Chapter 14 Rumple
fourteen
Rumple
The hazy pinkish hue of dawn instilled a false sense of security in the Queen’s serving staff as they made their way to market with their lists of daily acquisitions.
Had his mind not been so filled with singular determination, Rumple would have enjoyed taunting them.
Instead, he barely noticed as he swept undetected from the Merchant’s Quarters to the Tower, and filtered in through the doorway beside the kitchen.
The lack of any windows in the Tower left the narrow and spiralled steps as little more than a death trap, unless you could see perfectly well in the dark.
Rumple ascended rapidly and fluidly. The empty space where his Heart should have been was growing more pronounced with every moment he spent parted from his bewitching human.
And Boy was his.
Rumple melted under the door to the cupola and materialised in his room on the other side. With renewed vigour, he approached the looking glass on the far wall. There must be something he had overlooked. Impatiently, he stepped through and into the shadow realm hidden beyond.
The first thing he noticed was the absence of the soft orange glow from the magick of the older runes.
Now, only blues, greens, and reds bathed the rough stone walls of the cave-like antechamber.
He bypassed them with sure steps and slipped silently into a narrow crevice beside a luminous purple symbol.
Comparable in size to the throne room of the palace, this was where he kept anything of value—where he would keep Boy, if he could—and in the far corner was the Midnight Tree, which had spread its ancient and thick branches even further since Rumple had last visited, he was sure.
The Midnight Tree, so named for its black and silver bark, towering disposition, and leaves that tumbled and swayed in all the colours of the night sky, was the cradle of his existence.
His first conscious memories were of the shelter it provided his noncorporeal form, and so it was under its protective canopy that he had chosen to build his sanctuary.
Its gnarled and twisted trunk provided a natural foundation for his ever-growing collection of magickal artefacts.
Rustic wooden shelves were mounted high on either side, all of them full to the brim with incantations and possibilities.
Rumple didn’t hesitate—he knew exactly where the items he wanted were.
Bypassing the oak barrel, he stepped over a raised root, ignored the ledge where a copper kettle and assortment of crystals were stored, paid no mind to the alcove where various bottles and potions were kept, and ducked under the low-vaulted stone ceiling that eventually took over from the outstretched branches of the tree.
Rumple squatted, wiping away the dust from the cabinet that flanked the wall, and produced the iron key that fit the lock.
He turned it thrice, and when it gave a satisfying click, he pulled the door open.
It groaned on rusty hinges before it revealing the prized possessions within.
Arranged by geographical location, the yellowed scrolls were once heirlooms passed down between generations of the families whose role it was to document spiritual lore.
Rumple selected the tomes he had collected from the far east of the kingdom.
The way Boy had described his family’s propensity for the older tales gave him hope their parchments would contain the knowledge he sought.
A large cloud of dust rose into the air when he dropped the pile onto the floor.
Some of the books were so old that their spines cracked and the bindings came unglued at his rough handling, but Rumple couldn’t find it in him to care.
Crossing his legs at the ankles, he settled in beside them and opened those first delicate pages.
Something here had to reference the Law of Names—it was too much of a coincidence that Boy’s family had refused to issue individual names to any of their children for Rumple to ignore.
He’d spent his magickal incarceration looking for any direct references to his true name.
It had seemed the most important step in reversing the Queen’s spell, and he’d always assumed she must have a parchment secreted away somewhere that had been the source of her knowledge, but what he hadn’t considered was that she could have learned his true name incidentally.
Through an overheard campfire song—such as the ones Boy’s brother had entertained him with—or through her servants, the Royal Guard, or even the tithe collectors, who travelled the length and breadth of Falchovari, stopping at taverns to trade wares and tales along the way.
If this was the case, then instead of thinking like a geist, he needed to think differently. How might a human learn his name? And how could the Queen have developed a spell to use it so thoroughly against him?
When the first book had revealed nothing, he’d moved on to the second, and then the third. And when he’d devoured the entire stack before him, and still not learned anything he didn’t already know, the rage that had been quietly simmering was close to boiling over.
He was also acutely aware of the passage of time in the human realm, something else that had changed since he’d found his Heart.
Before Boy, all the days had bled into one long and tedious existence, but now he felt each and every hour that passed.
He was certain that by now, the Queen would have issued Boy with her new challenge.
And she could, because she had more of a claim on Boy—as her prisoner—than he did, despite the fact that he was Rumple’s Heart.
The thought made his corporeal form waver in outrage, and he blinked in and out of existence with aggravated indecision. Rumple could no more kill Queen Schon than he could claim Boy as his own. The situation was maddening.
His shadows thickened with steel-like tension until he snapped, and the thunderous crack of his form splitting apart before knitting back together ricocheted throughout his sanctuary.
The force shook loose an indigo leaf from the Midnight Tree, and it fluttered to the ground beside him.
As it drifted down, floating from side to side, its flesh corroded until all that was left when it reached the floor was a toughened grey skeleton.
Rumple leaned forward to pick up the delicate stem.
Not so long ago, he had thought himself to be much like this leaf, withered and wraithlike. The only thing preventing him from actually becoming so was the black magick that forcibly infused him. Rumple turned the skeletal leaf carefully between his gloved fingers.
Queen Schon was vain, obsessive, and ruthless. She either possessed or killed—there was no in between. Swiftly, he closed his fist around the leaf and squeezed.
Rumple wasn’t na?ve. He had told himself that by spinning the straw into gold he was simply buying more time to learn how to claim his Heart, but that wasn’t true. Not anymore.
The Queen had mistaken his magick for Boy’s, and that all but guaranteed she would covet him for her Collection.
If he didn’t find a way to break her spell soon, then all Rumple would have achieved was a delay of the inevitable.
Upon the discovery of his deceit, she would kill Boy without hesitation, and with his Heart dead…
He pounded his leather-clad fist into the stone floor, and his shadows swirled the leaf’s ashes upward.
Rumple tracked their course and watched in astonishment as the dull and lifeless dust transformed into a twinkling and vibrant glitter that bathed everything it touched in a layer of golden wonder.
Without a shred of doubt, Rumple knew this was Boy’s doing—the glistening shine was the exact colour of his honeyed hair.
He had breathed life into the Midnight Tree in much the same way that he had revived Rumple.
Galvanised, he stood. He wanted to immerse himself in his Heart’s magick.
He tilted his face upward, relishing the delicate tickle of the sparks upon his skin.
Slowly, he turned in a circle, and his foot stubbed against a small book that was partially hidden under the cabinet.
Curious as to how this volume had escaped his earlier attention, he stooped to pull it free.
The front was so faded that Rumple needed the indentations in the leather cover to read the title: Handbuch der Geisterjagd.
The Ghost Hunting Handbook wasn’t one he remembered acquiring, but when he swept the dust from the aged cover, the memory of the night he dispatched the thieves in the forest rang clearly in his mind.
Only hours later, he’d found his Heart and had entirely forgotten about the books he had purloined.
Rumple opened the first page to find the handwriting so old that it was now a rusted brown colour—barely did it contrast against the yellowed vellum within. But if anyone had a vested interest in documenting all there was to know about his kind, it was a ghost hunter.
Hunters were travellers who spent their lives wandering the forest. Whenever they stumbled across a settlement, they made it their business to ingratiate themselves and learn whatever they could about any problems the locals might have had.
No issue was ever too strange, and for the right amount of coin—or for decent board and lodgings—they would see to it the problem never bothered the residents again.
Every so often, hunters met at taverns or safe houses along the way and would trade knowledge and stories.
Quite probably the very same stories that Boy’s older brother had overheard and repeated to his siblings.
Rumple flicked through the pages; the first was an unnecessary dedication, the second a list of definitions, the third a sketch of a simple dwelling in the woods, and the fourth a rambling biography about the hunter who wrote the book.
Rumple turned to the fifth page and found what he was hoping for—an elementary introduction to geists for humans.
However, Rumple’s mouth soon drew into a flat line.
Whoever this particular hunter was, he had learned of the shadow realm.
This was the problem with younger geists, especially those who had only just gained enough power to interact with the corporeal realm—they were arrogant.
At some point, one of them must have been captured and interrogated for this information.
At least, Rumple hoped that was the case, or else he’d hunt this geist himself.
The hunter who wrote this handbook also knew that the shadow realm could accept human items. Rumple clicked his tongue in annoyance.
Thankfully, he didn’t mention that shadow magick could infuse everyday items, functioning much like a witch’s hex or curse.
A low chuckle crawled up his throat at the idea of how scandalised hunters would be if they ever learned that the shadows could seep from the very weapons they held and turn them against the bearer.
Struck by that thought, Rumple lowered the book onto his lap. Was this to be his solution?
He couldn’t bring Boy—as a living human—into the shadow realm.
He also hadn’t yet learned what state his Heart needed to be in when he did claim it.
In any case, he couldn’t do any of this until he found a way to break Queen Schon’s spell, but maybe this was to be the compromise while he carried on his search.
He could infuse an item that Boy would always wear with his magick, and the shadows within would be under command to always protect him.
It wasn’t the solution he wanted, but it was all the solution he had the time to achieve.
If the Queen inducted Boy into her Collection, Rumple knew he would be stretched thin trying to provide that protection himself.
The number of pointless errands she sent him on, all to the furthest reaches of the kingdom, would put them both in an untenable position—it would take only one request for a spool of golden thread while he was away, and their deceit would be uncovered.
The item would need to be small. Something the Queen wouldn’t notice as being out of place, but also something that would always remind Boy of Rumple’s presence. Nothing that could be lost, nor Boy easily parted from.
Rumple stood, the handbook forgotten as it slid to the floor where some of the pages scattered. He paced, with one hand braced under his chin in support of his mental efforts.
Boy had entered the Royal District with only the clothes on his back. Clothes Rumple had already ruined once, and likely the Queen would replace soon if his projections of her next offer to Boy proved to be accurate. Not clothing, then.
Given that Boy was supposedly able to spin straw into gold, his hands would be a focal point, so nothing around his wrists either. Pity. He would look good restrained in such a way.
Which left only the parts of his body hidden by clothing. Such as Boy’s neck. Rumple stopped his pacing. Something delicate and light, easily hidden under a tunic and a mass of flaxen curls.
He approached the ledge beside the Midnight Tree and poured water from the copper kettle into the polished stone basin.
When the last of the ripples had lapped the edge, and the water’s surface lay still as glass, Rumple peered in.
He moved gracefully from looking glass to looking glass within the Royal City until he found who he was searching for.