"Who are you looking for?"
The words were said in the barest honey tones, so quiet that he wasn't sure he'd heard them. He looked up from his spot on the wall. "And what, may I ask, is it to you?" Rumpelstiltskin asked. He narrowed his eyes.
The boy shrugged, the edge of his round, rice patty hat tipping down. It was too big on him and the tip of the cone slid off center when the boy tilted his head. He moved over and sat down on the wall. Rumpelstiltskin leaned away.
"You seem to be looking for someone," the boy said. His tone was light – conversational. "I thought maybe I could help."
There was a single stalk of straw, its ends sharp as broken glass. Rumpelstiltskin closed his hand around it, pressing the tip into his palm until it hurt. He stood, turning on his heel slowly until he faced the boy.
"You think you can help me?" he asked. He leaned down, staring into the young man's face. "What do you think you can do that I haven't already done?" He clenched the stalk of straw in his hand until his fingernails dug into his skin.
The young man turned his face up and the expression was soft in his round, brown eyes.
"It can be difficult," the young man said. He looked down for just a second and then back up. "Trying to find answers with nobody to help you. There are people who know things – people who might talk," the boy said. He glanced back over his shoulder, down the path where the women had gone. "But if they're afraid," the boy said. He gave a half-shrug with one slender shoulder. "They might stay silent."
The young man looked down at the ground in front of himself and then back up.
Rumpelstiltskin narrowed his eyes. They were raw and rimmed in red, so dry it hurt to move his eyelids across them.
"I think you were right," the boy said. His voice came out whisper-soft. "I think those women might have known something, but they won't talk to someone they don't trust. You need someone who can blend in, someone who can make them feel at ease so they'll say what they have to say."
"And that's you?" Rumpelstiltskin said. He leaned in and glared at the boy, teeth bared. "You think you're so charming – that you can make all the ladies spill their secrets while you play at getting under their skirts?" He slammed his hand hard into the wall at the boy's side. "Don't – waste – my – time," he said.
The young man looked up at him from his spot on the low stone wall – not cocky, but also not afraid.
"If you don't want my help, that's ok," the young man said. He shook his head and gave the smallest of shrugs. "But, can I ask you," he said. His eyes moved to spot just behind Rumpelstiltskin's shoulder and then back up at his face. "What is it that you have to lose?"
Rumpelstiltskin clenched his fist slowly in front of the boy's face. His heart was pounding, but he held himself still.
"You're brave," Rumpelstiltskin said. He stared at the boy through slitted eyes. "Or stupid. But if I were in the mood to take you up on your little offer, what might you be looking for in return?"
The young man nodded, and his dark eyes grew serious. "I'm a very long way from home," the young man said. And his voice shook very slightly at the end of it. "I heard that you might be able to help me."
Rumpelstiltskin crossed his arms in front of his chest. "You need a way back then, is that it? To China?" Rumpelstiltskin asked. His voice came out softer than he had intended.
The boy took a breath, small – almost imperceptible. "Something like that," he said.
Rumpelstiltskin watched him. He rubbed the fingers of his hand absently against his palm. "When two people have something the other wants, a deal can always be struck," he said. He eyed the young man critically. "Now, son, the question here remains," he said. He leaned in so close he could hear the young man's breath. "Do you have something I want?"
The boy swallowed and forced his dark eyes up.
"I think I do," the boy said. He looked up, his eyes open and unguarded. "I can prove it, if you'll give me a chance," he said. "I'll follow the women you were talking to and see what kind of answers I can get. Then I'll meet you in the barn at the back of the hayfield before nightfall. If they tell me anything you didn't know, then we'll make a deal. And if don't, then my service will have been a gift to you."
Rumpelstiltskin squinted his eyes briefly and stared at the young man standing before him. His blood pounded in his ears. "If not," Rumpelstiltskin said. He leaned in so close to the young man's face he was almost touching him. "Then your death will have been your gift to me."
The young man took in a shaky breath.
"Deal," he said. His voice sounded clipped.
"Deal," Rumpelstiltskin said. He drew the word out.
# # #
He pushed the door open to the barn with an audible squeak and stilled in the shadows, listening for any movement. When he heard nothing, he walked inside. The barn was large and filled with dried hay. He circled the floor slowly, feeling – rather than looking – for anything out of the ordinary, anything out of place. It didn't look like anyone had been inside for a long time.
He made his way over to a thatched wooden ladder that was missing a few rungs at the top. The ladder stretched toward a hay loft overhead. His hand closed over one of the rungs, and he climbed it slowly. He paused with his foot on the third rung – it was weak and it wouldn't hold his weight. He skipped it. The fifth rung was just as weak and so was the eighth. When he reached the thirteenth rung, he paused. He ran his fingers – whisper light – over the edge of the rung. He cast his eyes down toward the weaker rungs below it. The thirteenth rung had minute cracks in it, but they weren't jagged. They were clean and very, very small. Someone had rigged this ladder to give.
He reached the top, where several rungs were missing, and lifted himself up onto the hay loft. He stood, brushing the dirt and bits of hay from his hands and his pants. He stood at the edge of the loft and looked down. It was a good vantage point. It was high, and unless you were on the opposite side of the barn floor, you'd be hardpressed to see what was on it. But from nearly anywhere on the loft, you had a clear view of floor.
He crouched low on the very edge of the loft. He imagined the young man doing the same – waking with a start in the middle of the night and bending low, listening, ready to defend himself. Then he stood slowly and took a long step back, letting the shadows from the rafters overhead envelope him. The rafters were very low, barely tall enough for him to stand without bending so the young man must have been even smaller. He looked down at the bedding in the corner – a simple red, checkered blanket was tossed across a slab of matted down hay. There were wooden shapes – could they be owls? – in each corner. And above him, packed tightly against the loft's only window, was a messy collection of old hay and grayed field grass – a nest that was lined with the downy white feathers of a barn owl.
He approached it, sliding his feet across the surface of the loft instead of stepping. There were holes in the floor – he could sense them. And they had been covered over with hay. He moved around the periphery of the loft close to the wall where the floor was more solid. He ran his fingers lightly over the wooden panels of the wall as he moved, imagining the boy doing the same, silent. The softest creak made him pause.
He glanced down at the panel his fingertips rested on. Cool air blew in around it. He pushed. The panel swung up, held in place by a single nail, revealing a space just large enough for the boy to fit through. There were two ropes tied to a stud alongside the panel and then looped two or three times around the floorboards. They were wound into loose heaps on the floor and covered by a scattering of hay. He uncoiled them – one was straight, smooth from use – good for a speedy escape. The other had knots pre-tied at even measures.
He crossed his arms looking down at the ropes, now splayed like snakes at his feet. The young man was small, that much was true, but to require knots in a rope to climb up it . . . He tried to remember if the boy had looked weak or if he'd had some sort of deformity. But in truth, he hadn't really looked at him – at anyone – not for a very long time.
He shook his head and leaned his back against the wall, pressing it flat and hard against the wooden surface. He was tired, and his eyes burned. It had been three days since he had slept, and even on him, it was showing. He let his knees buckle under him and felt his back slide down the rough wall. He leaned forward, forehead dropping onto his crossed arms where they were balanced on his bent knees. He closed his eyes and felt the wetness seeping out of them like blood dripping onto a stone floor.
# # #
The flap of wings woke him. It was the barn owl swooping in through a hole in the corner of the loft. It stepped carefully inside and looked at him, like a professor startled to find a student still waiting after class. The owl carried a small field mouse in its mouth, a light tinge of red brushed onto its white feathers. Its eyes glowed huge in the moonlight, hollowed out – empty globes.
Rumpelstiltskin looked out over the barn floor, quiet except for the soft creaking of the wood breathing in the evening breeze. He raised himself and looked out through a knothole in the wood across the field. It was empty and dark. He closed his hand into a fist. The boy was late – hours late – and the familiar panic started to set in.
His muscles twitched, like they was ready for a fight, but hung too loose with nothing to do. There was a dull ache between his shoulder blades where he carried the weight of his fear. So much time spent in fear was just waiting – waiting for something to change, waiting for sleep to overtake him, waiting for someone else to question, waiting to find out if she was dead.
# # #
The moon was high in the sky – well after midnight – when the boy returned. He was wrapped in the same dark-colored cloak he had been wearing in the afternoon, but instead of the conical hat, the boy had lifted the cloak's hood to cover his face. The hood was tied closed with a ratty string that came to a bow below the boy's chin. He carried a small lantern with the stub of a candle inside. He held a long walking stick, barely grazing the ground with it as he walked. Rumpelstiltskin waited until the boy had come inside, had turned his back to silently latch the barn door closed behind him, before he moved.
With the flick of his hand, he lit a ring of lanterns surrounding the barn floor. The boy jumped but didn't get the chance to turn around before Rumpelstiltskin was on him. His slight frame seemed to weigh nothing as Rumpelstiltskin grabbed him by the arms and whirled him, slamming him first into the wall alongside the door, then into a support beam a few feet down from that and finally onto the hard packed dirt of the barn floor. The boy cried out – almost screamed – as his back hit the dirt.
"You lied," Rumpelstiltskin said. He grabbed the boy by the hair at the base of his skull and lifted up, then smashed the boy's head hard onto the dirt beneath him. "You think you can fool me?" Rumpelstiltskin said. He raised his hand and backhanded the boy across his face, bringing tears to the young man's eyes. "You think you can waste my time?" Another slap, harder this time, using the palm of his hand, and the boy's lip began to bleed. "You think this is a game? That you can raise my hopes? Do you think this is a game?" he snarled. Each sentence was punctuated by another blow – backhand, then forehand, and backhand again – the setting on his ring slicing thin spider webs of blood across the boy's cheek and up to the corner of his eye.
"I didn't lie," the boy said. It was barely more than a croak.
He seized the young man's throat in one hand and clenched it tight, choking him until not even a gasp could pass through. He leaned forward, shifting his weight onto the young man's stomach, and leaned in so close to him he could see the spidery red veins appearing in the whites of the boy's eyes.
"I warned you what would happen if you lied to me," Rumpelstiltskin said. "And now you're going to die."
The boy's body writhed and squirmed beneath him, but his grip on the boy's neck remained unchanged. The boy's eyes were wide – but not terrified – they were calculated and focused and desperate. The boy's eyes stilled on a point above his head, and his right arm reached. Rumpelstiltskin reached too, but the boy beat him to the walking stick, and brought it crashing down onto the junction between Rumpelstiltskin's head and neck. He was stunned for only a second, but the boy managed to work his left leg out from beneath Rumpelstiltskin's knee, coiling his legs upward toward his head like a snake. He wrapped his left leg around the front of Rumpelstiltskin's shoulders and pushed back, the hollow at the back of the boy's knee catching his throat and pressing down, flipping the match so that now the boy was on top.
The boy jumped up onto his feet, the walking stick held in both his hands. He jammed one end of it down into the middle of Rumpelstiltskin's chest, and Rumpelstiltskin grabbed it.
"Stop!" the boy said.
The word hit him with the clear, strong force of it and for the first time, as the boy stood over him, he looked not like a child but like an animal – fierce, strong and dangerous. His eyes were wide and incredibly dark, and the bloodlust in them in was real. Rumpelstiltskin stilled, hands wrapped around the base of the walking stick.
"Stop," the boy said again.
The boy's voice was softer now, almost gentle, and he took in a shaky breath. His chest moved unsteadily with the effort of it, and the red drops of blood on the boy's lip began to cut a path toward the curve of his jaw.
Rumpelstiltskin jutted his chin out once, but gave a sidelong acquiescent nod. He felt the pressure of the stick ease off his chest, and slowly the boy removed it. Rumpelstiltskin pushed himself up onto one elbow and stopped when he saw the boy's arm extended in front of him. He looked at the boy, eyes narrowed, but the young man merely stood there, his arm offered out in front of him. Rumpelstiltskin took it – still guarded – wrapping his hand around the boy's upper arm just above his elbow. He was struck by how tiny the arm was there, and as he pulled himself to his feet, he felt the boy's body give a bit under his weight. The boy released his arm and began to take a step back, but Rumpelstiltskin held on, closing his hand around the small arm. His eyes narrowed. He looked into the boy's flushed face and leaned in close – peering.
The boy looked up at him, not leaning away, and relaxed his eyes allowing the man to look into them.
Rumpelstiltskin raised his left hand and gave the string beneath the boy's chin a quick jerk, opening it and letting it go. The cloak slid down off the boy's shoulders, and the boy followed the movement of the cloak down to the ground with his eyes. Then he brought his eyes slowly back up to meet Rumpelstiltskin's, and his gaze was measured – resigned – with the barest hint of a laugh behind them. The boy's hair had tumbled free when the cloak had opened, spilling in long, raven-black cascades down the length of the young man's back and framing his face.
Rumpelstiltskin stepped back, fairly shoving the boy's body away from him.
There in the light, with the gauzy fabric of the boy's shirt clinging to him by his own blood, Rumpelstiltskin could see the contours of his smooth back, the swell of a curve beginning at the top of the breast bone, the narrowing of the waist and widening of the hips just below it and the rounded, lean curves of the legs.
The girl looked at a point past his shoulder and took a step in to stand beside him. Her chin stopped a fist's distance from his shoulder, and she dragged her eyes up from the ground to meet his.
"Sometimes," she said. She said it quietly, and her eyes were dark and still and serious. "You have to be what no one sees in order to hear what no one wants heard," she said.
He stared at her.
She took another step and almost brushed his shoulder when she walked past him and then deliberately continued on her way.