about with each other's memories entirely too freely now, but the process was one the Speaker could no longer stop. aat fairy—the blue one-- Azullii— of course-- the Speaker knew her name— it had always been uncommonly good at remembering a name--

She’d probably been a mere sap-biter when they last met— when last they met—what had happened when last they—Oh! 

Realization was dawning at last. 

The memory had mixed in with some more of Belle’s knowledge.  Silly stuff about Natural History whatever that was.  Old folktales about fairies who lured human men away from threshing in the fields to dance with them on sheaves of gold harvest wheat faster and faster until they wore circles down into the earth.  And nine months later a strange basket with a strange baby inside would appear by the hearth. 

As if by magic. 

Magic. 

Dark magic works differently on them. 

Chapter Text

WAKE UP!  You LIAR!  You KNOW why my magic doesn’t work on him.

The Speaker’s voice shook with rage. 

He’s one of them, a fairy! it spat. 

Belle’s soul trembled, but she maintained a veneer of calm.  “Of course he’s not!  Come now, he’s a man not a woman.  Whoever heard of a male fairy?”

Sparrowmin, said the Voice in the Darkness, not fooled for a second.  Sparrowmin was what they called them.   

But he doesn’t have wings.

Of course not you ignorant savage.  The males couldn’t fly, only the females.

The image the Dark Spirit was feeding her now, that welled up in her mind like a bubble of tar— was of a narrow waisted male creature, turning its amber eyed head to look over its shoulder at her, eyes that seemed to plead for its continued survival.  Seen from the back—it was small and slight, but strong-- thin, sinewy limbs like the branches of trees, muscles like roping vines tangled under grayish-brown skin. At the tips of its shoulder blades, where the cartilage of a female fairy’s wings would join to bone, were instead, two sharp protruding thorns. 

At the sight of the sparrowmin’s naked brown back, with its spindly waist-- an image flashed unbidden to her mind’s eye—Rumple as she’d first seen him—stooped to the floor with his prominent shoulder blades in full view, angular and protruding beneath their sprinkling of scars, his waist as painfully thin as a wasp’s.  Had there been something unnatural about his appearance that she’d noted even then?    

She tried to keep her tone light, though she knew she was failing now.  “H-h-he isn’t fair of feature and he’s certainly not graceful.  Aren’t fairies supposed to be light on their feet?  ”     

Yes.  About that foot of his.  I wondered…

Belle suddenly, realized perhaps it had not been wise to call attention to that irregular part of Rumple’s anatomy.  

You know from all the desperate maimed folk we’ve seen in our business, that, that is NOT what happens to humans when a part of their body dies.  But I’ve seen what happens to fairies.  Oh yes, I’ve seen what happens to fairies over and over and over again. Once you know how to do it, they’re so easy to kill, you see?  Heaps of them turned to wood and waste beneath the touch of my blade and the shot of my cannons when I lead a regiment of men.   Steel and iron poison them—turn them to ash-coloured dead leaf paper with such regularity.

Belle’s blood ran cold. 

 Excellent writing material that.  They say that parchment made of fairy skin will stay good forever. 

And now Belle knew there was nothing more she could do. 

“Please, we can’t hurt him—"

Then as if in thrawl, The Spirit’s voice rose up from her throat, lisping an eerie sing-song tune. 

GOLD is for the mistress—silver for the maid—
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.”
“Good!” said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
“But Iron—Cold Iron—is master of them all.”

XXXXXXXXXXX

Chapter Text

“And if iron does kill them, then why wasn’t he dead when we found him?  He’d been shackled for years!  If he could do fairy magic why didn’t he escape?  What was he doing living his whole life in some little Frontlands town with his aunties, then tramping all over the countryside with that nere’d well father of his.” 

Lies. 

“No.  You know as well as I do that all was true. I tried every truth potion in the land.  Every inch of him confesses it.” 

But the Spirit had turned contemplative.  When they die—if they die properly that is, they return to the tree. 

They turn slowly into wood and fuse with it.  It’s not just a place they live—all their generations are part of it.  The males rarely leave the tree of their birth and their flesh turns--shrinks and desiccates like a dried leaf.   If the tree is near, it gloms on, fuses into it, nurtures the Hometree with its remains and gives it another layer of bark to protect it.  No, you’re right, a true sparrowmin couldn’t survive that length of time in contact with cold iron.  It would have killed a full blooded one.  But he’s not full blooded, he couldn’t be.  I’d wager him a hybrid, if there ever was one.

“Impossible.  If we can hybridize with them why have I never read of it?  In all my tomes of Natural History why is there no depiction of such a creature?” 

They don’t survive.  Ever. The Fair Folk abhor them.  They are abominations, that can only come from the disgusting union of a fairy utilizing shape changing magic and a male human.   

Fairies do not have individual attachment to their offspring as humans do.  There is no affection lost between parent and child.  They live for the hive and the queen and only she may mate to purpose.  Offspring that can’t be utilized for the good of the hive are waste, unnecessary consumers of scarce resources.  A fairy who breeds without the permission of the queen will be executed.  All Fair Folk know this.  A hybrid creature-- if it wasn’t killed in the womb would be disposed of at birth—tossed out of the tree to its death.

“How horrible!”

It is their way.  They are not sentimental creatures.  All this romance humans seem to associate with them— men certainly write a lot more songs about fairies taking them for trysts in the Greenwood than there are actual fairies inclined to do that sort of thing.  My guess is they probably only resort to mating with humans if the females  go into heat without any available sparrowmin to make use of. 

“And if Rumple is what you say he is—and I’m not saying he is—"

He is—

“Do you think he understands?” 

No. The way humans picture fairies—like you said, he doesn’t fit the image.  It’s not something anyone, least of all him would guess to look at him. 

“Then we have to tell him, it’s his right to know,” said Belle firmly.

Yes, he should know right away. 

That sudden ascent to one of her ideas by the Speaker in Darkness, made Belle draw up short for a moment as she left her bed, caught halfway between rushing to put her shoes on.  She forced herself to slow down, why rush what might just as well wait until morning?   It had been many years since they had been at odds overtly with each other, but usually the Spirit did not cave so willingly.  And about Rumple, it had proved harder to budge than usual in the past.    

Still, she let her magic take her to the door outside his room.  She was eager to see him again, whether it was baring news of his full, true parentage or not.   She could feel the push from the Spirit to appear inside the room itself, next to his bed, to take him in her arms and kiss him once again.  This she resisted.  If her limited experience with romance had taught her anything, it was that love should only be practiced by two fully conscious, consenting adults, ideally of equal power.  Now she waited outside his door and raised her fist to knock. 

Why all this effort? The Speaker in Darkness murmured, its voice slurred with desire.  You could just take him with our magic if you wanted to, the way men take women.   He’d like it that way.     

Belle bristled at the suggestion, but shee left the “men take women” part of its comment to lie.  That was a place she wouldn’t go with a ten foot pole.  Instead she countered, “You know our magic doesn’t affect him at all.”

Is that so?  It could affect that fairy though, in the cottage of the Shoemakers.  You have never used our magic on one of their kind. 

But you had.  You taught me how to find their wavelength, way up in the register above a human’s.  I used your experience to guide me.

And did you try that with him?   Did you try the fairy register? 

Of course, you know I did,  when we first met him and I’ve tried every register in existence thereafter!

No.  Every register I knew that I could teach you.  I never said I knew every register in existence. 

“I’ve tried every pitch between human and fairy range, I can’t resonate with him, can’t even detect his wavelength.   Why is that?” 

All living creatures of the enchanted world, consumed bits of magic from their environment, and released it in species specific wavelengths of energy.  To work magic on another thinking being, one first had to recognize the pitch of the other creature’s wavelength, then use one’s power to synchronize with it.  Only once the two wavelengths were synchronized together, could a magic user like Belle use her power to bend the wavelength of her victim to her will, to change the electrical discharge of a chattering mind until it mirrored her own.  

The Spirit and the library had taught her all the different pitches of the creatures known to science who could be effected by magic from Airlofting Ardvarks to Zenthritical Zoranthums, but no pitch it provided seemed to resonate with whatever unseen wavelength Rumple was putting out into the universe. 

The loud, vascilating wavelengths of other humans were easy to spot, as were the wavelengths of fairies, the highest pitched of all known species.   She thought of her record books, experiments and graphs.  Nothing was written about the wavelengths of hybrid fairies.  She tried to listen for his tone again, carefully opening her inner ear to detect the slightest vibration in range between human and fairy.  Nothing. 

She’d moved up and down, listening to all the known magical octaves, in turn and found nothing, no sound she could synchronize to,  nothing on his side of the door that would respond, even though she knew, based on everything she’d ever learned that something that alive had to have some kind of aura, a musical wavelength it put out of its very own, unique as a thumb print.   So why was Rumple’s so elusive?   

But then another thought occurred to her, based on something she’d come across in her reading.  Apparently,  one could mate a lion with a tiger, but the resulting “liger,” instead of being halfway between the size of either parent, would be much larger than both.  So maybe Rumple’s magical range was, instead of in the middle between human and fairy, ABOVE the fairy range, in some ultra-high region she’d hadn’t looked for before.   

She opened her senses further, pitching her tune up octave after octave.  Higher and higher she let it sing, until the sensation border on the uncomfortable, even for a being so steeped in magical power as she.  At last she was about ready to cancel the experiment when her senses picked up something— the lightest tremble in the air of something vibrating back, resonating with her as she picked up its unusual tune.   

She let power come alongside it, this narrow, singular wavelength of magic, resonating and reverberating as further synchronicity was attained.  Up there in the highest range she found herself floating above the hum of all the magic of life everywhere with only Rumple’s soul as company singing in happiness with him at this odd spiritual union. 

No wonder he had been so lonely and forlorn-- to be up so high in mental pitch above all the rest, with no other electrical vibration on the planet to synch up with.     His wavelength fluctuated up and down with increased rapidity as her song joined his. 

In his sleep Rumple gasped and his brain thrummed with a sudden burst of love.  His body relaxed with the sheer relief, the perfect contentment— of just, finally feeling understood at last. It was the most wonderful feeling, better than sex—to be loved and understood and to feel that wavelength of another mind beside his own, adding to his, singing along, weaving its way into his song, making it all the more beautiful as it did. 

His inner being opened like a lotus flower, unfolding its moist, intimate inner heart in the nourishing rain.

On the other side of the door, Belle felt something ooze down the length of the connection she’d made with Rumple’s aura.  Something both ologinous and sticky made its way down the line and began to feed. 

“Wait!  What are you doing?”  Belle startled in alarm. 

What you were too weak to do from the start. 

No!  Stop!  She could see what was happening clearly now, Rumple’s small store of power flowing out of him into the gaping maw of the insatiable creature, the Eater in Darkness. 

Why are you doing this?  We don’t need—

We NEED.  We need his power, every power we can get our hands on, if we’re ever going to get free.  

No!  Stop!    

Can’t you see he betrayed you— lied about lack magic to your very face to while he ate your food and sipped your wine!   No one lies to La Belle Dame Sans Merci and gets away with it!  Any magic he had is forfeit now!  

But you’ll kill him! 

Does it matter? He is wicked, as all men are!  They are liars, you said so yourself, after one thing only!  It t’were better for you to be done with such weak things.  You are a vessel of power!  Attachment to such low lifeforms only weakens us unnecessarily, better to devote yourself to what really matters in this life—Power and power alone is all that will fulfill you in the end. 

A stray memory, like a flare, flew up from Rumple’s soul as it began to dissolve under the Dark Spirit’s assault—something that synchronized with the word the Speaker in Darkness said to her now— 

She saw Rumple as a wide eyed little boy watching his father’s hands as they played the shell game for passersby to bet on.  “Remember lad, and this is more important than anything else I’ll ever teach you:  there are only two classes of people in this life the Con Artist and the Mark and if you can’t be one you’ll end up the other.  Don’t ever let me see you end up like one of these slack jawed rubes son-- a chump, a dupe, a weakling.  Better get them, before they get you.” 

Even from a distance she could see the doubt on young Rumple’s face; How wrong the man’s words were, how terrible his advice.  How different from her own father’s.

She remembered Maurice, her father then.  He was a kind man, with much wisdom-- though little power, whose heart was filled with love for the world he lived in and with love for his child above all. 

Wicked men had fooled him into unlocking a deadly power, then murdered him for trying to defy their will in using it. He bled out that kind heart she loved so well to protect the world he treasured from a king’s penchant for destruction.  He had sacrificed his life and all his worldly possession to pay for his beloved child’s escape from the king’s clutches and he’d paid in vain, tricked by friends he shouldn’t have trusted.

He was a man Rumple’s father and the Speaker in Darkness alike would have called a fool—  This person who deserved all the good in the world, a peasant who stood up to a supposed divine monarch’s greater power in an attempt to save his world, though he knew it would likely be in vain— whom she loved more than life itself.

She had let the Speaker in Darkness first fuse with her, to save his life, not realizing he was already dead.  By then, the damage was done.  The Speaker had guessed as much when it made her the offer and perhaps in her heart she had known it as well, but more than anything in the world she had wanted him to be alive, thinking the strength of her want could remake the world to her specifications.   But then, as now, the Speaker was a manipulator par excellence, maneuvering and manipulating people into the positions it wanted like a chess player at a match.  The Voice in the Darkness played the long game. 

But Belle had spent a few hundred years to practice some countermoves and familiarize herself with its tricks.    

Using mental muscles trained for decades to achieve the result, she abruptly cut off the Spirit’s connection to the soul it fed on.  Rumple’s magic surged back into him, unconsumed.   The sudden bounce back from severing the connection came with such force that it flung her across the hall.  The spirit reeled dazed at this unexpected assault, come out of nowhere. 

Somewhere in the night, Rumple whimpered slightly in his sleep, his soul alone once more and held his magic more tightly to him. 

What are you doing?  screamed the spirit.  We NEED him!  We need his power!  Don’t you want to set us free?

“Not this way,” said Belle. 

She felt her power swirl through her, beautiful, strong and strange, just as she was now, had always been even before her transformation long ago.  The Speaker moved to stop her, but it moved too slowly.  She had prepared for this long ago, could perform the motions without thinking now. With her mind focused on keep the Dark Spirit at bay, she led her body move itself sideways into space.  

A cloud of red smoke enveloped La Belle Dame Sans Merci as she teleported away from the Dark Castle, her home for the past one hundred years. 

In an instant Rumple was thousands of miles away, intact and safe. 

Or safe from the Dark Lady at least.

Other threats though, were only starting to assemble their forces, more dangerous even than La Belle Dame Sans Merci could foresee. 

Chapter Text

The next morning Rumple woke up and went about his chores dusting and gardening and cooking meals under Mrs. Potts direction. It was like nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed. The cups and bowls and pots he cleaned were the same, but on this day they shone brighter than ever and tin and brass practically sang in his hands as the light from the windows glinted of their burnished surfaces.

The plants he tended in the garden hadn’t grown much in his absence, yet they looked markedly different to him, the unfurling cones of his morning glories more purple, the “heavenly blue” flowers at the top of the vines brighter than a cloudless summer sky. The entire world in fact, registered differently to his eye somehow; everything touched by some extra glow of beauty, an inner, magical light; His own inner joy, reflected in the way he saw everything around him, his inner luminosity echoed back, manifested in everything he saw— refracted rainbows shining through the soap bubbles as he scrubbed his clothes, all the familiar objects of the Dark Castle transformed in an instant, like a plain green leaf when the sun hits it just right— glowing and tinted like a stain glass window, graced with the liquid, all encompassing beauty of the morning. Everything in the castle turned new, everything turned magical.

Of course, everything had always been magical in the Dark Castle to begin with, he reminded himself. That was how things were in Belle’s realm.

Everything except for him. And maybe that was the difference. He had changed. The magic inside him had been unlocked somehow, even before that kiss. And now he was waking up to the magic all around him, that had been there all along, that he had been too pained and miserable to see for so many years. Magic called to magic.

He couldn’t wait for Belle to wake up, so he could tell her. He knew she’d want to know, would revel in the effect she’d had on him. He would thank her and shower her with every compliment and kindness he could think of. He would make her feel loved in a way she’d never felt before. Whatever his shortcomings, he knew the depth and breadth of his emotions were real and powerful. A love so deep and strong and pure-- like an ocean whose depths went on forever or a fire that never burned out in its ferocity-- to feel that for another person was precious and rare indeed. That was real magic.

And when she’d kissed him, he had felt that magic inside him rising, bubbling up inside him in a way it hadn’t since he was a little boy, making everything else holding him down fall away. She needed to know the power she had— to make a person feel that, to make a seed ground into dust flourish and flower.

He half expected to look in a mirror and see himself as he was then, when he was young.

What he saw didn’t look any different and at first he felt an unreasonable sense of disappointment. The creases around his eyes, his messed up nose, rough skin too long over-exposed to the elements, canes and twisted foot, of course to complete the picture— and yet, he fancied he stood up a little straight and his chin lifted a little higher and there was glint in his eye. His clothes seemed to conform a little more pleasantly to his body, rather than hang limply off his bony form, as they had been wont to do since the early days of his enslavement.

He adjusted his posture and thought longingly of the lace-up boot that the shoemakers had made him and how he’d been able to move in it, almost like he had before. It was tiny, now that he was back to normal size, just big enough for him to put his little finger in, which was such a shame.
However he wondered now, if it might not be possible to reproduce. He thought of the quick work he’d made of the shoes alongside Jefferson. Surely, this particular boot could not be so different. He possessed all the skills one needed. The only thing he lacked was some sort of magnifying lenses as a shoemaker or inscriber might have for very fine work so he could see exactly what had gone into to the original minute construction.

He thought of greeting Belle at the table. He’d be idly dusting a bookshelf, just as he was now and she would sit to take her tea, watching his behind in those fitted breeches she said she preferred him in. Then she’d look up, with a playful grin, eyes looking particularly fetching as she stared at him over the rim of her teacup and say, “Why Rumple, something is different about you today. Have you altered your hair?”

And he’d turn to her and gently say, with every appearance of innocence, “Why no my lady, guess again.”

And as she kept trying to guess, he move swiftly to her and sweep her off her feet and hold her in his arms the way he’d longed to do somewhere far back in his brain from the very moment he’d laid eyes on her. He thought of twirling her around the room, dancing with her— slow steps, a waltz perhaps—, even in his imagination he wasn’t inclined to ask for the impossible.

And she’d know that he had changed and that if she consented to let him, he could help her attain such pleasures as even a being such as herself would never have experienced…

“Uh, Rumple—“ he nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Chip’s voice emanating from a nearby china cabinet.

“Have you seen Belle?”

Chapter Text

“Have you seen Belle?”

The clinking, porcelain voiced little teacup broke through a rapidly widening crack in Rumple’s fantasy world, startling him into fumbling with the handle of his mop. For a moment he thought he would fall over, but quickly regained his balance.

“No,” he faltered, trying not to feel resentful for the interruption. “I’ve not seen her.” The delicate daydream was gone now, like a morning mist evaporating by the full light of the noon day sun.

“What are you doing?” asked Chip. Rumple, blushed scarlet suddenly aware of the fact that he’d been swaying and humming to himself like a fool, caught up in the ridiculous dream he’d had of dancing with Belle.

“Mopping.”

He stared down at the floor and the pail of dirty water feeling stupid.

“Maybe she’s gone out then?” suggested Chip.

“Maybe.”

“I was going to ask her about the seating arrangements for Mum’s birthday party. We wanted to invite the rest of the family.”

“The rest of the family?” asked Rumple astonished, for it had never occurred to his mind that there was a rest of the family, only Mrs. Potts and her teacup son.

“Do you mind if I ask, but are they all, uh, teacups as well?”

“Certainly not!” exclaimed, Chip, clearly affronted. Rumple focused on mopping a sooty spot on the floor in front of him with increased intensity.

“Oh Rumple, it’s alright,” sighed the little teacup. “Don’t feel bad. You couldn’t have known, but my family’s not in the least bit magical. They’re all normal humans, in fact.”

“Oh, uh—”

“Me and my Mum were too, in fact. We were servants in this castle long ago, even before the Dark Lady—I mean Belle—before she came here.”

“Did Belle—did she do this to you?” asked Rumple, though he wasn’t sure he really wanted the answer.

“Oh heavens no. It was the sorcerer. My father—he was head butler-- was made to wait day and night upon the Sorcerer who ran the castle before Mistress. The Sorcerer—he made demands. He was a truly dark magician—” Chip shivered and Rumple heard the faint sound of porcelain quaking against wood. “In order for his magic to work he needed to siphon power from magical beings. He kept them in cages in the dungeon, on hand just in case he needed another hit of power. Most didn’t survive for long. Without sufficient time to heal and replenish their stores of magic, they died after a time.”

“When you say magical beings, you mean—”

“Animals and… beings… Not people exactly— or at least not fully human sorts of people. They looked strange, some of them, but they could talk and ask for help.”

Rumple, who was beginning to suspect he might possibly fit into that last category in some people’s estimations, shuddered. How many times had he been down to those dungeons himself to pick up cleaning supplies and fresh straw, not knowing that people like him had probably come to quite gruesome ends in those very same places.

“So yeah,” Chip’s voice took on a somber note. “Maybe people.”

“There was this huge rabbit— it called itself a Hare. He said he came from a place called Underland— another world. Maybe it lived under the ground, I don’t know. The Hatter would tell you. There were others from the same place in there with him. Some looked like animals, but much bigger than the versions of them we have in this world and they could talk and reason like humans. Some even wore clothes. Others were objects, but huge and with human body parts. Very, very strange. There was a dormouse I got to know and a grumpy sunflower and giant playing card with hands and feet and a face. I don’t know what it ate. My father and mother never felt comfortable about keeping them imprisoned there, but there was little they could do. If anyone crossed Zorastro, for that was the sorcerer’s name, he would do horrible things to them. He liked turning servants into animals or objects just for the fun of it, too.

We were all terrified of him. Even when a servant left to go get supplies down in the village he always made sure to keep that person’s family members locked up tight in the castle, as hostage, lest they decide not to return or sell information about the Zorastro’s secrets and spells to his enemies. Sometimes he was just paranoid, accusing us of betraying him for no reason or plotting against him on behalf of his enemies. He had attracted our families to the castle with the promise of good wages, but once we were there, he kept us like slaves.

One day a man in a tall hat came to the castle. He entered through the servants quarters in the basement. Although he said he’d never seen the man before and had not let him in, my father was the only one who had the key to that door other than Zorastro and the doors were enchanted to prevent portal jumpers from entry.”

“Was it Jefferson?”

“Not exactly,” said Chip. “But a relative.”

“They all wear those hats?”
“I think if you asked someone like our Hatter, he might say the hat is the one who wears him. It is a strange kind of symbiosis. The hat-creatures feed off the energy released by thought processes.”

“Aided by my father, the Hatter came to the rescue of his fellow Underlanders, but for some the damage had already been done.” Chip paused, seeing Rumple’s gaze stray to the shelves he had been dusting before he started mopping. A few tracks of dust still remained around some of the items, he knew Rumple was too afraid to touch. “Do you know what that is?” asked Chip, almost conversationally, following Rumple’s eye.

“What?” asked Rumple, staring at the shelves before him, so chock full of objects of magical value it was hard to know what he referred to.

Sometimes Rumple really wished Chip had hands to point things out to him. They were always playing guessing games like this, but Chip was good at giving directions. He’d had years to perfect this unasked for ability.

“Third shelf from the floor, second object to the right.”

“This?” asked Rumple holding what looked like a murky glass paperweight.

“No, no, behind it.”

Rumple reached back behind the paper weight-like object and touched something soft, that he hadn’t really registered was there before. He pulled it out from where it lay behind a plethora of other, shinier objects. It was nearly as long as his arm and half as long as the shelf it rested on. It was covered in fur of muted grayish brown colour and had clearly once belonged to animal. One end was rounded off and sewn up like a tightly closed mouth, but the other ended in little nubs with rough leather little paw pads and sharp, keratinous claws.

Rumple nearly dropped the thing the moment he realized exactly what it was.

“It’s a—”

“Rabbit’s foot.”

“But—”

“They’re supposed to bring good luck.”

“I know, but it--- it’s huge!”

“So was the Hare.”

Rumple couldn’t get it back on the shelf fast enough.

Chapter Text

“What did he do to your father when he found out he’d helped the prisoners?”

“Zoroastro believe in the concept of punishing the whole family for the failures of one of its members. My father was good at his job and there weren’t exactly a whole lot of top tier butlers in the nearby farming villages. Zorastro contented himself with turning our mother and us children into dishes. When he sensed any resistance to the things he made my father do when it came to dungeon’s other prisoners, he would always threaten to smash us.”

“Did he ever make good his threat?” asked Rumple, horrified.

“Oh yes, many times, but my father would always glue us back together. He was good at fixing things. Like you.”

“Thanks,” said Rumple, blushing again. “Do you mind my asking? What happened to him?”

“The second time the Underlanders came back to free the rest of the being held by Zoraster in the castle. There were still a few Underlanders left who had not been able to escape the first time. I am not sure how they got in, that second time around, but it was through the upper floors not the lower depths. There had been a deal between him and the Underlanders, that they would take our family away to safety and in exchange he would help them rescue the rest of the prisoners.

“The arrived with another Hatter, this one a female from what I could make of her clothing, or maybe something inbetween and several other beings, riders and mounts and some beings that fused both rider and mount into one creature where I couldn’t tell who rode who. They appeared right here in the main hall of the castle, and came riding right on through. The new Hatter was able to get my brothers and sister away to safety through the portal of her hat, but as I began to go through Zorastro shot a bolt of deadly magic at her and both her and her hat died instantaneously, leaving Mama and me on the other side. Luckily, I survived, with only this small chip in my porcelain as an injury. But Zorastro had the invaders and my Papa killed for their insubordination. My brothers and sisters were taken into hiding in the countryside, their caretakers fearful to alert Zorastro to any hint of their presence.”

“Gods, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry Chip. I hope the murderous wretch is dead now?”

“Zorastro? He is, we made sure of it.”

“Did the Mistress dispatch him?”

“No. She could have—easily. He was no match for her, not even close and after the Underland invasion he was weaker than ever. And at any rate, he hadn’t wronged the Mistress, you see, not the way he wronged his servants and the people of the village and the few magical beings he’d trapped in the dungeon who still survived. We were the ones who voted on his fate. And we were the ones who killed him. Mama was the one who came up with the method—”

“Mrs. Potts?”
“Mistress turned him into porcelain for us and then we smashed him into a million pieces. Then we burned the pieces so he could never return to hurt us again and he never has.”

“But you and your mother—you are still made of porcelain. You still work here as servants? I know Belle is not as cruel a master as your old one, but surely you want to be free?”

Chip’s sigh was loud and long. “Once the castle and the village were free again, the villagers caring for my siblings came with them out of hiding and brought them to the castle. Once Belle was made privy to what had happened to us she reversed the spell and they were returned to their human forms once more. It worked for everyone, but there were a few unexpected glitches.

You see, every part of the porcelain we were transformed into corresponds to some specific part of our bodies in our human form. My oldest brother, whose handle was broken off and glued back on again, as a result has a scar all the around one arm. My second oldest brother was smashed on the base of his cup. My father glued him back as he was once again, but some small fragments of porcelain had obviously been lost, for when he returned to his human form he was missing all the small toes of his right foot. My sister who was a sugar bowl had a large piece broken off by Zorastro, and he, in his malice had ground the piece into dust. My father, ever resourceful was able to take another ordinary piece of porcelain and mole it into just the right shape for her missing piece and glue it back into place, although the colour of the porcelain he used had to be slightly different, for that was all that was available. When she returned to human form part of the skin of her face was of a different skin tone and the eye it surrounded was brown instead of blue.

As for me, the youngest child of the four, when Mistress turned me back into my human form it was clear the piece of porcelain that had been vaporized with the Hatter, the Hat and the portal by the sorcerer’s magic bolt was in a vital place—It was my heart. And the moment I was returned to human form without my heart I began to die.

In order to save my life Belle had to return me to my porcelain form. In the early days she tried many times to return me to my human form, but each time it failed and every time I grew closer to death. She tried to replace my missing heart with a new one, taken from an animal, but that too failed. She tried to replace it with one taken from a human, recently dead, but though a lived for a day without sickening, soon a deadly illness began to overtake me and once again I had to be turned to porcelain once more. We tried other approached but all were abject failures and with each failure, the margin of error grew thinner. It got to the point where she told me, that it was not worth trying again, when the risk of death was so great. She has been searching for a new solution to the problem for a long time, but so far has not found anything. In the meantime, my mother and I keep busy, looking after the castle and she pays us well for it. In the early days we went out often to spend time with my brothers and sister, but time passed and they had their own families in time. They grew busy and some of them moved away. More time passed and they went back to the earth. They are on their third generation now, though me and Mama are much the same as we always were. Time passes differently here, you see.”

“But I don’t understand. Why didn’t Mrs. Potts turn back?”

Chip sighed. “It is my fault, I’m afraid. I was so little then. We didn’t always have good ways to count the months and years inside the castle but I couldn’t have been more than five or six when the sorcerer was killed and my siblings were freed. My mother had lost four babies between me and the sister who was closest to me in age. My oldest brother was twenty, the next eighteen and my sister sixteen. They were ready to move on with their own lives and would soon be married. I still needed my mother. You must understand, I was all alone, so easily breakable, a tiny teacup in a great wide world. She decided to remain with me, porcelain like me, until Belle found a way to change me back. I think after she lost those four precious little ones, she was unwilling to abandon another child to such an uncertain fate.

And then years past and I grew older and no longer needed her quite so much. Eventually I urged her to let Belle change her back so at least she could have a chance at a normal life. After some time she did let Belle change her and she went back as a human to the human world, but found everything so changed. All the people she’d known were dead and gone and the world had altered beyond recognition. We’d realized, intellectually that time in the Dark Castle moves differently than the world outside, but it is different to see the effects with your own eyes. What feels like a short time for us can be ages to them outside. It might have something to do with Belle’s power and the spirit that keeps her perpetually in her youth. I don’t know if she realized the effect she was having on us, but Mama and I barely aged, while the world outside the castle transformed into something unrecognizable.”

“In time Mama came back and returned to her porcelain form. After so long it felt more comfortable to her than a human body with all its rampant needs and aches and pains and excreting and eating and drinking. She felt she could barely get anything done in a day it took so much time just to tend to it. As for myself, if given the choice, I would’ve at least liked to try to be human for a little bit again, just to see what it was like, but then it’s not really a choice I have.”

Chapter Text

XXXXXXX

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” said Rumple. He lowered himself in stages to the ground so he could kneel beside the little tea cup. Getting down and up off the floor without grabbing onto things was still a challenge for Rumple and they had moved a little too far away in their conversation for him to grasp at the shelf that had held the rabbit’s foot, but at the moment he didn’t care.

All he wanted to do was to get Chip’s level, to stroke him and hold him. Chip couldn’t cry, he guessed, lacking tear ducts in this form, but his voice sounded full of tears, all the worse for being unshedable.

Rumple wasn’t sure what his friend could feel in this form, or whether physical touch to a teacup supplied the same comfort it did for a human form person, but he knew if he had been Chip— and he had been a sort of Chip at one point in time— he’d have wanted a friend to touch him on the shoulder perhaps or put an arm around him, to say “it’s alright now”—- to let him know he wasn’t alone in the world with his sorrow. Sometimes you needed someone to draw you out of those memories of the past. It wasn’t wrong to remember, but sometimes those memories had the dangerous tendency to take on a sort of gravity that sucked a person down and under. You could drown in them sometimes, without someone who cared to come by and help you pull yourself free.

He stroked Chip along the rim, and the little teacup looked up surprised, his voice high, “Uh, thanks.”

“Um— please tell me that part of your porcelain doesn’t correspond to any significant body part of increased privacy.”

“Increased priva— what? Uh oh— oooh— no, no, it doesn’t. I was just surprised, is all. Once their curiosity is satisfied regular humans don’t often touch me much. I think I freak them out, to be honest.”

“Whelp, I’m not freaked out,” said Rumple from his spot on the floor. “But I was wondering about Lumos and Cogs and that ottoman-dog thingy that seems so fond of you.”

“Lumos and Cogs should explain their own story. I’m not sure that’s really my place to talk about.”

“Oh.”

“As for that ottoman dog thingy—his name is Otto and Mistress said he followed her home with the carpets from Agrabbah. He seemed to take a particular shine to me and here we are.”

As if he’d heard his name called the ottoman itself came running down the hall in all its muddy tasseled, dog-like glory. Chip whistled once and the ottoman stopped and lowered its seat to let Chip hop up onto it is back. It ran off on its squat little legs, their rubberized feet squeaking down the hall.

Rumple, alone again, crawled back to the shelf with his mop, to pull himself up and finish his work. As he made his way to the shelf, he thought, the gears in his mind twirling furiously. Two things clicked into place:

One, he was going to figure some way to help Chip.

Two, he couldn’t finish making the lace up boot fast enough if he was going to be ready for Mrs. Potts’s party.

XXXXXX

The Speaker in Darkness had no corporeal form separate from Belle.

That was the source of many of its problems.

Long, long ago it had possessed a mortal form, but those days were past and much lamented.

Now it lived on, nearly immortal, but feeling little. It could count lifetimes more than even the oldest human, but in exchange it was forced to possess a human body to weild even the slightest drop of power.

The irony was not lost on the Speaker in Darkness. It had knowledge and power beyond any human, but to use that knowledge and indulge in the fruits of its power, a human host was what it needed, for to be alive and not have power, was in the Speaker’s opinion, not much of a life at all.

Even to speak— was for it to communicate into people’s minds rather than make sound waves that reverberated out of a human throat and into the air.

As a result the Speaker in Darkness could only converse with one mind at a time and no more, unless it spoke through another person with an actual voice box to an audience. It was the Speaker in Darkness, because it spoke to its hosts more often than not in the dark, when their minds were less distracted by the things they saw and it could command their fulsome attentions for itself.

People were also more malleable in the dark part of the morning it found, their minds most vulnerable and lonely and filled with anxiety then, as they lay awake dreading the coming of the day, tormented and eager to flee from their worries. It thrived in those early morning exhausted hours of tossing and turning and self-doubt when humans were their weakest and most desperate, when they were all alone in their own minds, with no outside chatter to focus their attention away from their own weak wills and pathetic longings.

Images took up so much of a human’s focus and attention. The Speaker preferred not to have to fight against such things in order to transmit its thoughts with as much crystal clarity as it could muster. When all one had was a voice, it was important not to be misunderstood.

Although that wasn’t one hundred percent true. The Speaker in Darkness could be more than a voice in the mind when it tried. It could coalesce into something that was almost a physical form, though it was very limited and required all its concentration. It could float in a sort of concentrated miasma like mist upon the air and move great distances this way.

On one such night it took on its miasma form and flew, pushed by a northward wind, all the way to the Dark Castle from the island it stayed on with Belle.
Once in the Dark Castle there were specific places where it could momentarily gather strength, that were different than places in the outside world. Within the boundary of specific circles and enchanted stones placed in the palace walls and floors it could concentrate its power to its utmost strength for a handful of seconds and so, create a physical form for a few moments that it had learned to control.

Belle knew about this of course, as she knew about most thing the Dark Spirit did. Their souls were joined to one point after all, but saying she “knew” and saying that that knowledge was foremost in her mind at the moment are two very different things.

The human mind, after all has many spaces in it, much like a filing cabinet. If you know how to move the files around and are familiar with the ins and outs of a particular mind— and what was the Speaker in Darkness if not intimately acquainted with its Belle’s mind?— you could make a file get lost at the bottom of the drawer so to speak.

And so it was with the its ability to shirk her control while she was asleep and turn to its misty wraith-like form. And so it was with the Dark Spirit’s ability to coalesce into a firm shadowy figure for a few moments, long enough to press a specific sequence into the jewelled carapace of the beetle that perched on the finger of the golden statue of a woman that stood in an alcove all by herself, just outside a particular door. When the code was not pressed into the back of the jewelled insect the door was cloaked by an enchantment that made the human eye slide of it without properly registering its existence.

Rumple had walked by that door nearly a hundred times and never glanced at it once. However, with the combination the Spirit now tapped out on the beetle’s jewelled back the door revealed itself. The Spirit in Darkness felt itself begin to fray at its edges and knew it would dissipate in a moment once again. With the last of its concentrated solidity it stretched out a quickly fading hand to touch the door in front of it and pushed.

With a creak of rusty hinges the door pushed in a little. The Spirit evaporated despite itself, filled with annoyance. It had meant to push the door all the way in, but it supposed this would have to be good enough. As it flitted by on its way home to Belle and her isolated island, it paid a quick visit to Rumple’s dreaming mind and planted a thought of curiosity and seeking-ness there.

Tumbling through his drowsy thoughts the words echoed in his mind for the first time. “West wing…west wing… what’s behind that door in the west wing…”.

Chapter Text

The new pair of shoes was not hard to make once he had scavenged the necessary materials for himself from around the castle.

Rumple half wondered if Belle would show up to stop him, considering the apparent worth of some of the items he took, but whatever he did, it seemed to bother her not. She remained away from the castle, uncommunicative. His daring increased with each item he took.

By the week’s end he was raiding her personal closet directly, and cutting into her best riding breeches, practically begging her to return and admonish him for his temerity, but still, she did not show.

He kept his head to his work, trying not to think about her reasons.

The only things he didn’t get his paws on were items of magic which she’d marked with her protective spells.

Originally, when he’d first come to her there had been no indications which items were magical and which were not. This had led to some problems. There was that one afternoon when he’d been re-organizing the pantry and knocked over a rare kind of invisibility liquid on his clothes by mistake. What made it rare, was not the invisibility it conferred on the user, this was par for the course with invisibility potions, but rather the fact that this particular tincture made things appear invisible only to persons who hadn’t used the powder. For the user, everything would look the same as always.

Unaware of what the potion had been, Rumple continued about his day, tending to the plants, cooking and cleaning and folding clothes. Belle remained ensconced in her tower working, never realizing anything was amiss until she came down for supper, to discover Rumple preparing her supper table wearing nothing, but his undergarments seemingly unaware.

Hiding herself with her magic, she had watched him at his work, setting the table, folding a linen napkin into a fan and a second napkin beside it into a swan. Whatever had she done to deserve this kind and tender care from such a person? She wondered bemused

He was half sitting on the table now, one buttock resting on the polished mahogony inlay, one leg swinging under him in time to a little ditty he was humming. He made music unconsciously as he worked, his brown hair coming half undone from its que, hanging like a diagonal curtain over part of his face as his clever hands flew about their business, absorbed in adjusting fresh cut flowers from her garden in a glass, twining supple stems into braids and complex knots without breaking them, snipping here and there to change the length of a stem, plucking new flowers from a straw basket lying beside him to plait into the complex flower arrangement.

In the end the braided stems came together at the top in an explosion tiny white blooms circling round a central grouping of larger petunias like trumpets in shades of soft pink and gentle purple. A single yellow marigold, as round as a ball formed itss perfect centre.

The crystal glass vase in his hands was positioned in just such a way that it caught the light from the tall windows in the dining room. It threw a myriad of tiny rainbows against the bare tan skin of his smooth thighs, the nakedness only disappearing high up into the cleft between them, where a pair of greyish white cotton undershorts suddenly appeared in odd patches here and there, their edges rounded like the edges of a splash of liquid, covering his nakedness where the invisibility potion hadn’t had a chance to soak through.

She couldn’t even remember seeing the vase around the castle although surely it came from there, she could see its crestmark of ownership frosted into the other patterns etched into the glass. How had she missed such a beautiful piece before?

It was so characteristic of Rumple to find such a thing, she thought. He was like that, constantly discovering beautiful little things, common, nonmagical miracles, in places she’d overlooked and bringing them back for her to see, reminding her that this world still held beauty and pleasure in it, despite her long, jaded years upon it, which had so oft rendered her so cynical.

In moments like this she could feel her love and desire for him so keen and deep the yearning was almost painful. And yet even as her feet moved towards him and away from the shadow of the door, and her hand reached out to touch, she snatched it back and cleared her throat.

He jumped, roused from the trance of his work, with a squeak.

She’d cleared her throat then, to stop herself from falling headlong into impossible thoughts and ridiculous fantasies.

Rumple quickly slipped off the table, not sure she’d appreciate him sitting so casually on her table, with his bottom butting up against her plate and cutlery. After straightening himself out to stand against the table he threw a nervous little smile in her direction. She could see the eagerness in his eyes for any sign of her approval, the pride he took in setting her place at the table so elegantly...her meal just so... And then she was forced to tell him that he’d basically been running around naked all day for the entire castle to see.

He looked crushed and she cringed inwardly, feeling the way the Dark Spirit danced in joy at his humiliation. Belle wished on Rumple’s behalf, that his eyes weren’t quite so large and so naked in their expression of disappointment.

He flitted nervously back to his rooms to change and she felt her feelings sink. Through the hearing spell she had built into the walls she could hear him reprimand himself out loud as he rushed back calling himself all the names other people had once hurt him with.

It was like the time the giant flytrap in the garden had eaten his clothes all over again. Poor Rumple had been so embarrassed he’d hidden in his room for his meals all the next day, worried it would happen again. Belle had only managed to put his mind at ease when she places special warding symbols of protective power over all magical things in her castle that he would be best not to touch. This helped immensely towards his confidence.

Belle knew it was the right thing to do and she had been wrong to watch him go about his work without telling him he looked naked to her, but it had been so delightful she hadn’t been able to stop watching.

He had such a lovely rounded bottom and his chest and arms were strong with ropes of muscle from working in her garden. She loved his tanned, gingerbread coloured skin and his dark chocolate hair with its white streaks of frosting. Sometimes on more fanciful days she though he looked like a delectable candy confection.

Imagining Rumple as a tasty candy of all the blasted trivial things, made the Speaker in Darkness threat to get itself another host it was so sicken by the sweetness of it all.

As if a normal human would ever be interested in you as something other to fear and quaver before in abject terror. People only seek you out when they are desperate after all, when they want something from you-- the Speaker whispered in its silky, persuasive voice.

If Rumple hadn’t been dying, his body enslaved and nearly destroyed—he wouldn’t have been so eager for him to take him with her. It was that and that alone—his desperation-- that erased his fear that allowed him to act the way he did with her. He would be terrified and disgusted by her in good time, once his mind adjusted, the Speaker in Darkness often told her. Of course he would-- it was only a matter of time before he became like everybody else, like every other human in history had ever been when it came to how they regarded the Dark Lady.

Only—Rumple hadn’t... he’d stayed and if anything, seemed less fearful than he’d been to start with. He certainly didn’t regard her with disgust. If anything, sometimes the things he said and the way he said them, the way he looked at her, lingering over supper, asking if she’d liked a particular change of sauce or new herb he’d added to the garden, made her feel a vague hope or maybe it was terror, that he might feel what she felt for him... for her. It seemed impossible and yet... As he grew healthier, like an ailing plant repotted in nourishing soil, she began to suspect the Speaker of Darkness was way off track...

He just wants you to cure him, the Speaker whispered sourly to her in the light of early morning as she stalked along the parapet deep in thoguht. Perhaps he hangs about because he still believes you would stoop to figuring out what was done to curse him and restore his leg. He would run from you then once he finally could, no doubt.

This was before she’d discovered what Rumple truly was and that he’d never actually been cursed , if you could call being born a human hybrid not a curse. The Dark Spirit told her his birth was a crime that should have had him put to death as a baby by his fairy mother and she had no reason to doubt the spirit on this score.

But even then, before Belle had known the truth, she believed the Speaker in Darkness was groping for straws and excuses.

She knew common people like Rumple didn’t bank on the expectation of a sorcerer solving whatever problem they got themselves into with magic. The desperate souls she answered who came from the lower orders were always shocked to see her—more shocked it often seemed that someone with any power had actually bothered to listen than by her sudden and unnatural appearance. Not for them was the entitled expectation and impatience of the higher orders.

Most people, for most people were not born into nobility, people like she herself had once been, were of a practical sort— worried about the here and now of concrete things, not obsessed with huge schemes that took years to come to fruition, generations long feuds, intricate revenge plots and the like--which was how the Speaker in Darkness tended to think.

When she had been a human commoner herself, once upon a time, she and her father had spent more energy thinking about where their next meal was coming from than just about anything else. When they planned ahead it was for next week’s market day. There were monthly maps for yearly journeys at barter stops along the way, with pauses to construct new gadgets to sell and acquire materials to make them, so that hopefully one had enough decent items constructed and ready to sell by the time one’s cart made it to the capitol for the next big harvest festival, when the tributes were brought to the noble Lords from the lands all around and all the people would be there. You planned from one festival to the next and so survived from year to year.

If materials were stolen, wagons broken, horses or people sick or injured, or important tools lost along the way-- if sickness or injury interfered with the making of things and the arriving at places at the correct times for making money—you had to find some way to survive in spite of it. You adapted, often with help from the rest of the people who travelled with you, you adapted or died. Time spent bemoaning what had been lost was time wasted. You accepted changes-- What else could you do? And worked with what you had in a practical fashion.

It was a skill she realized she’d lost, so used was she to overcoming obstacles in her path simply by overpowering them with magic. Rumple had no such power and she was often surprised at the clever ways he would conceive to do things, the little gadgets he’d make to assist him, reminding her so much of her father, “Old Maurice the Inventor” again for the first time in ages.

It hurt to remember him as he was, back in the days when they spent most of the year on the road, but it was good too, to be reminded of where she came from, to take back that part of herself that was almost lost to being La Belle Dame Sans Merci. It was good to remember that there were other ways, the ones her father had taught her and that she still remembered, deep, deep within her soul.

The Speaker in Darkness sulked when she thought like this she knew, and it made her glad to frustrate it. It didn’t like her to remember, she thought, what she was capable of without its power.

But now those days were done. On her island in seclusion she ignored the pull that the Dark Castle and its much loved inhabitents exerted upon her, the threads of friendship that connected her to them, that the SPeaker in Darkness so disdained. Oh but she she wanted so badly to go back for Mrs. Potts’ party, yearned to shower her old friend with gifts and impress her distant family with little parlor tricks of magic and charmed presents to keep the peasants talking in the town until the next invite came, but she steeled herself and as the days ticked down to the day of the party, she remained apart.

Still, she daydreamed of seeing Rumple dressed to the nines—tailored up in some amazing confection she knew he’d work on to impress her. She could see how the thread and clothe called to him, the way the bottles and potions and ancient books called to her. She could see what pleasure he got from the mastery of his craft, such a pleasure to watch his delight when she asked him to explain it to her.

And watching isn’t all you want to do—gurgled the Dark Spirit maliciously. If you’d only let me we could have taken him while he slept—it would’ve been ridiculously easy—deflower him and be done with this insipid infatuation. Once you’ve fucked him he won’t seem so new and shiny. The mishappen little thing will lose his luster and you’ll move on to some other trivial toy—hopefully something a little more interesting this time, it huffed.

Her magic flew up to stop up her ears and the Speaker in Darkness laughed. Of all the stupid things! it tittered. You know you can’t block me out like that—I'm in here—inside you—blind your eyes, dash out your ears and burn up your nerves until you can’t feel—you can’t keep me from talking to you—I'm always with you. Always. Intimately—in a way that misbegotten half fairy- half human thing—can never be....

Somewhere a desperate voice cried out in the night, carried on the wind to Belle on her island. She’d never been so grateful to heed the call before.

Distractions it seemed, were all she lived for these days. They kept the beast content and fed at least for the moment.

XXXX

Unaware of his mistress’s torment, Rumple continued to pilfer his way through the clothes closets of the castle.

The scope of his endeavor had grown. Not just content with his pair of structured boots he also planned an embroidered coat for himself and a special surprise just for Chip, to complete his efforts.

He supposed it was ambitious and the prospect of completing these projects in just a few weeks seemed ridicoulous for only one person, but when the inspiration took hold of him he could work like a man possessed, with such speed and agility that his hands blurred into one with the needle. He’d found a gold need in a fancy sewing box in the library and with this he truly could work wonders, moving with the quickness of a hummingbird darting in and out of the cloth, darning and ripping seams, with strong bare hands, calloused fingers frequently pricked and bleeding into the golden silk thread and on the golden needle as he went on unaware.

Coggs and Mrs. Potts fussed over the menu which he would ultimately prepare—having hands it was easier for him, although they were the ones who fromatted the recipe and menu for the evening. Lumos of course obsessed over the decorations and candle lighting—assisted by Cathy for the exterior decorations and the carpets who flew up to access even the highest parts of the castle ball room ceilings with their tassles.

In the meantime Rumple refused to take a break from scavenging. In one of the upper rooms in the West Wing, he found a corselet of supple black leather, still preserved and miraculously soft despite the age of the rest of the clothes in the room. He found other pieces of useable tanned leather in the inner thighs of several pairs of small riding breaches he found in the expansive front room closet. The closets of the castle still never ceased to amaze him. Some were as big as the single room dwelling he’d grown up in with his aunts once upon a time and you couldn’t even get him started on the wardrobes, several of which Belle had sealed up to prevent him from entering, muttering things about “self-righteous Lions” and “annoying British children.”

For heels and soles for his new boots he cut into a black lacquered wooden tray from some far away land, painted all over with red and gold swirling, cloudlike shapes. Another tray table supplied black wood shot through with scarlet veins and inlaid strips of silvery mother of pearl in the shape of myrtle leaves.

In the garden were a few rare rubber tree plants. From these he took small amounts of black sap and bark, and melted them down into a liquid in the kitchen furnace. This he slathered over the bottom of the soles of the shoes to create a waterproof, slightly bouncy layer that wouldn’t scratch up the polish on the Dark Lady’s fancy floors.

The boots would be tall with many eyelets, each clasped with a tiny gilded button, he’d harvested off an ancient moth eaten dress he’d found in one of the barely used rooms in the West wing of the castle. That particular wing was an area he rarely went to, it had an abandoned and desolate air to it that made him shiver deep in his bones. The buttons were slightly chipped so you could see the animal bone material peeking through the gold leaf paint. He melted down a few broken gold trinkets he found in the room with the dress and painted the newly liquid gold over the chips and added a bit of tacky liquid glue-gloss over that that lost its stickiness when it dried.

There were chairs and sofas in some of the abandoned rooms and he went to those for horsehair padding, flax and dried spanish moss to fill out the shoe and the calf of his new pair of boots to give the illusion of a leg similar to its mate.

For stiff, but flexible struts he went to a long disused lady’s room where he found several corsets, moth-eaten and rotting on wooden dress-maker’s dummies. He cut the desiccating fabric away with his paring knife and pulled out the flexible stays that made up the corsets and bendable hoops for their wide, old-fashioned skirts.

The material was odd. Whitish yellow like bone, not silver like metal and with a strong tensile strength— but of a slightly yielding , rather than stiff and unbreakable quality.

He’d once been told by his Aunt Flora that the finest ladies at court made their corsets and hoops out of mermaid tails— and hadn’t been able to see how this could be— after all as a boy he’d not understood that underneath the shimmering scales and fins— there were materials like this— bone-like in some respects, but far more flexible and multiple jointed to accommodate to the mermaids’ twisting ways of swimming through cracks in rocky outcroppings in the seashore and in between huge mounts of brain coral.

The mermaid’s cartilage was hard and sturdy like bone, but with a little more give to it, that could take the pressure of all the ocean water on top and around it was important in that environment, expanding and contracting slightly with the amount of water pressure to give the stiffness needed to retain the mermaid’s tail shape and muscular, twisting style of swimming. As far as he knew mermaids had no proper bones in their lower halves, although he had been told there were still vestigial hips bones in there somewhere, though connected to nothing functional anymore.

He had always thought half uneasily of the mermaids— human looking, deceptively so, people said, but they said that about so many things— people— Chip had said— magical creatures, things from other worlds or beings distorted by curses or enchantments. It was convenient to extend to them a smaller measure of humanity. They did it to slaves all the time, said they didn’t get hungry or feel pain the way regular people did, that they were “used ot it,” and no one questioned if it were really so.

There were people he’d met in his many years through accident of birth or other reasons had the body and faces of humans, but no normally reasoning mind behind their eyes that could make proper sense of the human world, unable to fully communicate or understand the intercourse of human society, unable or uninterested in taking part in human society. Or there was so much interference from other, damaged parts of their minds that they couldn’t make proper sense of the things they felt or saw.

People who through no fault of their own had much less sense than Chip or the giant Hare from the dungeon or the Wonderland playing cards had, who apparently could reason and speak and make themselves understood and have some sort of society and governance.

And he wondered what Belle thought of the practice. Had those stays and dress hoops been hers once upon a time he wondered? He didn’t think the style fit her somehow and they seemed quite old fashioned to him, at least in comparison to the things he’d seen women wear in his brief exposure to the local female styles at the tavern and shoemakers’ house. But perhaps those examples weren’t a representative sample. Still, just the thought made him terribly sad. Having been a slave once he knew what it was like to be treated and seen as less than human, to be permanently injured or killed for another person’s convenience or a brief whim of fashion. His own maimed limb was still something Belle examined on occasion, to see how the healing process was coming along. He knew it would never be a normal foot again, but he didn't care.  

He'd held the giant rabbit's foot in his hand—and it had reminded him uncomfortably of himself, a thing of lesser humanity, treated like an animal whose life was spent to furnish someone else with a trinket, or perhaps a person who had to pay a great rice in blood and bone to gain the freedom other people took for granted. A person, just like anyone else, their precious life treated so cheaply, snuffed out for the sake of a good luck charm, the illusion of a fuller skirt or a comfortable corset and felt such anger he would have torn the material in two if he had had the strength in his hands to do it. But he had never been very big or very strong.

Holding the cartilage in his hands now, he was still determinecd to use it, macabre as it source was. Feeling the way he did would not bring the departed mermaid it had once belonged to back from the dead. Still, he wondered what Belle thought of the practice. Had those stays and dress hoops been hers once upon a time? He didn’t think the style fit her somehow, but how could he know, really? He never asked her much about the lands she supposedly ruled over, if rule over them she truly did. He’d never asked her about the situation with the town or the surrounding countryside.

Did she allow such things in her country? Did she even care? Did she try to stop people from keeping slaves or from hunting reasonable magical creatures? And if she did, should he say something to her, try to get her to stop the practice? He hadn’t stop to think about it, so observed had he been in his newfound pleasures, in learning his duties as caretaker, adapting and healing. Would he dare ask her about it? How could he not when he knew others hadn’t been as lucky as he was, to escape the cruel slave markets into this comfortable place. Would she be angry with him if he did? How far did her good will to him extend?

He knew Belle was called the Lady without Mercy by some of the songs and peoples in the valleys outside her lands, but he thought now there might be reasons for that name that had nothing to do with her behaviour towards her supplicants. She was an unruly power, one that the nobles did not know how to deal with—one they sometimes needed to call on for help, but also one who threatened their own system of inherited power, this magic woman from who knows where. She was a force that would not obey them and female to boot, more like a gale than a person you could command or control. People in power, he knew didn’t like that sort of thing, having no say over her comings and goings and whether she felt like doing them a good turn or not. That vexed people who were too accustomed to having power over other people. To be forced to regard another being as anything more than themself felt like a theft of their power and they resented it. But despite it all, the common people whispered hopefully about her. They spoke well of her believing that she would alleviate their burdens, but it was the clerics and priests in their high temples, the nobles in their castles and the rich merchants and speculators in their fine houses who paid the playwrights, the painters and the bards. They created the tunes in the style their patrons requested and folk everywhere danced to the tune even if they should have known better. The representations of La Belle Dame Sans Merci promoted by the resentful people in power were the ones that now lived in the minds of the people of their lands and travelled even to the lands beyond, not the real truth of her. After all, the only reason to tear down Belle was because she was a competitor to their glory. People like him weren’t worth painting as villains in a moving portait-play or immortalizing in a ballad like Belle was. To be a villain at least meant you were someone of consequence he supposed.

As for his own experience though, outside of the popular depictions of la Belle Dame Sans Merci and the Dark Lady in plays and murals, paintings and songs— he felt that Belle, the real Belle, had treated him with only kindness and care. When she examined his leg she did so with unexpected gentleness.

He had been wary to let her take a closer look at first. The few times it had been examined before when the slaver had paid for it to be treated so he might fetch a higher price, the country doctor, who usually care for livestock had mocked him to his captor, speaking of the hideousness of his deformity as he poked painfully at it, causing Rumple to bite back his screams. He had talked conversationally to the slaver of Rumple’s coming death as if he couldn’t understand a thing they said. “Best sell this one before he dies, or your investment will be lost completely. Seriously, look at him. I give him a week or two at most.” He had shed, unmanly tears then, partly of relief that his torment would soon be over, partly in sorrow that he would never see his aunt’s old cottage again. “Listen, if you don’t sell him before he dies, and he expires on the road, go to Surgeon Hatforth’s in Bartley Cove. He’ll pay a penny or two for an interesting looking corpse. Hell, you want to finish the job now and not spend more on feeding him I’ll pay you half a farthing. I have enough dissection stock for the moment, but his deformity is unusual. Might be interesting to open him up and take a closer look.” The slaver had declined this not so generous offer, but the memory still made Rumple shiver.

Belle’s care was the farthest thing from that. For one, she always gave him fair warning before she touched him, even in the slightest. She explained what she was doing, measuring the recession of the bark-like texture of the skin on his leg to make sure the damage was no longer growing or causing him excessive pain. There were potions she gave him to make it hurt less when she noticed him wincing as he went about his daily chores and salves she gave him to put on it that she said would draw out infection and any corruption that might still linger there.

At first it had discomforted him greatly to be on display like this, but she was always frank and businesslike and eventually he came to almost enjoy these moments spent so close in her presence. She was still confused by the effects the shackle continued to have on him, even though it was long gone. She tested the sensation up and down his leg by squeezing it gently with a pair of padded tongs and taking tiny samples of the bark-like outer layer with small scraping tools. This had terrified him at first, but in actuality he felt nothing when she removed small curls of bark from the tree-like skin to study in her laboratory.

After the first three months or so, when the last of whatever horrid poison the shackle had infected him with had finally been flushed out of his system, he was pleased to tell it no longer pained him much. Eventually, he could put weight on the shriveled, wooden remains of the foot for a short time. It didn’t have much feeling, but he found this preferable to the constant ache he’d dealt with before and took it all in stride.

He knew it would never really be serviceable again, had known from his first day in the castle, but he told himself he didn’t care. There were moments early in the morning when he’d wake up and his whole soul would spike with panic, rising from dreams of being enslaved and shackled again. He’d reach down and feel the texture of his foot like weathered driftwood instead of skin as it once had been and his breathing would calm again. It was real. This all was real. And he was free.

Seeing it like that made him know his freedom wasn’t a dream—in the fever dreams that had tormented him when he’d been shackled to the bolt of iron, he would dream he was back in his aunt’s old village, and he was walking about the same way he had before and everything was just as it had been in their little cottage, pressing the peddle on the spinning wheel, watching the thread move round and round. Other times he was running from the local constabulary with his father, their arms full of meat pies, jumping stone fences and laughing along the way.

And then he’d wake up to pain and terror and whips and men sickening and dying around him and an endless feeling of fire in his limb and repugnant smell of decay and death all around him. The stench of feces and rotting flesh mixed with garbage. Cruelty that he’d never realized a human being could possess, if the slavers were human beings at all. Sometimes the way the fever played with his mind and the fire lit their faces from below they seemed more like demons than anything he recognized as a fellow man. When he caught his reflection in a pail of water his skin seemed gray like he was turning to living ashes burned to dust. It was hard to tell sometimes which one was the dream and which reality. But in dreams he walked without a care and made straw into gold at the touch of a hand with no trouble at all. Somewhere inside he suspected that that was a reality that could have come to be, somehow if the cards had been in his favour, if his fortunes had not been so poor. Maybe some other version of him was living that life somewhere, and they were happy. He’d once imagined such beautiful worlds were possible when he was little. Where had that possibility gone, that beautiful world that he’d once imagine— where had it gone and why? To be replaced by this surreal waking nightmare and a world where days bled into sleepless, painful nights and his mind always felt foggy-- never awake and sharp seemed like the cruelest joke. To be free from the pain he’d lived with for so long felt strange, like lifting a sack you thought would be full of bricks only to overbalance because it is filled with candy floss. He felt unbalanced in his mind, expecting somebody to come and snatch it back, at any second. It took some getting used to the sensation that no one would do that, that he could decide things for himself, like what to have for breakfast. Everything around him seem too perfect, too good for it to be part of his misbegotten life.

Suddenly, he felt like the smartest man in the world, simply because for the first time in months he could hold a thought in his head for longer than a moment and plan several steps ahead for the day. He hadn’t even realized how foggy his mind had been until that fog lifted. It was a revelation everyday. He couldn’t remember ever learning so much, so quickly as he did in Belle’s library and garden.

And all this was due to speaking up and demanding his freedom and to her mercy in that moment.

She continued to examine him weekly instead of daily after a while. He wasn’t sure why she kept on doing it now that the pain was completely gone. She liked to study odd things he supposed, to observe the way the tressor trees grew in the garden and what soil composition did to their fruits. He took notes in great ledgers for her and kept records of things he’d never thought of measuring before—rainfall for one particular day in the month of May or the number of mice and eventually full sized rats that the infant carpets ate as they grew, the amount of seeds certain flowers would yield when grown in different types of pots. It was all grist to the mill of her mind, constantly grinding and grinding away at the secrets of the world, thirsty for knowledge.

She measured his injuries as they healed, unimpressed by trifling things that might disgust a lesser person. She took notes, he supposed, and just the calming act of cool, scientific observation, helped her exist in the world without despairing of it. He decided to try the same technique, writing notes on what he observed in himself and found it gave him a sense of control over his newly shifted world.

As he got well, he was pleased to note how the skin of his knee slowly recovered its normal range of motion and sensation, lost its tree bark-like gray colouring and changed to a scalded-looking pink, then eventually to a light tan colour, a near match with the rest of his skin. Tiny hairs grew back in time, slightly more wiry than the ones that had existed before. After six months of record keeping, both he and Belle concluded that his leg had stopped changing. It had stopped shrinking and shriveling up below the area where the shackle had been and growing healthier and stronger in the area above. Somehow it had found its new steady state. She told him it was unlikely that any of the flesh that had withered into grayish, twisted wood would ever change back to a regular human hue or texture or become properly sensible to touch once again. Whatever healing his body could do had been done. He knew she didn’t tell him to be unkind and he appreciated her honestly. He could still feel a vague sensation of hot and the cold and pressure or weight sometimes, but distantly as if touching something wrapped in layers and layers of wool. Whatever had happened on the outside it was still alive deep within somehow, at least a little bit, she reassured him, though he didn't feel he needed reassurance. It certainly wasn't the worst inconvenience he'd dealt with in the past few years of brutality and servitude. Now that it no longer pained him it was just another engineering problem to be solved. As long as he could think clearly he could figure out ways to adjust and adapt.

It wouldn't have been such an inconvenience when it came to housework-- a person didn't really need a foot that could bend to walk as he could well attest to, but the lower portion of the foot had shrivelled and curled up in such a way that his formerly shackled right leg was now significantly shorter than his left one. If only it had not ended so high up, if it had remained at the same level as his other foot, despite the deformity he thought he would have been able to walk all right without sticks. The curled up driftwood looking thing that remained of his foot was still sturdy and broad enough that he could eventually shift the bulk of his weight onto it without hurting himself now that it was completely healed, but when he tried to stand with both feet on the ground he could only list to one side, like a ship with a hole in its hull, taking on water, in a way completely useless for walking. It was frustrating.

A few weeks ago, Belle had surprised him by bringing up, seemingly out of nowhere, a couple she knew in Franca who worked out of Place de l’Armee, in a hospital for injured soldiers. They had a workshop, she told him, where they made artifical parts, braces and specialized crutches and other devices for soldiers who’d been injured or lost lower limbs in service to the king. “Perhaps Huvert might be able to do something for you,” she suggested gently. “I can make an appointment and take you in two weeks. What do you think?”

Though Rumple agreed to go, (how could he say no to Belle expressedly asking him to accompany her on a trip?) he was not best pleased at the reason behind their journey.

Oh he knew Franca, alright—had been to the capital himself in the back of a prison wagon. It was the name of his own nations, Frontlands, under a different tongue. And the Grand Armee that gathered there in Harper’s Square in front of the King’s palace, was the very same one he himself had deserted.

He knew injured soldiers who went to that hospital she spoke of too. When they were still useful, but too wounded to fight on the frontlines, the king’s army put them to work guarding prisoners, deserters like he had been, and those soldiers especially, had made life a particular hell for him.

According to Belle there were now even more demobbed soldiers hanging about, now that the Ogre War was over; some wounded, some homeless and some waiting for pensions the crown couldn’t afford to pay them anymore, so they could return home to their villages with something other than scars and nightmares. It got so bad that the mayor of the city sent a cart around with barrels of beer and poppy milk to give the soldiers every morning in the square, just to keep them docile and keeping incidents of theft and violence down to a minimum.

Belle said the King had already sent her letters begging her to stop the soldiers and peasants with magic. Apparently once their drugs and patience ran out, the soldiers began looting the stores of the merchants in the capital and setting fire to hay bales.

Rumple worried about this development, but Belle seemed unconcerned they would miss their appointment.

“I’ve seen this a thousand times before,” she reassured Rumple. “The soldiers or peasant will riot and loot and steal for a few days and then the King’s own guard and the city’s protective forces will come down hard on them. Next week there will be heads on spikes at the gate of the palace and all this talk of revolution will be forgotten—more's the pity.”

He tilted his head to one side in puzzlement at her remarks. What a strange concept—a noble that wanted all nobility overthrown? La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Lady of the Dark Castle— even if she hailed from no historic family house—wanted the rabble to overthrow the holy rulers of the empire?

“You want the peasants to win—to take—to take over the Hall of Lords?” he asked in shock.

“Well, obviously,” replied Belle. “They’re the ones the laws effect, so they’re the ones who should be making the laws.”

“But without a sovereign...”

“The people of Franca would be much better off.”

“But it would be chaos—with no one with any experience to lead.”

“Probably,” she shrugged, “but given a few generations I’m sure they’d figure out how to do it. The King’s not such a bright bulb. If he could make sense of the ins and outs of statecraft to be at least semi-competent at it, despite his deficient, overly inbred mind and constant skirt-chasing—there's no reason why a group of common, well read people with thorough knowledge of history and above average intelligence shouldn’t be able to figure it out. “

Rumple goggled at her. It was sedition, taboo, vorbotten to say these things. Criticism of the royal family had to be done sotto voice at all times, even when you were alone at home with the another person. And here Belle was openly voicing her support for revolution and overthrow of the monarchy.

“But it won’t succeed,” sighed Belle with a wave of her hand. “It never does, you’ll see. No matter how many of these things I support, they always seem to fail. The nobles have been entrenched for so long, have won for so many generations, the people don’t really believe in their own hearts that it’s possible to overthrow them. Every time they make it right up to the edge of freeing their nation from this system and then...”

She snapped her fingers. “They blink. They choke on their own fear and indecision. They hesitate and lose all momentum. I don’t want to make excuses for them, but it is hard to win, when you don’t really believe it can happen.”

“And that is only one of the problems,” she said regretfully. “For another, there are so many people who feel like they need a leader, someone strong to look up to, to tell them what to do. There are people who never learned to trust themselves or their own innate courage and potential, people who feel lost without someone to shout directions at them all the time. At the end of the day they just want someone to blame if things go wrong, so it’s never their own fault and more than anything, they seem allergic to actually thinking things through, taking the time to parse out cause and effect. She laughed sadly, “No revolution against royalty has succeed in three hundred years, so don’t get your hopes up. The rich have all the best weapons, after all. “

“But if you wanted the peasants to win, surely you could--”

“And I am, both a simple tinker’s daughter and an ancient, ravenous beast of unparallleled evil, after all. What right or experience do I have to pick a leader for these people? I can provide the tools if they need to build something marginally better out of this rancid clay, but they will have to do the shaping with their own hands.”

A week later she appeared at dinner with her scales grimey with soot and her hair tangled into knots, standing straight up from her head.

“Well then, I guess I was wrong,” she said loudly, as if half-deafened by a cannon.

“Mistress!” he cried, alarmed to see her in such a state. Smoke appeared to be coming off her shoulders and part of her dress was burned away, though she didn’t seem physically injured. “What’s happened?”

“The revolution has succeed, for the time being at least,” she said incredulously. “Didn’t think that bunch had it in them, so I guess the Hatter wins that particular bet. We’ll see how long this new thing lasts, before they crown some other bastard, but for now the people rule.”

She sank into her favourite chair by the fire and piercing the fine upholstery absent mindedly with her claws.

 <

“Why has this happened?”

“Well you know how it is. Also, the keeper of the hospital turns out to be some kind of rampant monarchist and tried to keep the rabble out. They’ve got the best drugs locked up in there and some of the soldiers have become addicts so that’s the first place they went. Then some drunken idiot outside the door got the bright idea to set fire to a hay bale to smoke the royalist scum out and before you know it the whole hospital’s caught fire.”

Rumple stared at her laconic delivery of these events in shock. “I’ve just spent the last hour transporting three hundred or so veterans and hospital staff to safety which explains the state of my clothes and hair,” she explained to him. “Although why I’m telling you this slips my mind at the moment.”

“My God, that’s horrible!”

“Yes, see I didn’t want to alarm you. Perhaps just call up Cogs and Lumos and tell them to draw me a cool bath.”

The edges of her profile became smokey and he knew she was about to evaporate herself up to her own rooms when she said, “Ah-ha!” and became solid once more.

“Now I remember what I had to tell you, yes, you see your appointment is cancelled. The workshop unfortunately, was beyond saving by the time I had finished rescuing the last soldier. As for Monsieur and Mademoiselle Huvert— I couldn’t find them. They're staunch royalists, so they’ve probably gone underground somewhere. I’ll keep my eyes peeled in the meantime. They’ll probably turn up again with a new workshop in some nearby kingdom, where the monarchist exiles end up. Or the revolution will fail and they’ll be back, rebuilding the hospital and their clinic in a few months or so. The cycle of life and so on—sorry Rumple,” she said as she finally evaporated back to her own room, sounding exhasuted. “I tried.”

He wasn’t sure whether she was talking about instigating a revolution or arranging an appointment with a maker of artificial parts at that point.

As horrible as the story of the revolution and the burning of the hospital was, Rumple was secretly, guiltily, relieved.

The thought of going among people who might have known him, who witnessed his crimes and would tell Belle all about them terrified him. Just imagining the former soldiers who’d trapped him and hurt him once again, who’d forced him down as they placed the burning shackle around his ankle, made his sticks knock about absurdly in his trembling hands. He hated that they’d done that to him, that it made him want to run at the mere thought of them and he never wanted Belle to see him like that, as the coward he knew he truly was inside.

Whatever had happened on the outside with the shackle, he knew deep inside, part of his lower leg was still alive somehow, feeling things at least a little bit, and that was still left to him.

He hoped when he was done building his fancy shoes for the party, he could take some of the trimming off and rework them into a more practical pair he could use for everyday.

He built up a platform until he could stand with both feet without bending one leg or listing down towards his right side. It took some time to get used to walking on it, like when he was a child and he and the other village children would play with overturned pails under their feet, walking about on them while holding the pails’ handles.

However once he was used to it, it wasn’t so bad and he could stand confidently without a crutch or sticks and could walk, with just one stick or very stiffly and slowly with none at all.

He padded out the foot portion the right boot, stuffing the heel with a curved block of wood and the other parts with horsehair and rags to mimic the shape of a normal foot, stretching out the leather uppers a little. The false, stuffed foot became more of a cheat than he’d initially planned, because even before it was injured, his right foot had been a bit smaller than his left, and now, with his artifice he could use a wire frame to make them exactly the same size, a perfect mirror image to its mate, improving on what he’d been given by nature-- at least if one didn’t look too closely.

This intrigued him— the idea that not only could he adapt the fabric to mimic what was missing, but could improve—at least in appearance if not function on what existed naturally.

He experimented with adding another piece of wooden platform to the bottom of the shoe on his healthy foot and stood up in his new footwear. There was nothing to measure his height on, other than the gilded frame of the mirror, but he could see the dignity his increased stature seemed to give him.

“A tall man,” his father who was a tall man himself had said to Rumple, looking down at him, still a head and a half shorter than his sire and by then fully grown, “can command a room-- a creature of elevated status as well as height. It just seems to fill some primal need inside the breast of every human, male ones in particular. It’s not your fault they don’t listen to you when you request a dram at the tavern—look at you-- no taller than you were as a boy of twelve! Who would believe you were mine?”

They would believe now perhaps. Thanks to the shoes he was tall as any average man. He could be even taller, he thought with a rush, taller than his own father had been, increasing his status and the respect it accrued even more! He tried another piece of wood and another and another glued to the soles of his new boots, working feverishly. Finally, he looked at himself in his new footwear in the mirror, standing so awkwardly tall, he felt he would nearly topple over.

It was ridiculous. He looked like a man from the circus on stilts.

There was no point stretching the illusion to such a ridiculous degree that it made him look freakish in a whole other sort of way. He always had a way, he thought of taking things to extremes in his creations.

Eventually he settled on a shoe for his left foot that gave him an extra two thumb’s worth of height and one for his right that allowed the knot of wood that had once been his foot, to rest, strapped to a hidden raised platform concealed in the structure of the boot, so that the soles of both shoes could rest on the ground and seemed to belong to legs of identical length.

It was weird, but when working with the gold he lost track of time and hours flew by— he wasn’t thinking so much in words but his mind was flitting butterfly quick from one idea to the next, everything flowing-- adding a thing here, a curl there and he couldn’t tell you why or what was the plan, it just FELT like it needed to be there.

As he got better at working the gold through with his needle and weaving it around other sturdier, cheaper metals, he worked on the jacket, cutting the cloth to flatter his small frame, it’s slightly stooped shoulders and narrow waist— and the needle jabbed in and out embroidering in a rush-- conjuring up fruits and leaves and vines and curling flowers from the garden and other imaginary plants, things he’d never seen before, but could still tell you when he got their depiction right and when they were wrong. The two sides of the jacket weren’t the same and that seemed right to.

As he got to the back of the jacket he began to get more inventive. He added some structure and padding to the shoulders, broadening out his slight shoulders and narrowing up his waist into an exaggerated male silhouette.

The areas around the shoulder blades— he couldn’t tell a soul why, but as if possessed he began to work them up into a curious style-- stuffed and wire filled protrusions like thorns covered in fabric encased in golden threads like spiderwebbing poking out the back where they could rest on his sharp shoulder blades. Another small crest he formed at the base of his neck in the back, where he’d developed a slight hump from leaning over sticks and crutches for the past few years—this he exagerated to with a spikey looking dorsal blade that managed to look both dangerous and exotically alluring somehow, although why it was so , he couldn’t have said.

He worked feverishly for days, only pausing to stop for food and drink and sleep when his friends, the other castle servants pressed him on the point.

Then one day, suprisingly, he was done and stepped back from his creation, the fog of a trance clearing from his mind.

The shoes did not surprise him. They were much the same as the sketches he had done to prepare. But the coat—buttoned up now and settled over the shoulders of the dress maker’s dummy he’d modified to his own physical specifications made his breath catch in his throat.

This creation was truly, truly otherworldly.

It was unlike any coat he’d ever seen before. Where had he got the idea for it? It would have like any have had him laughed out of any regular court of a regular noble lady— but when you serve a lady with skin like a lizard, eyes that glow in the night, claws of polished onyx and a mouth of sharp needle teeth like an eel— it seemed right that he, her caretaker should look the part— in his clothes at least, if not in his very human looking person. He matched her, he thought proudly, a being of equal, ethereal nature.

When he put that coat on, with his shoulders thrown back, the spikes sticking up from his back and shoulders stood erect, like the spines of a catfish, demonstrating its size and dominance to a rival. And this too looked right somehow, although he didn’t know why.

Chapter Text

The last thing he had to do before the party would involve someone other than himself. In his whole life he could count on one hand the number of people who had actually seen him do magic.

The number who had heard he could do magic and had been sorely disappointment though was much higher than that. He knew his ability to perform under pressure was close to nil and yet…

Somehow or other he trusted himself and his newly reawakened power to perform in front of someone else for the first time in-- how long—the last had been Cora he realized with a sense of foreboding. And just look what trusting someone had done to him.

But this was different somehow. With Chip, there would be no deal, no transaction of favours whether implicant or explicit. This would be a gift, with nothing expected in return.

He practiced on non-magical crockery to start with. He would break a bowl and then take a piece of gold—get in synch with the material in a way he couldn’t full explain. The gold would grow warm in his hand as if the tiny particles of it had been rubbed together so much that they created heat, and then, , the gold became soft and supple to his touch, malleable as putty, then before it grew hot enough to burn him and turned to pure liquid he would send it and watch it obey his sending, to fill up the crack and stick the two halves together. This bit was tricky and he destroyed several plates this way, but eventually he could worked it like slowly trickling glue just right between the cracks of a plate, then a bowl, then a cup, sticking the two halves together as if they had never been apart, without a single gap. Then when no more could be done he released his hold on the gold, gradually, gradually and the liquid cooled into its new form and the plate, bowl or cup resumed its function, as the thing it had once been before he broke it, with only a beautiful gold seam to indicate anything had ever been amiss with it.

Then he practiced with breaking chips and holes into ceramics with a little hammer and using other ceramic pieces to take the place of the gaps, then cementing them together with his magic gold technique.

At last, he felt he had perfected it and called Chip in to him.

Chip knew Rumple had been working on something. Worried he would disturb the little teacup, with all his plate and cup shattering, and afraid the technique wouldn’t work and he’d risk getting his friend’s hopes up for nothing, Rumple had practiced his magic on porcelain in one of Belle’s special sound proof rooms in the West Wing. When a person went into one of them you could scream at the top of your lungs and never be heard anywhere else in the castle.

Chip wasn’t sure what to expect when he rose in the dumbwaiter up to the room Rumple was working in. The door was open, so sound could be heard within and Rumple was calling him, half nervous and half cheerful to “Come—come, come in!”

Trying not to rattle with nervousness and expectation Chip hopped into the room.

The room was lined with shelves displaying plates and bowls, of every size imaginable and cups for an assortment of liquids, souvenirs from across the known world. And every single plate and bowl and cup had some sort of crack in it, some two or even three and every crack had been mended, with a shining seam of gold, running through the crack like a river, running through a fertile land.

Rumple motioned to Carpet, who brought Chip up to the worktable Rumple sat beside. Laid out before him were several pieces of porcelain, roughly the shape, colour and texture of Chip’s missing piece.

“There’s something no one knows about me,” said Rumple quietly to his friend.

“Is there?” asked Chip, absently, feeling the condensation of the water vapour in the room go cold against his sides, uncertain if Rumple meant that as a threat. His manner, usually on the verge of anxiety on a normal day, seemed particularly skittish today. Very odd.

“I can—I can—what I mean to say is I have—since a I was a child—but it went away and then it came back after I got well again, but I usually can’t because I get nervous and I—oh—” Rumple looked away in frustration, realizing he’d said basically nothing to Chip and the little teacup was starting to look frightened and apprehensive. “Oh I—just watch and tell me what you think, alright?”

Chip saw a nonmagical teacup on the table, roughly his own size and shape though a little rounder and with less of an attractively tapered bottom than himself, he thought, somewhat critically, and with a garish pattern of trivial roses around its rim.

Like himself, this cup also had a triangle shaped chip around its rim, though he thought it had been artificially created rather than the random result of some sociopathic sorcerer on a destructive bender.

Really, where was this going? He watched Rumple pick up a gold coin from a small pile on the table, massage the coin between his hands and then… Chip blinked as the coin began to glow, as if Rumple rubbing it between his palms had suddenly caused it to go white hot. Rumple’s hands should have been burning he thought and there should have been heat, but there was none. The coin lost it circular shape and turned to a putty like material that Rumple rolled out thin upon the table. Then he layered the goop over the edges of the chip in the cup and quickly, from somewhere Chip hadn’t noticed before produced a triangular shaped piece of porcelain that seemed to fit the chip nearly exactly. The two pieces came together. The light emitted by the gold flared briefly brighter and then went out. There was a bit of smoke, like hot metal going into a cool liquid and then the heat appeared to go out of it and the smoke cleared.

Chip stared open mouthed. Rumple had mended the cup… using liquid gold like some kind of glue.

“I think—” said Rumple hesitantly, “I can get it to work on you too.”

“That’s not going to turn me back into a human is it?” asked Chip quietly.

“I don’t see why it would,” confessed Rumple. “I can transform base materials into gold and even that I can do very, very rarely. I can’t make porcelain or any other material turn into living flesh—I mean obviously— Anyway, I still can’t really predict when it will happen—the turning things into gold thing. The power works much better when the gold already exists and it’s just making the metal move to my will and shape to my touch and only— I have to be in the right mood. It doesn’t work in front of a lot of people, but I can control gold that exists in a room if I touch it or get close to it and that power is usually fairly reliable when I’m by myself.”

“What happens when other people are watching?”

“Oh, I get nervous and it goes wrong or doesn’t work at all. Oh dear, I suppose this isn’t terribly reassuring, is it?” Rumple twisted one of his sticks miserably in his hands still waiting for Chip to say something, fearing it was all going wrong.

Chip didn’t speak or look at Rumple’s face. He was hopping around the cup, studying at it from this way and that, tipping it over and turning it to the side to see if it was really and truly mended.

“How’d you figure it out—what you could and couldn’t do with the power?”

“Oh, you know, experimentation a bit, and — um, my father told a king, once. Not about the making gold do what I told it to do, more’s the pity—only about the turning normal things into gold, just my luck, the very least reliable part of the whole thing. He tried to show me to the court to get himself a high position, but I couldn’t do what the king asked me to—to spin straw into gold. I’d spun wool thread into gold for my aunties before, when I lived with them and they taught me the trade and the mood took me—they used to sing while they worked and I loved it-- I have to be sort of happy—at least content, for it to work and it doesn’t always even then and not for very long.”

“I think—I think—they were supposed to kill me for taking up the king’s time like that, but in the end, I threw myself on the mercy of his court and I was so tearful and sorry for my incompetence they gave me to the army to the army instead to make something more of a man of me. Long story short, I met a woman in the army barracks. She had been taken because her family had no living sons left in the conscription year. The soldiers used her terribly and she wanted—she was desperate to escape and I suppose I was her ticket out of there. I thought she loved me, but she used me, too, especially when she discovered what I could do. She had to I guess, but then I was left behind to be sold into slavery as punishment for desertion. They snapped some kind of cursed iron manacle on me which made me sick. My foot withered and I grew nearly too weak to work and then no one would buy me. I think they just planned to let me die because I was costing them more money on food and water than I could earn for sale. In the end, I think they thought they could make more off me as a corpse. But then, when things looked bleakest Mistress discovered me and I guess you know the rest.”

Chip stared at the gold seams on the plates.

“Does Belle know—that you can do this?”

“No—I don’t think so. I—I think she suspects something though. When I first arrived she kept asking me these strange questions, studying me-- my legs-- I mean leg-- I mean foot-- nothing like that--" He blushed. "I didn't mean-- Look, anyway, I think I resist her spells somehow, without meaning too, like her magic doesn’t work right around me. She hides it, I know, but it seems like I make her spells go wrong all the time.” He sighed and looked at his pieces of porcelain on the table. “Maybe that’s why she left—so she could do some magic without all the trouble I caused.”

“No,” said Chip gently, nudging up to Rumple’s wrist on the table. “I’ve known Belle a long time. I don’t think that’s it. She’s—she’s a very complicated person—persons.”

“Persons?”

“She’s not just an ordinary person who learned sorcery or stole powers from true magical creatures, like the wizard who once owned this castle was. She has great knowledge on her own of course, but her magic comes from another creature she shares her body with. We call it the Dark Spirit or the Speaker in Darkness, because you only hear it speak out loud in the dark of the night or when she thinks she’s alone, in a place all deserted. Zoroastro knew about it—this ancient, storied power that lives in her, that sometimes controls her and that she sometimes controls. He said the power struggle was supposed to kill its host’s personality, leaving the host as nothing but a human shell when the Dark Spirit took over, but somehow Belle had figured out a way to keep it back, to use the spirit’s power for her own and control it. I’m not sure how well he fully understood it, but once he knew it was possible to house the power and still keep your own mind and will, he sought it out for himself. And you know how that ended.”

“Yes, Belle told me.”

“I don’t think Zoroastro ever really understood or took the time to watch and observe like we have. You see, Belle’s will doesn’t usually dominate the Spirit and the Spirit’s will doesn’t usually dominate hers—it’s like there’s some kind of contract, between them or they share a field with a fence down the middle where both their sheep can graze. There is a balance that Belle and the Spirit have achieved, I think. She takes things—from the desperate folk who call her—her services aren’t free—”

“What, does she harvest their immortal souls or something?”

“No, not their souls, but she takes scraps of magic from them.”

“But regular human people don’t have magic.”

“Actually, Belle says you’d be hard pressed to find a human in this world who doesn’t have magic.”

“You’re kidding. Then why—”

“It’s just in really tiny amounts, masquerading as normal human talents, so that most humans don’t ever know they have it at all.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Like a person who can talk to anyone and is never shy, not even once or someone who can revive even the most withered house plant. Maybe someone who can play a tune after only hearing it once or a person who always knows when it’s going to rain the day before.”

“I always know when it’s going to rain,” groused Rumple, who had an ache in his head of the sort that usually meant rain was on its way himself, “And trust me it’s not magical.”

“Well believe what you will, but that’s what she takes from them—those tiny scraps of magic to feed the Speaker in Darkness. And it always hungers. Sometimes it cries out in the night, with hunger like a baby.”

“We all hear it, it isn’t even a sound--- just a feeling, that clawing hunger that goes right through you that you can’t help but feel a little yourself when the mood is upon it. She feeds it magic in a steady supply when she can get it, never too much or too little. Belle can seek it out wherever it may hide. In turn, it feeds her power, so much power. If you’ve ever seen her really use her magic—it isn’t something you’re likely to forget. On her deals, with the desperate souls who call her, the people she visits she rarely lets it out. She lets me tag along sometimes and—it’s not even usually magic, what she does for them. When you have enough knowledge you know of resources, potions, powders, techniques and people who can help. I think the Dark Spirit doesn’t like her using the magic. It hordes it—for what purpose no one really knows. But any knowledge or technology sufficiently advanced can seem like magic to ignorant people.”

Rumple nodded. He was one of those ignorant people, impressed by things that turned out to be old herb recipes or quick sleights of hand.

He remembered the cream she’d given him to put on his foot when he was still recovering that he’d initially thought was some sort of magic potion—Until she’d explained to him how she’d made it out of rare red milkweed plants that only grew on a specific hilly valley and a specific kind of peppermint, that she’d bred through several hundred generations of artificial selection until she’d got a variety that could numb the nerves as well as the tongue. After that it had only taken ten years to perfect the recipe with the exact right ratio of ingredients to create the desired effect. The amount of cleverness, determination and time it had taken to create this simple, yet effective little palm sized jar of cream, seemed more amazing to him than if it really was magic and just achieved with a snap of the fingers.

A look of determination of came over the tiny teacup’s features and Rumple could see he was making up his mind.

“Enough chit-chatting,” he said. “If you say you can do it, then let’s try.”

Rumple gulped and began to heat up another gold coin between his fingers.

Chapter Text

The royals were being annoying. Again.

And there were problems, big problems with the revolution.

Belle rubbed her temples and tried to help the two hot heads in front of her who seemed to be running things to think it through.

Cleonis the Third, king of Franca and Yerzy was in jail with the rest of the royal family and all members of the court who hadn’t had the wits to flee. They were planning to execute him the next day.

“I mean, I get it—“ Belle said. “It’s not like I don’t see your point— after all he scoffed at sending thousands of your people to death as soldiers in unwin-able wars without so much as a thought for their families—“

“And don’t forget the prison for political agitators he had constructed in the Mountains of Madness!” added Amblegrove.

“Yes, but technically that was Cleonis the Second his father—“

Blachette spat and Amblegrove intoned, “May his shitty name be trample into dust by plague ridden pigs with errectile disfunction!”

“Uh, yeah… but you see you have to take the long view on this. You want your new government and system of doing things to last for a while. You know every other monarchy in the world will be looking at you. To them you seem unreasonable and threatening.”

“They should be threatened!” crowed Blachette. “The will of the people cannot be suppressed any long. The revolution will be coming to their lands soon too!”

“Uh-huh, yeah see that’s exactly what they’re going to be afraid of— so let’s NOT do that.”

“Not spread the revolution?” asked Amblegrove in confusion. “But I thought we agreed—“

“Let’s get things stable in your country first before we run around trying to convert everyone else. A revolution will always continue in the way it is begun. You begin on a foundation of blood and violence and vengeance against people who wronged you than that’s the way it’ll continue. Vengeance and Violence just make more of themselves and there’s been enough pointless death. Trust me, please. I’ve seen this all before,” she counselled Amblegrove and Blachette. “It’s a bad idea.”

They looked at her and wondered about her cup size beneath her decorative armour and how old she was really and why they should listen to the advice of a woman.

Just because they had imagination enough to picture a free and just society where every man had a say in the government, had the right to read and write and express himself, and was entitled to a job and a home, basic food and water and the ability to refuse to fight in an armed conflict he didn’t agree with doesn’t mean they had the imagination to understand that women or enslaved people deserved those things too.

“You really don’t want to kill the former guy,” she repeated to them.

“Yes, we do!” spoke up Blachette, which was the last he said for fifteen minutes as with Belle stuck his lips together with a thought.

Amblegrove asked softly, “I thought you said he wasn’t holy, that the gods didn’t choose him or his family, that he was just a man?”

“And that’s true. He is completely ordinary— there’s nothing special about that blood unless you want to count being excessively inbred as a positive— but you still shouldn’t kill him if you want the revolution to succeed. Right now, no other country really has a reason to fight you. You haven’t attacked them or tried to take their land or injured their people. What is going on in Franca is considered by them and their people to be a civil war, not a revolution. When those things happen it behooves other countries not to get too closely involved and let a country deal with matters on its own. However if you kill the king, he’s got brothers and sisters in half a dozen other kingdoms sitting on other thrones. It is an affront to their family name and honour. Then you’ve got a vendetta against your new government that must be avenged.”

“I didn’t think of it that way.”

“Which is why you need me— because I see wide and far in this world and know the opinions of distant people. They don’t want to make war, not right now, while their own fields are dealing with fire and drought and their own people might revolt at any moment. They need their soldiers around them close to their palaces and places of power.

And from you— all they need is for you to show that your new government is willing to play by the rules and amicably continue to trade with them exactly the way it did before. As long as you keep buying their goods and supplying them with everything from Franca that their people have come to rely on they’ll turn a blind eye to any systemic changes. Present yourself as reasonable, civilized people and they will deal with you in a similar way. Present yourselves as revolutionaries still thirsting for the taste of royal blood and that’s what they’ll see.”

“So what do we do with the royals? We can’t keep them in prison indefinitely.”

“Why not?”

“Well for one, royalist sympathizers keep trying to bust them out and blowing off the prison doors to try to get at them and on the other hand some of the more fanatical revolutionaries have gathered in the square demanded they be executed, also trying to break in to drag them out by their hair to the block to murder or lynch them. Eventually one faction or the other will succeed in either freeing them or murdering them and these two quarrelsome factions are continuously clashing in the courtyard by the dungeons of the palace where they are imprisoned. We wouldn’t mind if it was just the royalist getting killed in these clashes— lessening their number isn’t such a bad thing, but they keep wounding and killing our revolutionaries as well so…”

“Hmmm, yes that does present a problem. Tell you what, I’ll take them off your hands for you.”

“What?”

“I’ll take them to live here on the island with me.”

“You don’t seriously mean that?”

“Maybe just for a short time, until things settle down. Then I can send them off to a country of their choice to live in exile if you approve.”

“But if they move to other countries and remain free they will agitate to gather a foreign force against us.”

“Meh, the royalists who escaped are already doing that now. They’re pretty well organized too. Trust me these new guys won’t make that much difference pro or con. ”

”Merde, I had no idea what are we going to do?”

“Present the foreign powers with a reasonable, thriving new Franca that’s eager to make deals with them and continue profitable joint enterprises. Show them nothing has changed, except for the person in charge and the political system. Make it too costly for them to turn their back on you or attack. After all, their people want the goods you supply and they don’t have anyone closer or cheaper to supply them. The more intertwined your economies get, the harder it will be to justify an attack from economic perspective without hurting their own economies too.”

“Do you agree Amblegrove and Bachette?”

The two hapless politicians nodded their heads. “Good, good excellent. I will deliver more non-lethal magic weapons for your troops tomorrow, and gather up the royals. Please have them wait for me in Central Square with their belongings. But remember— the instant anyone gets stabby with the royals or the court, they’ll be dealing with me, understand?

“Y-yes of course my lady, they answered together.

“So glad we could come to this understanding,” she said sweetly and the revolutionaries trudged back through Belle’s portal, ready to tell the king about where they were taking him and his family.

Chapter Text

Far away from the “No Kings No Princes” revolution in Franca, as it would in future histories be known, Rumple remained in the Dark Castle. The days went by as before with no word from La Belle Dame Sans Merci and the day of Mrs. Potts’ party grew closer.

At least he was ready to work his magic on Chip. Nervous as he was, he knew it was time as he flexed his fingers and felt his magic leap eagerly into his hands, joyful and excited to come when called now, like a happy puppy.

“There you are Chip,” said Rumple softly as he removed his hands from Chip’s porcelain form. The gold was still a little bit soft, not quite liquid and not quite solidified yet, but pleasantly cozy to the touch, like warm, soft wax.

All of a sudden Rumple felt dizzy. He felt heat in his hands and a sudden itching sensation in his fingers, as if he was suddenly to big for his own skin. There was pain like one would feel from a slight sunburn. He held up his hands to see. They were bright pink and the skin was peeling. He grimaced and his head sank to the tabletop exhausted. It was easy to forget sometimes that doing magic took a lot out of a regular person.

His arm felt heavy as if he’d been spinning at his wheel all day. He dropped it again, too tired to continue to hold up the small mirror with its heavy, silver plated backing with its engravings of roses that he'd borrowed from Belle's room to show Chip his transformation.

“Your hands,” Chip sighed. The little cup at least seemed no worse for wear.

“Oh, they’ll be fine given time. I just— I— look, look at yourself in the mirror. Come.”

Chipped hopped over to where the mirror lay face up on the table by Rumples’s head.

He studied himself from side to side, the gold seam along the break in his porcelain where the new triangle of pottery had replaced his old chip was glazed and shining and the new porcelain only slightly different in colour and texture to the long lost piece it had replaced.

“Can you tell?” asked Rumple shyly. “Do you feel it?”

Chip moved his handle, sending it up to touch the place where he had been mended. Instantly he drew the handle away.

”Does it hurt?” Rumple inquired.

”No, it just feels kind of tingly— but I think maybe— maybe that’s good,” answered Chip, still uncertain.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the other transplanted porcelain pieces Belle tried on me— I couldn’t feel them. They looked alright in the mirror and they seemed to function, at least at first— but they didn’t feel. This— it’s faint now but getting stronger all the time.“

Chip looked up at Rumple, grateful tea coloured tears bringing in his eyes, (so he could cry, thought Rumple, a lump forming in his own throat). The tea-tears dripped down the smooth curved surface of his white porcelain cheeks like beads of condensation. ”I can- can feel it— it’s beating— the heart— see?”

Without thinking Rumple raised one of his hands to touch the area he’d replace and was shocked to find the slightest sensation of something vibrating deep inside the little teacup with an even heartbeat-like rhythm. He withdrew his hand in shock. He’d thought about this moment— what would happen if it worked, but actually feeling the results with his own hand was another thing.

”I’m not even completely sure how I did this and how it works,” confessed Rumple. ”It might not last. It might be temporary,” he faltered.

”It’s light magic,” said Chip. “It’s gotta be.”

Rumple stared at his scalded looking hands. ”But I’m not— how could that be?”

”I don’t know. You’re not a magical creature I know, but I’ve heard Milady talk about it enough. Light magic can do this— it has special properties that lend themselves more readily to healing. It can perform miracles.”

”But that’s crazy. I just work with gold. I can’t perform miracles.”

“If this isn’t a miracle, what would you call it?” asked Chip.

”I- I don’t know, but we’ve got to tell Belle. She would know. We’ll see if it lasts and then— once we know it’s a permenant change, we’ll talk to her and she can give us her okay and then she can turn you back human. Those should be the next steps.” Rumple tried to think logically and not get flustered. This was all a little too much at once for him.

A huge grin rolled up Chip’s little porcelain face. “Just think when I show everyone at the party! Mum is going to get the surprise of her life!”

Before Rumple could warning him about not doing anything to shock his mum too much, little Chip skipped down off the chair to the floor and clattered off down the hallway yelling “Mum! Mum! Ya gotta see this!”

Rumple stared after him. He wanted to get up to follow him, but he felt too tired. He wasn’t sure why he felt so ambivalent about it. Shouldn’t he be happy for helping Chip? After all, even Belle herself had been unable to repair him and he, Rumple, former slave, had figured out the secret to fixing him. Shouldn’t he be celebrating more than just Mrs. Potts’s upcoming birthday now?

Rumple picked moodily at his leg, at the part where normal human flesh morphed into the strange tree bark material. Little bits of bark were always irritating the skin there and he sometimes pulled at them without being very aware of it. There was something satisfying about peeling a strip of bark off, to see the fresher, yellowish woodlike subtance udnerneath the crusty brown and gray. Sometimes he fancied if he could just peel enough off it would look like proper human underneath, but it never did. A few times Belle had noticed and told him off, worrying he might permenantly damage himself, but he felt no pain from it and the bark, to his eternal regret always grew back in time.

When he was a slave they had said he wasn’t human. He thought he’d got his humanity back this last year with la Belle Dame Sans Merci. He’d come to feel like a man again with all that entailed. He could think clearly again, he could be kind to others again, he had enough that he could share and he longed to share his body with someone female again, longed deeply for it. All this seemed very human and familiar to him.

But his magic-- it was changing beyond his control and changing him along with it. Whatever it was growing into frightened him a little. What sort of human had magic after all? Some humans could use dark magic, magic they crafted themselves out of scraps of magical creatures, powerful amulets stolen from wizards and otherworldly talismans. Light magic this big and blatant, not just the little, incidental human magics that helped plants grow slightly better or made lines even those drawn without rulers straight every time— this sort of magic was more in line with what a magical creature possessed.

Picking away at his transformed skin, he saw clearly what he had been trying to hide from himself for a long time; that whatever had caused his injury wasn’t a curse or something to do with the chain he’d worn— it was him— something about him that had caused it, something to do with his magic. And maybe, maybe he wasn’t as human as he looked upon the surface. If a human could be made to look like a teacup, perhaps, then it stood to reason that a magical creature could be made to look like a normal human man-- a man like him, perhaps. But if he wasn’t truly human, then what was he? Was he even his father’s son? The ramifications of all this were too exhausting for his overworked brain at the moment to deal with. Rumple put his head on his folded arms, just to rest for a second. He groaned inwardly thinking about the effort it would take to hoist himself up on his sticks and climb the stairs to sleep in his room. He promised himself he would only lay his head down for a moment, but instantly he fell fast asleep.

He dreamed of the costume he’d created for the party, the handsome jacket with the spikes protruding up from the shoulders, how seeing himself in the mirror like that had felt so right and more than right— had made him feel lustful of his own image, made him feel parts of him moving deep and swaying inside himself, made him feel sexual, desirable, powerful, like a hunter searching for… what exactly? Someone, someone to love.

Someone like Belle?

And more than that— Something inside him wanted— no needed— to dance. How very strange.

Chapter Text

Belle threw the newspaper out the window of the coffee house and stomped out the door, leaving the cacao bean speculators open mouthed at her exit.

Hey what gives? We need to get back in there and close that deal,” groused the Speaker in Darkness. “At least let me order them some more coffee. We need them sweet so they can give us the three sacred koi fish from the imperial pavilion they still owe us, not to mention the animation and ensoulment of automatia scroll.”

“I saw that so called scroll. It’s a crock of shit. You can’t ensoul an automaton. Remember what happened when we tried that?”

“But it’s a different spell--”

“Why didn’t you tell me the day?”

Oh, what I’m supposed to be your source of most of the world’s dark magic AND your calendar all in one?

You were going to let me forget about Mrs. Potts’ party on purpose!

Oh don’t be such a drama queen.

She puffed a mirror into existence in her hand. It was a near twin to the mirror Rumple had used to let Chip look at his newly mended self a week before.

Belle gazed into her magic mirror. It showed her the main ballroom of the dark castle, done up for Mrs. Potts’s festivities in rainbow buntings, crey paper streamers and balloons.

The tables were laden down with bread, fruit and meat. There was a swan, stuffed with a turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with a miniature weasel. Without a doubt Lumos, Coggs, Pots, Chip and Rumple ahd outdone themselves. At the front door to the castle carriages were arriving. There were carts and horses for the less well off and some people were arriving on foot. Everyone was in their best clothes and chatting exciteably with each other.

In the front hall Belle spotted the Hatter, in a new patchwork scarf and coat, who certainly had not done nearly enough to worm himself into her good graces again to be invited to this shindig, scarfing down mushroom canipes as if he owned the place. Glasses of wine floated along upon magic carpets behind a row of hors d’euvres, the plates refilling themselves whenever they grew empty.

Chip and Mrs. Potts floated on by on small velvet pillows enchanted specifically for the evening, though she couldn’t remember authorizing the use of that particular spellbook for them.

At the front door a hired butler greeted their guests removing their coats to place them upon magic hangers to be teleported to other rooms throughout the castle for temporary storage. She wondered where Rumple was in the crowd and who they’d managed to hire for the party.

She knew from experience that few people in the serving trades were comfortable enough working around all that magic not to be startled every time a puff of smoke transported a mink stole to a different room.

Seeing the butler only from a distance through the mirror on the hallway adjacent to the foyer, she didn’t immediately recognize her little caretaker, looking instead for the familiar shape of his slight stoop over his canes. This new silhouette, black against the bright orange of the setting sun was unfamiliar and not just because he’d eschewed his sticks for the evening somehow. He stood straighter than she’d ever seen him and seemed taller than she knew he really was in proportion to the people around. There were strange, leather protrusions emenating from his shoulders that seemed to be sewn into his jacket, his own strange stylist invention. She supposed that was what gave him away. No one else she’d ever met could sew a garment like that.

Of course, it had to be him, despite the touch of purple eyeshadow and traces of kohl that rimmed his eyes. Some kind of dark dye on his eyelashes made them look longer than ever and there were beads of blue jewels twined through his hair, with its gray all dyed out to a youthful glossy brown, at least for the night. A shawl-like net of diamonds rested on his shoulders between his heightened shoulder blades like it was meant to be there. She thought of the image of the sparrowmin in her mind, the spider’s webs with their sun-pangled dew drops that often formed in the morning between the tall spikes that protruded from the males sharp shoulder blades, those spike-like vestigle appendages that in female fairies blossomed into wings. On Rumple the false spikes were strange horse-hair filled plumes, like enormous tapering thorns or naked branches of trees with bark that twisted and swirled like horns of dark purple and earthy brown, with hinks of gold sparkling under the lights.

She had never imagined he would favour something so extravagant. The Rumple she knew prefered to fade into the woodwork and seemed horrified to attract any notice good or bad from anyone.

And yet here, with gold dusted make-up on his face to cover his shy blush, in an outfit more magnificent than even the richest merchants attending the ball from the wealthiest towns in tribute was her little mouse of man, turned full peacock. He twitched his short jacket into place like a strutting little peacock and she felt a strange sort of pull within her, like she'd jerked a little hard on something deep inside. His jacket, she saw now was embossed with golden threaded, beautiful sewn patterns of birds, fruits and flowers twinkling in gold, green and blue along the edges and around the pearl buttons of the garment, with swirls of gleaming clouds made of more pearl buttons trailing down his back. The jacket ended in two long coat tails extending out from his back just above his peachily curved bottom like the tails of a swallowtail butterfly.

The whole cut of the jacket and what she guessed were some kind of corset type creation underneath made his torso look very much like a triangle in a way that excited her.

His cinched waist did indeed look narrower than that of most men, especially when he stood up straight.
The breeches he wore seemed to be leather, but inky black in colour, with a strange sheen like that of an aquatic creature’s hide. They clung to his arse and thigh and reflected the light of the room in a way that highlight the curves of his bottom quite fetchingly.

From leagues away she admired his wild, carefree designs. It pleased her to see him cut loose like this in a way she knew the man she’d first met couldn’t have ever conceived of, of being able to play her own small part in providing his supplies and helping him to feel healthy and confident enough to do this.

As he moved to a better vantage point for her mirror on the wall to see, she noticed that the boots looked a bit familiar. They were black too and melded seamlessly into the glossy ebony breeches with their many golden eyelits and gilded laces crisscrossed every which way, thinner than strands of angel’s hair. They reminded her a bit of the tiny, plainer pair he had brought back from the shoemaker’s house. The ones he could walk in—of course. Not magic at all-- she could have smacked herself for not figuring it out-- just Rumple being resourceful and clever with his hands, always the craftsman. Now why hadn’t she thought of boots like that for him?

Looking carefully she could guess the trick of them. The soles weren’t quite the same thickness and one was built up to make his shorter leg even in length with the other one.

This was confirmed as Belle watched an over-excited young woman, surrounded by cumbersome wide skirts and more people jostling about than the foyer was made to accomodate, tread on his foot. “Oh I’m so sorry,” she blushed looking down. “I didn’t mean to. Are you hurt?”

“No, right as rain,” he said with a gentle smile.

She looked skeptically at the foot she’d stepped on. “Are you sure?”

“Yes of course,” he said, perplexed by her reaction and directed her out into the ballroom where they’d layed out the long supper table.

Rumple looked down to see his stuffed foot had been been squashed almost completely flat like the cover of a book. “Oh bother.” No wonder the young woman seemed to think she’d greviously injured him. “Hatter can you take over here for a bit? I need a moment.”

Now, as Belle watched curiously, Rumple ducked into an alcove. He emerged after having prodded and plumped the stuffing and wire structure of his shoe back into an approximately foot-like shape without taking off his boot.

She studied his silhouette against the candlelight from twenty-five magically glowing chandeliers as he entered the ballroom. It was hard not to compare him to the image of the sparrowmin the Speaker in Darkness had shown her with the protruding wing-like tips growing up from their shoulderblades. Not taking into account his human facial features and hybrid size the resemblance was uncanny. What he hadn’t been born with he had made himself, seemingly on instinct without a guide. Her Rumple was clever.

Clever, and also at least half fairy, possibly more.

Of all the preposterous things in the world she had fallen in lust (or was it love now) with her own
worst enemy.

No. The Spirit’s enemy.

Not hers. Never hers.

Rumple— in her life was a force for good. It was just funny that she’d had to meet someone who wasn’t completely human to remind her of her human self again, to make her remember what she’d long forgot.

She stroked the glass in her hand as if she touched his cheek. Her heart longed for him and her hands ached to reach into the glass like a pool of water and grasp him to her, to enfold him in her arms and never let go.

She wanted to drop into the mirror, to transport herself to where he was. If only she could tiny-size herself for just a moment.

But no, she realized that train of thought would go straight to the Dark Spirit and removing Rumple’s magic. And you couldn’t remove Rumple’s magic without possibly killing him. He was a magical creature and that magic marbled through his whole being. It wasn’t just some sort of rind rest on the surface that you could remove without damaging the succulent fruit inside.

You’re wrong, complained the spirit. We could drain him of his magic and not spill a drop of his life. The two are separate. I could drain him in seconds and I guarantee he’d be not the worse than before. What would be so bad about that anyway? Taking his precious widdle magic. What has it brought him but sadness?

Was that truly the case? She looked at Chip now and was flabbergasted to see the tiny teacup repaired in a way she’d never managed to do and Mrs. Potts looked so fondly at Rumple for helping her little boy that tea coloured tears leaked down her flower patterned porcelain skin.

Well, maybe it’s good for something after all, the Speaker in Darkness huffed. Not that it’s helped him any.

But Speaker was wrong there as well, she thought. Seeing Rumple like this, fully come into his own, preening for guests and presenting himself before them in this way in finery half-made by magic from his own hands—she didn’t think this could have happened for him if he hadn’t let his magic come to the fore. If he’d hidden the magic away, like something to be ashamed of, he wouldn’t have been able to do this—to make Chip whole again. She could almost feel the teacup’s newly restored heart beating strongly even at this distance and the joy it brought to her to see a great wrong corrected and justice done made tears spring to her own, slit pupilled lamp-like eyes.

I could go— I could turn the tea cup human. What treat for the party that would be, eh? Just a brief visit. I wouldn’t even have to see Rumple, she whispered to herself.

Or did she?

There were times when she could distinguish between the two voices inside-- was it her or the Speaker in Darkness? Who spoke now? How could she trust the feeling when she wasn’t sure if it was her own voice or the Speaker’s? She knew she couldn’t, and that’s why she had to stay away.

You know what you need? said the Speaker.

What?

A distraction.

Is that so?

I heard there’s some problems with a lucrative kingdom succession in Evstro, maybe we could check that out, see if anyone with access to valuable magic could be induced to owe us a favour.

All right, she conceded, relieved that Rumple would be safe from the Speaker’s dark intentions fat least and she would be able to run from her own conflicting emotions for just a little bit longer.

Chapter Text

xxxxx

In ballroom the dining tables were moved to the sides of the room, now that most people had finished eating. The marble floor shone like it never had before, flecked with bits of sparkling mica that caught the light in silver and pink quartz. A few of the Potts relatives who happened to be musicians broke out a fiddle, some drums and a battered tin flute and began to play.

Rumple didn’t know most of the lyrics to the songs, but the tunes were familiar. They were different than the sad, longing ballads that his father played in the taverns when he travelled with him. These were upbeat, village rhythms that invited the listener to dance.

He watched as the women took to the floor first, then the men. The women’s wide skirts swished and swirled along the dance floor. The women and men danced in separate circles in the beginning, moving in and out together from the periphery to the centre hand in hand. A separate circle formed for the children who whooped and hollered and did silly acrobatic moves on the inside. Some of the more skilled adults performed complicated intricate steps to the music, while others just bobbed along with the tide. The tunes were the sort that could accommodate either.

Everyone wore colourful clothing that blurred into rainbow arcs as they moved.

A man pulled Rumple, almost unaware into the men’s circle. Rumple stumbled along, glad that there was little more required from him but to follow along as some of the older fellows did. No one seemed to notice if he was clumsy. The men on either side of him holding his hands helped keep him up to speed with the rest.

It was a strange, almost sexual feeling to be dancing like this. Some instinctual part of his being he had been hitherto unaware of, the part that had told him to make the high spines on his jacket and sprinkle gold across his cheeks to make himself his most attractive to the opposite sex, knew what dancing was a prelude for. His attraction to a specific type of trance-like bobbing motion was oddly disconcerting, like some primal part of him taking over his senses.

Disconcerting… yet pleasurable on another level. To feel such opposing things at once was an unusual experience.

And he was astonished to feel himself really dancing now, bobbing along in time, just like he had in his dream. Gradually, the men’s circle and women’s circle intertwined with each other. The mixed circle moved faster and faster and now individual men and women would find themselves in the empty middle of the circle with the rest of the party swirling around them. Some looked shocked to find themselves there. Others actively leapt or pulled each other inside. The circle would turn around the man and woman in the centre, once, twice, three times and then they would retreat together under the raised arms of the partygoers to disappear into the alcoves and dusty rooms of the castle, far from other’s prying eyes. And what they got up to there who could say?

As a child he had watched from the children’s circle as the adults of his aunt’s village danced themselves inside and out. Everybody knew what it was to take your first turn inside the circle. He had never done it in the village he’d been raised in. And then his father had taken him to the king and he’d found himself pressed into the army, young and terrified of the dancing circles he saw there. In the soldiers’ camp the dancing had been strange and done in the darkness around small fires among air tinged with blood. It had involved desperate and sometimes unwilling participants and droughts of dark magic. He’d avoided the dancing circles then. And then there had been Cora who danced with him alone, away from prying eyes. Then their attempted escape, the pain of the shackle and the doom the seer had pronounced for him.

He shivered, but maybe it was just the cooling liquid of his sweat as it slid down his back under the thick brocade.

Sometimes he still thought about the words of the prophecy, but he didn’t dwell on it much anymore or try to figure out what specific phrases meant with regards to his life. He was happy here and now and that was enough for him.

And yes he had been “captured, crippled, enslaved and starved as the Seer had predicted. He had crawled in chains and now he was a servant to one other people called “monster,” but that was just a simple perspective. To him, to everyone here at this party, she was a friend, even a saviour, more importantly, she was someone he loved. It all depended on what you called a monster. Perhaps the monsters the Seer had spoken of hadn’t been Belle at all but the regular people who’d enslaved him.

Was this place, this Dark Castle in its own strange bubble of time the next part of the prophecy, “the world to come” the Seer had spoken of? If it was so it made the words she’d said so darkly; “you will still be maimed as you are…wandering the world on spindle legs of wood and wire” take on a different, less negative cast. This reality he found himself in now, was not really the world of ominous doom he'd thought the words portended when he'd first heard them. The wood and wire parts made sense now. His canes were made of wood and part of his new boot was made of wire and he was still here, still dancing and partying and falling in love. What did any of that matter when you had a place to belong and something to be a part of and people who loved and appreciated you just as you were? He had so much more than most people had and far more than he'd ever hoped for when he had last spoken with the seer. What was really so terrible about any of it? She had twisted things, looking at it askew as he should have known she would, that was all, wasn't it?

Ah, but it was the last line of the prophecy, the one he’d never paid much attention to before, that struck him now as the most disturbing. It was the thought of “still searching for what won’t be found” that lingered worryingly in his mind. What if the “what" that "won’t be found” was a person, not a thing? What if that person was Belle? Would la Belle Dame Merci ever return? Would she be lost from him always and him left searching forever? It felt like that interpretation at least had the ring of truth to it, no matter how much he didn’t want it to be so.

All Rumple wanted to do now was to dance in the centre with la Belle Dame Sans Merci and to take her with him out of the circle, into the little room nearby where he’d seen the guests’ coats splayed out open the floor in piles of soft fur and remove her clothes, savour her body, nuzzle into her neck and chin like a cat. Even now as the dance resumed, he looked from face to face across from him searching for her, hoping, hoping against hope that he’d see her there amid the stranger’s faces in the circle.

Chapter Text

He looked and looked believing every time he blinked his eyes that she’d be there, but she never was.

And then as he turned in the circle his eyes locked with those of a woman. The one who’d stepped on him. He vaguely remembered her coat, sable fur with claret velvet lining. Her hair was a cloud of dark curls around her face, cut short in the new style and her eyes were brilliant blue. There were dimples in her round pink cheeks when she smiled and she was everything that he, in former times before he met Belle would have thought the picture of beauty.

Then why was it now that he longed for preternatural eyes like yellow lamps and patterned boa constrictor skin? He really wasn’t normal, even in his sexual desires he chided himself now.

And after all Belle was gone. He’d shared one kiss with her, nothing more and she’d taken off for parts unknown apparently so disgusted by him that she wouldn’t even deign to stay with him in the same castle.

Why shouldn’t he try at least for some companionship with a normal human who seemed at least so inclined?

The dark hair woman held his gaze and indicated she wished him to join her at the centre with a nudge of her head. Rumple gulped and let go of the two hands he held on either side.

He stumbled towards the centre instantly feeling ridiculous and exposed, certain he had only imagined the woman incline her head.

But no-- there she was extricating herself from a group of whooping women of similar age whom he assumed must be her friends or sisters.

He gulped as he realized without the other men around him he couldn’t real do much more than sway back and forth. It was a nice illusion but…. She took his hands in hers and swept him into her arms. Her arms though deceptively plump and doughy in appearance were firm and strong enough for him to lean his weight on. She felt strong and sturdy and a hand taller than he was.

She smiled at him as they turned together, the blush rising in her cheeks from her exertion in the dance or something different altogether. Then he noticed that it wasn’t on her cheeks alone he noticed, but appeared on her chest like a pinkish heart shape above the tops of her breasts.

It’s good to meet you,” she gasped out between turns. “I’m Fredericka. My friends call me Freddy.”

“I-I’m Rumple,” he managed to wring out.

“Do you work here, at the castle with cousin Chip?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like it?”

”Yes.”

“What do you do here?”

”Plants?”offered Rumple awkwardly. To be fair it was difficult to keep up a conversation of any sense, while the music was so loud and the people around him were shouting and he was trying to dance for the first time in his new lace-up boot.

“You do plants?”

“Also dishes. You?”

“My husband was a butcher. Been running the shop meself these past two years. You want to get out of here on the next turn?”

Rumple’s head nodded vigorously like a child’s bobble-headed toy. It felt strange being at the centre of the circle, with all eyes on him. The last time that many people had been looking at him he'd been on a stage in a slave market about to be sold. He pushed the memory down and tried to focus.

She giggled and pulled him by the arm. They went under the bridge made by the waiting circle of the people's arms and were suddenly out of the dance altogether. Rumple was concentrating on retaining his footing as she lead him down the hall to the nearest open door.

Sconces in alcoves around the room flared into life as they entered. The floor was covered in piles of coats, wraps and shawls.

“Oh weird, I wondered where they were disappearing to. I thought they were being erased and remade by magical elves—that’s what my cousin the shumacher’s nephew said—but I guess they’re only transported to a different location. Whelp, good to know.”

She sat down on a mound of soft furs and patted the spot beside her. “Sit down, you look about done in.”

Rumple lowered himself awkwardly onto the mound of furs beside her and almost fell over.

“Feel this! So soft,” she said taking part of a leather coat between her fingers. “It can’t be cow’s hide or even sheep. What d’ya reckon this is?”

“Sphinx,” said Rumple barely glancing at it.

“Sphinx! Well I never.”

The air hung heavy in the room as she continued to stroke the fabric.
Rumple thought he could hear his heart beating in his ears and the rush of blood through his body.
He put his hand down on the material to finger the stitching of the garment. It was his favourite way of grounding himself when he felt his mind might fly away.

Her hand lay beside his on the sphinx skin coat on the other side of the stitching, still lightly stroking the marvelous material.

He knew the motions of this dance. This dance was one he could easily preform. He was good lying down. The question was-- did he want to?

She smiled down at him, the kohl traced around her eyes gathered up in tiny clumps in their corner folds. She looked merry and her eyes were as green and sparkling as beach glass. She lowered her gaze. “You know it would be alright,” she said, soft and still breathing a little hard from the dancing, “if you kissed me.”

There was some sort of cream on her eyelids that made them look wet as if she’d awoken in a field of dew. He kissed her and she surged towards him, lips moist and yielding. He held her in his arms and it was like holding the world’s warmest pillow. Without meaning to he sighed with pleasure and relaxed into those soft arms.

He closed his eyes and imagined them covered in blue scales, her kohl traced eyes, not green but gold, glowing like lamps in a foggy bay, lighting the fishermen’s way home.

Apparently though his mind was preoccupied elsewhere his body was engaged in the here and now. He felt himself rise to attention beside her in his breeches and hoped the coats were covering his embarrassment.

She gave a mischievous smile as he realized she realized.

“We could do more, more than just that… if you liked?” she said and one arm looped around his narrow waist to bring him closer, so they were face to face, rather than side to side now.

His mind knew she was objectively beautiful, with her generous lips and the cute gap between her teeth and lively, sea green eyes—but he couldn’t stop seeing Belle. The image of her in his mind like a wet page placed over a piece of dry paper, so that both texts ran together with the superimposed words overtop, and he couldn’t see this lively woman for only for herself and all he could feel was how she wasn’t quite like Belle and so was less than in his eyes.

He knew that months ago a beautiful, lively woman like this Fredericka would have never looked twice at him, let alone wanted to give herself freely to him. Who was he to turn her down, like he had a slew of prospects lined up outside? It wasn’t as if even in his wildest dreams, Belle would have deigned to do something of this nature with him anyway, if she were here, he reminded himself as Freddie turned around, revealing the strings that held her wide skirt together.

“Here, undo the string and I’ll take my skirt off. It’s impossible to get close with this silly thing on. Just loosen it and I’ll shimmy out. I’ll milk you first if you want?” she offered.

“Milk me?”

She mimed pulling at a penis like a teat. “Ain’tcha ya ever drank milk fresh from a cow teat before — just put your head under and—-“

“No— I—"

“Risky sure but definitely worth the experience.” She licked her lips. “It’s so warm. You never tasted milk like that I bet.”

His numb fingers worked mindless away at the strings holding the skirt together and on her body. It fell away leaving her in only her bloomers underneath. He could see the slit in the fabric. It was there so a lady wouldn’t have to take off her dress and bloomers to urinate. But it made other things much easier to do too, without taking all one’s clothes off either.

She laid back on the coats and spread her legs in her bloomers wide. "Turn about's fair play." In the gap in the fabric of the bloomers he could see her pink opening, slick and wet with her vaginal milk.

He thought he remembered how to "milk" a woman in the way she'd described milking a man. Cora had taught him this at least, if nothing else.

He moved towards Belle and began to lick, like a cat just tasting his first mouthful of cream.

Only she wasn’t Belle. He froze. This didn’t feel right. A real man would've continued, he thought later, in his father's voice, burning with shame, but he couldn't-- he just couldn't. It was all wrong.

He stopped, his mind finally catching up with what his body was doing. He froze, still hovering over her and realized that even if his lower parts wanted him to do this, his mind did not-- not with her. Not if he had made love to her pretending she was Belle. A person should be loved for who they were, he’d always felt, not for who you wished they could be. His father had never learnt that lesson about him, and Rumple would be damned if he’d repeated the old man’s mistake with another person.

“Keep going it’s alright,” she coaxed him. "No need to feel shy. You're doing great."

He was beginning to panic inside. “No, no, no, I can’t. I'm s-s-sorry. So sorry.”

He drew away and sat up abruptly.

“If you’re worried about what people in my village say—you know whatever happens here, in this castle stays here— unless we don’t want it to—unless—"

”No, I can’t because—”

What he wanted to say was:

“I’m in love with a hundred year old immortal sorceress who owns this castle and all the land around and speaks in the dark to a being who isn’t there. She is sad and lonely much of the time, I know it though I don’t know the reason, but she is too and smart, unbelievably smart and filled with knowledge she is more than happy to share. She is passionate about plants and so many other things. She believes in people—people no one else even sees as people. She saved me when she found me and bewitched me without even uttering a spell. She is powerful and unique and I am too in love to see anyone else as anything but some inferior version of her, more so is the tragedy, because I know she will never consent to be with me, nor should she. I am born of the dust and she is a sorceress on high. I should make my peace with that and find a woman who is good, sweet, kind and fun-filled as you who is eager to love me, but my stubborn soul won’t let go of her and it doesn’t feel right to use you to pretend I’m with her. You deserve someone who will see you as perfection, a consolation prize and second best to someone they’ll never be able to have. You deserve to be first in some man’s eyes.”

But he couldn’t articulate all the feelings battling and roiling inside of him, the panicking crashing through his composure, couldn’t make it make sense to someone who had only just met him and didn’t know how he’d come to this castle.

He couldn’t fail to notice her brittle smile fall then and he could sense with practiced ease the thought running through her mind--— “I’m not good enough. He doesn’t want me because I’m not pretty enough” or a million other things she saw as flaws to attack herself with. He knew it, because it’s what he would’ve done in her place, once upon a time.

He touched her on the shoulder.

“Please, it’s not you. You’re beautiful and kind and funny and I-- I-- I can’t do this with you though because I’m cursed.” He cringed inwardly at the lie. It sounded so stupid and false to his ears the moment he uttered it, but she was nodding her head as if it made perfect sense.

“Oh, so that’s why you’re here.”

“Uh, yes. I’m cursed-- if I’m ever with a woman in any sort of romantic she’ll fall into an endless sleep. The Lady Belle offered to cure me of this curse in exchange for serving her here in the castle while she accumulates the ingredients she needs to lift the spell.”

Fredericka edged away from him onto another coat as if he suddenly had a disease.

“I thought true love’s kiss was supposed to work on that sort of thing?” she asked worriedly.

“Yeah, unfortunately, it turns out this isn’t one of those type of curses.”

“Well, shit you coulda told me that before I was almost knocked out for good!”

“I’m sorry.”

She gathered up her skirt and tied it awkwardly in the back on her own.

“Please, let me help you with that—”

“You know,” she turned on him angrily. “I have kids at home. Two little ones who need me. If you keep letting your little head do the thinking for your big head you might leave someone else’s poor bairns orphaned one of these days.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Please, that's enough. Just forget about it,” she said with a final tightening of her skirt strings. "Leave me alone."

Rumple stared after her as she flounced out of the room, her skirt sagging unevenly from her hasty tying.

She closed the door hard after her, making the magical lamps in the room all flicker out.

Rumple rolled over onto his face on top the pile of coats, in the dark, in his fancy new jacket and tall boots and began to cry, hot tears of frustration and anger at himself, at Belle at this stupid universe that made someone like him get stuck on someone impossible like her and never never be able to move on. Was it part of her curse or his or just part of the cruel fabric of the world that did this to people—turned their longings against them and fixed them to some impossible point never to get over to the land of love on the other side? Would he be like this—infatuated with someone out of reach forever—? Why was he even lying here crying over this now when just a year ago he’d have been happy to be well fed, alive and free and no longer in pain? Hadn’t she given him enough, but that he greedily wanted her love and access to all of her body on top of that? Why couldn’t it ever be enough for him?

Why couldn’t his love—the love of a doting son for a father, ever be enough for his Papa, what kept him moving, from village to village singing sad of wistfulness and regret, songs you couldn’t dance to, searching for some woman he would never find who didn’t want to be found? Was he like that too, at the end of things—just another selfish git, to wrapped up in himself and some fabled love story to let anyone else in?

Whatever he was, he felt he didn’t deserve this—this jumped up outfit of someone pretending to be—a what exactly? The master of this castle? Even as a butler, he knew he was no great shakes. Who took on someone like him as a butler? Maybe it was just pity along that had made her give him this job, made her tend to him, made her kiss him. He was deluding himself and here, he could have had a chance with someone who was real and he’d just mucked that up too. Now who knew what sort of things she’d say to Mrs. Potts and Chip and all the rest of their relatives? He’d be lucky if they didn’t all turn him out on his bottom to beg in the streets now. What had ever convinced him to make up such a ridiculous lie?

Stupid, stupid stupid Rumple! He chided himself in his father’s voice and hit out with his fists.
But they only struck the yielding softness of coat fabric and furs.

He wanted to make contact with something hard all of a sudden.

He wanted to hurt. He smashed the back of his rotten foot down hard against the floor imagining it shatter into a million wooden splinters of pain. But he was on a pile of furs and nothing happened. He pushed them aside and did it again against the floor.

He felt nothing although one of the laces holding his boot together snapped. He yanked the whole thing roughly off, tearing through his sock and the skin below and threw it against where he thought a wall might be in the dark.

It hit with a slightly more satsifying smack and the magic candles flicked into life once more.

Rumple stared down at himself in the firelight, sitting up in his tear stained clothes and felt more embarassed than he had in all his life.

He had duties to attend to for Mrs. Potts and here he was making out and traumatizing her female relatives.

He had a job to do, a professional appearance to keep up, he scolded himself. With that he straightened his jacket and brushed a lock of sheep’s wool off his shoulder. He sniffed up his tears and blew his nose discretely on his silken handkerchief, which, once it amassed a wealth of giluberous snot, he tossed in the corner to be retrieved latter when he did the morning clean up.

He crawled over the coats and found his boot by the wall. There were still enough laces that remained unbroken to do it back up again. He shoved his leg into it, ignoring the places where strips of his bark-skin had flaked off when he removed it without undoing it first to throw it against the wall. Oh all the silly theatrical antics! Some of his real skin had also been torn and he noticed a few spots of blood on his tall stockings. It pleased him because he felt he deserved it.

Once all was put together as well as it could be, (barring the wire foot stuffed with horse hair which had returned to its flatten shape and refused to be coaxed back into anything close to what it had been before), Rumple rose and went to the kitchen. There was still second desert to be served and the sweet wines from the cellar to make available. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go back into the ballroom to greet the stares and chatter Fredericka’s return was sure to cause. He didn’t know what she would tell the others at the feast about him. He pretended now that he didn’t care.

He felt more relaxed in the familiar kitchen environs. He had the book of kitchen spells Belle had so kindly leant him on the table. He rattled them off with practiced ease and the dishes rose and whizzed out the door.

The dirty dishes from the main course were in the large sink soaking now. He knew a spell to clean them, but decided against speaking it. He removed his jacket and exchanged it for his apron. The apron hung low on the wall from a wooden hook he’d hammered in himself, right below the metal that made him feel dizzy when he touched it. When Belle had asked after it, he’d said the other peg was too high for him to easily reach without unbalancing himself, which he supposed was technically true. There was a lot he hid from her too, he realized and promised himself that if she ever returned he would be honest with her about his magic and his strange aversion to certain things. Perhaps she would call him crazy, but at least he wouldn’t telling any more lies.

He dragged his wooden chair over to the sink and sat down to unlace his boots, carefully this time. He didn’t want them getting stained from the food covered dishes and knew if the leather got too wet it would rot and smell. Regretting his earlier mistreatment of them, (if not himself), he placed them carefully on the mat below the hook. He removed his brocade vest and the cincher around his waist and hung them up too. The breeches he didn’t remove, because he had nothing left below them. He supposed if they were destroyed by the water it wasn’t like he had anyplace else to wear them to and they weren’t as fine masterpieces of tailoring that the rest of his work was.

He bumped the chair up next to the huge sink and stood with one foot on the floor and one knee on the seat and got to work with the scrub brush and suds.

When Cogs found Rumple hours later he was still scrubbing as the last of their guests drifted out the door.

Chapter Text

Rumple kept on scrubbing, hoping he could scrub away of the guilt of his lie to someone who’d been nothing but up front with him. He’d panicked and now she was probably traumatized for life thanks to him. Why oh why couldn’t he just tell her the truth? Why did he think lying about having a transmissible sleeping curse was somehow better? He just hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings, didn’t want her to feel rejected or ugly or not worth it. Well, his testicles certainly weren’t thanking him for his misplaced compassion now.

“Rumple?”

“Aaaah!” He’d been so deep within his own thought that he practically jumped into the air.

A skillet slipped from his hands and fell into the dish soap water, splashing him in the face.
He picked it up again with nimble fingers and kept on scrubbing. All the dishware in Belle’s domain was made of some strange form of orange-tinged tempered glass, that luckily, seemed quite resistant to breakage. He’d once asked after it and she’d told him the unsual pots were castle-warming gifts from the Hatter’s League. They came from another dimension and were called something like Pie-Rex in the language of that land.

“Rumple?” Chip’s voice prodded him as the newly repaired tea cup floated by on his enchanted velvet pillow.

“Everyone’s gone now. The party’s over.”

“Oh hey, sorry I couldn’t say good-bye. D’you think they all had a good time?” Rumple tried to muster some enthusiasm into his voice.

“Well, I don’t know about them, but I certainly did. I danced in the circle with a woman from Cartegerville. Oh don’t look at me like that—she’s only a third cousin once removed my father’s side. Barely related at all. Trust me, I checked.”

Rumple didn’t dare ask what part of the teacup corresponded to a typical person’s private parts. He’d never even considered it when picking Chip up or giving him a scrub after a meal. The mind boggled.

“Did your mother enjoy her party? Where is she?”

“Oh you know, off with that blacksmith from Ventegrel with the fetish for water spouts probably. No relation. At least I don’t think.”

Rumple choked a bit as scrubbed a particularly recaltriant pan. Was he the only adult in the whole castle who hadn’t had some sort of sex tonight?

“So what about you? I saw you leave the circle with—what’s her name again? I think she was married to a milkman a few years back.”
“Butcher. Her name is Fredericka.”

“Oh, so how’d it go?”

Rumple said down heavily on the chair. “I think I cocked it up royally. It was all going so well and then I completely panicked.”

“Oh come on, couldn’t have been that bad. You know I once accidentally gave some of my sugar cubes to a prospect paramour’s diabetic gelding not realizing the poor beast would go into shock. I don’t think she ever forgave me.”

Rumple looked up. “I told her I was cursed.”

“Oh,” Chip’s expression softened, the edges of his facial features blurring, liking seeing a person through a haze of steam. He hopped off his pillow onto the table so he could be level with Rumple’s face instead of looking down on him. He took in Rumple’s abandoned boots by the wall and the spots of blood on his stocking and thought he understood.

“You know I never thought about it—how it might be different for you,” said Chip. “People see me and they know right away. Sometimes I hate it, looking different, not doing things in the same way as everyone else, but I guess, if this is something a girl can’t deal with, then she knows not to bother and doesn’t approach. It’s not like they’re going to come up to me later and say why didn’t you tell me you were a teacup, eh?” Rumple knew Chip was only trying to make him smile, but it only made his guts twist inside, the assumption that this was a pain they shared together and he had been rejected because of his appearance.

“No, you don’t understand. It wasn't this that upset her.” he gestured downward. “That’s not it. I told her if I—if I ever became amourous with anyone it would make that other person fall into an endless sleep. That’s why she stomped off. She was worried I’d make her fall asleep forever and her children would lose their only living parent.”

“Oh,” said Chip, at a momentary loss for words. “That’s awful.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Is it—is it true?”

“What? No! I lied obviously. You know it’s not! I can’t make people fall asleep forever! Since when was that even a curse? I just panicked and that’s what came out.”

“But why would you lie to her? Why dance with her if you didn’t want to—”

Rumple buried his face in his hands. “Have you ever wanted—” He waved his hands in the air as if he could sketch out his mind in the air, like he was trying to give birth to words that could make sense of his jumbled emotions. “No, I mean have you ever known you should want something—someone—objectively be attracted someone and known physically it was right that it should be happening with this person, but your mind just won’t stop finding someone else attractive, someone of a kind that’s totally unsuitable, and you know everyone you ever met would frown on such a union and say it’s unthinkable. And then no matter how much a part of you wants to dive into the prospective romance at hand, to make love with this new person and leave that impossible love behind, you remain enthralled with this one kind of person you could never really have. It’s an insoluable problem.”

Chip bubbled away thoughtfully on the little magical stove top Gold had asked Belle to make up for him, so they could talked side by side while Rumple worked. Doing dishes went much faster when you had some to talk to and she liked Chip to have some entertainment. Even now, Rumple was thinking wistfully of Belle and her little kindnesses to him and the other staff.

“I mean in your mind there’s what you think you should feel and then there’s what you feel and when that doesn’t match it’s weird, you know? What do you do when you can’t love how you’re supposed to?” Rumple knew he was grasping at straws. It felt insane to say these things, even to some as close a friend as Chip. “Do you know what I mean?”

“I don’t think I do,” said Chip softly, “but I know someone who might.”

Rumple looked up, genuinely surprised. “Who?”

XXXX

Rumple gave his stiff back a stretch and made his way over to his boots. He knew he’d need to get them back on to return to his room that night because he didn't have his crutches with him, but he didn’t relish the prospect. What insanity had it been to rip of his special shoe?

He could see, though only vaguely feel the stocking on his damaged foot sticking in odd spots, bunched up and clinging to him. At first he thought it was blood that had leaked from the little cuts he’d got higher up, but upon closer inspection he realized it was some other substance, thicker and stickier than human blood and tinged an orangish-yellow.

He picked off a small rubbery globual and rolled it between his fingers. Something about it reminded him a necklace he’d found in one of the rooms upstairs. There’d been with some kind of animal sinew used instead of string or a chain on which hung lumpy beads of yellow and orangey red with tiny insects and bits of flowers frozen inside each bed. Belle had called it “amber” and said it was fossilized tree sap and that things kept inside were thousands upon thousands of years old. Tree sap. His leg was weeping tree sap. That was not normal.

He heard a sound like the scraping of gears against each other, wiped his sticky hand on a rag and looked up. Cogg’s face peered out at him from the kitchen clock.

“My goodness look at the time, you should’ve been off to bed hours ago.”

“I just—just wanted to finish up, so I don’t have to do it tomorrow. The sticky parts get caked on if you leave them.”

“You could’ve used a spell and let the sink take care of them.”

“It doesn’t always get the really stubborn bits of sauce off.”

“Hmmmm,” said Coggs meditatively as if he wasn’t quite sure he believed him.

Rumple looked down and resumed lacing up his boot.

“Chip told me what happened with the young lady earlier.”

Rumple said nothing, just continued lacing wishing he was upstairs instead of talking with Coggs about this uncomfortable topic.

“He told me what you said to him and I—granted I’m no expert on this sort of thing—love and relationships and such—I mean I have been a clock for close to a hundred years so, take this with a grain of salt, but—I was a man once—like you—”

“Like me?” Rumple’s eyebrow arched quizzically.

“And I loved, still love in fact, another person, a person whom society deemed unsuitable for me. And I was expected to be married—to a woman and I didn’t feel for her as I thought a man should for a woman so I said no.”

“Oh.”

“So, my father and mother being reasonable sorts brought another eligible lady to me and yet another and another and another and still I would not consent to marriage. And though I courted death to do so, I had to tell them why.”

“Why?”

“I, a man, was in love with another man, and him a fellow not of my station. My father, he took me aside and told me that it didn’t matter, my duty was to continue the family line of stewards, that’s a high place household servant to the king, that had remained unbroken for thirty generations and it didn’t matter what piece I took on the side, it was my job to marry and conceive children and carry on the tradition and if I did anything less I would shame him and bring humiliation to the entire family and they would all have to kill themselves.”

“Are you serious? That’s crazy.”
“I am serious and they thought I was crazy. I didn’t want my family to die, even if I thought their traditions were foolish. Even if they didn’t accept me, they had still loved me as a child and cared for me and held me close. It wasn’t completely their fault that they couldn’t disengage from the trappings of our traditional society the way I could. Not everyone has that sort of imagination.”

“Goodness, what did you do?” asked Rumple now caught up in the story.

“We prayed, my love and I to the fairies, to the blue star,” sighed Coggs, “but as you may have guessed they did not answer. Finally, in desperation we sent up a plea to our lady of the dark castle, who in our culture is seen by people of my class as evil incarnate, but you see Lumos and I could see no other alternative.”

“And the Dark Lady appeared before us. She is not without mercy as you well know, but even she does not give something for nothing. She has ways to predict the future—not of an individual—but of a society—her predictions are not guaranteed perfect, she herself will admit, but she gave us hope, told us the land we lived in would change. It would take between one hundred and a hundred and fifty years, but there would be a day when people who loved like Lumos and I could be together with the full approval of our society. Though tradition seemed to have stronghold on change from our perspective, for someone who can take the long view, to wait is not so hard a thing.

The thing is, the human life span is not so very long. To change a whole society takes much longer. We knew we would not live to see it if we remained human. Hence our current forms and our occupation working for Belle in the castle until such time as the world is ready to accept us as we are. While I function as all the time pieces of this castle and Lumos works as all the fires we keep an eye on what is happening in the world outside. We write pamphlets which Belle is kind enough to distribute for us through magical means. We wait and watch to see the ripple form and the waters change.”

“Thank you,” said Rumple sitting up straighter. “Thank you for sharing your story with me. I always wondered, but was too shy to ask.”

“It is no matter. We are together here, Lumos and myself the way we could never be in the world outside. I measure and keep the time until the change takes place as Belle said I would and Lumos keeps the flame of passion for freedom burning through his fiery words. It was part of the spell she used to transform us. I must admit we didn’t imagine we would exist in these sorts of forms, but we have grown accustom to it. Lumos speaks to me of his dreams for a better future and I time them to the syllable of iambic tetrameter, to create our poems of rebellion all the better to be memorized by people who haven’t been given the gift of literacy. It is hard to see the slow pace of change sometimes though. Perhaps, had we remained in the world outside it would have been faster, but then again, perhaps that world would have devoured us as well and we would never have had the chance to love each other all these years.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because what you said to Chip led me to wonder if maybe what frightened you about the young lady’s amorous advances was that you didn’t feel that way about women, but didn’t want to tell her. It is still not an accepted way to love in society, even now is it not?”

Rumple shook his head. “No, no that’s not it. But I get it. I get why you thought that after what I said to Chip. The thing is…” he gulped and forced the words out of his mouth before he could hide them again, “I am in love with a woman. At least I think she’s a woman. But whatever she is I am in love her. I was almost dead and she brought me back to life and I think—I mean I know—I love her.”

“Belle,” said Coggs. “You love Belle.”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t think she could love you back?”

“I don’t—I don’t know. She kissed me—back in the shoemaker’s cottage when we saw the fairy. I don’t know if she meant to do it, if it was just a reflex or she really—I mean it’s not possible is it. I was a slave—you know what that means—not even a peasant! I’m nothing to look at and my foot has turned into what is basically a tree stump. I mean it—I’m bleeding sap now! Fucking sap!”

“Do you want me to take a look at—”

“NO! I just—I think maybe I’m just imagining things and making it hard for myself, you know? And then the day after she kissed me she disappeared so I can’t even ask her, can I? I don’t even know what happen to her. Is she even alive? Is she coming back? Does she love? Does she hate me? Where do I even with her? If I’m going to move with someone else, then that’s—that’s something I think I need to know.”

Coggs looked thoughtful at this, the minute hand across his face twisting from three to nine and back again.

“I didn’t think it worth mentioning to you, but the night after Belle left I was doing my rounds of the castle, checking, using every clock in the building to make sure all doors were secure and everything was in its proper place as I do every night, when I saw the door to the West Wing was open.”

“What? I thought she kept that locked up.”

“I did too. Our mistress has the only key and yet when she left, she left that wing unlocked.”

“Why? Do you think she was trying to test us? Are we going to get in trouble if we go in?”

“I don’t think so. I move through the castle differently than you and some of the others here do. I’ve been to the West Wing many times through the faces of most of the clocks there in the halls and rooms and most things I observed there on that night were as they always were. Except when I got to one particular hall and one particular door. There is a room that our mistress told me was once a ballroom secret that is always always locked.”

“Why?”

“She told me and I have no reason to believe she was being anything but honest, was that the walls of the room were covered with obsidian memory glass, her obsidian memory glass. It is off limits to others because she keeps her memories there, the ones that are too painful to carry with her all the time. I wondered why she left it open that night, if it was a mistake, if she fled because she’d seen something in her memories that had upset her, but that didn’t seem like our mistress. She is nothing if not calm and calculating. And now that I know about your feelings for her, I think I know the reason she left that room open. I think it was for you, Rumple. To show you something about herself in a particular way. Her way of saying she trusts you and wants you to find out more about her than anyone else knows.”

Rumple’s eyes grew wide. “Or, maybe she just forgot she left the door open and she’s going to come back to find me in her memory glass ballroom and incinerate me where I stand for violating her privacy!”

“Well,” said Coggs worth briskly. “I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”

Chapter Text

Night on the island was quiet, but Belle couldn’t rest, which meant the Speaker in Darkness couldn’t rest. Belle shape shifted from one thing to the next; a finch, a lizard, a coconut crab, another finch again, but this one with a slightly differently shaped beak, a fish, a sandworm, a dolphin, a seal, a humpback whale, another kind of whale that swam through the deepest seas and ate things eve mermaids wouldn’t touch, things with strange magics and oddly placed tentacles that had arrived in this world long long ago from different dimensions; older, stranger places than the ones their own ancestors had come from.

Belle thirsted for knowledge the way the Speaker thirsted for magic and the Speaker tried to educate her where it could. It was very old and so, had lived during the time of many momentous events. She liked to listen to its stories. In a long, long life by human standards entertainment and relief of boredom was an even more prized commodity than it had been when she’d been an ordinary mortal.

That was one thing the Speaker in Darkness really liked about having her as a host. So many of its hosts over the years had been interested only in the power the Speaker in Darkness could give them. Their curiosity extended only as far as the knowledge the Speaker held that they could utilize to devastate their enemies and take power for themselves. Belle was different. Belle wanted to know about everything, to connect all the disjointed things she knew about her world to understand the whole.

There were times, like these months on the island, away from the castle, away from Rumple and the servants where the Speaker in Darkness felt things for Belle. Not romance—even at a hundred and fifty years old she was far too young for it to love that way; besides without a body or a functioning hormonal system, lust and other such passions, were long lost to the mists of time, mere ghosts, things it knew once were there, like its hands and feet and hair and skin that it rarely dwelled on anymore.

No, what it felt for Belle was something more akin to a teacher for a fairly bright student, or a parent, with a gifted child.

In its own way, the Speaker wanted Belle to be happy. Of course, its took the long view—what would bring the most happiness to the both of them in the long term was what it was after. Its goal was achieving what they’d worked for, for all these years; keeping the Speaker of Darkness fed on magic, so it was a strong and powerful aid to her, so the Speaker could find a body of its own where it could still access its magic and they both could be free. Belle, it knew, because it knew everything about her, was still human where it counted and still hewed to human ways—it considered her more of a short term thinker and easily distractable by the whims of her human body as all humans were.

Of course the Speaker had other, secondary goals related to changing the way the humans of the world governed themselves. It had learned much from Belle on this score and had informed her of systems that had worked well in the past and those that had not and its guesses as to why.

The night was calm without a cloud or a moon in sight. As a whale now, Belle lounged on the surface of the ocean, the stars reflected on the silver pleated mirror of her enormous throat. The water around was calm and dark, so that it was hard to discern where the sky turned into the water. The stars were clear in both. Like a faint splatter of white paint, a thick band of stars shone above in the blackness.

Belle rolled to look up with one small dark eye.

“You’re awfully quiet you know—for someone who calls themselves the Speaker in Darkness. You’d think this would be your cue.”

“What would you like me to say? That I think it’s alright for us to return to the Dark Castle now? That I won’t eat your magic pet like the delicious morsel he is?”

She rolled again in the water, and slashed her tail up and down, putting on an angry burst of speed. The ocean rippled for miles around upsetting the perfect reflection of the stars.

“No need to have a tantrum, dearie. You know, as well as I do, how rare fairy magic is now adays, how thick and rich and filling…” thinking about it the Speaker in Darkness nearly moaned. “If I was clever I’d hide my longing from you, but we are bonded in body and spirit. You know my secrets and I know yours, so here we remain. A stalemate. You know it cannot continue like this forever. He won’t live as long as we will, for one. Even female fairies die eventually and males lives are but of fifth of a female’s. Not to mention part of his blood is human and his misuse by the slavers and contact with iron leaves him weak still. Eventually, you will have to make a decision about him, or time will make that decision for you. It will happen one way or another though, as I’ve said, it makes more sense to utilize his power while we have the chance.”

Belle’s tail thrashed and slapped against the water. The sound rang out in the silence so far away from any shore. Belle took an enormous breath through the wide nostrils on top of her head and dove down.

Layers of waves and kelp flew by them. A startled school of fish fled in their wake, but Belle did not slow down.

Belle was its first host to turn them into a whale. The Speaker in Darkness still found the experience rather unsettling, but Belle seemed to relish it.

“You know I could dive down further, all the way down that dark trench,” she said conversationally. “I’ve wondered for quite a while what would happen to you if I tried to drown us in this form.” She paused, but the Speaker in Darkness did not respond. “What? No witty quips or warnings now? You don’t think I’d really do it?”

“You can’t kill me that way. You know that,” said the Speaker. Its voice in her head was even, mild and calm. “You might die, but I would just move to another host, one that was perhaps not as well intentioned towards other people as you are. And what would happen to your darling Rumple then? With no castle to feed and protect him? No garden to tend? A beggar’s life wandering from town to town? Without your protection he’d be fair game for anyone eager to revenge themselves on one of your former servants. Then again, one of his own kind might find him. I can’t imagine a fairy would be kinder. As I know, no halfu has ever been allowed to survive to his age—I imagine they’d make a thorough study of his unique characteristics in excrutiatingly precise detail before they dispatched him.”

Belle dove down further. Everything was dark now and the pressure surrounding them was terrific. Things with bright-light up eyes streamed past, and still Belle dove. It couldn’t sense any thought in her then, it was like she was in a trance, her mind pulled down and down by whatever dwelled there or by something deep and dark within herself.

The Speaker in Darkness could feel the pressure squeezing against its lungs, big as they were, hurting its head, rattling the baleen in its jaw. Its brain hurt and it couldn’t think anymore. And all it knew was that it couldn’t lose her— to find another host again that it could actually live somewhat comfortably with was no easy task. And more so—it was frightened, frightened for Belle. “Belle stop!" a voice cried out. Whose voice? Rumple's? The Speaker's? Her own? Some part of her that could buck the influence of whatever it was drawing her down into the depths. "Don’t do this! I love you—"

And like a miracle, this broke the trance. Belle stopped. She began to float up. The fat in the whale body she wore rose like a cork so fast she actually had to slow it down with her fins to keep it from boiling their brain alive from rising too fast. It was nearly impossible to do because her survival instincts were screaming at her to rise as quickly as possible, her air was nearly out, and black dots were dancing at the edges of her vision.

“Let me,” the spirit spoke in the Darkness and Belle relented and let it use its magic to help calm her resperation and let her rise more slowly—pulling oxygen from the water around her through newly furnished gills in the sides of her face.

When they broke the surface Belle began to cry, though there were no tear ducts in this body, her entire massive form shuddered and sobbed into the night.

Invisible hands were there to stroke and sooth her somehow, to hold her close, mind to mind.
“Foolish, foolish Belle. That’s not the way. I’m sorry, please. It’s been a long time since I was human. We’ll figure this out-- together. Just promise me—Belle promise you won’t try that ever again.”

And Belle promised and bound herself to her word.

But at the edge of her mind she remembered another time, at the beginning of their association, before they were one, when she and the Speaker in Darkness had traded promises. Strange things could happen when you made a deal you didn’t completely understand.

Chapter Text

XXXX

Belle floated on the surface of the water. She was back to her regular form again, the scaled humanoid one that her body returned to when not actively trying to be something else. The night sky was beautiful, dark and three-dimensional and filled with stars. So many stars. "You said you loved me," she said and it made her marvel. People said those words to her all the time when she made miracles for them. "You saved my child. I love you!" But when they learned the price too often that love curdled and turned to hate. She didn't trust it. "What did you mean?" The Speaker for once was silent. But she knew it well, the way it lived inside her and how its emotions often mingled with her own. "That wasn't me," the Speaker said. "It was you. You love you. Too much to let yourself go that way." And she could feel that the speaker-- as twisted as its mind and intentions often were, was honest at that moment. "But now that you mention it, I suppose I love you too my dear, as much as an old monster like me could love anyone."

Her guts twisted with guilt inside. She wanted to tell Speaker she was sorry, that she wouldn’t be given to such stupid tantrums in the future, but the Speaker in Darkness knew what she knew and how she felt and it extended the tendrils of its vaporous self around her soul and held her close and comforted her as best it could.

“They can dredge up strange feelings in us,” said the Speaker, cautiously in her mind, eager that she could feel its forgiveness, to give her an excuse to grab on to something tangible to pull her out of the depths, even if its body was not something she could actually hold onto. “Those creatures in the deep. They can be subtle. They call to the unsuspecting when you get too close. I should have warned you. They are old, old things. The original denizens of this world. I don’t think they like us very much, for over-running their world and pushing them down into the cracks below.”

“When you say us—you mean— all the humanish creatures—”

“Yes.”

“The fairies too? I thought they were older—”

“They are older, but not as old as what resides down there. The fairies-- their ancestors came from the same places our ancestors did. The creatures of the depths-- not so much. I have never been able to figure out where they originated from. Perhaps the place itself has winked out of existence. Maybe that is why they are so angry. You see, even for me, there are still mysteries.”

"No doubt." Belle floated on in silence, enjoying the cool of the night, the relief at the lack of water pressing in all around her.

“Tell me a story,” she said to the Speaker in Darkness.
It chuckled fondly, its touch in her mind like a fatherly pat on the head.
“What shall I tell you a story about my child?” it answered in the same words her father did long ago. She shivered, but continued.
“Tell me about where you came from, who first called you Speaker in Darkness. How did we get here?”

“I believe you swam.”

“No. You know what I mean. Us. The humans, the fairies. How did this all begin, this hatred? So much of it still doesn't make sense to me.”

“There have been waves of humans who have come here over the years. Traversed the bridge between worlds. Our ancestors were only the latest of hundreds of waves, thousands perhaps. The largest one. Something would align between worlds, at times, like a fold in a piece of cloth, connecting two far away worlds, a stickiness between dimensions like a button in a buttonhole holding together the folds of a piece of cloth-- a narrow bridge would appear for a few hours, days or even months sometimes and creatures could pass between worlds.”

“I thought those were only legends.”

“No, it happened with some regularity for a thousands of years that I know of and probably thousands and thousands of years before that. No one wrote it down back then, is all. ”

“Where is this bridge? If it is real why have you never taken me there?”

“It’s lost, like so much else.”

“How?”

“When people came over—” Speaker began before starting again. “This world changes people, but the changes happen slowly, over many generations. You can tell what groups have been here the longest because they’ve changed the most. Magic starts to creep in and transform a creature. The little magics you humans possess that you aren’t even aware of— your ancestors who came over the bridge, they didn’t even have those. They came from a land without magic. And the fairies, forgetting their own origins thought the recent human arrivals were not a threat because of it.”

“I don’t think the others who were here for so long realized what humans could do until it was too late. They were so use to being rulers of this world, for every other creature to grovel at their feet and bend to their will. Plus the fact that humans——we’re a deceptive species. We look so weak and vulnerable on the outside especially as babies, but we are cunning on the inside and work together. One human on its own is no match for a dragon or any other fearsome beast in this world… but where there is one human, there are bound to be many. When we use our minds and conspire together we can accomplish great and terrible things.

Also, unlike other denizens of this world, humans did not to wait for time to change us naturally with gradual adaptations over generations to give us the magic we needed to be masters of this world. Building upon knowledge gathered at great cost and passed down from one generation to another through oral legends and written down books, we gathered a compendium of artificial tricks and spells to mimic what other creatures possessed naturally in abundance and learned how to take the magic by force for ourselves.

It was something that hadn’t occurred in this world before. Something the fairies and other human-derived creatures of this world had never thought to counter, perhaps because in the world they left writing and speech had not developed to the same extent.

They barely had a chance to blink at this unexpected turn of events, human communication systems for spreading knowledge worked so quickly a hundred years or a little more and the knowledge of how to access magic through artificial means—through the killing and consumption of magical plants and animals—or through draining life and emotion out of them, had spread through the human society like wildfire.

Before our ancestors could figure out how to effectively manage the ecology of this world and keep it in balance, the plants and animals we humans were consuming for their magical properties began to grow scarce as the humans grew more rapacious for magic. Whoever could gather the most magic to them after all, could also gather the most power. Humans consumed so much of the magical wildlife that they wiped many of them out. Fish mermaids ate and the plants fairies had been tending for generations, gone in a blink into potions brewed in witches’ cauldrons and wizards' hats. The Naga in the forests, who would occasionally feast on humans were hunted down and wiped out entirely, despite the fact that once upon a time, these snake-like beings had been human too.

The fairies, unlike the Naga and the mermaids, chose not to slink away and hide in the deep forests and oceans when their preferred food sources went scarce. After fighting amongst their clans, tree against tree for generations they found an enemy larger than themselves. They formed a fairy alliance for the sole purpose of cleansing this world of humans forever.”

“They might have done better talking to them or trying to teach them—” suggested Belle, “explain why the humans needed to stop consuming everything in sight to use for dark magic.”

“Maybe, or maybe human society had become too dependant on magic to revert back to learning to let magic just be by that point. By then there were cities with massive populations who relied on the power of magic to be fed. If they had to go back to what existed before, half of humanity would have starved. .”

“Though there were slightly more humans than fairies by this time, they reproduced differently. The fairies, for all their delicate appearance were the hardier creatures, much longer lived, with fewer births per family. They were nauturally magical at birth and spent many years gestating. The humans lived short lifespans in comparison and bred frequently with shorter times from conception to birth. For a human, perfecting ones’ knowledge of magic required years of study. Even at the most basic level, at least some rudimentary literacy and number knowledge was required. Despite the abundance of humans, skilled sorcerers were rare. The fairies had the upper hand in every fight until the humans found a way to turn the tide.

After hundreds of years of fighting, humanity in this world was close to extinction at the hands of the fairies. They gave no quarter and showed no mercy, determined to wipe out every last human man woman and child.

And then a small group of humans discovered the location of a bridge before the fairies did.

And the humans learned how to widened it.

Not only did the bridge to the World Without Magic fall into their hands, but there was one among them who had learned a clever trick. This magician had figured out a way to lure humans from the World without Magic to the bridge to our side. Now it was not just a handful of people coming into our world by accident who arrived. This magician could actively pull them in. just with the sound of a human voice. This incredible sorcerer learned the magic of vocal projection beyond this dimension, of placing an image in another person’s mind on the other side—like a hook in a desperate person’s soul to draw them to the bridge to this world. This magician could tempt them in the dark with a voice that could talk in whatever language they spoke and lure them with the temptation of their greatest desire and promises of a better world into the hole. That’s why they called me the Speaker in Darkness. I was the one who urged them on through the dark tunnel that connected our worlds and told them not to look back. I spoke to them and comforted them in the darkness and I brought them, through the power of nothing more than my voice-- to this very land.”

“Wait-- You did that?”

“A trivial matter, no?”

“But that shouldn't possible-- to cross into another dimension with just your voice? ”

“Not possible anymore perhaps, but once upon a time…”

“Stop it. How could you access that kind of power? To communicate with another world surely must have cost a great deal. What exists in this world with magic enough to feed something like that? Surely an entire field of dewfligons in full season would not have sufficed. In fact I cannot think of anything in existence that would balance that equation. What gave you the fuel?"

“Something that no longer exists,” the Speaker in Darkness teased a white after-image forming in Belle's mind of a smile like a sliver of a moon on its side.

The realization dawned on her then. “A dragon.”

“Yes.”

“They are extinct.”

“She was the last dragon queen and I took every egg in her belly.”

“Goodness, even you couldn’t have been that hungry for power.”

“She’d been a captive of the fairies for hundreds of years. They bled her for magic for centuries. I offered her her freedom, but she only wanted revenge against the fairies who'd tricked her and held her as a slave. I tried to dissuade her but…”

Belle wondered if the Speaker really tried to stop the dragon queen or if it had actually urged her on. It lied too well for her to tell.

“The fairies dealt her a fatal blow,” it continued. “I took all her power before she could die." "I'm sure out of the goodness of your heart with no plan ahead of time, eh?" " Her revenge would have been incomplete if it had been allowed to go to waste. It was what she wanted me to do.”

Belle felt something inside her turnover and go queasy. Somewhere within the Speaker in Darkness was licking its lips in memory.

“The eggs—were unfertilized, yes, but full of untapped potential energy. They were put to good use, rest assured.”

“Oh, of that I have no doubt.”

“I made that narrow bridge wide, wider than it had ever been before and new soldiers, humans with weapons never seen in these lands streamed over to our side lured by the promise of freedom and land if they would help us fight against the fairies. Humans in an endless, endless number to overrun the ranks of the enemy.”

“So we won and the fairies were reduced to what they are today?”

“No, it didn’t end as neatly as all that,” said the Speaker in Darkness and she thought she could hear a note of regret in its tone. “All I wanted, truthfully, was for them to stop hunting us, stop hurting us and killing us, stop looking at us as if we were lesser creatures that didn’t deserve to live. I thought once the fighting was done maybe we could have a chance to live side by side in peace as we'd once done and learn from each other. Sadly, not everyone on my side felt the same way."

"We used anyone we could get our hands on for soldiers. Some of our people were… less than scrupulous in their morals.”

“I’ll bet,” said Belle, uncomfortably reminded of a certain soldier in particular and what he had done.

“Our warriors found the hometrees of the fairies. Had they any education or wider experience of the world, any knowledge of fairy-kind at all they would have realized what the trees really were and who lived there. They were never just houses or places to store a nest. But perhaps I give them too much credit. Perhaps they knew that the males who could not fly away and the children who hadn’t grown their full wings yet and the fairy elders in the process of returning to the tree were all there, stuck in the hometrees along with all the knowledge of generations upon generations of fairy sages.

Regardless, all it took was a few stupid, uneducated fools to set the whole grove alight. The smell of the fairy wood as it burned— nothing smells like that-- I think I tried to stop it but I was too far away—by the time I got there too much had already been destroyed— the magic in such ancient things is too combustable-- tree by tree kept going up like exploding torches—all that wonderful, powerful magic, all that wisdom and learning stored so carefully in layers upon layers of bark year after year. All of it gone in an instant of destruction.

The Speaker in Darkness paused. Even Belle could tell that it was appalled—if not at the destruction of life, at least at the destruction of so much knowledge that it could have gained—at the hideous triumph of ignorance and waste by people too stupid to understand the value of what they had thrown away.

“I took what I could of what was left. No use letting it fall into the wrong hands, of course.”

“Of course,” echoed Belle. She wasn’t sure if she really believed the Speaker in Darkness. Perhaps it lied. Perhaps it no longer rightly remembered. Perhaps it was all just a story it had told itself so many times over the years it had created images to accompany it that seemed like memories. After its transfer between hosts for so long it was hard to know what grains of truth remained.

Certainly, the Speaker seemed to believe what it said to her in the moment and if it was a lie, it was one she thought the Speaker did not tell intentionally. Perhaps the truth was just too painful it, even after all these years.

Chapter Text

“But there are still fairies,” pronounced Belle, “so the destruction was not complete.”

“Yes some trees did not burn completely right away, others— there was enough time for at least some sparrowmin and their babies to climb down the trunks and escape.

They had their own technologies; gliders they used to fly from tree to tree for trade with other trees and that sort of thing. Some escaped on those, while others were close enough to the bottom that when the fire started they could leap to safety and survive. As you’ve seen, with your half-sparrowman, while deceptively frail-looking, they can be quite hardy creatures and quite hard to kill.

The fairies of the female persuasion, of course could fly to safety and they did where they were not caught unawares. Burning the trees was a mistake for that reason too.

Our generals counselled that the fairies kept their weapons in the trees, but I knew that overly optimistic conclusion was ridiculous. Anyone who knows anything about fairies knows you can’t defeat them by taking away their puny weapons, such as they are— the Fairies– they are their main weapons.

It’s not like a human where you take away a wizard’s staff or magic talisman and she becomes momentarily as powerless as an other mortal until she can make another. Take away a fairy’s wand and you just make her mad. And the fairies, they were mad, justifiably so. What happened to the males and infants who leapt to safety– some were badly injured. We took them to our hospitals and healed them where we could, the innocent noncombatants— or rather some of us did. Other injured fair-folk who met less scrupulous human warriors were not so lucky.”

Speaker’s mind skittered away as Belle tried to probe it further. There were flashes of images, but they were hard for her to read and interpret. It was rare for the Speaker in Darkness to communicate in this way, with pictures, rather than words in her mind, spoken with such perfect elocution. In pictures its mind appeared jumbled and unsure. Images of memories were hard for it to control. A sound was easy to adapt to give it the proper spin Speaker wished. Images could not be massaged in quite the same way.

“We were at war for our very existence,” Speaker emphasized, “and they had valuable knowledge. The magic contained in the sinews of even a single full grown sparrowmin is– well you’ve seen what even a haifu possesses, so you can well image it was quite the temptation to human magicians in desperate need of magical energy. For some that was a temptation too strong to be dismissed so easily.”

“I’ll bet,” said Belle laconically, wondering if Speaker spoke of one magic user in particular.

“And then there was all that could be discovered about physiology by studying them,” the Speaker in Darkness continued as if this was perfectly self-explanatory.

In retrospect perhaps it was a mistake for our generals to deal with them as we did.

Incensed the fairies demanded release of their males and children. We refused. They took human hostages then, the children of powerful dukes, clerics, kings and battle commanders, stolen from our highest temples of learning which we’d assumed were safe.

By then they had retreated to a place we could not follow. They re-discovered another bridge, one that had been long neglected, a bridge to a pocket dimension, small in circumference, but hard to reach, only accessible by experts in using size magic.

Across this bridge in the pocket dimension they started to grove the New Grove of hometrees from seeds and cuttings of the old, speeding the growth along with their native plant magics. The bridge to this place is hidden to humans even now and in those long ago days, size magics were only known to fairies. Even if we had known how to get there, we would not have been able to enter.

They sent us their demands. We were to meet by the gate to the bridge of the World without Magic. By then the Bridge to the World without magic had become the epicentre of much fighting. I told the generals, the King’s Counsel all of them, that this was a terrible idea. That bridge to the other world was too crucial to the war effort to invite them into, but the fools only wanted their children back. They were arrogant and believed the fairies were completely vanquished and could no longer harm them.

At first all went well. The injured hostages were swapped and given to healers experienced in their species particular ailments. The injured children went to our human doctors and the injured fair-folk were given to their healers to be spirited away to their new home in the pocket dimension.

Then an enchanted parchment, a binding agreement was drawn up.

For our side the humans, to their eternal shame agreed to silence me; Me, their only Speaker in the Darkness. They took some of the magic out of my voice, so I could no longer lure any more humans without magic through the gate to our world.

The Bridge was all the Fairies requested and that, not even for them to use. We all agreed that the passageway would be blocked from now on. No more humans would be permitted to arrive in this world. The Fairies would guard the bridge to see to it that we humans kept our word. All humans were also forever forbidden from the pocket dimension if they should ever find under pain of death.

This we agreed to.

What did you get in exchange?

In exchange we took all the lands and oceans of this world as the dominion of humanity. No fairy could evict us from this land we’d tilled and bleed and worked for ever again. Everything here would be ours. The Fairies rights to have a presence in this world, the only thing they demanded as non-negotioable was the right to harvest the fields of flowers and magical plants that formed the staple of their diet freely in our world without being molested or harassed. With the setting of the sun, no human would ever be allowed to kill one of their number or destory a home tree and no fairy would ever again be allowed to murder a human or banish us from the lands of our forebearers. For our part we thought we got the best of the deal.

All the land of this world would be ours and the fairies would give us free reign and dominion. No fairy would killl or injure a human ever again after this day. Our leaders, eager to be done with this costly war and its unpopular conscription rules on the common folk, could see no flaw in the reasoning. The document was signed with binding spells that allowed no person; fairy or human to break it under penalty of instant death.

Chapter Text

XXX
Only when it was done and the humans were congratulating each other on their new land acquisition, did the fairies spring their trap. They exploded in a mutual act of spontaneous magical combustion, destroying the diplomats, leaders, non-injured hostages of both sides, themselves and the gate all in one massive release of retaliatory magic.

The only witnesses to survive were the injured hostages receiving treatment at the medical tents outside the ring of the blast and the doctors and healers tending to them.

Everything else was gone— the bridge to the other world, the land without magic was obliterated. One second it was a sturdy creation made of stone and in the next, a black smudge on the Earth.

The fairies who had come to the negotiation table, the humans who had signed in good faith and sent their emissaries with the contract on their way, had been decimated completed. There was nothing left but charred remains— bones and branches, decorated in scraps of torn clothing, body parts littering farmer’s fields, trenches and former battlegrounds for miles around.

The fairies had taken their retaliation with one hand and their peace with the other and the humans hadn’t even seen it coming. The document was signed and delivered by flinders pigeons to the human and fairy leaders before the destruction of the gate occurred. It was spelled into unbreakable magical law before any other news could reach them that day so that when the sun set on that day, the contract was sealed.

The humans couldn’t enact any revenge on the fairies for what they had done. The spell on the document specified that they couldn’t kill or even hurt a single member of the fair folk directly or even prevent them from harvesting their flowers once the sun set on that first day. And it was the next day already by the time riders from the medical camp straggled into the first human towns with their devastating news.

From that point on the Fairies made themselves scarce around the human inhabited lands. Legends surrounding them and their powers grew without real experience to provide a corrective counterpoint to many humans’ fanciful and horrific imaginings.

Meanwhile men who once longed to be free of fairy tyranny now discovered they could oppress their fellow human beings just as well. People who grew powerful in magic and status, who’d rare amassed fairy goods, wealth and weapons during the wars now sensed the power vacuum at the top of the heirarchy and did their best to fill it. Within a few generations they had cemented their positions as the new elite and filled their people’s minds with their own legends to justify their rule.

I was stupid not to anticipate such a development. I had thought if we got rid of the fairies, justice and fairness would prevail. I had believed that it was the fairies who corrupted everything, who made humans cruel through doing their wicked bidding, but I was wrong. Most humans are kind, but some take to cruelty with a disturbing enthusiasm. I suppose it makes sense. We come from the same origin as the fairies do. If there was cruelty in them, than there must be the same in us too. I just didn’t want to see it or believe it wasn’t fairies who put it there. I wanted a world built by humans for humans to prize human flourishing, art, innovation, knowledge and peace. But there were always those who wanted more than the rest, who used the systems set in place to take care of everyone, to cheat and take more than their share. People, like fairies, are selfish creatures, they just have different ways of showing it.

When humans took over they just put the same systems in place that the fairies had, only with humans in positions formerly held by fairies— kings, princes, serfs, commoners and nobleborn— I understood then, that if it was the same system how could it yield a different result? What difference does it make if a tree is a pear tree or an apple one— they both work the same way and give us nearly interchangeable fruit. We just traded fairy tyrants for human ones, and watched the nobles congratulate themselves every year on armistice day for a job well done. But for the common people nothing really changed.”

“And for you? What changed for you?”

“Everything. I was there when they exploded the bridge, right in the epicentre of it all. I could not escape the blast. Most of me died— the physical part of me, anyway. The other part was still over on the other side of the bridge trying to bring as many human soldiers through before the treaty closed the gate to us forever.”

“Nice.”

“It’s what their side would’ve done if they could have. In war you can’t leave any options behind on the table or the enemy is sure to take them. There is no margin for error. Other enemies will figure out in time, the operation of the weapons you were too squeamish and moral to use in the moment. In war you must act now, and survive to apologize later.”

“Duly noted.”

When the explosion happened the lungs, guts, heart and hair of me that was in this world died in ash and flame. But the part of me still in the other world was just pulled back hard into this one. It was a shock to discover my corporeal existence ended so abruptly. The nonphysical part that survived somehow, coalesced into a mist, a diaphanous vaporous sort of form like a poltergeist. I had the power of the dragon and all her children that I had consumed to sustain me— lifespans of thousands of humans and fairies put together and magic beyond what anything human shaped had access to— but I soon found I had no living body to return to— just bones and ash and burnt remains.

All I had was my voice, the voice of a Speaker in Darkness. Now it was very weak and whispery without a body to constantly absorb power and funnel it towards projecting my voice. Now I could touch nothing and nothing could touch me. It is a cruelty for a human who once revelled in the sensual and the sensational to be deprived in this way. It was maddening sometimes. I might have ended it there, but I couldn’t exactly die in the form I now possessed. Neither could I influence the world as I had once done even from a distance. It was frustrating, especially those first few years, but in time I learned to use what was left to me by my unusual circumstances.

My body was dust, but my mind lived on, like a cloud of loosely gathered energy that no one could perceive. A cloud without a body or any sensation that came with it.

It was a horrible existence without feeling anything, disconnected from everything that made life worthwhile. I longed to feel anything after a while, joy, sex, even pain would have been welcome at that point. I welcomed death but could not die.

I hovered by the black scorch mark where my corpse had once been for a long long time trying to merge with it again, then when that failed, let the wind carry me through the mountains to other places and other lands.

Whatever other name or identity I had once possessed I had lost my memory of most of those personal things when my human brain exploded in fairy dust. In my future memories I would always be the Speaker in Darkness full time now.

A voice that could touch no one and no one could touch me. A breath on the wind was all I was. I howled in my loneliness and grief, my ache for all the things I missed that I couldn’t really remember, the specifics that were gone. In my shorn soul I could sense the holes that had once been occupied by something, could see the missing shapes left by loved ones and a a job I adored, but I couldn’t recall enough to fill them.

Can you miss having something you don’t remember possessing?

Yes you can. You have senses other than those of touch smell and taste that remember in ways your conscious mind can’t. You have senses that refuse to let go of what they think you deserve to still have.

The loneliness, the boredom, the sorrow and insanity the frustration of seeing my people make the same dumb mistakes the fairies had once made, underestimating and mistreating the common folk who didn’t know magic, lording it over them, stealing the labour of their hands and the food from their tables. Saying one type of human was above another by birth just as the fairies had once placed themselves above us by dint of their wings and magics. It was beyond belief. The human tyrants who placed themselves above other humans turned their brethren into slaves with no compunction for our common shared history, no memory of what had been sacrificed to gain the land they forced the slaves to toil under and still I had no voice, no ability to say or do anything to change my people’s lot, to budge the system on iota. It was torture for me to see and turned me bitter with despair. Everything I had worked towards, the reasons I had sacrificed my body and life— the cause I had died for—thrown away as if they were nothing by this arrogant new breed of human overlords whose memories of the past lasted no longer than that of goldfish.

Chapter Text

One day right before a particularly unnecessary execution of an indentured farmer who’d done nothing more terrible than poach a fat deer from some footling king’s private forest to feed his starving family-- something happened. I grew so angry and sick of this sort of thing happening again and again with no one realizing, no one recognizing themselves in the mirror that their leaders were just as bad as the fairies now and that they’d betrayed everything their elders like myself had once stood for— that they made statues in my former likeness along with that of my compatriots while all the while behaving even worse than the tyrants I’d helped topple, showing they understood nothing of what I had really stood for— I grabbed the executioner by the lapels of his coat and screamed in his face and somehow— that anger, that energy condensed into something powerful enough to enter his body— to exist in his corpreal form at the same time he did and to remain housed in there.

The elation I experienced was unbelievable. I could smell and feel and taste again. And I could Speak, not only in whispers in the dark, but out loud, in the light, in front of this crowd.

I spoke about our fight to free humanity and unneccassary war and subjugation of the common people and how this king had perverted our message and turned into what we hated. Had our sacrifice meant nothing in the end? just another show to convince the rubes in the provinces that the bigwigs were on their side while they themselves covertly just transfer the fairies ownership of human serfs and slaves from fairy hands to their own.

All eyes turned to me after this sudden, unexpected address to the crowd. I grabbed the ax with his hands and felt the power in a large, sweaty, well muscled body for the first time in years. With sharp human eyes I could see the light of the morning glint on the silver blade of the ax and feel the whorls of the wood and its smoothened grain under my calloused fingertips.

On the blocks was the scrawny neck of the trembling farmer. In the stands was the king who’d sentenced him to die.

Guess which one I used the ax on?

And not just my ax. It was pleasant to realize that when I took on a host I could still access much of my magic and dragon-fed powers. It leant my skin a scaled sheen and my breath the searing properties of fire necessary to burn the nobles and their kin to the ground like the fair folk they’d replaced. I gave all their wealth and the run of the forest to the common people to hunt in as they willed and went on my merry way.

I had much to do to make up for lost time and an entire world to set right. It was a good thing mortality was no longer an issue.

I learned with practice that I could move from one human body to the next like a monkey could swing from branch to branch. Some hosts were more accommodating to my magic than others. Some could even, with my help of course, learn new magics. But all disappointed me in the end. Their dreams were small, these farmers and fishermen I had to make do with. They couldn’t read and only had access to the things they heard and many of those were false. They lived and died in the villages they had been born in.”

”There is poetry and beauty in that surely,” said Belle.

”Of course,” said the Speaker in Darkness. “But poetry wasn’t what I needed. I needed folk receptive to change and eager for knowledge. In time I learned I could pick my hosts and be selective about who I bonded to. I could hunt down the minds of the world’s most learned people, those adept at the study of magic who knew things even I had never learned and had access to new magical devices and artificial creations. And once their magic and knowledge were married to my own we could become more powerful together than we ever could be separately.”

“What about me?” asked Belle. “You had no host when I found you. You didn’t switch from someone to me because I had a better brain or whatever. You were locked up, de-powered. However did that happen? You refused to tell me at the time.”

”I was a little cautious at the time. You were an unknown factor.”

”And now?”

”I’ll bite.”

“You were locked behind a magical wall bespelled with 23 locks ensorcelled with ancient runes in the dungeon beneath the Duke’s castle. Behind the wall once we got through was a perfectly smooth black box with no lock, impervious to all attempts to open it that could only be accessed with an acid formed from an unusual chemical secreted by the rare baobab trees of the Cursed Isle that fairies use to make their wands. And once we opened the box there was just a simple knife, barely sharp enough to cut butter with strange words upon the hilt it took months to translate.”

”I could change the letters around at will.”

“I used to wonder.”

“Yet I still managed to speak to your father, to whisper in his ear the way to free me, even if he was not conscious of it. I could speak in his dreams only, but still I got through. He was supposed to avenge your dishonour by taking me on, but he was murdered before he could reach me. That was when you found me, your whole soul desperately howling for revenge. I was happy to oblige.”

“You could have still chosen Gaston.”

“My dear, I may not remember much of what I was as a human, but I know I was the Speaker in Darkness. I could convince a human from the world without magic to go through the darkest tunnel full of all that terrifies them with the promise of a world to come of beauty and power. I could convince people to fight a war against nearly immortal fairies with the strength of my logic, my appeals to their minds and my rhetorical skills alone.

Do you think I ever, ever would dishonour myself in my previous guise to try to take a lover by force? Please. You think I would stoop so low as a brute animal who must slake his hunger to rut by taking it by force? You do me a great disservice.

There was no age at which I could not convince a human of any gender or sexual persuasion— without the use of magic I might add— into joining carnal pleasure with me. And trust me, I tried my utmost to make sure they enjoyed themselves and came back for more. The Speaker in Darkness knows how to flatter shallow humans and bring them joy in all they seek— how else do you think I got my name to begin with? Why speak in darkness if not to provide cover for the designs of romance?

Oh, um. Too much information.

Well you did ask. Please know I would never deign to share a corporal form with a rapist. I would rather possess the lowest rat in the sewer.”

“Good to know.”

“Ah but you still harbour a little anger at me for my deception over the matter of your father. I can taste it, your anger at the lie.”

“So?”

“It is unjust. You may not acknowledge it openly, but you know you only deceived yourself. You had much theoretical and historical knowledge of the ways of magic even then. You always knew death is forever. Isn’t that what the fortune teller told you about your mother when you were a child?”

“Yes, but she didn’t have real magic. She was just a charlatan. I thought perhaps you might be governed by different rules.”

“I’m afraid we are all governed by the same rules my dear, king and commoner, rat and roustabout, fairy and fox. All living things grow, breath, eat, try to make babies if they can and die. Magic can delay the inevitable of course, but not prevent it completely.”

”But you— I thought if anyone could, you could do it. You who break the rules by just existing!”

“But do I really break the rules? I exist the way a stone does. I don’t breath, reproduce or grow. I hunger for magic constantly and consume it, but it doesn’t ever really fill me, not the way a fine meal could fill a starving belly.”

”Have you ever done it though? Brought a person back to life? Have you ever tried?”

”I think in my previous incarnation I did, but magic can only change what is living in one form into another, not revive what is already dead no matter how much we wish it so. I may have promised that I could make your father live again, but you knew it was a lie the moment I wishpered it in your ear. You, who had read countless books in many languages on the history of magic and nature before I ever darkenened the corners of your mind, knew such an event had never been recorded by a reputable source or with a reproducible method. Don’t tell me you ever actually believed me. You just wanted revenge on the man who defiled you and murdered your father.”

But the Speaker in Darkness was wrong about this. She had believed despite all her wisdom and studies of ancient texts, in the moment her father fell she lost all logic, all notion of reality. All that was left was desperation and disbelief. After what had just happened to her it was too much to expect her to continue going on without her father, to live in a world where this could happen to her and her father could be murdered without a thought as well— as if he was unimportant, just a thing in Gaston’s way, not even a person. if she didn’t have her father in her life too, it was too much— because he couldn’t be dead— not like that— she had to fix it back to the way it was to fix reality itself.

“Ah— “ the Speaker tasted the edge of that. “I forget sometimes what it is to have attachments that are that strong. I admit I don’t remember my human family. I suppose my feelings were never as intense as those. To truly love someone like that— you have to give up some of you control, some of your possession over yourself— I don’t think I ever could— be truly vulnerable like that. It wasn’t in my nature, even as a human I think, not even as a child, but then these things are so hard to remember correctly.

Perhaps dragons were wise not to keep such attachments to those of their own species, event he sires of their broods. It is the only way to weild power and know you will never be betrayed.”

A tear slid down Belle’s dragon scaled cheek. “Says you. But how do you know? Have you ever tried to be another way? Have you ever really been able to be anything other than the cold heart that you are? Have you ever cared for anyone as much as you care for yourself? Have you ever wanted to?”

The Speaker in Darkness for once was left with nothing to say in response.

In the water below them it could feel, with Belle’s unerring senses, the rising of a mother whale with a calf, moving up into the upper regions of the ocean so they could sleep, blow holes at the top of the water, bodies below.

They slept with one part of their brain half awake, alternating between sides, so they could respond if there was a threat. They literally always slept with one eye open, never giving way completely to unconsciousness and dream the way humans did. Dragons, the Speaker remembered, slept the same way.

“Maybe logical, rational me did know his death was forever, but emotional, parent-bonded me believed you when you said you could revive him if I took on your power. Emotional me needed to believe it was possible. I would have done anything even for just a chance to make it work.”

“Yes, I think I understand.”

“And I understand why you lied to me. I’ve long since forgiven you. You were trapped and needed to be free, to sense again, take part in the world again. You were starving without sensation. I know what it is like to be trapped and willing to do anything to break the chains that hold you down. But still, I’ve always secretly wished what you promised me could have been true. Part of this thing with Rumple, why I’m so scared— I know he isn’t like me— even being half-fairy isn’t enough. He could be hurt— be hurt because of me— killed because of me— just like my father. And there’s more risk now that I am La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Now that you are free, the fairies will never stop hunting you down. Not without reason I might add. They are concentrated magic. I suspect if you knew a way to get there you’d find the Hometrees and consume all of them for their magic if you thought you could do so without being trapped again. This will only end with either your destruction or theirs and your destruction is my destruction as well.”

“I do not dispute it.”

Belle sighed. She knew the answer but had been hoping for something different. “Then anyone who helps us or who they think is valuable to us, will be considered by them to be fair game.”

“Yes.”

“Therefore, as long as we are around him, Rumple is doubly vulnerable. Not just from the fairies who would use him to lure us into a trap, but you want to attack him and drain his power.”

“These appetites they are not something I have control over. The only way any of this will change is if I can have a human body and still retain my magical protection. Then you may love Rumple to your hearts’ content and the fairies and I can continue our feud without involving you and yours. We need more magic so we can separate us and I’ll go on my merry way.”

”How can I store up any excess power when you are constantly sucking any magical object or creature I locate for us dry?”

”I am constantly starving for magic, it is my curse.”

”Well, put a cork in it once in a while and focus on the big picture.”

”Find me a source of magic large enough to fill me up and put some aside to create a body I can inhabit and still keep my power intact.”

“That is what I’ve been trying to do.”

“Work harder then.”

Belle, in human form now walked up to the beach flapping aside a wet fold of her dress in irritation, scattering tiny pebbles in an arc across the sand. She was looking for a way, any way in to get herself free from this perdicament.

“Tell me another story. When I found you, you were trapped under the Duke’s castle. How did such an unlikely thing happen? You supposedly have power beyond imagination. How could mere humans do such a thing to you?”

“They had help.”

“Fairies?”

”Fairies, yes I understood the fairies, duplicitious as always. It was the Humans who betrayed me that shattered my faith. I never though a human would ally with a fairy against me.”

“Well, you did kind of overthrow their nobles and cut them down with an executioners’ ax. And it struck me that that’s not the only time you did something like that. Advocating for revolution’s bound to bring a person enemies.”

“They should have been able to see that the unrest would only have been temporary. For the long term good of their people and their society they should have welcomed changes I was trying to bring, but they called me a sorcerer, a warlock, an evil wizard and painted me as some kind of villain going about willy nilly killing people. They made it seem like I was taking the power for myself. They didn’t understand democracy, that you had to educate the people, show them the tools they could use to help themselves and build a society that included everyone.

They consulted with fairies who were only to happy to share some of the discoveries and weapons they had developed in the hundreds of years since they last fought me, along with their insights into my true nature. The fairies were happy to offer their expertise in this regard to the human nobility so eager to regain their control of their populace. The fairies after all, have always supported a strong monarchy. I haven’t met one hive not ruled by a queen. They believe this to be the holy order of all things and anything else a perversion. A democracy would surely be an abomination in their eyes of the natural order.

They managed to kill my host through poison and separated and caged me through spells and enchantments developed solely for my capture. The modern fairies had decided that I was impossible for them to kill. They contented themselves with rendering me impotent; depriving me of a host or listeners for my speech would destroy my power and influence as much as killing me would. It wouldn’t matter if I continued to exist then. My control of human and fairy events and peoples would be at an end. It didn’t matter if I theoretically still survived.

For hundreds of years I lay fallow, bared in my cage for communicating or inhabiting with anything more than a mouse or a cockroach. It was your father and you who first figured out what my prison was and how to unlock it through knowledge of ancient languages long since dead to most humans.

Of course they were only supposed to be working on freeing me so I could help the Duke win some tedious war against another group of tedious ogres. They and even you didn’t fully understand that my power required the possession of another person. They thought it was just some power staff they could take up and wield and make do whatever they wished it to do. They were stupid. Dark magic always come with a price. And my magic especially is the magic of transformation, the magic of burning away the old world, and the old ways.

They should have paid attention to your father’s warnings.

<

<

Chapter Text

Rumple hovered uncertainly on the threshold to the now unlocked room in the West Wing and sneezed.

There were no right angles it seemed in this space. The walls curved around in an undulating way that looked almost organic, like a seaside cave. From above he thought the room would have looked like a long oval, slightly pinched at the middle.

Walking across the black and white checkered floor he left marks in the fine layer of dust that coated everything. It would be nearly impossible to disguise just who had trespassed now, he thought, if she came back and was angry.

Flames in the many tiered chandelier that hung from the ceiling sprung into life and filled the room with a pleasant glow. Thousands of flames danced around the high walls, reflected by mirrors. So many mirrors. Some tiny as his hands and others twice as tall as he was and five times as broad. Some were hung on the walls facing outwards. Others were stacked in row upon row of racks like huge dishes waiting to be dried. Frames stuck out here and there, molded from a variety of substances from simple bits of scavenged driftwood to ornately carved jeweled gold and silver. Others were covered entirely by dropcloths or wreathed in cobwebs. Even the ceiling was covered in a patchwork of mirrors. Some showed a blue sky with puffs of cottony clouds, others beds of lovers seen from above, naked and writhing in white sheets. Rumple blushed and turned to look down at his feet.

The sight of his new boots cheered him somewhat. Then he remembered the young woman at the party and how he’d disappointed her and felt his heart sink once again.

He had to get Belle to come back. Maybe there was something here he could use to summon her. And if not to summon her at least to better understand just why she’d left.

But Rumple was intimidated and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of mirrors. He’d imagined it would be a single large looking glass that would be obvious to operate. But how would he find the memory glass in all this chaos? Or were they all memory glasses? What did a mirror made of memory glass even look like to begin with? Did Belle really want him looking at her memories to begin with? When he thought about it, this did seem suspiciously unlike her. She was generally quite a private person (sorceress? Dragoness? Deity?) who seemed shy to talk about her private life or past from before she came to inhabit the castle.

Lumos smiled gently down at Rumple from the main candle of the chandelier and the friendly face of Coggs appeared in the wide grandfather clock squatting on the far side of the room, as Rumple expressed his misgivings.

“M-m-maybe I shouldn’t be here.”

“Mistress must have left it unlocked for you, that’s the only possibility. Maybe there is something here she wants you to see, but was too shy to show you herself,” said Lumos.

Rumple frowned at that. He couldn’t really imagine anyone calling Belle shy or timid, not the way he was. She didn’t jump at loud noises or sudden motions the way he did after his years in the slave caravan and the army. She might be stand-offish and reserved around people she didn’t know, but he’d never thought that it was because she was anxious. The very thought seemed ridiculous. How could she be afraid, when she had all the power in the world? It wasn’t like anyone could hurt her.

The thought of seeing her, even if she was angry gave him a tiny surge of happiness and confidence to delve deeper into the room. He missed her more than he realized he could miss another human being as an adult, missed her the same way he missed his aunties when he was on the road with his father. Distantly, he remembered how he’d cry at night missing the way they used to tuck him in and tell him stories before bed or sing him songs. His father had made fun and called him a baby, mimicking his cries in an exaggerated mocking way. That horrible, jeering tone in his voice was one Rumple recognized again years later in one of overseers who used to kick his stool away when he sat at the spinning wheel and play keep away with it as Rumple scrambled on his knees to get it back from him.

“I don’t know what she wants me to find here,” Rumple confessed. “It’s so confusing.”

He stared at the mirrors on the walls. They weren’t normal mirrors at all. Only half of actually contained his own reflection and of those that did, only a tiny percentage showed him as he really was.

He’d seen magical fun house mirrors as a boy when his father had been attached to a circus for a time—mirrors that made your reflection look squished short and fat or spindly and bendy like a cooked noodle. Here he saw his reflection in mirrors that showed him as a little boy. In another he walked by a fox with three legs who stopped to turn its head as he passed. One showed him at the age he was now, but dressed in bizarre clothes with spindly towers and a gray sky behind him. In another he was old, with a long beard and wispy white hair. There were other people who appeared in the reflections, other than himself, a few of which seemed to repeat—an elderly balding man with a walrus mustache tinkering away at bits of metal—a soldier with a broad chest, black hair and a cruel and stupid smile—a woman in a shawl covered in needlework birds.

Lumos flared brightly against a series of racks holding mirrors on one wall. Rumple walked over to the wooden apparatus and saw upon closer inspection that each slot in the rack had its own pasted on label written in Belle’s strong, flowing hand.

Some of the pen marks were pale brown and faded with age, while others were strong black and nearly fresh.

He trailed his finger over the labels, reading the first clearly legible one nearby:

-Marie Bellefleur Frontenac, Caravan outside Mount Conicule, age 3, 9, 16.

He looked at the next one:

-Marie Bellefleur Frontenac, Mayday and Maypoles, age 4, 8, 12, 14

What an odd way of categorizing things.

He didn’t know who Marie Bellefleur Frontenac was exactly but her name seemed close enough to Belle that he suspected he knew her identity.

He pulled out the mirror in the rack above the maypole label. It was one of the smaller ones and easy enough for him to extract with one hand.

In the glass he watched a flock of little girls in brightly coloured peasant dresses from some land and time period he’d never seen dancing around a tall pole in a meadow. He could see a small village in the distance above the crest of a rolling green hill. Each child held a coloured piece of ribbon and as they danced the ribbons wound themselves around the pole creating beautiful patterns.

He vaguely remembered seeing such sights in a land he’d travelled through with his father once, a spring festival his father had played music at on the border between the Frontlands and Aveckasborg. The music, if he recalled had involved a lot of accordions. In fact, he could hear it now, the sounds of accordions, fiddles and some other flutelike instrument he could see a man playing in the glass, standing on a chair above the group. And then the dancers pivoted and suddenly he was in among them, not separate from the scene in the mirror, but one of them, looking down at a pink and white striped skirt, the smell of freshly mown grass and a bit of cow dung in the air.

He gasped and looked away, nearly dropping the mirror. In the glass the girls were still turning in their multicoloured dresses and now he saw they were the same girls he’d seen a moment ago, but older now, with the shadows of breasts and hips just starting to form under their dresses and the pole was a slightly different height and width and the ribbons looked faded and older now and he could taste peppermint on his tongue.

“What in the world was this?”

Chapter Text

Rumple didn’t return to the memory glass room until a few days later.

He told himself that is was because there was too much to clean up in the castle after the party and that was keeping him busy, but that wasn’t the only reason.

The experience in the memory glass, where he had fused, even just briefly with the Marie Bellefleur Frontenac of the past had been deeply strange.

The morning he decided to go back he lay in bed, drenched with sweat. He had dreamed of the experience again in the night and when he woke wasn’t sure what was real and what was pretend and what was something other. Were events that had happened in the past part of reality? Did they exist side by side with normally unfolding time? Was what he saw in the glass really like capturing a moment in time or a place or was it something else, more like a memory. He was curious. If he walked around in the world of the glass would it stop like the edge of a painting or could he keep on going further and further into that world. Could you get lost in there? Did people get lost in there on purpose, running after people they loved who they’d lost in the real world, chasing memories of happier times trying to bet back to their source?

Was there danger in the glass?

And then there was becoming what seemed like a whole other person in there. He hadn’t been himself when he’d looked down. He tried to run through what he saw again in his memory— the skirt and the dancing feet and the disorienting feeling of not being himself— of seeing through the eyes of a stranger— no not a stranger— of Belle— of the intimacy of that— of walking through her memories— of being close to her— the heady joy of being inside her in a way other than the one he’d been having fantasies about in the bath lately— but still— inside her in a way, that was so intimate, so personal, even sex paled in comparison— and then falling out of the world of the mirror, back into his own body and wondering what it all meant.

Was this something she wanted him to see, to experience, some way of explaining herself when she didn’t feel like she could explain it with her voice— or was this a violation of her privacy, of her most personal self?

Just by being there in her carefully preserved memories did he change them? Sully them somehow?

And if she returned, would she know? Would she be angry with him? And what would her anger be like? Would she punish him like the slavers had punished him? Briefly he felt the ghost of the iron shackle around his damaged ankle and winced.

He got out of bed quickly after that, not wishing to dwell in the old memories of that time that sometimes came to him when he let his mind wander.

There were ways of preparing to face the glass, research to be undertaken. He remembered the shelf number where he’d seen books with titles referring to memory glass. He took them down after breakfast and mulled them over.

It all seemed pretty dull, instructions about where to find the Desert of the Sands of Time. How to refine samples of the sands of time into glass. The appropriate admixture of silver required for certain effects. Pages about the pros and cons of making your own memory glass versus purchasing from a vendor and the best kasbahs, shooks, and markets to buy ready made memory glass from and how to know if you were being scammed.

Eventually, he gave up in frustration and decided to just dive in once again

Chapter Text

Rumple looked down at his feet in their tiny black slippers with the delicate cross-stitched patterns of wildflowers across the toe box. Each shoe had a different pattern on it, his mother—no Belle’s mother had driven a hard bargain for them, after Belle had begged and pleaded for themat the last market town and dug in her heels and refused to leave without them. His father had said they couldn’t afford them, but his mother eventually gave in. No, not his father, his father was a tall and distant man, with a full head of curling hair, who played the lute and sang beautifully. Belle’s father, Maurice was older, with a balding head, a perpetual stoop and paunchy belly who was an inch or so shorter than his wife. When did Belle’s memories get mixed up with his own?

“Rumple!” cried a voice with an accent not of this world. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a naked man in a long trailing scarf with a blue polka dotted hat.

“There, at last I’ve got your attention.”

Rumple swung his legs back and forth beneath his little pull out bed and touched the patterns stitched into his patchwork quilt, tracing the lines of flowers there. She really did love flowers, his mother did, not to mention plants in general. They hung in macramé planters from the ceiling of the caravan, their leaves of ivy trailing into the Hatter’s hair as he walked by, like hands trying to hold onto him, reluctant to let him go. He was too tall for this place. The top of his hat brushed the bundles of herbs hanging upside down from the rafters. Every time he made a motion that brushed against the upside down bouquets of drying lavender stems, they released a powerful smell from their dried little cones of dead flowers. Rumple felt calm and sleepy. The Hatter’s words fell slantwise, visible in clouds of lavender pollen through the air between them each time he tossed them out of his mouth.

Rumple stared, not really processing what the Hatter was saying.

The Hatter pulled up his chair. “You have to wake up. Rumple you have to wake up,” he said and shook Rumple by the shoulder.

“I am awake,” said Rumple mildly and pushed away the affronting hand. The caravan door squeaked open and the Hatter vanished.

Rumple watched the door.

“Have you been waiting all this time?” said a gentle, much loved voice.

A woman with chocolate coloured skin and a blue and yellow headwrap entered the room.

He heard himself nod and wimper. The voice that came out was cantankerous and toddler-high.

She scooped him up in her arms as she sat down on his bed. She carefully undid the shoes and removed his pinafore. She pulled the shade to block out the summer evening’s light. Then she rocked him in her arms next to the pillow of her breasts and sang:

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.

Rumple began to drowse as his mother sang. There was something so familiar about the tune, though the words were a little different when his father had sung them.
His mother paced the room with his tiny form in her arms, his small curling head against her shoulder bouncing gentlely, lulling him to sleep.

He kicked himself awake and squirmed. No, no there was something wrong. This wasn’t the way the song should go, it scratched against his mind like two notes played side by side on a keyboard, similar but incorrect— buzzing irritably against each other- even if one was just a bit higher or lower and it wrecked the harmony--- the sound was more jarring than if they had been widely spaced apart.

That was NOT the way the song went. Against his will the true words came back to him, in the slurred tenor of a man deep in his cup who cared not who saw him weeping as he sang:

And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’

. And now Rumple was back with his father at another tavern, and Malcolm was playing his lute for his supper, still singing through his drunken tears, despondent as he often got on the anniversary of that day and the patrons laughed and a few tossed coins in the mug a small boy passed around.

Some spoke with pity for the singer—"fairy touched,” they said, “you can see it in the eyes.” And not knowing if it was true or not, Rumple still cringed with shame, but now it was like he heard the actual words to the song for the first time. Detached as he was now, he rose above his embarassment to realize exactly what his father was singing about, why it brought tears to his eyes, why it was so personal-- this song, to him, to his life-- and Rumple found he understood something about himself and his birth he'd been oblivious to his entire life. That is what I am, he realized suddenly. "A fairy's child?" And this was the anniversary his father had said. Of what exactly? Of the day she met him or the day she left? His fingers grew sweaty on the gold handle of the mug as he clenched it in anger at this mother, this fairy he'd never met.

But that was wrong too, the mug shouldn’t have had a golden handle. Not at that tavern.

He looked down and saw the gold handle of one of his canes in his hand. He looked around for its mate, and found none—that’s right, he remember, he only needed one now that he’d made his special boot.

“Rumple! Rumple are you back?”

He looked up into the Hatter’s terrified gaze.

“Jefferson? What are you doing here?”

The Hatter began to laugh hysterically. “Oh my God, the Dark Lady preserve me, you’re awake, you’re awake! You’re here! You’re here!”

Rumple sat up and brushed himself off. “Of course I am, I happen to work and live in this castle, as you well know. The question is, why are you here?”

The Hatter was still laughing, semi-hysterically. His hands didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves, first plucking at his scarf and then hugging his sides. He pushed himself up to his feet and reach a hand out to Rumple.

“Come on now, let’s get the hell out of here before it happens again!”

Rumple grasped his hand and let the Hatter pull him to standing.

“I don’t understand. Why was I just lying there on the floor?” Rumple looked around.

There was a huge mirror in a gilt easel sitting on a frame in front of where he’d been lying on the floor. There was a huge patch of cleared dust below it that looked like someone had made a dust angel instead of a snow angel on the checkboard tiles.

Suddenly, he caught his reflection in the mirror, except it wasn’t his reflection. A woman looked out of the glass, not really seeing him at all. On her shoulder was a child who looked about two years old settting down to sleep. All around them were the close confines of a caravan where a small family clearly lived on the road. There were also heaps of metal objects and repair tools and odd little machines and…
Rumple stumbled backwards.

“Don’t look at it!” said the Hatter, tugging his sleeve. “Please! Don’t go back in.”

Rumple turned away and let the Hatter begin to drag him out of the room.

With each step he took on the black and white tiles his mind felt like it was leafing through the pages of a book he had recently read, going back and back and back to the beginning.

And on each page was a memory, an important episode in the life of his mistress that he had just witnessed, smells, and touches—screams and emotions and sights and—it all felt like it was ramming into his mind too quickly and all at once to make any sense of any of it.

The room began to spin. The Hatter caught him before he fell. He sagged against him and the Hatter’s hat spun them both up into nothingness.

The next thing he remembered he was sitting in the kitchen, a steaming cup of tea being thrust into his hands.

Rumple looked up to see an angry teacup with mismatched eyes was staring down at him with a look of bloody murder. “What in the world was that? Don’t you ever—” His voice quivered with rage. “Don’t you ever do that alone again!”

Chapter Text

It all started a few weeks before that fateful day when the Hatter pulled Rumple out of the mirror. Everything had been going well from the outside, other than Belle being absent from home. It made Rumple feel unsettled. He ached for her in a way that was almost physical despite the fact that she had barely touched him in all their time together. He wouldn’t have gone into the mirror room Rumple insisted, if not for the one frame that had been sticking out just a little in the bunch of frames on the rack that had got his attention. But perhaps that was a lie he told himself later to make himself feel better. Perhaps the temptation of getting to know Belle in some way, even a magical one from her memories was something he was just too desperate for.

Unbeknownst to everyone the Speaker in Darkness had their hand in this too. While Belle slept and dreamed, the Dark Spirit often walked the world as a ghost alone. It could influence little, lacking a body or any physical presence, but it hated rattling around Belle’s brain when she slept, being forced to relive distorted memories of places she had been as a child, experiences it had never been a part of. It was jealous of their ownership of her. Belle was supposed to belong to the Speaker, not to herself and her memories. Other times it didn’t mind so much. Eternity with nothing new to see was often a dreary prospect. Nobody talked about the boring bits of being immortal. Nobody talked about how frustrating it was— seeing groups of people forget and go about repeating the mistakes of their ancestors over and over again. The oppressed becoming the oppressors, thinking that their former status as oppressed people would inoculate them against themselves giving in to the worst transgressions of the villains in their stories themselves. The arrogance of puny mortals grew grating and stale. The Speaker in Darkness had never thought that when it contemplated eternity, the worst struggle it would have, was its struggle against stultifying boredom.

The urge to create drama and stir the pot a little was just too tempting. As Belle slept, the Speaker in Darkness had tampered with the mirror, pulling it, nudging it with all of its strength day after day, until it stuck out just a little bit at just the right angle to catch the light of the flames. Speaker bewitched the tiniest part of the tiniest corner of the mirror glass frame with a “look at me” spell.

This was one of the simplest spells to do and one that require the bare minimum of magical power. Even in their reduced form, working separately from a sleeping Belle, the Speaker in Darkness could enacted a spell this weak and simple to perform.

No one had seen Rumple pull the frame with the Speaker’s additional enchantment down from the rack.

He was not supposed to go into the memory glass room in the West Wing by himself. The Hatter had warned him against it when he’d briefly mentioned to him.

Yes, the Hatter was still around in the castle, freeloading off Belle’s generosity as usual. He’d caught a cold from someone at Mrs. Pott’s party and claimed he needed a place to rest to heal up properly.

Rumple didn’t mind testing out chicken soup recipes on the Hatter as he got better. He felt lonely in the big castle without the party guests or Belle around. He did not know where Jefferson lived when he was on his own or even if he lived by himself when he was away from the castle, but something told Rumple that he missed human-ish companionship more than he tried to let on.

Jefferson looked very much like a normal human from their land, but Rumple knew it was all an illusion. His life experiences, like Rumple’s own were hard for most people in their land to relate to. There were few people who had personal experience with decapitation related trauma and counted a giant sentient rabbit as an adopted brother.

Mathilda, Jefferson’s hat, often told him through their shared telepathic rapport that the emenations of his thoughts had a unique flavor that most people in this land didn’t have the proper taste buds to appreciate. She comforted him somewhat in his loneliness, but she was still only a symbiotic fungus who spent most of her time and energy eating dandruff and maintaining a form of adaptive camouflage to keep up her squashed-top-hat appearance.

And anyway, when he was by himself it was too easy to for him fall into despair from his unfruitful search for his missing wife and daughter.

The mere mention of memory glass made Jefferson shiver from head to toe.

“Do not mess with that stuff,” he’d warned Rumple, but was evasive as to his reasons why. Unable to get anymore out of him than this simple warning, Rumple finally promised the Hatter in frustration that he’d bring Chip or one of the other castle dwellers along when he next tried to touch a memory to act as a spotter and detach him from the memory if need be.

Personally, Rumple had just chalked up the Hatter’s warning to his general level of paranoid weirdness. Jefferson had odd reactions to many things that were completely harmless. He thought red roses were phony and you could get in trouble for picking them and that people would murder you for stepping on caterpillars and that the cats in the shoemaker’s village would play tricks on them and tie their shoestrings together if you turned your back on them. He’d had to explain that this was ridiculous because cats didn’t have opposable thumbs to which the Hatter had merely sniffed, “Not here they don’t” as if somehow, the cats in the village were some kind of subpar form of feline.

For a few days he’d dabbled in memory glass viewing taking Chip with him. He’d seen memories of a man he guessed was Belle’s father, Maurice the Tinkerer and the old horse who pulled their caravan from town to town. People would cluster around the little wagon and barter with Maurice and his wife Collette in the early days when she was well, for assistance with the repair of gadgets and sharpening of knives. They sold little trinkets as well, intricate wooden music boxes full of miniscule gears, refurbished watches on chains and brought the letters and greetings from one town to another.

From the trappings of the caravan which served as home, transportation and shop all in one, Rumple could tell they weren’t rich, but they always seemed to have enough to eat thanks to the people in the towns who were more than happy to trade chickens and eggs and bolts of cloth with them for repairs instead of money. They stayed in small inns by the road when the weather was particularly savage and met up on occasion with other travelling folk who preformed little plays and songs for the towns they visited. Belle’s parents were loving, though her mother was often ill and too tired to play. In later mirror memories she was no longer with the older Belle and Maurice and they seemed quieter, less inclined to laughter. Belle spent most of her time on the road reading. Maurice was eager to teach her all he knew about different languages in the different countries they travelled to and the way of fixing objects, including magical ones.

Chapter Text

One night Rumple woke up randomly early. It was probably something like two AM or three. No one should have been up and about, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d heard someone, a voice calling to him from the darkness. He pulled his bathrobe tight around him, cinching the cord that wrapped twice around his narrow waist and grabbed his sticks. The sconces down the hall, lit themselves with their magic as he wandered the hallway, stopped off for a bite in the kitchen downstairs and then made his way to the West Wing. Instantly the temperature seemed to drop as he entered. The carpet on the floor always had an odd stained look to it, no matter how much he laundered it. He turned a corner and there it was, the open door, the room inside already lit up with lights though he hadn’t entered, the checkerboard pattern on the floor with its thin layer of dust, like gray ash calling to him. The edge of one particular frame glinted tantalizingly in the light and he found himself moving forward without even being aware of it.

Awkwardly, he removed the frame, glad it was not one of the larger ones. He placed the frame on the easel they’d set up in the middle of the room for this purpose and removed its canvas cover. The silver surface was a rectangular shape, just a little bigger than his head. Why this particular mirror above all others had caught his attention he did not know. The frame was unremarkable and plain.

The handwritten tag stuck on the bottom simply read:

Guard, that night.

What did that mean? Was this a memory of Belle guarding someone or working as a guard somewhere? What night? He removed the cover and waited for the memory to swirl him up inside the frame.

In the world of the mirror there was darkness all around and odd, disgusting smells. He thought he could detect the scent of frying bacon, cow droppings and iron. He carried a torch in one hand and a sword in the other. He had two good legs and an odd, unexpectedly tall perspective on the world. The strength in his arms was similar to his strength in the real world, not the weak, extra-bendable child-body of memory-Belle which he had most recently embodied. This body was padded with armor as he tiptoed towards an open stone doorway in a poor proximity of stealth. A metal breastplate clanked against his back and front and an itchy wool cap covered his head and ears.

He was standing on a stone bridge between two parts of a castle. It was not the Dark Castle, but somewhere in another land, the hills and trees he could vaguely see below in the shadowy dark half hidden by the shadow of a foreign mountain range. There was an arched doorway in front of him at the other end of the bridge. The wooden door that had once covered it was shattered and torn halfway off its hinges, as if by the hand of a giant.

There were sounds of a scuffle from inside.

“Go away. Don’t come in here!” panted a terrified sounding female voice, strangled off in its last syllable.

His heart clutched inside his chain mail chest in fear. The accent was alarmingly familiar.

“Shut up!” cried another voice, that seem to shade into deeper male registers. He felt he could almost recognize it, like a word on the tip of one’s tongue. The new voice ended in a deep growl and a snapping of jaws.

“Shut up, he’s coming!” it yelled and no one in particular that he could see.

“Lady Bellefleur? Sir Maurice?” his guard’s voice asked, cracking halfway through the question, a sure sign of quivering fear.

“Run away,” growled someone as he ventured further into the room. “Run from here and never come back.” Two yellow eyes with dark pupil slits running through them, like a snake’s eyes glowed inside the gloom. Had Rumple been himself and not living another man’s, stuck as a passenger while someone else steered the ship, he would’ve turned tail and hopped away as fast as a terrified rabbit.

But now, as the guard, he was forced to stupidly stand his ground, a passenger in another person’s body.

He held the torch in front of his face as he walked through the door, hoping it would offer some protection from whoever lurked within.

The light reflected off the objects in the room as he moved it around. He saw brief glimpses of a heavy, overturned wooden table, covered in a mess of spilled food and discarded wine cups. Throne like chairs lay on their sides with deep grooves torn into them, showing the pale fresh wood underneath their stains. A torn tapestry fluttered from iron hooks above the table in the slight breeze. A bowl of spilled soup with lumps of potato still in it squished beneath his boots.

Only that wasn’t the only thing under his feet.

He jumped back in horror.

A pile of intestines. Bones. Flesh. Another guard’s arm with a hand clad in mail.

He gasped and dropped the torch. It burned with a quiet crackling sound as it gnawed a hole in the carpet beneath him.

“Leave,” breathed a woman’s voice beside him and he was aware of a presence next to him, a dark vibration in the air, blotting out the light of the moon outside and then the slight illumination of the torch was snuffed out completely.

And Rumple realized he knew that voice—the voice of the creature, there breathing loudly beside him, causing the hairs on the back of his neck and arms to stand at attention. It was Belle’s voice, distorted as if spoken through an inhuman mouth, but her voice nonetheless.

When the guard’s voice emerged from his mouth, without him telling it to move at all, it quavered in fear.

“I- I c-c-can’t. The D-d-duke said. It’s my job to guard this room. You’re not supposed to be here. No one is. It is you who should leave.”

“Run away,” snarled the voice repeated and it was accompanied by a hissing sound like steam pouring from a kettle. “Tik tok. Your time is almost up.”

Though the torch was out there was a strange glow in the room now with no discernable source. Reddish tinged smoke clouded his nostrils and lungs with a smell like carrion.

And yet still he stood, fixed to the spot, too terrified to move, frozen in fear and incomprehension.

“Run away now,” snapped the two voices, on just slightly out of time with the other. “or we’ll kill you.”

At last the guard found his voice. “Trespass!” he screamed, panicking now. “Trespass! Tinkerer’s chamber! Help! Help!”

“I warned you,” murmured the two voices together and the hissing increased.

A head on a long, long neck plunged out of the darkness accompanied by a wall of fire. Sharp fangs glinted and Rumple screamed incoherently as they darted forward, closing his eyes against his impending doom, feeling the heat from the fire and….

He opened his eyes and the air was cold around him again and well lit. He was in the memory glass room sitting on the floor, backed up on his haunches. The canvas cover for the mirror lay in a rumpled heap beside him. He grabbed it and flung it over the memory glass. It only made it halfway over.

Shivering in a cold sweat, Rumple screamed in frustration. “Go away go away GO AWAY! You’re not the real Belle! You’re not! You’re just a dream. Just a bad dream. Go! Away!”

From beneath the hem of the canvas a sliver of mirror glowed enticingly at him, silver light bouncing off the reflection of the ensorcelled chandeliers and their flickering candles which magically lit the room.

“Gaaaaahhh!”

He grabbed one of his walking sticks from where it had fallen beside him on the ground and threw it hard at the glass.

It hit the memory glass right in the middle. He heard a sharp crack as the glass in its frame fell, toppling the easle over backwards to the floor. There was a satisfying crack as it hit the floor even harder and shattered into a million shards of glass that could never bother him anymore.

He floundered around amid the glass pieces ignoring the stinging sensation of tiny shards of glass going into his hand until he found his errant crutch. It had been a rather silly thing to throw at the memory glass seeing as how he needed it back to return to his room. As much as he hated picking his way through the sharpened bits of glass and worried about the memory returning to terrorize him, the glass, once broken seemed to retain none of its previously magical properties.

He swung away as quickly as he could from the room, slamming the door behind him.

If he could have taken the steps three at a time and run all the way to his bedroom he would have. It seemed like the creature with Belle’s voice would stalk him out of the West Wing all the way back to his bed if he didn’t do his best to hurry.

The moment he entered his little sanctuary he shut and locked the door and bolted it behind him. He sagged down onto his bed, his head whirling.

It was the magic, not Belle. Those weren’t her memories or anyone else’s. Someone had planted a fake mirror amongst the real ones, it had to be. There was no other explanation. That had to be it.

He lay in his bed running through all the justifications he could think of, like a wagon wheel spinning and spinning in a muddy patch of road, just digging the wagon deeper and deeper in the muck.

It was a long time before he realized one of his hands was hurting from tiny slivers of glass that had embedded himself into his palm when he’d reached down to pick up his thrown cane.

He had a basin of fresh water by his bed and a magnifying glass that he’d used to work on the finer stitching for his coat and boots. Using a sewing needle and a pair of tweezers he thought he did a decent job of getting the slivers out of his skin. He wrapped them in a bit of cloth and threw them in the rubbish bin he kept beside his sewing table.

After soaking his tender hand a bit more, he tore a strip of cloth off some discarded material he had lying around to make a bandage. He was tired too tired to fasten it securely, but promised himself he’d tend to it better in the morning. This settled, he dragged himself to bed and fell into a fitful sleep.

XXX

It was all a dream—that was his first thought when he woke up in the morning the next day. But no, there was the bandage he’d wrapped around his hand. There were even a few small spots of his blood in the fabric when he unwrapped it to examine it. I looked good. The cuts were small and didn’t appear particularly angry. As to how Belle would feel when she noticed what he’d done to her memory glass room, he couldn’t hazard a guess.

All morning long he remained on edge as he cooked and cleaned and did his work in the garden, trying to put it off as long as possible. He avoided the other servants in the castle. So far though none of them seemed to notice anything amiss.

Finally, because he couldn’t stand it any long and it was driving him crazy, he snuck back to the West Wing and turned the corner to the memory glass room. He had to know how extensive the damage was and correspondingly how furious he expected Belle to be with him when she returned. He ducked into the room and shut the door behind him and took a deep breath before he allowed himself to open his eyes. Expecting to be met with the smashed ruins of the memory glass and the toppled easel he looked around himself in shock.

There were no shards of glass on the floor. No broken shards of mirror to sneak into a person’s skin mirror. There wasn’t even the bit of canvas that had been used to cover it with. It had all disappeared. The easel stood on its three legs, no longer topple over. Everything looked exactly as it had the day before as if the night had never happened.

Perhaps it had all been a dream?

He drew the drapes pulling on a satin cord. He tied the cord off, choking on the dust that rained down onto his hair and shoulders. In the light of the actual day, in the dancing of the dust motes on the floor he saw where the dust had been disturbed. He made his way over and saw the circles on the floor from the marks of his sticks as he’d left the room and the tracks in the dust his feet had made when he fled right up to the spot where he’d bent down to retrieve the crutch that he’d thrown. Standing over the smudge of shiny marble tile on the floor, he could just see a few drops of brownish-red. His own blood.

It wasn’t fresh either.

He stood up with a start. Clearly, something had happened, but what he did not know. Who had taken the mirror away? Or had it never been there to start with? Had it all been a sort of hallucination. Sleeping walking? That made a sort of sense he guessed. He could have made his way down here in a trance and cut himself somehow and then returned back upstairs.

It all felt so unreal, like a wavering disappearing image in his mind now, except for the memory that the thing that had attacked him as the guard had worn Belle’s eyes, had spoke in Belle’s voice. What of that? Was that all just a dream?

Who? What was this person he’d fallen in love with? Was she really a person at all?

Oh like you didn’t know, a voice in his head scoffed back at him. She never made bones of what she was. You knew how people spoke of her and the kind of things they said.

But, but ,but—she was so different with me. I just thought they talked about her the same way they talked about me when I was a slave—all lies and exaggerations.

Were they all lies though? Really? Some were, clearly, others were a little less clear.

No , no, she wouldn’t have murdered a person like that, straight up in cold blood even in a monster form, there had to be an explanation for it, he thought and beat his head with his hand in frustration.

He decided then and there to take a stand. He would go back to the memory glass room even if he had to return by himself. He would understand her. He would find out for himself why Belle had done what he’d seen if indeed it was truly her, because he refused to believe there was no explanation and she was just straight evil. Either it wasn’t really Belle or it was Belle and she had good reasons. He was certain. He would check every mirror in that room and find out, Rumple told himself and he wouldn’t leave until he was satisfied or at least understood the reasons for her actions.

Chapter Text

After the death of Belle’s mother, Maurice travelled with Belle from town to town. The sign on the side of the caravan said “Tinker, Repairist, Storyteller, Letters Read and Written, Newspaper and Book Exchange, Medicines, Mail Delivery.” You could send along letters with Maurice to friends in the next town over for a few pennies. Maurice and Belle also made money reading letters for the illiterate townspeople and writing letters to their relatives and friends in nearby villages.

Among the more literate townsfolk, like the tradesmen and merchants; books, newspapers, pamphlets and ballad sheets could be used as currency to barter with and trade. Everybody was always desperate for a new story, anything to alleviate the boredom and sameness of their provincial days.

The number of Maurice and Belle’s specialities did painted onto the side of the caravan increased with each passing year, until they needed a separate signboard to accomodate the full repertoire of their talents.

Life would have gone on forever in this way, moving from town to similar town in rotation, had Maurice and Belle not been forced to take shelter in a Veblentown, a small town adjacent to the castle of a vain, ambitious, glory mad Duke.  

The Duke of Veblen had been a minor knight in his youth, elevated to the Dukedom by his role in a war just five years past where he had starved and burned the former ruler out of the castle he currently called his home.  When the King of Franca fought a small coalition of rebellious nobles and had the traitors and their families executed, their lands and titles were given to those who had remained loyal to him.  The successful fighters from the lower ranks of nobility who had distinguished themselves in the battle for being particularly cunning and ruthless had first pick of the spoils of war.

The current Duke of Veblen had been trained as a warrior, not an administrator of agricultural lands and it showed in the slipshod way he administered his new realm.  He had been the eighth child of his parents and so far down the line of succession to any lands or titles, that no attention had been given to his education in literacy, numeracy or the etiquette of court life.  

He had been pawned off on an uncle and sent to military school, trained to be an officer, only one step up from meat grinder of the conscripted commoners he bossed around on the battlefield.  Being so close in status to the men, gave some commissioned officers solidarity and sympathy with their troops, but for others the opposite was the case.  

The fine line between low ranking noble and base commoner was so dangerously porous, the threat of being demoted in rank to that level so readily apparent, that one’s noble status had to be shored up and underlined with threats and bluster.  Without a fine estate, fancy clothes and a living removed from intercourse with common folk in anything but a servant capacity, it was crucial to make the lower ranks know their place through bullying and bluster, according to the Duke of Veblen in those days before his elevation to the nobility.   Any cruelty or disdain other nobles had treated him with, Veblen, as an officer had showered twofold on his inferiors, climbing the ranks with ruthless abandon, backstabbing his superiors, (once even literally!) to reach his current level of exalted status.  Everyone at court knew him, and praised his conquests to the populace in public, in private, all but the most snivelling and servile hated his guts— his stupidity and arrogance was legendary and everyone at court secretly mocked his atrocious manners, ridiculous clothing and ignorance of all art and literature.    

When an opening came for a new duke in this far away, low ranking duchy, most of his peers had been happy to be relieved of his bullying, presumptuous presence.  

Barely literate, without a lick of knowledge in matters of land management, accountancy and record keeping, wiser men in his position hired a steward or any number of professional estate managers from the burgeoning middle classes at the capital.  Veblen tried something of the kind, only to dismiss the man he hired as a snooty know it all, who was trying to muscle in on his business and waste his hard earned cash on boring public works projects like improving irrigation to the tenant farmers’ lands and starting apprenticeship programs for peasants to train as iron workers in the capital.  He exiled that steward for impertinence.  Other hired help who tried advising him met similar fates, summarily imprisoned in the dungeons beneath the castle and executed by the guards.  

By the time Maurice and Belle arrived in the duchy for the yearly harvest fair, many of the peasant farmers had abandoned their lands, unable to survive, thanks to the Duke’s oppressive tithing of crops, poor yields due to lack of irrigation and illness from polluted wells and poor water quality.   The children of the town were smaller than usual, Rumple noticed through Belle’s eyes right away.  They had picked up the sad tale of the town and its oppressive new duke from travellers they met on the road.  

“Don’t you worried your over-thinking little head about it,” Maurice called to her from the front of the cart.  “We’ll be in and out over the weekend.”

Belle was worried about stopping there, but her father told her that the next town with a market where they could ply their wares wouldn’t be for a few weeks.  They needed to replenish precious supplies.  

And so they went.  

Chapter Text

Belle and Maurice received the people of the town in a stall and tent set up next to their caravan. Collette’s sure hand had painted the pictures of spices and a person reading a letter for the people to get some idea of the things available at the stall and Belle touched them up every year with her own small tin of paints to keep them bright, going over the black outlines and redoing the colours. It was the same paint tin that her mother had used, with the dented lid and greasy little hard pots of colour. Every time she looked at them and replenished them with egg whites and water to get the colours going again she felt those intermingled feelings of joy and sorrow. She could have repainted the pictures, but it felt like sacrilege now to do anything but go over her mother’s careful outlines.

Market goers brought letters to read, spoke things to be written down to send relatives in other towns, traded for spices unavailable in their lands, had Maurice mend their small devices. Belle provided creams and ointments for pains and rashes and the deciphering of bits of foreign text and fortunes a like for a price. Special foreign fabrics and jewellery were a recent addition to the things they sold and services provided. Belle’s favourite thing to do in a new town was to trade books, but there was little to be read in this somber place. All the paper in town it seemed had been fed into the fires over the colder months to keep the villagers warm.

One man, better dressed than the others with a well-fed look to him, and a finely waxed mustache approached the caravan, muscling all the lesser townsfolk out of the way.

He came bearing a small tablet with ancient, indecipherable words pressed into its still-red clay by an ancient hand, long since dead.
“This,” said the man with a flourish, “was found locked in a chest in a trunk in the catacombs beneath the the Duke’s castle.”

“Oh,” Maurice said worriedly. “Is he looking to trade for it? I doubt we have anything of sufficient value, but perhaps some Agrabadian scrolls and spider silks from—“

“What? No, no, no. Not to trade. To TRANSLATE.” He emphasized each syllable of the word loudly as if Maurice was deaf. “Do you know the language of this spell?”

“Spell?” Belle laughed, and Maurice did too once he had his spectacles firmly fixed onto his nose so he could properly read the tablet.

The man in front of them in the fancy doublet bristled.

“I fail to see what exactly is so funny.”

“Oh, uh,” Belle smoothed her skirts and calmed her giggles. “It’s not a spell.”

“What? Foolish girl! What is your hussy laughing at?” snapped the man. A sudden silence descended on the crowd around them who up until that moment had been conversing at typical market-day volume levels.

“N-n-nothing,” stuttered Maurice. “She-she isn’t a—“ He blushed at the rude word. “A what you said. This is my daughter Belle.”

Belle curtsied, all seriousness recovered.

“And the tablet isn’t a spell at all. It’s a set of instructions for toilet training a toddler.”

“What?”

“I think this hole here is where it would be nailed to the toiletting area of the room for a small child and their adult caregiver or older sibling was supposed to sing this little rhyme to get them to remember to wipe their bottom, clean off the seat if it was dirty, put their undergarments back on and wash their hands in the basin. That’s why it’s written in simplified Covner Lange, rather in the more ornate, courtly writing style you see?”

“Oh, uh, of course,” said the Duke’s messenger. “I knew that.” He stepped back and thought for a second, a sceptical expression on his face. “Are you sure?”

“Oh yes, I could be wrong with some of the more archaic verb tenses, and the use of the definitive article for the Covnerish word for ‘washing bowl’ which is rarely done nowadays, but that doesn’t change the basic meaning.”

“But it was found in a chest, locked with a massive lock. The other objects inside were a tiny string of pearls, meant for a fairy, clearly, a little loop of ivory outfitted with silver bells, perhaps for summoning the fairy and some kind of wooden horse talisman of some kind or an amulet or—“

This time Maurice didn’t laugh and neither did Belle.

“Isn’t it more likely,” he said gently, “that instead of a fairy’s treasures, these were the possessions of a child. A tiny pearl necklace, a rattle and a wooden horse toy and—“ he held out the tablet “a potty poem.”

“By who would some keep such worthless junk?”

“A parent wouldn’t see it as worthless,” said Maurice, with a glance at Belle.

Chapter Text

On the second day another servant came from the Duke’s palace to visit the tinkerer and his daughter at their little stall. This time the man brought a flattened jade disk, bound up in a silk cloth enclosed with a silken red cord tied up in intricate square shaped knots.

The polished circle of jade was the pale green of a celery stalk shot through with darker green veins that reminded Rumple of a stormy sea in winter. There was an empty circle at the centre of the piece and around it danced a circle of simplified crude human figures or overly complicated foreign letters, or possibly Nipponese characters or maybe all three things in one.

Writing and drawing tended to go together in many cultures. A phonetic writing system was not a prerequisite for a civilized culture despite what narrow minds in the River kingdoms might think. Still, Belle could not make out the writing or what the figures were meant to represent. Their crude depictions seemed at odds with the fine polish and simple elegant of the jade circle.

She had never been east of the Fangcrested mountains. Few people in the River kingdoms had, but artifacts of the lands beyond arrived on their shores sometimes, hawked to traders from the Volcanic Islands, who traded with the River kingdoms in turn. Some artifacts came in from the few brave pedlars who crossed the Silver Bridge of Ice across the North Pole which at this was only passable at certain times of year.

The pedlars of the Northern Traderfolk were the only ones who had mapped out the exact locations and times of year the Silver Bridge of Ice was passable and those details were such a closely kept secret that a Northern Trader only learned of it, during the final ceremony in a sequence of adulthood ceremonies and tests of strength.

“Is it authentic?” asked the visitor, a soft tremble of anticipation in his voice. Clearly the servant at least thought it was, Rumple, seeing through Belle’s eyes in the past surmised.

“Yes and no,” came Maurice’s pronouncement as he stroked the green veins across the mysterious green surface.

The Duke’s servant scowled. “Stop playing tricks with me old man. How is it yes and no?”

Chapter Text

“Yes, it an authentic jade piece from the Nipponese kingdom, far far away from here, and probably brought to our lands at quite some risk and expense. The craftsmanship is exquisite and ancient. No one in our lands knows how to work jade like this even today. Its provenance is unmistakable.

But no, it is not what you were told it probably was, some sort of talisman for summoning powerful warrior beasts from the demonic kingdom. All the rumours that the empires East of the Fanged mountains use these jade circlets for that purpose are just generated by embarassed would-be conquerors. These discs, I was told are actually used to hold pull back parts of their furred and oil-clothed outer robes when indoors and out of the elements; to show off their inner robes which tend to be more elaborately designed, but more delicate and easily ruined by the outdoor weather. The thickness of this jade circle would probably indicate it was made for a man’s robe not a woman’s. Even so, it is not a magical artifact, unless you count foreign artisans’ ancestral knowledge of jade sculpting and polishing to be a kind of magic.

Someone from the Riverlands has carved these fake Nipponese signals and characters on this piece, scratching the carefully applied glazing to trick unsuspecting purchasors into thinking it some kind of Demon Beast summoning stone, but the characters you see here are inauthentic and mean nothing. Someone who speaks a language like ours probably invented them, someone who unfamiliar with the true writing systems and grammatical patterns of the East. The characters aren’t even pointing in the right direction, you see? Had it not been half-destroyed to dupe a naive Riverlands purchaser, the piece would have been worth considerably more. The jade stone alone is of the finest quality.”

Chapter Text

The Duke’s servant flushed a deep scarlet; Rumple guessed he was a heavy drinker from the red veins that appeared, vividly and thick on his turnip like nose, and snatched the jade circle back. Maurice carefully folded up the silk wrapping and the satin cord and returned them without comment.

The servant retreated back tot he palace without so much as a thank-you or payment. Belle suggested angrily that her father go after him, but Maurice, knowing caution and deference were better strategies when dealing with those in power demurred and only called more warmly to a group of women showing some interest in a salve for dry hands.

“Mark my words my girl, that’s the last we’ll see of them. It is no skin off our backs at any rate. Honesty never won people of our station a position at the hand of the nobility. More’s the shame for them and their people. A little humility might go a long way to mend the Duke’s fortunes in this land. If he continues on in this way much further, he’s bound to have a peasant revolt on his hands.”

Belle couldn’t help but nod in agreement. Rumple silently marvelled at such reckless words and the idea tossed so carelessly into the pile of notions one kept in their head as possibilities. Was revolt, by PEASANTS of all people really a thing in this world? And not just to happen one time by fluke, but to happen so many times that its likelihood was bandied about in the way a person might speculate on the likelihood of rain or snow. What had happened in these lands before he had been born and the Dukes and Kings and Emperors had become unassailable in the eyes of the people? Was there a time before they had seemed like gods among men, so far removed from every normal person?

Chapter Text

Much to Belle’s surprise though, her father was wrong.  On the third market-day the Duke’s servant returned and looking like he was being forced to take some particularly foul smelling medicine he extended a card to Maurice, inviting the tinkerer and his daughter to the Duke’s palace.

Maurice and Belle rattled along the cobbled stone path from the market square to the castle gates.  The doors were tall and barred with an iron grill.  There was a small door set in the wall for people to arrive on foot, but they had to pull the handle to open the big gate, to let their entire caravan plus Phillipe into the caravans.  A guard took a sneering look at their tawdry little operation and the invitation embossed with the duke’s seal and opened the gate.  The sound of clanking pots and plans and the clip-clop of Phillipe’s large shoed hooves announced their arrival in the king’s courtyard.  

As the huge door clanged shut behind them, Belle watched from beneath the brim of her hat at the faces peering down at her from the windows that looked out onto the courtyard from the walls around and the castle that rose up out of the uneven stones, the nucleus of this strange organism.  A shot of fear and foreboding ran through Rumple at the finality of that sound, listening to it through Belle’s ears. It felt like something much more than a memory— overlaid as it was now with the foresight of what was to come.  Belle shivered and retreated back into the caravan, away from all the staring eyes. The sun slanted and made wicked shadows on the walls in a corner of the courtyard, like a gathering of some ominous fate, edging slowly towards the caravan where it was parked but he horse stables with the setting of the sun.  

XXXX

Belle and Maurice were the most colourfully clothed, though not the most expensively dressed at the Duke’s table.  The women and men were seated separately as was local custom in wealthier households.  Of course, Belle noted the men’s table was served the best cuts of meat, but as she had,  had little that was beyond chicken or wild turkey for months, just savouring a slice of beef ribs felt like the ultimate in decadence.  

From what Rumple and Belle could hear from the men’s table, and they were loud enough that you could avoid hearing them in the echoing room, most of the talk was of war, hunting, jousting, bows and arrows, horses and dogs.   Maurice remained quiet, having not much to add to such conversation.  No one spoke of books, theatrical shows, mechanical devices, or ancient civilizations, the things he knew the most about and certainly politics was off the table if he knew what was good for him.  

At the women’s table there was little conversation, which Rumple thought very odd.  It was as if the women of the house had forgotten how to speak anything more than simple commands, like “pass the salt,” their voices in gasping whispers, their eyes lowered fearfully over their plates, managing only the occasional brief glance at each other beneath the stern gaze of the guards and male servants who dolled out the food.  Their whispered words were easily drowned out by the raucous goings-on at the men’s table as the Duke saw the men served the good port.  

Belle was seated by the Duchess’s right hand and watched as the thin woman pecked joylessly at her food and drank her cloudy glass of water.  Her voice was as whispy as her dull yellow hair and her skin looked dry and wasted, in contrast to the Duke’s florid hue, thick gray locks and beard and booming voice.  She wore white make-up which only added to her ghost-like, pale quality.  But her arms were not painted white and the sleeves of her gown were slashed up to her upper arms, to reveal ribbons of  expensive red velvet underneath.  When she reached for a bread roll at the table her right sleeve bunched around her elbow and Belle could see the length of her lower arm, the skin a normal, tanned colour, except where it was mottled blue and purple with four bruises, one finger width apart each.  Belle notice the knuckles of her hands, swollen and likely arthritic, an unusual problem in a woman who was not yet a grandmother and a noblewoman, unaccustomed to hard labour with her hands.  Her heart leapt in her throat with horror at the realization, pity for this strange woman and fear for herself and her father. 

Belle’s head felt suddenly dizzy, the heat from the over-fed fire in the room, almost suffocating.  She wanted to grab her father by the collar and drag him out of there, out to the courtyard where their homely little caravan and Phillipe were waiting and urge him to speed them away into the night.   They needed to get away from this place, these people— the faster the better.  The edge of her doom seemed to pick out from under the plate in front of her, but it was only a woven face. She looked down and it was impossible now not to notice that what she had previously taken to be an ornate table cloth was in fact, a tapestry. It was old and beautifully crafted, but the Duke had taken it off the wall to be used as a tablecloth to catch up their spilled wine and gravy. On the walls instead were newer tapestries, of a modern style, but badly worked, clumsily woven in threads of gold and silver. Cheap looking ugliness made with the most expensive materials a man of his means could afford.

Though she wanted to shout out to her father, in her trepidation, she knew that she could not address him here, with all these people about, and confess to her misgivings. In the privacy of their caravan her father would listen to her as he would listen to a man, but here, her opinion did not matter. She was only a woman after all and for a commoner to spurn the hospitality of a noble was no small thing. 

And so, when the meal was done and Maurice and Belle were told to follow the Duke into the catacombs beneath the castle, below the tree roots that had lifted up the tiles of ancient stone over their heads they could not but heed the invitation.

Chapter Text

In the catacombs, beneath the castle the Duke explained the reasons they had been brought there. In her memory, Rumple felt Belle’s nervousness in close quarters with the man in a place so deep under the palace, with no avenue for escape, with an entire castle on top of their heads. There were ancient bones and grinning skulls in creepy niches along the walls where spiders and other creeping creatures had made their homes. Belle tried not to look at them. There were prohibitions among her people surrounding dealing with human bodies after death. It revolted her in a more intrinsic way than it would even most people to see human remains kept about in such a way, alongside places living people might traffic, as if they were simple objects on a shelf.

“Relics,” intoned the Duke, his voice echoing off the stone walls. “Veblen was once the seat of power in this district. These men, whose bones you see here were all kings, worshiped as gods made flesh in their day, the deities avatars on this earth. You should bow,” he said with a smile.

Maurice began to bow, but Belle grabbed his hand and yanked him back up straight. She stood tall and refused. “We do not bow before any man,” she said stiffly, “and certainly not before some dead thing that merely used to be a man.”

The Duke’s smile in the light from his torch grew stiff upon his face, and his eyes took on a flinty cast, but his grin remained.

“A very well, very well. I know the superstitions of your people and won’t hold such quaint notions against you. Still, if you are students of history and learned persons you must have heard of King Evenrood the Eighth—“ he said pointing at a pile bones in one particular niche, with a gold circlet on its head and a sceptre of command still clutched in its hand. “That is him over here. It is said he commanded great forces in the final battle against the Fair Folk, that he used great magic to exile them forever.”

“The books said he had a wizard— his name escapes—“ babbled Maurice, “who could walk through walls, and from one country to the next with a single step. Warriors with arrows, enchanted to never miss their targets—“

The fire danced in the Duke of Veblen’s eyes. “Yes. And did you know it was rumoured that his son Evenrood the Ninth possessed a shell, given to him by the merpeople. If you filled it up with water and dumped the water out again the sea would roar out of it and fill rooms and entire lands with a ceaseless flow of water until a magic word was said to make it stop.”

“Legends,” said Maurice. “Surely, you know those are just stories. A great flood happens and someone makes up a tale and another person repeats it. Whisper after whisper from person to person and facts change shape to make myths and legends.”

“Maybe, but what if it were true! All the ancestors of the ancient kings who once owned this castle and their paltry, wastrel descendants who fell before my sword are buried here, along with their records and artifacts. Clay tablets in barbaric script none here can read— broken objects that may be garbage or artifacts of great power. We need someone who knows these things, how to decipher, to translate, to transcribe. I can offer you rich compensation for you to complete this task and to do it discreetly. If any of the objects in these trucks and chests do hold great power, it is best not to one but I should know.”

“Ah.”

“Stay here. Winter with us in the castle. Do not shiver through winter on the cold roads with little food or protection from the elements. Enjoy our hospitality and decipher these trinkets for us and we will see you handsomely rewarded. Why burden your daughter with stoking and feeding a paltry fire for months? It is only what a responsible father would do to care for his family.”

Belle heard every word and she couldn’t argue with the Duke about this. She hated spending the entire winter fetching firewood and coal and tending to the fire and cooking and coughing and choking ont he smoke from the flames. But many townspeople wouldn’t buy from a woman, especially a stranger. They only went for Maurice’s elixirs when he was the one hawking them, even if she was the one who concocted them. It was unfair.
And so the Duke and Maurice struck their bargain and Belle said not a word in protest.

Chapter Text

The next few months were some of the happiest Belle had spent in her life since the time before her mother had died.

All the drudgery of cooking, cleaning, fire making, dish cleaning and water fetching was gone from her life at last, taken off her hands by the more capable staff of the castle and she didn’t miss it a bit.

She had a real bed to sleep in at night, fresh linens, clean clothes that she didn’t have to wash herself, plentiful food so that she was never hungry and all the writing and sketching materials she needed. No more scrounging about for a scrap of paper or a nub of charcoal. Everything was here in the writing desk the Duke had commandeered off the previous owner and whatever wasn’t there was eagerly supplied.

Though she had, had many small yearnings and momentary fancies in her young life she had only ever had two large over-arching goals. Though she had contrived to keep her dreams alive— the way she kept the fire burning in the caravan’s little stove in the colder months, with bundles of twigs and broken coals— she knew that some dreams weren’t for people like her, especially women. This tiny fire, though alive, yes, would still never become a real blaze it wished it could be. Even so her little soul didn’t seem to care what was possible and what was not in this world and yearned away, realistic possibilities be damned.

She dreamed of the halls of the scholars that they’d road past in Mariosca, tall buildings with many minerets of pink stone, glowing with the sunset as the scholars streamed out of the little round doors below in pale green robes; scroll tubes, rulers and measuring triangles beneath their arms at the supper bell. At first she thought they might be women; their faces were all beardless, but upon closer inspection she saw that they were men.

“Where are the schools that trained wise and scholarly women?” she asked her father, perplexed at the female absence.

“Why would women need such training?” he asked her back, honestly befuddled. “A young man trains to get a better position, a skill he can use to make money; money he can use to buy things to attract a wife; then once he has attracted a wife, and she has given him children; to provide a good life for his family.”

Chapter Text

Belle felt a surge of anger and grew quiet.  

The she stopped, cocked her head at her father and stared at him, his eyes hidden by his unruly white hair as he bent over some worthless gadget he was repairing.  She knew, it wasn’t something they could resell.  It wasn’t something they needed or even something particularly nice to look at.  She knew he was just fixing the gadget because it gave him pleasure to fix it.  He liked trying to figure out of the puzzle of it and couldn’t rest until everything was repaired.  His mind enjoyed the challenge.  

He looked up, knowing her as well as he did, aware of the pull of her gaze on him even when his eyes didn’t actually see her looking.  

“Wait,” he said slowly.  “I don’t think that’s true.”

”Then why did you say it?”

”I— I don’t know.  No, I know— it was something my father told me, something other people told me all my life, especially when they talked about your mother, about her ‘wasting her time’ on learning, on me teaching her how to read, on me not scolding her at spending time reading tales of fantasy and stories of the future— She didn’t do it for its usefulness, not really and neither do I.”

And Belle said: “I learn and I read because I am curious and human and it is what humans do— try to understand the world we live in, try to decipher its mysteries. It’s not like something you can open and shut like the lid of a box. It is like breathing and drinking and eating— a yearning for an essential thing that goes on and on through your life— it’s like a fish swims and no one asks the fish why it does it.  It does not know.  It only knows that it is what it feels it must do.  And so, to think there should be some kind of boundary on the pursuit of knowledge— that it must only be undertaken when it is “useful” as opposed to the natural state of all human beings, male and female feels false.  It is artificial—“ And now she looked her father in the eyes to speak to her father of politics, as he sometimes did to chosen patrons, about a world without kings they dreamed for some day “it is like something our masters would want us to believe to stop us from questioning them, something that isn’t true.”

Chapter Text

And now, here was Belle, years later, freed from all drudgery of scratching for mere survival, living the life of the mind with her father, her best friend and teacher by her side, relishing the challenge of interpreting ancient written mysteries and puzzling over odd, broken objects.

It was everything she’d dreamed such an existence could be and more.

She was like a thoroughbred horse, long constrained in small pen, used to plodding down the same circular path over and over again suddenly released to gallop freely through endless fields of green. Her mind ran and ran and ran for the first time since she was a child.

And there beside her was her father galloping to share in this amazing discovery, the two of them egging each other on in competition and enjoyment of their sudden, unexpected freedom to think and study without limits, one’s joy feeding the other’s.

They rarely saw the Duke then, as he was busy in the capital attending the marriage of the king’s second son and sitting on the monarch’s council of war as they plotted the further devastation of the Southmen and the settlement of the Crevenses of the woodlands. His son was returning to the capital now from putting down the rebellion in the far north of the Mistolaks and would be returning with his father after the festivities were done.

All this news barely registered with Belle and her father, as the women, given to talking a bit louder now, with the men away discussed possible ways of interpreting a particularly difficult to decipher word in ancient Coglish that they’d found on a burnished bit of copper.

Chapter Text

There were surprise visitors in the library, where Belle and Maurice spent all their time when they were not in their rooms.  It was here that they studied and debated the meaning of the finds they had been unearthed in the catacombs.   And with the help of the scullion and the groom they were finding even more new discoveries every day.  

Few people had investigated how far down the catacombs went.  Belle had mapped out the area and it looked like the tunnels went below the ditch of a moat that surrounded the castle and continued to run below the village beyond.  One had exited in the fallen down remains of a temple which was now part of a farmer’s field.  The other one kept on going.  There were blockages of stones here and there from where the earth had shifted over the years that had to be moved and shored up, but it was clear human hands had dug these tunnels long ago and the further one went into them, the farther back one went in time.   After a certain point Belle and Maurice realized that their torches were no longer needed to light the way.  Unfamiliar gemstones embedded in the rock around them activated and glowed the moment any living thing came near.  They couldn’t figure out what powered them.  The groom from the stables had removed one with a pickaxe for them to study further.  

Maurice had been busy for some days performing experiments on it, before Belle unlocked the secret by chance, translating a fragment of poetry from a broken clay tablet they’d found in a shallower part of the catacombs.  

“I think I’ve finally deciphered it!” she cried out to her father.

He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and came over.   “Which tablet is this one again?”

“4C from tunnel portion 23.”

They had quickly invented an index system so they could remove objects without forgetting which parts of the tunnel system they found them in.  It helped to mark the chronological era the clay tablets had been written in.

Belle pronounced the words on the tablet as best she could.  No one currently living had ever heard the words of the language she was reading spoken by actual native speakers in day to day life.  It was a very early version of a language only spoken by a small group of tribes who lived on the islands across the Great Sea now.  

“But what does it mean?”

“Water plus love plus light makes life.   Life plus love plus water makes light.   That’s what it says.  Some kind of weird math equation, but it’s wrong, you see.  Plants need water and sunlight and nutrients, so I guess that is what they mean by ‘makes life’ but I don’t know what love has to do with it per say.”

“Wait.  Say the words again.”  

“Water plus love plus light make life.”

“No, the second one.”

”Life plus love plus water makes light.”

”Look!”  

Maurice pointed to the stone he had been working on, held in a vice surrounded by magnifiying glasses.  As Belle said the words, it began to glow.

Chapter Text

That was the first magical artifact and actual working spell they unearthed from the caverns beneath he castle, but not the last.  Some were things that they could instantly think of practical uses for, like the glowing stones that could help you see in the dark of night.   Others… what use they could have been to ancient people was hard to figure out.  There was the thing that looked like a stone paper clip that when touched, levitated a foot or two above the ground for a second or two before falling back down.   

Belle thought perhaps it was a part of some more complex machine, perhaps connected to the scraps of painted wood they’d found beside it that had decayed and gone mostly to mushrooms in the damp cavern.  

Then there was the canine femur with the gold filigree woven around it. When the spell on the filigree was read the bone would slowly dissolve into a white puddle and then reconstitute itself over a period of three days.  

There were also a few diaries which contained first hand accounts of famous historical battles that refuted contemporary historians’ accepted narratives about those historical events.  Maurice was very excited that these documents, if proved authentic, might necessitate the re-writing of more than one foundational historical texts of the Fairy Wars.  

The Duke seemed far less interested.

Hearing the inventor’s enthusiasm over the dusty old pages and heaps of broken clay tablets, the Duke of Veblen’s eyes glazed over.  His son, Gaston de Veblen, the future duke, picked his teeth with a sharp bit of chicken bone and leered at Belle as she struggled to carry over a box of heavy artifacts.  He leaned against a wall, never offering her a hand in assistance.  

Once she’d found the bone, amongst the jumble of artifacts, Belle tried to get through her explanation of its dissolving properties without getting flustered, but couldn’t help stammering and losing her place in her thoughts when the Duke’s son wondered out loud if the bone could really do anything at all.  She had to repeat once again that its transformation, though miraculous, required three days patience to observe.  

“You want us to sit here for three days to watch a bone turn into a puddle?” He threw up his hands in frustration to the Duke.  “Really Father!  What are you wasting our time and money on with these charlatans?  All they’ve found is useless rubbish!  Why’d you even call me here? I could be out hunting!”  

“Shut up!” Said the Duke, swatting his son’s arm away rudely.  “I know it’s all rubbish, but you know the king is interested in trifles and toys like these and we do want him to be amused when he comes to visit us.  Look, if anything turns up that can be useful in the defense of the realm, well, it will come to us first and he will only be able to access that discovery through us. He will come to rely on us for more than just the warriors we can muster for his knight’s brigade!” He clicked his tongue in dismay.  “You must learn to play the long game my boy, if you’re ever to make a name for yourself at court.  Don’t be so impatient.  And take that thing out of your mouth.  You know how they frown on poor etiquette in the capital.”

“Don’t tell me what to do old man!” Gaston growled and picked up the filigreed bone that Belle had carefully placed on a piece of cloth the table, as it was beginning to undergo its slow process of dissolution and dashed it on the floor.  It broke into a dozen pieces which bubbled and fizzed and dissolved to nothing in seconds.  

“There you go. That’s the way it’s done!” he grinned and stomped out.

”B-but—“ Belle crouched over the remains of the magical bone as it dissolved to powder on the harsh gray stone of the floor.  The filigree gold had disappeared somehow, as had the letters she had read to make the spell take place.  Gaston had destroyed it.  A piece of magic that had survived untouched for perhaps a thousand years, simply because he’d been too impatient to appreciate it.  

Belle’s right hand clutched the fabric of her skirt tight with fury as a rattled Maurice continued to speak to the Duke, pretending as if everything was normal and nothing had happened, trying to save face after Gaston’s bizarre eruption.  

Belle had never hated anything in her life with as much venom as she hated Gaston in that moment— for destroying something beautiful, unique and precious in an effort to make her look like a babbling fool.  

She resolved to keep her treasured discoveries far away from him and his destructive nature in the future as she swept the remains of magic into the dustpan.

Chapter Text

But there would be no visit from the King.  The Duke’s mood turned dark now.

 The Crown Prince had been married to an ogress as a way to cement the truce between the two kingdoms.  Misland had claimed victory over the Ogre Confederacy thanks to the Duke’s troops in the last war.  Now the final ragtag rebel holdouts of the ogre tribes were subdued and this marriage was made to signify the union of the two peoples.  

It was believed by the Duke of Veblen and other people with more learning than he had, that a marriage between a human and an ogre could never bare fertile offspring.  He had opined on returning from the wedding that the King was basically throwing away the possibility of any future descendents on a whim and dooming the royal line.  The King’s courtiers believe that this symbolic gesture would bring the ogre tribes to heel, as they would never defy their own princess and heir to the ogre confederacy crown by rebelling against the human monarch of Misland.  The Duke had counselled that it would be sin to mix royal blood with that of a savage beast like an ogre, but the King hadn’t listened to him.  Instead he had sent him back to his own duchy once the wedding was finished.  This was part of the Duke’s reason for his sore mood.  The other was having Gaston back around the castle.  Though he was his son, Veblen couldn’t stand the sight of him.  The boy was stupid and arrogant and disrespectful.  He had secretly wished he would have cut a better figure at court and so remained there until it was time for him to come into his inheritance.  Unfortunately, Gaston’s lack of wit and social graces had done little to impress the etiquette obsessed court of Misland.  And now his father was stuck with him rattling around the castle, harassing the help with nothing else to do.  

But what really, really had soured the Duke’s milk, was the news that now followed.  Apparently, the ogre princess was pregnant.  Only a few months later even further wretched news arrived.  She had given birth to a health baby, a son.  Secretly, the Duke had hoped when news of the pregnancy had arrived that perhaps it would be a good thing for his cause.  Perhaps the princess would miscarry or even better die in labour and so the crown prince would be forced to pick a new wife, a human wife.  

When this wish appeared futile and the ogress gave birth, he had hoped the baby would be a non-viable monster.  But this wish, alas was not to be.  The infant appeared normal in all respects and even worse, actually appeared to heavily favour his human, rather than ogre lineage.  Not to mention, the large, healthy full term infant was a BOY.  Soon the ogres, who usually were very slow to reproduce on their own, were throwing a huge party to celebrate the arrival of the little prince and joining their troops to the king’s army for celebratory jousting shows in the new baby’s honour.  At the banquet there was another announcement. The younger sister of the crown prince was promised to the younger brother of the conquered king of the ogres when she came of age.

The Duke’s rage could scarcely be contained.  The King was supposed to rely on him and his armed men to keep the peace.  Now diplomacy through marriage and long forbidden mixed species baby-making seemed to be the rule of the day. 

The Duke had had the king’s verbal promise at the end of the war that his then infant daughter would wed the Duke’s then infant son. He had been counting on the alliance for years and paying for improvements to the castle by borrowing on the strength of the money he would likely come into when Gaston married the Princess Floranette.  And now it would not be so.  All thanks to those stinky, treasonous, animalistic ogres.  

One night the Duke and his son went to a tavern in the village and started drinking with their knights and some local landowners and men at arms.  Soon the talk turned to the promise the King had not met and how the treasonous sly ogres had inserted their vile princess and disgusting prince into the dotard king’s family.  True sons of Misland knew it was wrong to mix blood even for the sake of peace, the Duke asserted.  

Eventually, once enough liquor was drunk and the tavern barrels were empty the party spilled out into the street.  

It was an average village street with dozens of small timber houses close together.  There was a carpenter, a smith, a ferrier, a milliner.  And there was a butcher.  

The butcher and his family were the only members of the town who weren’t human.  They were ogres and had come to town decades before to open their shop when the original butcher and his family had vanished one night after borrowing too much money from their neighbours that they couldn’t give back.  

After two years of people killing animals on their own to eat and making a mess of the business they were more than happy to welcome a competent butcher, even if he was an ogre.  Now no one in town thought much about it.  

Ogre Bill and his family were just part of the scenery now.  

Except for tonight.  The Duke spoke to his friends then of how he’d gotten sick after eating a cut of meat from Bill’s shop and told them that Ogre Bill was probably intending to poison all of them, just like the ogre royal family, planning on infiltrating the castle, lying in wait until the day they could kill them all with magic or poison or just their massive ogre fists.  

While Ogre Bill and his family were sleeping in their beds, with the mighty meat cleaver that Bill could swing with his massive arms and sever a calf’s head clean off its body in a single chop, far below them resting harmlessly in its wooden block in the shop— the Duke and Gaston and the gang of drunken knights set fire to the butcher’s shop and the sleeping quarters above.  

Chapter Text

Ogre Bill's wife Magda was not at home that evening.  She had left the village the night before to visit their eldest daughter Petunia, who had gone to a predominantly ogre village on the other side of the river to marry the local blacksmith.  Petunia had recently given birth. Ogres care greatly for their infant offspring and grandchildren.  Despite their long lifespans they usually only have one or two children.  Magda was blessed to have given birth to three.  One was the daughter she was now visiting, herself a new mother.  Another was the son who'd gone for a soldier in the King's combined army, which now welcomed ambitious young ogres into the officer's corps, as long as they were wiling to take oaths of loyalty to the throne.  The third son was a butcher like his father who had barely survived the burning of their house and business, who came, bearing grevious wounds to his mother in the ogre village in River-run to tell of the horror that had transpired and how the Duke and his men had killed his father.  

Leaving her injured son with her daughter to recuperate Magda had run to her soldier son in the capital to beg him to petition the king whom he served to grant her audience so she could request justice and redress for her wronged family.  

Ordinarily, such a request would be denied or investigated by a lesser official.  If the claim the ogre widow made in such a case was deemed truthful, the Duke would have been pressured into paying some paltry sum of money to compensate her and then the case would have been dismissed.

But at the specific time of day that the ogre soldier brought his mother's plea to the king, the king, his queen the ogress and the baby half-ogre prince were at breakfast.  The Queen turned towards her husband, visibly moved by this tragic story of specism and pointedly asked the King what he planned to do.  He told her he planned to recommend the matter to one of his local councillors to deal with.  Sensing an opportunity to publicize the union of their two kingdoms and the fact that ogres would be treated with respect and justice by their new ruler, the Queen suggested a different approach.  

"Why not--" she suggested, "make an example out of this Duke who has treated ogre lives as if they are nothing?  Prove to your ogre citizens that their lives are worth the same as any human's and that you, their new king will stick up for them and see justice done."  

Still the king hesitated.  He was concerned about his nobles, some of whom still had reservations about the ogre alliance.  They were mainly worried about their own status and importance decreasing, now that the king no longer relied on them quite so completely for troops, with the addition of ogre forces to the royal army.  The dukes talked to each other and he knew, their combined might together was enough to topple him from his throne.  It had been done before when a king displeased the nobility enough.  

"We must tread carefully though, darling wife," he cautioned the Queen.  "Now who is this duke who has committed this senseless cruelty upon your family?"

"Veblen, your majesty," said the ogre soldier with a bow.  

"Oh," said the king and his nose wrinkled as if he smelled something rancid.   He knew Veblen, knew him well. 

The only reason he was tolerated at all and allowed to remain with his land and titles was that he had served the King's father and had been instrumental on the battlefield in their victory over the ogres.  There were paintings and statues of him all over the city, to commemorate his role in the victory.  What the plaques beside the statues didn't say though, was that Veblen was not a great general.  His strength on the battlefield and all his great strategy came down to simple luck.  For days the foreign ogres had been devestated by a plague that most humans were already immune to.  His forces cut through squadrons of ogres twice their size because the ogres were  busy puking their guts out in the trenches rather than wielding their weapons.  

The king, who was privy to intelligence the common folk never received knew this well.  He knew the other nobles from the old noble families resented the upstart Veblen and would not lift a finger to assist him if he was brought to trial and accused.  

And make no mistake, once the king knew who it was, he wanted to bring the man to trial.  

For the king knew something else about Veblen that no one else knew.  Long ago, when he was just a child he had come upon his dear nanny crying in the garden, sitting in a pool of blood and had made her tell him why.  She had made him promise never to tell another soul and he had kept his promise and never told anyone that Veblen had held her down in the prince's own nursery and raped her.  

Chapter Text

The King’s father had never regarded him with much fatherly affection.  He had been removed from his mother and given to a wet nurse at birth as was the royal custom.  The dirty business of child rearing, with all its wet nappies and soiled bed linens, food encrusted bibs and night-time feedings was not for the glamorous queen who had a reputation to keep up.  She was fond of her boy, obviously, but the person who stayed up with him when he was feverish at night, who cuddled him when he cried and scraped his knee, who told him stories as she bathed him and stroked his back to help him sleep at night— had always been the nanny.   The current king had rarely been alone in his life— there were always courtiers to tend to him, cooks, servants, tutors, teachers, even other children brought in specifically to play with him when his parents’ union brought forth no further siblings, but he was often lonely.  Few people saw him as a person, rather than a symbol of something.

The royal position was a like a flower vase and every new royal born to the line was simply the water used to fill it and had to mould himself to the job accordingly.  Nanny was the only person, before his wife that the king had ever truly loved and Veblen had hurt her— worse than hurt her— he had stolen something from her that she would never get back.  The prince saw how she acted around men after that, how even the gentle groom and the elderly head butler made her flinch when they moved an arm in a sudden way, how she cowered around his father after that, refusing to defy the king as she once had, to protect him when his father had his toys and childish things thrown away and exchanged his son’s art lessons for more weapons training.  He had always promised himself that when he became king he would find a way to hurt Veblen the way he had hurt his Nanny and probably many other women before her.  Fate had given him this chance— and if it further endeared him to his wife in the process, well that was only more good luck for him, bad luck for Veblen.  

A rider was sent to the Duke of Veblen’s castle to demand the Duke come to the king to answer for his crime.  The Duke, as the king knew he would, refused.

A second rider was sent, with further demands for money to be spent to compensate the widow and her children for the destruction of their shop and the death of the main breadwinner of the family and the permenant injury to the eldest son. 

The post delivered his head back to the king in a box.  

Enraged the king sent a squadron of troops, with a good number of ogre soldiers in their number,  to the Duke’s castle to lay siege.  

XXXX

The first Belle knew anything was amiss was when she felt a strange rumbling and swaying in the library.  She quickly dismounted the ladder she was on and crouched under a table on the floor with her father.  

“Do you think the earthquake is over now?” she asked him after the room stopped shaking.  

“If there are aftershocks it makes more sense to be in the courtyard below than up here in the tower.”  

She nodded and they crept out of the room and down the stairs.  As they descended to the courtyard below they heard the sound of something thumping at the iron gate of the castle and the sound of metal links squeaking as the tension held.  

A white faced soldier ran to them just as they got to the door that exited onto the courtyard. “Get back get back!” he shouted, shooing them into the stairway with a gauntleted  hand.  As he closed the door to the courtyard behind them, Belle could see a slice of the courtyard just below— people with weapons were milling around shouting at each other, trying to pull on armour and muster the troops in the square.  Horses were whinning in panic and stamping their hooves on the stones outside the stables.  

In a daze Belle sniffed the air and smelled smoke.  She looked at her father’s face and wondered if she looked as terrified as he did.  

“Belle, I think we’re under attack.”

Chapter Text

As the siege of Veblen’s castle continued things inside grew increasingly claustrophobic.  That was especially true for Belle.    Unable to go out to the forest to hunt or into town to drink, Gaston rattled around the castle making a nuisance of himself.

Wherever Belle looked it seemed, there he was.  She’d sit at a carol in the library reading and look up to find Gaston standing uncomfortably close beside her, pretending to look in interest over her shoulder at whatever she was reading, when in reality she knew he was glancing down into the hollow where her dress squeezed her breasts together.  She’d be walking up the stairs with armfuls of equipment and feel something brush against her buttocks and she would jump, startled, dropping her boxes.  Then she’d hear Gaston’s stupid laughter as she watched glass bottles tumble out of the boxes to break at the foot of the stairs.   As she stooped to pick them up, Rumple, as Belle felt Gaston’s eyes on her.  Together their faces burned with rage and embarrassment.      

After that, Gaston just got more aggressive, touching her in some way every time they were forced into a room together, under the table at dinner, behind her back when they came to present findings to his father, even at the basin washing her hands after using the loo.  Even in her sleep his grasping, unwelcome hands invaded her dreams.

And Gaston’s presence wasn’t the only cause for her nightmares.

Once Belle knew the stupid pride that motivated the siege— if the Duke had only stooped to compensate the widow of the murdered butcher with a trifle from his stores of gold and apologized to the king and queen, the whole thing could have been papered over and averted—and now people were going to die for his pride at being unwilling to make amends and apologize— the games these arrogant nobles played with human lives like they were nothing— roused Belle’s fury like nothing ever had before.   It was all she could do to stay silent whenever she saw the Duke or his coterie for fear if she spoke she couldn’t keep a civil tongue in her head.  It frustrated her to be a party to this madness more than ever.  Not to mention that every day, the pressure from the Duke to decipher more ancient artifacts and come up with something, anything he could use against the king to turn the tide of the war in his favour, grew.  

The household servants spied on them, Maurice said, and reported their private conversations to the Duke.  It was the only way he reasoned that the Duke could have known of some of their findings so soon, before they even had a chance to write them up and test them properly.   He always seemed to have more information about what they were working on than he should have.  That was how the Duke found out about the device he used to create fireballs to launch at the enemy.  They could be stored as inert rocks in a sealed jug, but when exposed to the air they would begin to burn and then explode if oil was thrown at them.   Maurice had tried to explain that the surrounding archaeological setting and burial alongside a royal baker, that these artifacts had been found in, seemed to indicate that their purpose had been for cooking large meals, to feed a congregation or town at one go, for instance, instead of cooking many separate meals, or perhaps for powering a heater to heat a large space like the interior of the castle over the winter.  The Duke, unfortunately didn’t care for anything but using the newly discovered technology as a weapon.  

Maurice and even the Duke’s counsellors had suggested he send a councillatory token to the king or any sort of message really to show him that he wanted to talk and that he wasn’t trying to overthrow the king’s government, that he would pay whatever fine he needed to, to compensate the king’s subjects.  But the Duke grew angry and told them this treasonous suggestion was tantamount to showing his belly and pleading for surrender.  It was important, he said, for a man to look strong before other men.  

“Even if in doing so, he looks completely stupid?” The comment slipped out before Belle could think better of it.  She was growing achingly  Belle was tired of his selfish behaviour, putting all of them at risk for nothing.   “What about all the people in this keep?  Don’t you have to think of their lives?  Wouldn’t a strong leader give up anything for the safety and wellbeing of his people?”  

The Duke just snarled at her.  “Who invited you caravan garbage?  Go back to whoring for the paying customers and let the men finish our little chat.”  

Furious and worried she would say something to endanger her father in her thoughtless anger, Belle retreated to her room.  She lay down and tried to relax.  She was determined not to try to decipher the voices from Nextdoor in the Duke’s apartments where her father was desperately begging the Duke to reconsider and apologize to the king.  

Eventually she heard a knock at the door.  It was Gaston, claiming she’d left her satchel of notebooks behind at the meeting.  She looked around the room, immediately suspicious of him, but it turned out that her satchel was indeed missing.  The last place she remembered using it was at the meeting.  Grudgingly, she opened the door.

Gaston grinned.  “Ah, I see the little lady has come to her senses.”

”May I have my bookbag now please?”  She reached out to grab it, but Gaston was quicker and held it up out of her grasp.    

”Just a minute there!  Hold your horses.   My, your manners are barbaric.  You really ought to apologize to me and my father.  It isn’t right for trash like you to talk to a Duke and your employer like that.”

”Fine, I’m sorry.  Happy now?  Now give me the bag.  It’s mine!”

”Now, now little lady,” he said, looking down his nose and jabbing a finger at her.  “You owe me.”  As he said that she felt his arm slip around her shoulders, sinuous as a snake.  It lay there, heavy and sweaty smelling across her back.  Suddenly, she felt like she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak.  What was happening here?  He held her chin in her hand, to keep her head from turning away.  His hands were firm and rough as he brought her face upwards to kiss his own.  

“Eeechhh!” She grimaced in disgust and pushed him off her, spitting in his direction.

He flicked her saliva off his chin with a look of disdain.   

“You animal.  Well I suppose your kind doesn’t go in for kisses.  Don’t worry though, there’s more I’ve got to show you.”  

She stared transfixed in horror as he began to undo his belt.  The sneer on his face as he looked across the room at her was the stuff of her worst imaginings.  Now there she stood, back against the wall, hands flat on the cold tiled porcelain behind her.

Trapped in Belle’s mind,  Rumple began to struggle, desperate to get away from this scene, trying to pull his consciousness out of the memory glass, knowing that was something Belle would never have let him see, even if the mirror glass room’s opening and the voice drawing him there in the darkness were truly examples of Belle’s will.  She wouldn’t show him this he felt.  There was something off here, some power he could feel controlling this all, just out of reach, hiding around corners, holding up the walls that held him in.  

“Let me go!” Belle/Rumple shouted and pushed against Gaston’s form.     

Rumple gasped as Belle smacked Gaston’s hand away and ran down into the catacombs, the blood rushing audibly in her ears.  Although she knew the tunnelled compartments well by now, she still had trouble when she wasn’t concentrating on counting how many turns she’d made and in what direction.  

By the time Maurice found her, crying and shivering amongst a cache of broken pottery it was late at night and the temperature had dropped.  Their air came out in clouds from their mouths as they talked about Gaston, the war and what the Duke’s plans entailed.

Rumple remained a passenger wondering how he would ever escape the memory glass.  He had tried with all his will to remove himself just then, when Gaston attacked, but had been unable to sense his body— his real body— the one with the stubble on the face and the calloused hand and uneven legs that he had often cursed in frustration for all it couldn’t do— but now he wanted it back, more than anything.  Anything, so he didn’t have to be trapped like this with a powerless Belle, hiding in a cave with a whole castle above her— the only person who cared at all about her wellbeing crouched behind her rubbing her back as she sobbed her heart out.  

Because even as Maurice said soothingly, “Don’t worry dear heart it’ll be okay, it’ll be okay, Love,” Rumple, who knew the future, knew with ominous certainty that it would not be okay and whatever hell this was that they were in now, it would likely only get worse.

Chapter Text

Sitting in the cool and the dark of the cave. Belle and Maurice discussed the future.  

“He can’t be allowed to get away with it,” Maurice said angrily.  “You’re a person, he shouldn’t treat you like a- a- a-“ words tumbled through his mind, only to be rejected in turn.  No sense to add more fuel to the fire.  “What you feel about things is important,” he stressed.  “If he wasn’t a complete brute it would matter to him, how you actually felt about him.  He’d listen to you and notice how it was with you and not press his suit.”

Belle gave a bitter laugh.  “I think Gaston is a long, long way from wanting a real relationship of equals with me or any woman for that matter.  Not every person can understand the depth and beauty of something like you and Mama had together.”  

“Do you think he will stop now that you have made your thoughts of him plain?”

”No, honestly Papa I don’t think he will.”

“And I don’t think if I tell the Duke he will seek to curb his son.  I don’t think we are important enough for him to care about what Gaston tries to do to you.”  

“Then what are we going to do?” asked Belle tearfully.  She’d never seen her father look so serious and angry before, his clipped, compressed tone of voice giving vent to his inner feelings.  

“If I was a nobleman or even just a younger man I might face him down in a duel over your honour my darling.”  He stroked her hair and looked down in embarrassment.  “But we both know I am old and I am common and can barely tell which end of a sword to hold.”  

“You may be many things Papa but you are not and have never been common.”

”Well be that as it may we have only one choice I think— we have to escape.”

Chapter Text

The yawning horror of it all suddenly hit Rumple square in his momentarily incorporeal face.  Belle and her father would try to escape now and they would fail and he would be stuck here watching as… as what happened exactly?  

Luckily due to whatever process governed the mirror glass— perhaps how the person it came from remembered the time, focusing on key moments rather than all the wasted time in between, the long stretches of sleeping and eating and planning that sped through their paces through some magical means he didn’t understand.    

Rumple knew that time was passing from the angle of the sun in the sky which changed in strange leaps, as if he was waking up from a sleep to see a different dawn every so often. Finally the motion of time seemed to slow.  It was night and the moon was full as Belle gazed out the window and lifted the hood of her cloak up to shadow her face.   

Maurice was out in front, carrying a lantern and his map of the catacombs beneath the castle.  With the blockade of the king’s soldiers surrounding the castle, if they tried to get out through the front door they were liable to be shot, unless they came bearing the Duke’s flag and seal, items they couldn’t access though they’d tried.   Thanks to their mapping, they could see that the tunnels underneath the castle came up several miles away, outside the blockade and village. They should emerge out in a cave in the forest and could carry on from there.  

Unfortunately, as they made their way through the cavern, the master of the seige decided to launch a new barrage of magical rockets at the castle, ones that fed on moonlight.  Only a few actually hit the castle and caused damage though.   In a coincidence of extreme bad luck, one of the rocks landed right over the field that the tunnel Belle and her father were travelling ran under.  There was a cave in.  Belle and Maurice escaped being crushed by the falling rocks by doubling back up towards the part of the tunnel that went under the castle.  However, when they returned to the part of tunnel they were supposed to travel through to escape the catacombs to freedom, they saw it had collapsed and was filled in with tons of dirt and rock.   

“Where do we go from here?” Belle asked her father in despair.

Maurice glanced around as if some solution would present itself in the faintly glowing walls around them.  All he saw were the magic stones that had stopped amazing him, now that he realized they were common to the length of the tunnels, they seemed ubiquitous and ordinary.  Now that the main tunnel was blocked he suggested they investigate the narrower tunnel that remained.  This one they had not explored because it was so narrow they could not walk through it upright and Maurice had a bad back that hurt after too much crouching.  It seemed unlikely anyway that this tunnel would yield anything of significance.  It barely glowed and it seemed to have been dug in a rougher, more haphazard way than the rest.  Belle guessed that perhaps it had been a false start that for whatever reason had been abandoned and never quite finished.  

“There might be no exit,” said Belle.  Studying in the shadowy ground, which was strewn with pebbles, not smoothed down like the other parts of the tunnel she wondered if it had been made by human hands at all.  There were persistent rumours of giant moles in the area, as big as a man.  Of course, she’d never seen any proof of their existence, but experience had taught her that behind most rumours lay a kernel of truth.  

As their luck would have it, Belle’s guess was right.  The tunnel ended in a rocky blind end.  Maurice touched the veined granite.  

“They must not have been able to dig through it.”  

“Looks like,” sighed Belle.  She’d wanted this tunnel to work so badly, but now she almost felt relieved.  Her body was exhausted from walking and her nerves were shot from being pulled tight as a bow string, unable to relaxe, constantly worried about being found out any second.  A rest in a comfortable bed back in her rooms at the castle sounded pretty appealing just then.   They could regroup and come up with a new plan.  

“Ow!” Maurice cried out. 

“What’s going on?”

”Oh just stubbed my toe, dear, don’t worry about me.  Lots of rocks around here and I can’t see as well as I used to.”  

But Belle’s eyes were sharper than her father’s.  “That’s no rock.”  She could see the distinct straight lines and right angles of an object that indicated human construction.  

She picked up a rectangular metal box.  It looked like it should have been very heavy but whatever material it was made of was light as a feather in her hands.  The surface was pitted with dents and scarred with orange rust, but she could make up words etched into the metal as well as a picture of what looked like a wing being and something else…

“We should go back,” she said, as if in a trance.  

“Are you sure?  We could double back and try another tunnel.  There are a few we’ve not done to the end yet.  There might be a way to escape yet.”

”What time is it?”

”Half past 45.”

”Sun’s going to be coming up.  We need to get back before they find out we’re missing.  Then they’ll know for sure something’s up.”

Maurice turned to begin the trudge back to the castle, his shoulders slumped in defeat.  Strangely enough though, Belle didn’t feel the same sense of despair.

”What are you doing with that?”

”Taking it back with us.” 

“Where will you tell them you found it?”

”Does it matter?  One part of the tunnels is alike as another to them.  Idiots like Gaston don’t care.  All that matters is what they can do with it.”

”And what can we do with it?”

”That remains to be seen, but it looks old and these sigils here?  Those are wards to hold back power.  If this is the powerfully artifact it claims to be in these words, then the Duke is going to want it— maybe want it enough to agree to set us free—“

”Careful Bellefleur, you play a dangerous game if you think that Veblen will negotiate for anything less than—“ 

“Then we take it to the king’s men.”

”And suppose it isn’t what it claims to be on the tin?” 

“Then it’s for us to know and them to find out.”

Chapter Text

Even in her first glance at the mysterious box Belle had her suspicions what it could be.  

There was the unbroken seal of the Great Wizard impressed upon the base metal of the box in melted gold for one thing and the region hadn’t had a Great Wizard for over a hundred years.   

The symbolic system used to write on the box was archaic too. Belle recognized only a handful of words in the characters used to write the message on the top of the box.  

The reason the character was instantly recognizable to her was that there was no modern version of the word— not in appearance, or sound or meaning and that was because people didn’t need that word anymore.  It was a word for a thing that no longer existed, that hadn’t existed for millennia and had pasted into the realm of myth or spoken of by crackpots and people languishing in insane asylums.  

The word, or rather phrase was “Doorway to the Other world.”  

Not “other land” or ocean or kingdom.  Other world as if there could be more than one when every intelligent person knew that the Worlde was the only one and any others had long since been destroyed.  Let alone some kind of doorway or gateway to such a place that didn’t exist.  

There were other words that she recognized as belonging to an ancient language, but they didn’t mean anything to her in their current configuration on the box.  

“Beware one who talks to you in your mind at night and tells of magic.”  It made no sense.  Perhaps if she deciphered more of the box’s riddle though, its secrets could be hers.  

She hoped whatever it was, was something they could use to either fight with or barter with.  Like the rocks falling in the tunnel, she saw their paths to freedom and options for survival of the seige were rapidly closing with each passing day. 

Chapter Text

It is difficult, though not impossible to work while moonlight rockets are falling around you.  Occasionally someone would peek in at Belle and her father at sunset, right before the rockets became active, (they were fed by moonlight), and advise them to sleep in the courtyard to avoid being in the castle tower for the nightly barrage.  Belle and Maurice just ignored them.  The Duke didn't seem to care.  As long as they kept working, cooking up knew exploding materials and weapons from their discoveries in the tunnels he didn't bother them.   

Unfortunately, neither Belle nor Maurice seemed able to do this fast enough to the Duke's liking.  They weren't inventors of weapons and had little experience in anything as simple as a catapult, let alone one that launches bottles of ferrous liquid that are ensorcelled to explode when specific words in Olde Threnish were spoken.  The idea that they were working on weapons bothered Belle. She knew, even it wasn't her hands on the sword thrusting it into the belly of one of the king's men that she was bore part of the responsibility. She helped make the magical weapons. The knights who came to attack the Duke's castle were only doing their duties. It was her boss who was in the wrong, but Belle and her father could not stop working. Not if they valued their lives. She wasn't sure if the Duke and his followers knew about their escape attempt or believed the lie that they had found the ancient metal box by chance in a pile of other artifacts the Duke's tunnel diggers had brought up for Belle and Maurice to look over.  

Of course, the Duke and Gaston assumed right away that the box had to conceal a weapon. She couldn't blame them. There was something about the box that emmenated an air of danger. It was smooth black with no lock and no seam to indicate a lid or lever. It wasn't heavy like stone, but didn't have a natural grain to its surface like something made of wood. For days it remained impervious to all Maurice and Belle's attempts to open it. After experimenting with many solutions, they discovered that only boaboab tree acid from the Cursed Islands could make a dent in it. Once it ate through the box, they were astonished to discover that there was another box, inside the first. This was one was a more common titanium metal alloy. Once the black part of the box was completely stripped away they could see that the metal container within was covered in words. There were 23 distinct languages and symbols. Some were sentences, some pictures, some words, some elaborate, some simple. All were variations on warnings. "Danger." "Do not open if you value your life." "Eternal curses for the one who would wield the knife within." Belleflower and Maurice only managed to decipher half of them completely. It was odd how the metal box had not tarnished with age and how the lettering of the words was still bright and crisp as if they had been carved into the metal surface days, instead of hundreds of years ago.

Snippets of information they could gather from some of the translatable words mentioned "a great power" "demon speaker" "other world gateways" "imprisoned in knife" "creature escape" "release to overpower enemy" and "magic familiar." How different people interpreted this warning proved an interesting litmus test of human desire. All people who saw it seemed to have strong opinions about what the contents of the box offered. To Belle, the box's mention of gateways and escape seemed like a promise to get her and her father away from the Duke's clutches. She had heard theories from her father about the magical opening or closing of portals to other worlds.  She wasn't sure what "vessel of speaker of darkness" could mean though.  That sounded rather ominous, almost like someone becoming an avatar to a god or perhaps a seer being possessed by a ghost, which did happened from time to time when they communed too often with the dead. 

To the Duke the strange words meant one thing only: "Weapon to win the war and secure the kingship" and he was determined to have the box's power for his own.

And still, the weeks of the seige past. The food and fresh water grew scare and still the tinker and his daughter could not open the metal box. Men with massive shears and enchanted light beams used for cutting gemstones came and wet and still the box didn't yield up its treasure. Further tries with fireworks and other explosives-- even rarer acids to eat through the metal also proved to be failures.

Chapter Text

No longer trusting to escape the Duke's clutches by stealth, Maurice had turned to bargaining.  

One day, taking his life in his hands, he approached the Duke of Veblen at supper.

"The catacombs beneath the castle, the dungeons and the dugouts under the crypts are empty," he said.  "We have done all you asked.  We have examined and analyzed the last of the magical artifacts we uncovered days ago.  You said, sir, you promised us that we could go once the artifacts were deciphered and their purpose known." 

"Did I?" asked the Duke, idly picking his teeth with a chicken bone.  "And what of the mysterious box?  Have you and your little strumpet learned its secret yet?" 

Maurice let the slight to Belle's honour go.  He would debase himself and his family however much was required if the duke would only let him and Belle go free. 

"It is stubborn, you know, it is impervious to all tools and materials we have used to open it." 

"Much like your daughter then you mean?" laughed Gaston and the chuckles and guffaws echoed around the table.  

In Belle's body, standing at the far end of the room behind Maurice, his back bowed in respect he did not feel, Rumple felt her rage seethe within her as her cheeks blazed red and she swayed with fear.  

The Duke rose and grabbed Maurice by the arm.  

A whimper rose from Belle, but at a look from one of the guards she remained silent.

"Your work is nothing without the box," hissed the Duke and the quivering inventor.  "But I tell you what,  I am not a merciless or ungenerous man." He gestured with an open hand towards his courtiers and as if on command they all chimed in:

"Known for your kindness and wisdom sir--"

"Famous in all five realms for your generosity--"

"Your charity exeeds that of the druids of the stream--"

He smiled fatuously and then, as if conducting a symphony closed his hand and drew it to his heart.

His sycophants stopped mouthing his praises and he continued, "But people are saying that you and your thankless daughter are wasting my goodwill and burning up resources we can't afford to lose.  So why don't we make a deal?"  

Inside Belle, Rumple's blood ran cold as he heard almost exactly the same words a royal had spoken to him and his father years ago, when he lost his freedom to his inability to transform mounds of straw into gold.  

"You get that box open Maurice and you figure out what is inside and how I can use it.  You do that and you and your daughter go free.  You fail and you both die.  You have until sunset tomorrow.  How's that sound?"  

He let Maurice go and the poor inventor stumbled backwards, bumping up against his daughter.  She reached for his hand as the Duke waved them off.  

"Now get out of my sight."  

XXX

In the laboratory Maurice held Belle in his arms and cried like a child.  "I'm so sorry my child.  I brought you here. I did this.  I should've listened to you.  This is all my fault.  I'm so sorry so very very sorry."

But Belle's body was taunt and firm against his bulk, decreased as it was from their meagre rations.  The hunger in her belly ate at her every day and with each pang of hunger her heart spewed venom against the Duke and his retinue.  "It isn't your fault Papa.  None of this is. It's them." She seethed with anger.  "If it weren't for the Duke we wouldn't be in this situation."

"If only we could open this dratted box," growled Maurice and he took the metal box and hurled it to the ground in his frustration.  

It clanked harmlessly against the carpeted floor and sat there, an impenetrable lump, its engravings shining in the firelight, still undented and unmoved by their plight.  

"Papa," said Belleflower nervously.  "I have a feeling, even if we managed to open it, the Duke wouldn't let us leave this place.  We would know too much about his weapons and he wouldn't want knowledge of this, his ultimate, secret weapon to get into the wrong hands."

Maurice sighed and his shoulders slumped.  "I fear you are right, my girl." He spread his hands, but they were empty.  "Whatever shall we do?"  

"There is a way," whispered a voice.  "A choice."

And Maurice looked out the window of their little room, through the latticework bars as if the speaker had come from outside, but there was no one there.  

Belle looked to the window.  "The bars won't even let us try to jump or climb down," she said hopelessly.  

The sun was setting, orange and dark red, like blood over the hill between the mountains, lighting up the tents of the King's men with in outlines of fire.  

"We still have a choice," Maurice echoed the Speaker who came to him from nowhere.  The words were not his own and yet he felt compelled to say them.  

"If the King's men attack and the castle falls, we may still get away with our lives intact."  

"But the castle is in no danger of falling," said Belle.  "Not that I can see.  Our food stores are still enough to hold us for a few weeks.  We have enough weapons for a month or a little more.  The castle will fall-- yes, because we cannot gain more provisions, but it will happen long after we are dead." Her voice began to climb the registers in panic.  "The king's men having been hammering away at the castle gates and the walls for months, but the iron shielding they are clad in, remains strong."  

A strange laugh echoed through the darkening chamber, richocheting off the walls and ceiling.  There shouldn't have been an echoing with all the tapestries on the walls to dampen the sound but it was there all the same.  Maurice glanced around, before catching Belle's eye.  She looked at him like he was going mad.

"What are you looking at?"

"That laughter. Don't you hear it?"

"What?"

"Over there!" he pointed to a shadowy corner by the fireplace.  "And there!" he gestured to a shelf of books from which the laugh seemed to be coming from."

Belle frowned.  "Stoppit Papa!  Stop it this instant!  I won't have you going mad right now.  We need good heads on our shoulders, now more than ever. If this is to be our end, let's face it like men-- or rather adults."

She kneeled to the ground.  

"What would you have us do? Pray?" asked Maurice incredulously, for they had never been a family given over to religion or superstition.

"No, silly," she thrust a rucksack into his hands.  "Pack some acid and explosives in here.  I'm not going down without a fight."  

"Clever girl," said Maurice and he heard his voice twinned with the voice of another, that mysterious speaker who he knew now Belle could not see.  He had heard that desperate situations could drive a man suddenly to madness, but this felt real.  But perhaps that was what mad people thought of their illusions as well.  He shook his head to clear it and the weird sensations that seem to cloud his senses seemed to retreat.  

Once Maurice had his rucksack filled halfway he deposited the metal box inside and closed up the straps.  

Belle watched him.  "Why are you taking that?"  

Why was he taking it?  It didn't make sense and yet he knew he had to take it with him somehow.  To leave the box behind was suddenly unthinkable.

"They'll chase us if they know we have it," she said, sensibly.

"We can hold it hostage," he improvised.

"I guess."  She didn't sound commited.

"If we escape the castle we'll run into the king's men.  We'll need a good bargaining chip to give them so they don't think we're spies.  It will do us no good to escape the Duke only to wind up dead outside the gates. 

They descended to the caverns beneath the castle.  Belle hoped there would be no one there to guard the tunnels so they could escape.  It was a silly hope.  Now that the seige was starving the people within the castle they had to have armed guards blocking all exits and entrances.  

There were three guards at the entrance to the first tunnel they chose.  They backtracked and chose another.  The next had four guards.  They began to try again, but now they had a guard following them. Their behaviour was suspicious.  As they approached the last of entrances to tunnels they knew exited outside the walls of the castle a group of guards converged on them.  

Belle was ready with a bottle of acid.  She threw it at a soldier but he ducked and the bottle smashed harmlessly on the wall behind him.  The guard growled and grabbed her arm, twisting it painfully behind her.  At her throat she felt the sharp point of a knife.  

And then the soldier was gone.  They were all gone, all the soldiers.  She didn't understand it, didn't see how it could have happened.  Nothing remained of them.  She looked at her father and he seemed nearly as shocked as she was.

Nearly as shocked.  But not quite.  He gasped.  His bag was on the ground. The box was glowing in his hands.

"Run," he said.

Chapter Text

Belle ran like she had never run before.  Her father, Maurice surged ahead holding the glowing metal box in front of him like a lantern.  Their feet pounded over the rocky ground of the tunnels. Between the bricks that made the archway over their lowered heads, water trickled down. The air was colder now and the water around their ankles seeped through Belle's stockings. In places where the brickwork was damaged from the recent shelling, small rivulets on either side babbled and rushed and echoed around them.  If she listened for a moment the sound grew eerie-- intermixed with their gasping breathes it sounded almost like the high pitched cackling of person, a witch, a wizard laughing at them, not just at Belle and Maurice for their stupidity and stumbling feet, but at the Duke and his presumption of power, at the King and his white robed knights, at the kingdom and its people and every absurd, ridiculous longing in their all too human hearts.  

Something laughed in the darkness and Belle picked up the pace.  

"Almost there," gasped Maurice just as Belle spotted a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.  It must be dawn she realized and they had been running in the tunnel, stumbling and tripping and barely walking now for hours.  Her back ached from bending to accomodate the decreasing appeture of the tunnel. Maurice puffed along with his head at the level of his shoulders.

Still, he could hear the smile in his voice as he said it.  "Freedom!"

"We're almost there."  

The tunnel turned upwards and now they were climbing, grasping for slippery handholds, shrugging off moss and cobwebs and brushing off the tiny running feet of small rodents too icky for Belle to contemplate.  The fell to the ground with indignant squeaks and still Belle and Maurice climbed, their fingernails chipped and bleeding as they pulled themselves up into the light.  

Belle saw the circle of pale blue sky and the pink clouds of morning and then Maurice's body blocked out the sight as he heaved himself up and out of the tunnel into the light of dawn on the other side with a gasp.  

Belle followed eager to be rid of this place, this living grave, pushing her hands and feet against the walls of the tight tunnel to launch herself up and out.  

She landed not on the ground, but in someone's arms.  

"Papa!" she cried joyfully, laughing with relief.  

A deep throated chuckle met her, too deep to be her father's voice and she struggled to detach herself from the arms that held her, too muscled for her Papa's, pushing herself off a chest to thick and broad to be her father's.  Panic leap up her throat and she screamed.  

"Oh look LaFou," crowed Gaston.  "She just called me Daddy."

Chapter Text

Belle turned to see her father held tight in LaFou's grasp struggling weakly. The metal box was on the ground in the grass still glowing faintly, lighting them up from below with a ghastly greenish light.

She tried to run, but Gaston easily grabbed her by the back of her dress and pulled her into his arms. She was exhausted, too tired to resist his kiss. He pressed her down into the grass.

”No!” screamed Rumple with Belle and Maurice and another strange voice added to his own at the same time.

And Rumple pushed back hard with all the magic within him, flinging the heavy weight of the object above him away, pushing the mirror, flinging it with all his might.

He heard the crack and the crash and saw the shards around him shimmer once again.

He was in the mirrored room and the walls were starring at him with Belle's accusing eyes. The small mirror in the frame was broken. He had destroyed it.

But it was a memory. It had really happened. And no matter what he did now it didn't change it.

Still he couldn't look.

He grabbed his walking sticks and rushed out.

He slammed the doors behind him. Breathing hard he turned a corner away from the West Wing and threw up in a planter. He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. He knew he couldn't let Jefferson or Chip or any of the others know, not this time. He didn't want them walking in to find him sprawled on the ground. He didn't want them to know that he had come back to the memory glass like an addict to his pipe. It was a compulsion now and even as he tucked his shuddering shelf into bed and pull the cover over his head he still felt the itch and twitch in his hands, the urge to hold the memory glass again, the drive to see , to learn, to understand it all. He closed his eyes and dreamed of a past that was not his own and the next night rose again to look once more into the glass.

Chapter Text

"What do you know about the mirrors breaking?"

Belle had stormed out of the meeting of the Revolutionary Committee of Unity, ducked into a toilet stall and screamed at the Speaker in Darkness.  

"What mirrors?" it returned weakly.

"COME ON! DON'T FUCK WITH ME!" 

The first mirror that had broken, had shattered at night.  Belle had just been asleep in bed when the memories had flooded back into her, returning unpleasantly, marring her rare moments of slumber and pleasant dreams.  At first she hadn't realized what it was, thinking it was just a  vivid dream.  In the morning when she awoke though, she remembered, for the first time, turning into a dragon, eating a knight, his fear.  She had taken the memory from his body when it was no longer living and had already begun to fade. It was not the most vivid one she had for that reason.  Also it was not her own memory.  Most of the memory glass memories were her own.  She had taken that specific memory from that specific person to remind herself what happened when she lost control, when she let the monster take over, when she let herself rest and take a back seat in her own mind.  It was a cautionary tale that she exposed herself to sometimes.  

Helpfully the Speaker in Darkness had reminded her about what it had said when she first took the memory from the dead man's rapidly decaying mind.  Even if she put it in mirror glass successfully it was unlikely to hold forever, the way memories from a living person would, when imprisoned in the glass.  She had accepted the likeliness of its decay at the time.  It had decayed in the frame and dissolved it, as the Speaker had promised and that was that.  

But then... this new memory.  This was one of her own.  Not taken from the mind of dead man and very much freed before its frame time was supposed to run out.  

Suddenly, everything seemed suspicious.  

But who had access to the memory glass ballroom?  Only La Belle Dame Sans Merci.  

Chapter Text

Even after Jefferson had saved him from drowning in the memory mirrors. Even after he had promised Chip he'd stay away, Rumple found himself in the mirror glass ballroom once more. He stepped into the abandoned ball and the ensorceled candles immediately sprang to life. The round room was all mirrors and his reflection stared back at him from all sides, multiplied over and over until it looked ridiulous, mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors to infinity. He looked small and unimposing in the huge empty space as his footsteps echoed on the shin-stone tiles. He skittered towards the wall that held the memory glass mirrors in their slots, rack upon wooden rack hanging off the wall. The room was dark despite the candles. His face looked drawn and pale in the reflection of the memory glass, like a pinkish white fish swimming up out of the depths of the sea, illuminated by an eerie inner light.

His whole soul was screaming at him inside not to, as he took down the next mirror in the sequence and dragged it clumsily to the easel.  He pulled the toppled over chair back upright again, unsurprised this time to find a total lack of shards from the mirror he had broken on his previous visit.  Once the chair was upright he took his seat, in front of the memory glass on its easel.  He didn't want to look, but at the same time he did. His mind at war with itself, in the end the strange compulsion drove him on and as the image within began to quicken his pulse beat a stacatto tattoo against his throat. There was a sound of rushing water by his ears as his own face grew large in the reflection.  

His familiar face in the mirror dissolved like mist and now he was looking up into the face of a younger man.  

A younger, much more handsome man, whose cheeks were sunken, whose nose was straight, butwhose evil thoughts twisted his face into the ugly mask. 

Rumple was Belle again, trying to get away from him, but he had her by shoulders and was pressing her down into the earth as if she could did her own grave with her body. y The feeling of wrongness flooded Rumple's senses and he turned to try to escape back, back out of the mirror but had somehow suddenly forgotten how.

“Gaston…”. A bulge pressed against Belle's thigh through the barrier of clothe and calf skin. Rumple/Belle shrank back from his touch.

“Why are you here?” Belle's voice cracked in confusion. 

“You’re supposed to be at the castle!” Screamed Maurice in accusation. 

“The Duke is done for,” said Gaston, without remorse.  “The castle will fall, sooner, later, it makes no difference, but I want to be on the winning side when it happens.  My dear father, doesn’t have the strength to hold out against the might of the King and his soldiers.  He can replace them with new, fresh recruits the moment they're cut down.  In the meantime our troops starve and grow weaker. People desert and we are fewer in number with each passing day.  Of course,” he scratched his chin.  “If I just show up at the King’s general’s tent without anything to offer him to prove my fealty he will think this but a trick. I won't be able to convince him that that I choose his side without something to offer him. Honestly, we were quite concerned about it, weren’t we LeFou? We didn't want to get our throats slit prematurely, eh? ” 

LeFou said nothing, but in the dim light of morning Belle could see his face looked grim and strained.  “Please—“ Belle begged.  “Don’t let this happen, don’t—“. Gaston drew back and idly cuffed Belle across the face.

Rumple was startled by the man’s brute strength.  Bright lights danced for a moment in front of his eyes. 

Somewhere behind him he could hear Maurice struggling—- “Ow!” Screamed the LaFou.  “The fucking geezer bit me!” 

Still stunned by the blow, Belle heard, rather than saw much of her father moving from behind her to get at Gaston. 

What she did see because it was so close, was Gaston’s face— almost placid, barely a trifle annoyed at the interruption. All of time seemed to stand still as frozen, Belle watched Gaston shove his long hunting knife into Mauice’s gut.  He pushed up, all the way to the hilt. As if he was gutting a deer in the hunt, the pull it out and wiped it on his breaches without a care in the world.

As Maurice began to bleed and sputter. Only then did Belle screamed as Maurice looking down, crumpled to the ground. "Dammit couldn't you do a better job of keeping hold of one feeble old git?" Gaston groused at LeFou as if Maurice was nothing.

The old inventor was on the ground now, drenching the grass in blood bright red as new paint, hunched over his bleeding guts, his white shirt red as if it had been dyed that way from the start, barely a spot of white left to show its original colour and still the blood came. Belle struggled against Gaston to get to her father, but he held her in an iron grip, her arms practically shackled to

“I’m sorry I’m sorry” Maurice muttered as he reached a bloody hand towards Belle’s face.  “This is all my fault, Belle,” he moaned in anguish as he rolled upon the ground, his back arching in pain. sileHe gasped out and cried, screaming a silent scream of agony. Belle couldn't stop looking, couldn't stop struggling against Gaston, tired as she was and weak from running all night.

“No, no ono Papa hang on! Please! Please Gaston!"/p>

Something in her still refused to believe the evidence of her own eyes, even as she watched her father choking on his own blood, gasping to breath and her feet. She felt like everything was happening to someone elese because this couldn't be her reality. Gaston couldn't be unfastening his belt and tightening loop by loop it around her wrists.  Later she told herself she should have struggled, tried to get away, something— but she was caught there in her father’s gaze in the blood on his lips— in the fear and the guilt and the terror and knowing he was dying. 

“Please— if I give this to you,” she begged Gaston, stupidly, she saw for hindsight now so many years later. “Please let him live, let him live.  I don’t care-- take me-- take whatever you want.  Let him live, he’s all I have.” 

“No Belle!” Maurice spluttered, flecks of blood dotting his linen shirt.  “I won’t have him do this to you!  Your virtue!  I’m old I’ve lived my life you still have—-“

And Gaston just snorted, he didn’t really laugh, and she recognized now with the experience of years, that he couldn’t really laugh or even find something funny. Rumple had met people like that himself, people who couldn't really understand humour or warm companionship, people whose only pleasure was in domination who only felt anything at all when they were hurting someone else. There were people out who were so hollow that the only relation they could recognize was one where one person was below another. This feeling was the only thing that really brought a true smile to Gaston's lips, the feeling of someone licking the dust beneath his feet, someone recognizing him for the exalted being he was-- Gaston, the greatest hunter of beasts and women alive. 

And all the while Belle begged— not for herself or her virtue, but for her father— please please let him please help him, get him to the doctor please please please—

She begged without shame. Even as the brute slammed her head back and tore her most sensitive parts.  

And Rumple was vaguely aware that his body, wherever it was, was hunched over crying, he was crying for Belle, for Maurice, for himself who was Belle, and for himself just as himself— because he had never loved anybody this way— the way that Belle loved her father— maybe because no one had ever loved him that way— and maybe it was scary too—- to love someone so much— to love Belle so much—that like Maurice you would die for her— because Rumple, who knew what was happening and had both Belle’s hindsight and foresight  and wasn’t a prisoner of self denial Belle was at the moment, knew it was true— Maurice was dying, would die, was dead in his time own time. 

His mind was somewhere else now, far distant from Belle’s body, which he recognized was not his own, even as it had these awful things done to it. 

He remembered a time when he had been used the way this Gaston was using Belle now, by the slaver after the auction, by Cora at the soldier’s camp.  Looking back at it he had been so angry at himself— more than at Cora, for being such a fool.

And he remembered a time when he had been ready to die for someone he loved— had nearly died, had been left to live a life of torment and slavery by someone who had betrayed him, her who only pretended to care before consigning him to slavery forever.    

Later, much later when he’d seen Cora, when he was shackled and caged and spinning in the public square for his master— he’d seen her and he’d caught her eye.  He’d known it was her— of course he had, he had been looking for her everywhere, hoping against hope that she’d gotten to the stash of money and was just biding her time, waiting to purchase him or get him alone to effect a rescue. 

Only when he’d finally seen her, after so much suffering and waiting, after hanging on for so long telling himself it was just because she’d had trouble finding him with all the recent moves of the slave caravan that she’d not got to him before, the moment he’d finally seen her.  It had barely felt real. 

After a year of searching face after face every day in the squares and slave auction blocks and markets he finally saw the features he recognized.  The slightly dimpled chin, the auburn hair, such an unusual colour and she’d done nothing to disguise it. 

She was beautifully dressed in brocade linen, white with blue trim.  Spotless and elegant.  A woman no one could have ever confused with the “comfort woman” to countless soldiers she had once been.    

She’d looked clean and well fed, her cheeks round and pink and glowing with health.  He didn’t have a mirror, but he knew and not just from the shocked look in her eyes, before the mask rose up again, what he must have looked like, how far he’d fallen physically in her estimation, how little of whatever man had attracted her in the first place was left.  Huddled on the ground, behind the bars of a cage, he’d dwindled to almost nothing, a loose collection of bones and rags and loose teeth.

But he still had his voice. 

“Cora!” he croaked out to her and his hands grasped wildly at the air beyond the bars, trying to find purchase on anything to haul him up and out of this cage he found himself in. 

He’d seen the fear in her eyes and the recognition— first of him and then the danger to her own newly secured place in society.

And then a man stepped in who he’d not known was there. 

Milady is this slave bothering you?

And Rumple could see where this was going.

“Cora! It’s me— Rumple!  Please— !

He saw her placid countenance falter the mask nearly slip and then fall into place again as she turned towards her new champion. 

“Do you know this wretch?” he asked and with a half joking smiling. 

“Of course not.  He’s obviously confused.  Looks sick.” 

“Or a con artist,” said the young man with a patronizing air.   “Typical of these criminal types.  Probably tries this on all people who walk by his cage.” His nose contorted.  “Shame the sellers don’t keep the merchandise in better health.   This whole place reeks badly enough to make you retch,” the man said offering her his handkerchief.  Cora obediently put it over her nose and mouth.  “There love, come let’s go see the flower show.” 

And Cora made to turn away as Rumple gaped at her, stunned.

“Cora!” Rumple growled finding a last reserve of anger and energy as he rose to stand on his mangled foot and reached out for her, grasping the hem of her shawl.

She made a growl of her own and her protector whirled on him, twisting his hand loose from the cloth as he propelled Rumple away from he bars, pushing him back and down, forcing him to sit down hard back on the straw.   

“Get back to your place!”

He remembered crying out as the shackle bit into him, like a thing hungry for his pain and blood.  And then Cora looked back at him for the last time. 

His eyes were swimming with tears and he couldn’t even see her expression as he turned away, not wanting her to see his further humiliation, secretly hoping she’d take pity on him and come back.  His pride was nothing to his desperation to be rid of the shackle.  

But she’d only walked on, leaving him to his misery.

Chapter Text

Rumple’s eyes had been closed for so long against the awful sight and experience that he didn’t immediately realize when the memory ended. He opened his eyes and he was back in the room with his own pale terrified, tear stained face staring back at him from the mirror. He cringed back from the image of a man before he realized it was only his own reflection and no danger to him.

He was sitting on a chair in the ballroom again. He’d folded his legs up in front of him and his hands were up to shield his face as if he expected a blow to fall again at any moment. His body remembered and reacted, still stuck in that place, anticipating danger, for far longer than it took for his mind to extricate itself and reorient itself back to his true surroundings.

He didn’t know how much time had passed. He was breathing hard, gasping as if he’d just been pulled out of stream, in the midst of drowning. His legs and arms felt cramped as he unfolded himself from his position.

He could still hear his heart beating in his wrists, could feel it in his neck as he stood, feeling shaky, wishing he had two sticks instead of one.

His mind was whirling with all that he had just seen. And yet, he knew he had to see more, to comprehend to understand to witness, to follow the river to the mouth of the ocean where it ended. The desire to pick up a new mirror warred in his breast with his disgust and aversion to what he’d been forced to witness. He was sure this mirror trick was not from his Lady— how could it be— she wouldn’t show him this— wouldn’t have this done to him if she knew what it felt like how awful how painful— his lower regions ached as he moved with phantom pains of a rape he’d never experienced.

Wouldn’t experience— not if he had a head still in his skull with any sense.

And yet— his mind went blank again for a bit, carried along by the eddies of old memories, thoughts of Cora, the great love his life? The first great love of his life. Then who was the second? La Belle Dame Sans Merci? Surely that was only a one sided romance. But it could still be love, couldn’t it? Even if the object of your affection was barely aware that you existed?

Belle would be furious with him for this, he was suddenly certain. Why had that not occurred to him? She would kill him for peering into her private secrets, for violating this inner sanctum for breaking into this closed chamber. Why had he thought she wanted him here, wanted him to see her greatest sorrow, her defilement, her shame, her father’s demise? What the hell was he thinking?

And then he realized he had the mirror in his hands again. Not the same mirror. It was a new one. How had he replaced the previous mirror back and taken out a new one, and dragged it to the easel to be viewed without even realizing what he was doing?

Suddenly, something clicked in his mind. This was some kind of dark enchantment. The mirrors were cursed and working their magic on him. Maybe his mistress didn’t know. Maybe it was all the work of one of her enemies. Maybe she would think he was working with them?

And yet even as he thought these things his fingers fumbled as they untied the string that held the cloth in place that covered the mirror. His gaze caught on the shiny surface and his hands became Belleflower’s hands, fingers soiled with set earth and grass that she’d tried to throw at her captor without success. For a second his own, rough clean calloused male hand, he had large hands, despite the small size of the rest of his body superimposed like a ghost over the image of Belle’s small dirty hand in the mirror and some instinct of ancient self-preservation inside himself screamed RUN!
Run away and don’t ever come back!

He dropped the mirror and it shattered into a thousand pieces.
The crash reverberated through the halls. He thought for certain Chip and the rest of the servants and the Hatter too must have heard it. He couldn't let them intervene. Couldn't let them see. His thoughts were whirling like the spinning wheel with no thread to tether it or hand to hold it back. He skittered out of the room, panting as if he had run a mile. He slammed the door and felt it lock forever. He would never, never go back there again.

The guilt of what he had done reached up like a hand and seemed to grip his throat and twist his guts up inside. He felt like he couldn’t breathe.

And he knew he had to go, get out of this place. Get out of this place where that man in the mirror could hurt him.

Chapter Text

Belle was rushing home to Rumple, but of course, the matters of the revolution had to interrupt her.

 Different factions had to be dealt with before they killed each other, before the whole democratic project dissolved into a back-stabbing reign of terror.  They needed some kind of objective authority to break them up when they got to squabbling like this, like a parent separating and sorting out two quarrelling toddlers. She was rapidly realizing that keeping the nascent country from descending into a monarchy or dictatorship wasn’t the action of a single revolution, but required consistent care, like a gardener tending to a climbing plant, constantly having to put down new trellises and supports to keep it growing into the desired direction, constant treatments for funguses and other things that would sap the strength of the newborn democracy. It wasn’t just a machine that once set in motion chugged along to its destination of equality. It was a constant, unending struggle just to keep the project in a state of semi-effectiveness. It was absolutely exhausting to be honest, thought Belle.

Perhaps the creation of schools to train people in how to best administer the new state and in the laws of government, as one of the parliamentarians had suggested, was the best way to go. Even as one nearly all powerful being, she couldn’t be a thousand places at once, putting out every fire the moment it arose.

Of course they would come to her for the funding, but money was easily replicated, was it not? If the cause and purpose was just. One truism was that there was always more money in the world and one new coin could easily replace a lost one in value. Sentient beings were not easily replaced. People were not interchangeable that way.  Each one was unique and in all the time she’d lived she’d never seen the same exact pattern of a person in body and spirit appear more than once even in cultures that tried to train their populations all to a uniform mold.  Variation, as any student of nature could tell you would happen anyway.

It was exhausting, but more than anything she wanted to prevent the new government from reconstituting itself into another monarchy or authoritarian system.  Everything they had struggled for wouldn’t be worth it, if in the end they only replaced an evil ruler with another, just from a working class family instead. And yet sometimes she thought that was really what some people wanted. To be ruled over. To rule over others. Just with them in charge instead of someone else. Democracy wasn’t always easy for people, who had lived all their lives in a dictatorship, worship their ruler like a god, to understand. Some people didn’t realize it took a lot of work, to keep everyone in the loop about the decisions they would all need to make. Lazy people preferred not to do their homework and unscrupulous people were always happy to take a burdensome decision off their hands. 

The Speaker in the Darkness had warned her about this.  It was endlessly cynical about her plans, noting that human beings rarely acted in their own long term best interests.  They were tribal and territorial and found it hard to trust those unlike them.  It made it difficult for disparate peoples to agree on things.  

By the time she could resume her flight back to the Dark Castle she could feel something unsettling stirring inside her.  

The first mirror that broke she had considered an accident or something that was destined to happen due to condition of the man she’d taken the memories from.  The second mirror had alerted her that it couldn’t have been a mistake. She’d left the island after that, on her way back to the Dark Castle to see what was going on before there were any other unpleasant surprises. She felt both excited and apprehensive, her mood switching from ominous dread to happy anticipation. Her feelings about seeing Rumple again were tangled up in each other: Fear that the Speaker in Darkness would attack again and try to drain his magic. Worry about how he was doing and whether whatever had broke the mirrors might have injured him. Excitement and Longing for large eyes in a sun weathered face.

She missed the sound of his voice, how it travelled up and down the octaves in a way that few men’s voices she’d known could, the unique sing-song cadence that perhaps was a mere artifact of his peculiar local accent, but sounded so lovely and dear to her in a way few voices she could remember ever had. She could almost reach out now that she was so close and touch his register in the general hum and music of all the living beings in the vicinity, like a golden line that rose and dipped into the surrounding notes, like the arc of a dolphin leaping in and out of the ocean as he went, sparkling with glistening droplets of water, each like its own tiny sun.

Her dragon wings flapped on over mountains and valleys and cities and streams, her magnetic senses telling her unfailingly where she was, despite the strangeness of the terrain, until the land below grew more familiar.  She saw, from miles away the gap in the pink and purple sunset, the black silhouette of a castle that wasn’t there, hidden from sight, a place no one could travel to unless she wishes them to.

Idly, she wondered if the Hatter was still there or had he buggered off to his little mushroom hovel in the Boglands.  Did she want to find him there?  It would be nice if someone was keeping Rumple company, but then again, a hungry, horny part of her wanted to find Rumple alone, to take him to her and kiss him all over, to wrap her body around him, like the snake she was and squeeze until she drained every drop of his essence into her ravenous, waiting mouth.  

Then a feeling… like a giant invisible fist had come out of nowhere and punched in the stomach.  Memories, strong memories, horrible memories flooding back in an endless, unstoppable torrent.  She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t breath or fly for a moment.  

In her dragon form she dropped from the air like a stone, a missile careening towards the ground.

Chapter Text

Rumple's mind was still whirling, spinning like a thread caught in the wheel. It felt like his thoughts were flying in all directions. He needed to do a million and one things before he left the castle for good. And yes, he needed to leave this place for good. Now it felt like the spell of the mirror was temporarily broken, but like a half played piece of music, still hung in the air, longing to be taken to the finish, demanding completition. The compulsion to finish what he had started with the memory glass still ran high in his blood. And it was worse now, somehow, that he was halfway back in his senses again, without excuses, his lies to himself laid bare— because really there was no way in hell that Belle had meant for him to find the mirrors. And that meant someone or something had been manipulating him, using him to hurt her somehow— or maybe this was just some wicked part of himself, eager to self-sabotage the one good thing he had going in his miserable life. Yes, he realized, that had to be it. It would be just like his misbegotten self to destroy even this pleasant rest and comfortable bit of existence he’d somehow managed to luck into with a goddess no less who inexplicably tolerated him, him who wasn’t fit to lick her dust and yet still— somehow wanted more. Just like his father in the end— a peasant who could never be satisfied with his place always pushing to be something more than he was born to be.

Would La Belle Dame Sans Merci be angry at him for taking a satchel and some maps? Ridiculous question. Of course she would. But after what he had done-- trespassing in her innermost private space, destroying and defiling said space beyond repair-- the theft of a few maps and a burlap bag seemed laughably trivial.

He stuffed as many maps of the forest and surrounding area from the map-room as he could into the satchel and a spare pair of clothes.

In a leather backpack he shoved a rind of cheese and a hunk of bread.

He put on his new boot and strapped a walking stick onto his pack on his back. He'd wavered about informing Cathy the carriage, but decided at last he would not chance it. He would need crutches to move as quickly and securely along the forest path as he could. He was fairly certain it wasn't smooth. He put on his gloves and stuffed a warmer coat into the knapsack. He had no real idea what the weather was like outside the bubble of Belle's domain, but if it was warm, he figured it would be easier to shed the excess clothes than to acquire new items once he left the bounty and safety of the castle. In the real world, in his experience, people were dear with their castoff clothes when they thought you wanted them, even if they could no longer user them themselves, especially if they thought you might be an escapee from the army or a former slave.

The last thing he took from his room was a golden apple he had made accidentally, wrapped and hidden in a linen pillowcase. He didn't want to take any of the many precious gems, exotic plants or priceless artifacts Belle had acquired through her long life on his journey. There was the added weight to think of, sure, but mostly, he didn't want to steal from more than he already had. This apple was something he had made in happier times. Perhaps if he was stuck and no one would hire him to work, he could sell it for some food or a warm place to sleep. He could barely see to find the buttons to close up the sac when he put the apple inside.

His vision swam with tears as he closed the door carefully behind him and swung down the steps for the last time. He peeked around the corner to make sure the carriages, both regular and enchanted and the magical animals and sentient carpets were all inside. The world was unnaturally quiet as he removed his scarf and wrapped it around his gloved hand to be doubly careful he didn't touch iron. He lifted the iron latch without trouble and the door squeaked in protest as it swung open, a sound that to his ears sounded too much like "Don't leave, don't leave, don't leave." Finally the little used hinges prised themselves open as he pushed through the door.

And then he was outside and the door swung shut behind him.

The metal clang echoed in the cold air.

There was a feeling like a sunction cup becoming unstuck, but as if he were the suction cup and the entire world was the surface of a glass pane. There was an odd, prickling sensation in his hands and feet and then the barier reasserted itself. He looked behind him and the there was a gap in the vista as if someone had taken a giant cookie cutter and cut a silhouette of a castle out of the es surrounding forest scenery.

His hands began to tremble. His knees knocked together with shaking.

The world outside was cold, so much colder than he had felt in a long time, but that wasn't what set him to shaking.

He was outside her protection now.

And he was terrified.