Nobody in this village will play with him. Instead, the children play at him.
The little girls gather their skirts, squeal and run when he walks into the marketplace in search of company: "Monster!" They shout in mock fright. "Look out! If he touches you, you'll turn into stone!" Then they fall, giggling, into piles of leaves.
Their older sisters lean against the counters of the stalls from which they sell their wares: candles and shawls and tarts and things made of leather or wood. The village, so small it doesn't dignify a name, offers them little opportunity for amusement, so they, like their parents, gossip endlessly. Strangers never come here (not since that creepy kid got dumped on the half-witted spinsters' doorstep) so there's never anyone new to gossip about, nor fresh stories to exchange, so the older girls keep passing the same stale tales back and forth, pretending they've never heard them before, pretending they're shocked. After all, what is there to look forward to in this backwater town? Their lives will follow their mothers': marriage at fifteen to a farm boy or, if they're lucky, a merchant, then a passel of kids by age twenty. By thirty they'll look as worn and colorless as the laundry that hangs on the clotheslines behind their ruck houses.
The younger boys play Ogres and Soldiers around him. They don't ask if he wants to play: they seem to assume, perhaps because of his accent and odd haircut, that he doesn't speak their language. He's always made the Ogre, the only Ogre; the other boys are the heroic Soldiers sent to defend the village against him. They poke at his eyes with sharpened sticks, because everyone knows the eyeball is an Ogre's only vulnerability. The smallest of the younger boys throw clods; they're afraid to get up close. No matter how he reacts–running away, crying, yelling for help, swinging his fists–they pretend he's an Ogre and therefore, something to be killed.
The older boys, too conscious of the girls watching them from the stalls, don't demean themselves by bothering with the little foreign kid. He doesn't exist for them: they bump into him when passing him on the footpath, knock him down, step on his hand or leg rather than walk around him. The farm boys driving carts into town run him off the road as he's walking home in the evening. Sometimes one or several boys wait behind trees, then jump out and rob him of the coppers he's bringing home after selling the yarn he and the spinsters made.
They're doing him a favor, these boys sometimes answer on the rare occasion when an adult chastises them for the robbery. The little foreigner needs to be taught a lesson, then maybe he wouldn't be so creepy. There's something wrong with a boy who sits all day at spinning wheel.
There's something even more wrong with a boy whose father ran out on him.
Still, he continues to come into the village once or twice a month. If anyone asked him, he couldn't explain why.
The spinsters teach him, they praise him, they tell him the unvarnished truth. He has enough to eat and they put coppers aside for him so that when he's thirteen he can buy an apprenticeship and when he's sixteen, a membership in the guild. He has a future that could outstrip most of the village kids', because the spinsters have recognized his talent and are nurturing it. The villagers see this and it makes him even more of a foreigner.
The spinsters also tell him stories when they tuck him in at night. Some of their stories are about talking animals, sailing ships or strange lands, but some are about magic.
He prefers the sailing stories. He's already been punished by magic.
There's an oak tree behind the spinsters' cottage that he likes to sit under on summer evenings after supper. He takes Peter Pan with him for company. With the knife he uses to cut sheepskin, he makes a mark into the trunk of the tree, one mark for each full moon that passes since his father. . . since Neverland. There aren't very many marks when he gives up believing his father will come back, but he keeps making the cuts anyway.
One evening he counts them: twenty-two. His father has been gone a very long time. He leans his back against the bark and looks up at the stars. He's thinking. He doesn't like thinking because that leads to wanting, but he can't help it because one of those stars is blinking at him. Maybe it's trying to talk to him or maybe it just wants to be noticed.
He remembers the spinsters' stories about the Blue Star. "Reul Ghorm? Is that you?"
The star is blinking faster, he thinks.
"Reul Ghorm, if that's truly you, appear before me," he commands, using the same phrasing as the wish casters in the stories.
The star moves. It's coming closer.
"Reul Ghorm, I have a wish!" The words startle him as they leave his mouth. He's never dared to think them, but he realizes they've hidden in his mind a long time.
The star flies directly at him, so fast he scrambles away, hiding behind the tree, but the closer it gets, the smaller it appears, and that strikes him as so unnatural that he comes out from behind the tree to watch. The star comes to rest in mid-air about as far above his head as his father could stand, and then the star changes into a beautiful lady with wings.
As she hovers there above his head, twinkling and smiling, he wonders if his mother was as beautiful as this. When she speaks in a voice as gentle as a summer breeze, it startles him and he steps backward.
She laughs; it's a sound as pretty as the tiny bells on the tinker's wagon. "Don't be afraid, child. I'm the Blue Fairy."
"You're beautiful," he breathes. And then he remembers she's kind of like a queen, and he bows to her, and she laughs again.
"Such big manners for such a small boy," she praises. "Tell me your wish."
It pours out of him, the words tumbling all over each other–father, bean, Neverland, cake, ghost, "a child can't have a child"–but she understands. She shakes her head sadly. "I can't bring your father back, Rumplestiltskin. He is where he wants to be, who he wants to be. You must forget about him and live your own life."
"But I need him." The boy slashes at his burning eyes with his sleeve. He's too old for tears; besides, if he shows weakness, she may despise him and fly away. "He needs me."
"You have a home now. Your father will not come back, no matter how many marks you make in the tree, no matter how many wishes you wish." The fairy watches him as he sniffles and swallows his tears. There's a strange look on her face: he can't identify it, though, as the victim of many bullies, he's developed a knack for reading faces. "Let go of him, child. There is an important future waiting for you."
Her wings beat faster; she'll fly away; he has to stop her so he can think of the right words to say to change her mind. He remembers the many, many times his father had to think fast to get out of a bind, and he does what Malcolm would do. "Reul Ghorm! I'll make a deal with you!"
She tilts her head, puzzled. "A what?"
"Deal, a deal!" He searches his pockets frantically. His knife? Would a fairy like a knife? No, it's not sacrifice enough for what he wants in exchange, but he has nothing else, not so much as a copper or a sweet, nothing else except–
Yes. It's sacrifice enough. He picks up his doll and offers it with both hands.
"What is this, child?"
"He's Peter Pan. You can have him."
"In trade for your father," she surmises. She shakes her head again, more slowly this time. "It's a generous offer, but I can't accept it. When you feel unwanted and afraid, remember this, Rumplestiltskin: you have a future of important deals ahead of you, deals that will change the world. You will have power untold, for which you will pay a steep price, but it must be so. You have been chosen, because only you can find the flicker of light in an ocean of darkness."
His hands are still open, still reaching out, still offering Peter Pan to her when she vanishes. He waits a long time. He comes back for many nights after to call her name.
It's thirty-five years before she answers again.