Rumplestiltskin (3 page)

“Yes sir.”

The man looked up. “Where is he then?”

“I, uh…” Aubrynn flushed. “I am afraid he had to relieve himself. He could not wait a moment longer.”

“All people must be accounted for. You tell yer father to come here after this is over so that I may be sure to cross him off this list. All those not crossed off meet an outcome they are not too eager to experience.” His kind eyes met hers. “You will find yer father soon, yes?”

“I—uh, yes. I hope so.”

“See that you do. It is orders we cannot disobey.”

“Yes, sir. I know. Thank you.” She dipped a curtsy and hurried away, praying silently her father showed up despite himself.

Already the musicians had begun their tribute to the deceased prince as Aubrynn stepped up to the end of the crowd. Men and women alike were wiping their eyes and attempting all manner of whimpers to appease the royal family. She caught a glimpse of the beautifully dressed queen as the multitude parted, just before King Marcus stood to deliver his speech.

Aubrynn looked down with the others, not willing to meet the man’s eyes. She stared at the stones around her feet allowing his words to glide over her, only catching about every third one. Soon this would all be over. Soon she could head home and wait again until they were summoned next year.

But if her father did not show, she was not sure she would even have a house to live in until next year. Without her father in the home, the king would surely take it up again. Where would she go? Her mother’s sister lived about fifty miles south in a neighboring kingdom, perhaps she would take her in? Or if she offered herself as a maid, for free room and board, maybe one of her own neighbors would take her? But no one could afford the luxury of another mouth to feed. Things were tight everywhere with the king’s high taxes.

Aubrynn cringed and took a deep breath chanting within her mind, “Please come, Father. Please come, Father. Please come, Father…” over and over again until she thought her heart would burst. Heaven knew he had never been a good father, not even while her mother and sister were still alive—but since their deaths it had all changed. He had gone completely downhill.

It was as if Mother’s presence had kept him in check just long enough to be halfway respectable. Now the man was a drunkard, plain and simple. He spent way too much on drink and slothed away the rest of the hours until his next bottle, leaving the housework and farm work to his daughter.

She was lost so deep in thought it was a few minutes before she noticed the commotion coming from the opposite end of the gathering where she was standing. It was not until the group jostled and stepped back that she was even aware there was a disturbance at all.

Standing on tiptoe she could not make out more than the shoulders and heads of all those around her, but with a glance up toward the king she could tell from the look upon his face he was greatly displeased.

“You there!” he shouted. “Come up to the front at once.”

Aubrynn could just see the red feathers of the guards’ helmets as they moved through the mass to the front of the podium. The guards stopped right below the king. Everyone around her was straining to hear and see what was going on as they bumped her aside.

“Why have you come to disturb my brother’s memorial? What is it you were shouting of out there?”

“Tis a man they have!” whispered a woman next to her.

“Who is it? What is he saying?” came the whispered responses all around her.

“Shh…I cannot make out what is being said.”

“What is your name?” bellowed the king. His head dipped out of sight clearly to hear the man they had captured better. It was several moments before the king stood properly back up. “Is that so?” He seemed taken aback.

“What did he say? What did he say?” whispered another villager.

“Shh!”

The king shook his head and then announced loudly, “If that is so, then I allow you a moment to step up to the stand and speak with me.”

The crowd surged again and Aubrynn watched as the guards brought a man up the steps of the podium and toward the king. She could barely make out the back of the man’s head as he bowed low and began to speak, but the coat jacket he had on—that jacket she would know anywhere.”

“Father!” Just as quickly as her heart soared that he had come, it dropped. What is he doing?

Suddenly the king’s voice rang loud and clear. “Aubrynn Sloat. If you are within this company, I command you to show yourself at once.”

CHAPTER FOUR

LARGE GASPS AND MURMURS broke out all around Aubrynn as she nervously stepped forward. Slowly she made her way through the crowd and up to the podium where her father grinned down.

“This is my daughter!” He smiled and pointed toward her as she curtsied. “She is the one I have been telling you about. I promise, Yer Majesty, you will be very pleased with her!” He took a step to the left and swayed a bit.

Aubrynn’s whole body went cold. Her father was clearly intoxicated. What has he said about her? What has happened?

The king’s eyes roamed over Aubrynn, his head tilting to the side slightly. “Come up here and speak with me.” He gestured toward the steps and one of the guards was quick to come to her aid and help her up them. He held tightly onto her, as if he was afraid she would run.

Oh how she wished she could run! Instead she dipped into a formal curtsy before the young king.

Rumple hurried away from the window in the castle and out of the room as soon as the king called the girl forward. He managed to make his way outside hidden behind the bushes, just as she curtsied again before the king on the podium. He was as curious as everyone else as to why the king would call the maiden before him.

From the stiff way she had stepped back he could tell she was clearly terrified. Perhaps she did not know what was happening either.

Fidgeting, she glanced away from the king and toward the bush where he was hidden, perhaps twelve or so feet away.

My! She was beautiful.

Scared, but oh so beautiful.

He was lost in his thoughts for a moment and did not hear the words his brother spoke straight away.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but what did you say?” asked the girl glancing absently around her. The group of people must have been completely overwhelming.

“I asked if it was true, this gift of yours, your father has been boasting of.”

“A gift?”

“Yes!” King Marcus was beginning to lose his temper. “Can you or can you not spin straw into gold?”

“What?” The girl’s face went white and she stumbled a bit.

Rumple watched the girl’s frightened eyes as they flew to her father. Imploring him to make sense of this all and explain himself to her and the king.

“Yes, she can!” The man lurched forward and thumped his daughter upon the back. “This here girl of mine is a magical being. You would be a fool indeed not to want her for yer wife!”

“Father!” Aubrynn reddened, her hands visibly shaking.

“Is what your Father says true, girl?” Marcus stepped forward, his finger lifting her chin up to study her features.

She flinched slightly, but otherwise remained stiff, refusing to answer.

Clearly she had no magical abilities whatsoever. “Lie to him,” Rumple whispered quietly to himself. “Lie. Tell the most convincing falsehood you can and lie.”

The king clenched the girl’s jaw. “Tell me now. Can you turn straw into gold?”

Rumple sucked in air and tightened his hold upon the branch nearest.

She closed her eyes and nodded.

Heaving a sigh of relief, Rumple watched as his brother began to lightly stroke her jaw and neck.

“Good. Because if you can, I
will
marry you.” Her eyes closed tightly clearly repulsed by his forward behavior as his hand moved to her shoulder clasping it, “But if you are lying and cannot do what your father says you can, he will die.”

The girl’s eyes flew to the king and for a moment she looked just like a frightened rabbit facing the hunter, before she nodded again.

“You are very beautiful, you know.” Marcus ran his hand up her neck and jaw again. “So very beautiful. I believe you would make a striking queen.”

She turned her head away, but the king brought her face toward his again, leaning over he kissed the girl—claiming to the multitude that he would one day make her his.

The crowd roared—the girl’s own father the loudest.

She flinched, but did not move as he deepened the kiss. When he was through, he flamboyantly stepped forward, his arms swept out toward the throng, their cheers deafening, which allowed the girl to step back into his shadow. Her whole body quaked. Rumple had never seen anyone look so petrified in all his life.

When her father came and captured the girl up in a big bear hug, Rumple could just make out the tears streaming down her cheeks. To anyone else, they could be construed as happy tears, tears of relief and joy; however, he could tell they were anything but.

Marcus shooed her off the stage as quickly as she was brought up. He said a few more words to the people, but Rumple watched as the guards collected the girl and forced her into the castle—her father bellowing out her embellished achievements behind them the whole way.

He waited a few more moments until the coast was clear before hobbling back into the servants’ entrance. Winding his way through the back passageways, he burst into the bustling kitchen as they were preparing for the king’s luncheon. Sliding along the wall, so as not to be in anybody’s way, he swiftly dipped down into the small cellar—his home.

Rumplestiltskin rummaged and searched through every single thing he owned desperately trying to find the stones he had collected by the pond all those years ago. The last time he had even looked at them was on his sixteenth birthday. Tilly was convinced the pretty rocks had magical abilities and that would one day help him. She was positive because they had been in his pocket at the time of the transformation, they held a special enchantment.

After years of trying to make the striped stones correct his body, Rumple had given up. Sure there was no doubt the pebbles had some sort of zing to them, some sort of mystical ability. Hadn’t they shifted his clothing around the room and created a few moments of ease and happiness to him when the chores seemed too hard to bear? Before he gained as much strength as he had now, Rumple would constantly keep one of the stones around with him, to help aid in carrying something or moving something that would prove too heavy for him.

However, on his sixteenth birthday, after foolishly attempting to lift the ugly curse off his form yet again, his anger for the helpless rocks got the most of him. In frustration, Rumple threw the rocks across the room and vowed never to look upon them or hold them again.

Until now. He needed those silly stones now. If ever there was a time to find use for such enchanted things, it was right this moment!

Tossing items about, he frantically searched through it all. Where would Tilly have put them? Where are they? He knew she would not truly leave them hidden on the ground to be flung aside and forgotten, she would have picked them up and placed them somewhere—somewhere safe.

His eyes roamed around the small room, his mind reaching as far back as he could remember to grasp anything—any little wisp of some sort of clue as to where the stones could be.

That girl needed a miracle, and though he was not sure his stones could do all she required to keep her father alive, at least it would be a start. At least it was something he could help her with. Heaven knew she needed some sort of hope to grasp onto.

Slumping onto his bed, Rumple laid his crooked back down and thought. One arm came to rest behind his head as he took a moment to sort through all those memories of Tilly to connect with one that could help him.

He was an incredible problem solver; he just needed a few minutes of peace to allow the puzzle to sort itself out in his brain. Closing his eyes, he sifted through hundreds upon hundreds of the greatest of Tilly, allowing his mind to find something—some clue to where she would have hidden what she considered to be his utmost treasure.

After several minutes his eyes flew open. The windows. She had always said how the windows in his room would one day open to reveal his future.

He looked over at the makeshift curtains and landscape paintings that had long ago become some of his dearest friends. Slowly, he got up off the bed and approached the window closest to him. Raising the only hand that would reach that high, he felt all along the top of the frame and down its sides. He skimmed the curtains as well. But it wasn’t until he lifted the pictures completely off their nails and flipped them over that he found the stones tucked between the frames and canvases. Three stones in one canvas and three in the other.

Strangely enough the blue and black striped rocks seemed to glow as brightly and as beautifully as he remembered when he very first found them. His long crooked fingers tightened their hold briefly around the removed stones and their brightness increased through his hand in the darkened room.

Mayhap they contained more magic than he imagined. Perhaps his window, in an odd sort of way, did open—creating a way to assist others. Allowing him to be a part of this world and truly contributing.

CHAPTER FIVE

AUBRYNN SAT ALONE IN the large, richly decorated room, waiting for someone to remember she was there. The guards had silenced her father and sent him home quite a while ago. It was a good thing they removed him from the castle before he could create even more havoc for them both.

What in the world was she going to do? Had anyone ever heard of such an impossible thing? Spinning straw into gold?! What in the world was her father thinking? Where had he gotten such a foolish, stupid idea from! And how would she be able to protect him this time?

She leaned forward and covered her face with her hands reminding herself to breathe. In her anxiety, she often overlooked the simple act of inhaling and would make herself sick because of it. It did no good expiring on the sofa at this time. She needed to breathe, needed to think her way out of this mess.