Rumpel

Letter to Shay

Do you feel it, Carrots?

I slice myself open. I bleed upon these pages. My soul has been breathed in them. If you knew me at all, you would know the great depths of my love for you. But I am a monster, selfish and unreasoning when it comes to guarding and protecting you. And you are perfection. Innocence and beauty breathed to life.

How you must hate me. How you must despise me. I dream of a future together. But I know it cannot be. You are too pure and I am too soiled.

Would you even miss me?

Could you make a better life without me?

You deserve better than this.

You deserve better than me.

~*~

I WANT YOU. I LIE AWAKE at night, shaking with an unbearable hunger for your touch. Your hands upon mine. Your skin pressed to mine. The scent of your body washes over me.

I close my eyes and I remember roses. Everywhere, there are roses.

I stood on the edge of a cliff tonight, hypnotized by the gentle rolling waves as they kissed the sands beneath. One more step and I could fall.

It is not death that scares me, Carrots. It is living. It is the endless cycle of pain that eats away at me day in and day out.

I watch you grow. I cannot stay away. I am in awe of your first steps. The trill of your laughter. The way your eyes gleam when you are excited and even how your rosebud lips turn down when you are sad.

Every nuance, every facet of you fascinates me. I would move heaven and earth to keep you safe always, but I fear a day may come when I cannot save you from yourself.

~*~

THERE COMES A TIME when it all stops—the fervor, the zeal, the masochism of always being around her when I knew she did not know who I was, when I knew I could never truly show her how much I cared.

After that night upon Calypso’s cliffs, I ceased following up on my Shayera. Prince, too, had stopped. His reasons were his own, though I suspected I knew why.

At first, the tortures of being separated from her were unimaginable. I howled madly at the moon, night after night, trapped within my realm of clouds, suffocating on the madness closing in on me and choking the life from my body.

I went through a phase where I didn’t bathe and didn’t interact with anyone, save for Euralis, and only when he came to me.

I was a wreck, and I knew it.

I was also ashamed of my weakness and that I’d allowed the farce to continue for so long, thinking that I could straddle both worlds and not suffer so.

I cut off all personal ties to Shayera. I did keep guards on her—my ravens, to protect her from herself—but I never went to her again. I didn’t watch her anymore. No more.

I had to do it for my own sanity. All things considered, that wasn’t exactly saying much, as I’d never in my entire existence been more insane.

After a year, though, I finally bathed.

And after the next one, I began to laugh.

By the third year, I walked among my friends and servants again, and if I wondered about Shayera at all, it was an idle thought now and again. I never lingered on it. She was guarded and protected, and that was the best gift I could give her.

There were even nights where I sometimes contemplated whether she would find another great love. It was true that there was only ever one soul mate, but in this life she did not know she’d ever found hers. But there were many great loves in life, and she would find another. Sure, the thought panged me and sometimes left me reeling in agony, but the depression and pain lessened over time.

And then one day, Danika came to visit me. Years had passed since I’d seen the fairy godmother, but she’d not changed much, other than looking a little more mature, a little wiser in the eyes.

She and Jericho had still not mended fences. She said they never would, until she was satisfied that her godchildren were reunited and happy again.

I shouldn’t have done it, but I gave into curiosity and asked her about Shayera.

I will never forget that scene because it’s burned indelibly into my mind. Blinking, she looked up at me with something akin to guilt burning in the depths of her dark-blue eyes. Her rosebud lips twisted up into a worried pucker and my skin shivered with fear and adrenaline.

“Danika, what is it? What are you keeping from me?”

Setting down her cup of tea, she leaned back in her seat and shook her head. “You are doing so well now, Rumpel. Do you really want—”

That’s when I understood the illusion of all I’d done and accomplished, my false belief that I’d finally moved on, and that now Shayera could too. I leaned forward and growled, “Tell me now, fae.”

She inhaled and glowered at me, but spoke nonetheless. “The girl lives. And she is as well as she could possibly be.”

“What the devil does that mean,” I said in a low, shivering voice that echoed with the strains of gravel and grit.

Never one to be easily intimidated, she leaned forward until our noses practically touched and hissed, “How the hell do you think she is, Demone Prince? She’s a siren now. Her world has shrunk down to four walls and a roof. She never leaves her home. She never speaks to others. She’s a hermit and she grows more and more despondent with each day that passes.”

My heart physically ached to hear her say it. I wasn’t a fool. I’d known exactly the reaction Betty and Gerard would have after the cursing of their child, and they did what any sensible parent would do. They were forced to lock her up, for her own safety and that of everyone else.

Weariness tugged at my soul and I grunted as I leaned heavily back into my seat. “I am a selfish bastard. She told me of her upbringing. The isolation she’d been put through. But she’d survived it then, Danika. She can survive it now.”

“It’s not the same, and you bloody know it, imp,” she said the word softly, but with a definite tone of disapproval. “Shayera did not share her soul with another then. She does now. I don’t give a rat’s arse what Betty and Gerard or even you want anymore. You know better than the both of them that once a soul has been cleaved it will remain forever faithful and, in her case, tortured beyond what a young woman should bear. She is only fourteen, Rumpel, and even so she cries in her sleep night after night—”

“Stop!” I held up my hand. “Tell me no more.”

“No!” She jumped out of her seat and clenched her tiny hands into fists. “No, you need to hear this. You need to know these things. You cannot put on your blinders, not anymore. I won’t allow it. She suffers, and every night the suffering only increases. Betty and Gerard are at their wits’ end. They believe it’s the siren lure that’s done this to their daughter, but I know better, and so do you. Her soul needs to find its mate or she will never again know peace, whether she’s a siren or not.”

I hadn’t realized I’d begun crying until I felt the cool splash of a tear plop onto the back of my hand. Sniffing, I swiped at my cheeks.

“What the hell should I do? I made a vow to Betty. I’m honor bound to—”

“For gods’ sake, Rumpel,” she hissed, “you’re not magically induced to obey. It’s your own bloody honor that keeps you in chains this way. Betty did not know what she asked when she asked it.”

“She is Shayera’s mother! I’ve already done them all such great harm. If I have any hope, any chance of—”

I sucked in a sharp breath, slamming my mouth shut. Damn it all to the very pits of the underworld. The truth I’d buried deeply had just come spewing out of my mouth like hot vomit. All the careful lies and years of work I’d put in to get myself to a better place were crashing down around me. I was just as much in love with her as I’d ever been.

“She’s little more than a bairn still.” I shuddered, closing my eyes and fighting to breathe.

Those words seemed to strip the fight out of Danika too, and she heaved. “Gods above, but I know it. I know it, Dark One. I do not envy you, my friend.”

I glared at her. “Go home, Danika. Leave me in peace. Fix the others. At least they stand a chance of a happily ever after.”

“You do too.” She clasped her hands together and her dark eyes pleaded with me, but for what I didn’t know.

I hated her for making me remember and for bringing it all back up. “Go home.” I said it softly but with conviction.

Her wings buzzed loudly in the almost complete silence that echoed like a vast gulf between us. “I will leave,” she said and turned, flicking her wand to open up a time portal. But then she paused and looked back at me unflinchingly before saying, “If you love her at all, give her the peace she needs, Rumpel. Go to her, send her Prince, even. But do not abandon her like this. I love Gerard and Betty, but in this they are so very wrong. They speak with parental love, but in so doing, they are grievously wounding their daughter and you. You both deserve so much better than the hand you’ve been given.”

In the hours after she left, I sat in deep contemplation, staring into the fire, feeling grieved by the thought of Shayera suffering, because she didn’t deserve to endure this fate. Not her.

That’s when the idea was born. After decades of marriage to my bride, I’d come so bloody close to finding a temporary cure for Shayera’s siren curse. The curse could never be completely eradicated, but it could be transformed, and I’d been on the cusp of discovery.

My books and papers had all vanished in the other time, but the curse of having such an exacting memory as mine might, temporarily, be turned into a boon.

Standing up, I walked to my work room, and I didn’t leave it for the next three years. I worked day and night, getting myself back to where I’d been before the curse had ripped my world away from me.

One night, Euralis came and sat with me. We enjoyed dinner together, and he made the most innocuous and innocent of comments, which finally cracked the code.

“Father,” he said, “you should leave this room. Stop whatever madness has consumed you. Live a little.”

Busy staring into my book of spells and herbs, I blew off the words he oft-repeated to me with a shrug and mumbled oath, the same as always.

He didn’t let it go. “This quest of yours, it’s impossible, and you know it. Nothing changes for you. Nothing.”

I stilled, wanting to snap at him, wanting to call him back to me and tell him that I wasn’t the unfeeling monster he thought me to be. I needed to explain to him that the only thing still holding me together wasn’t my love for Shayera, but his love for me. I needed him to know that I was aware I was a terrible father, and that I loved him to death, and...

Then a light bulb went off in my head, and the answer was so obvious that I began to laugh like a madman, bending over and slapping at my knees. The answer had been in front of me the entire time, and I hadn’t known it because I’d been unyielding in my belief that I was on the right path. The impossible was impossible, in every place save for one.

There was one place in all of Kingdom where rules did not apply, where up was sometimes down and left was sometimes right, and where magic created its own rubrics and madness reigned.

The next day, I flew off to find the Hatter and exchanged several vials of good fortune spells for the one thing I’d always needed but had never known until just then: hope.

The first blossom came forth from the hope tree during the third night of the month, under the soft glow of the full blood-red moon.

I stirred that translucent flower into my kettle, and immediately I felt the magic, the rightness. With a shudder, I manifested a beautiful ring of gold with hands knotted together and holding a fiery ruby the same shade as Shayera’s wild hair.

I dipped it in then breathed.

The ring glowed like blue flame in my hand. It singed my fingertips, but I did not drop it. Instead, I stared at it with eyes shimmering with wet heat and a heart that finally felt hope for my beloved—true hope, the kind that released the shackles around one’s soul, even if only briefly. She was free, though not forever and not always. Although the power in the ring would suppress the siren magic to nearly null, every night she would be required to take the ring off, as it would dull her life force just a little during the day. But at least she could leave her home. She could mingle with others. She could begin to live.

“Dani... Danika,” I cried out, voice hoarse from years of disuse.

The tightening at my back let me know she’d come. “Rumpel?” she asked, sounding shocked.

I turned and noted the high bloom of pink on her cheeks and her wide, bright eyes. I tipped the ring toward her. “Give her this. But say it was you. If they thought it was me, they’d never allow her to have it.”

Her nostrils flared as she flew toward me, increasing in size until she finally dropped to the ground and held out her hand to me. I dropped the cold charm into her palm, and a second later she inhaled deeply, looking up at me with surprised shock. “W-w-what is this magic? I sense great power within.” Her surprised gaze cut to mine.

I nodded, the weariness of the sleep-deprived years suddenly crashing down around me. “Aye. It is. It’s a null ring, for her siren’s charm.”

“What?” She blinked and shook her head. “You cannot be—”

“I’m absolutely serious.”

She gasped. “Th-th-this is impossible magic.”

I nodded. “Indeed it is. Magic that can never be recreated again, in fact. I took the last bloom, you see. This charm is for her, Danika, to give her a life beyond this one. Beyond what she’s been handed. She deserves it.”

She clutched her fist to her chest and shook her head, causing the pearls in her hair to sway fetchingly around her heart-shaped face. “And you, Rumpel? Don’t you deserve it too?”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I deserve exactly what I’ve got. Save my Carrots. That is all I ask.”

A look of heart-wrenching devastation scrawled itself upon her face. “Do you still not wish to know, Rumpel? How beautiful she is now and how much of a woman she’s grown up to be? The fiery flame of mane with its riotous curls winds down her back, and the flush of womanhood brightens her cheeks. Does none of that pique your curiosity? Will you still be so adamant in your belief that you have no place in her life?”

“I am tired, Danika. Far too tired for these games.”

She clenched her jaw. “Fine. Then I will tell you no more. But I will show you, because you are a stubborn ass, and I care far too much for you to just walk away.”

I turned my back even as her wand began its graceful undulation through the air. In seconds, I felt the pressure of her fairy magic pulsate at my back.

“Look or don’t look,” she said. “It’s up to you. But there she is, Rumpel. There she is.”

I didn’t sense her leaving so much as I felt the sudden absence of her behind me. Holding my shoulders ramrod straight, I told myself to eradicate the image. Don’t look. Don’t even entertain the idea of looking.

But before I knew it, I was turning around, and when I saw her, a sound like a wounded animal spilled off my tongue.

She was gorgeous, with skin smooth as pale moonstone, hair the color of fire, and eyes the icy blue of the arctic tundra. Shadows darkened the spaces beneath her eyes, the purple shade attesting to her lack of sleep. Her rosebud lips turned down at the corners, and the frown seemed permanently etched onto her face.

That’s just how she’d looked when I’d first met her, beautiful but aloof, and always with a hint of sadness radiating out from her. By the end of our life together she’d been the exact opposite. She’d had verve, passion, and a sparkle in her eyes. It hurt me to see her that way.

She was sitting upon her bed, staring out the window at the nighttime sky and clutching onto her night rail with long, thin fingers.

I finally saw the woman she would be, the woman I’d known. She was very nearly there. With a shuddering heave, I raised my hand and traced the still image with my finger.

“Oh, Carrots,” I breathed from the very bottom of my desperate heart. “I love you so.”