Disclaimer: Characters, plots, and settings belong to their rightful owners (ABC, Disney, Brothers Grimm, etc.).
"I walked across an empty land
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand
I felt the earth beneath my feet
Sat by the river and it made me complete
Oh simple thing where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin"
"Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane
Rumpelstiltskin watched with wide eyes from behind the brush as the group of children surrounded the girl. Well, a group of ten boys to be precise. The people of the nearby village had never ventured into this part of the woods and with good reason: the demon child lived there. On the days where he practiced his invisibility trick, he would venture into the village and hear the whispers of the "demon" that dwelled in the forest. Many thought he was just a small and ancient being of legend that would steal their children at the given opportunity to make them his next meal. Had they known that he was just a lonely creature who was but nine years old, they would not have said such things.
He knew that because of their fear of him, he should never travel into the village. The only time he had ever done this without his invisibility enchantment was when he was only three years of age. At this age a human toddler would have been unable to have survived in the forest for so long, but Rumpelstiltskin was not human. In the village he had met Zoso, the village witch doctor, who had gazed in wonder at the golden-skinned creature. He remembered how he had picked him up and cradled him like a child. "I shall call you...Rumpelstiltskin."
His memories were momentarily interrupted as the group in front of him became louder.
"You know what my Papa said about going into the woods, Gaston!" It was quite a bossy and know it all voice that had spoken and it belonged to the girl in the middle of it all. She was small and fought to keep her unruly curly hair out of her face while simultaneously carrying a rather large book. Her manner of speaking was one he had never heard before and her dress indicated that she was of noble birth: it's sky blue color was one he had never seen on the commoners of the village.
The boy she was talking to was the tallest of the group, certainly taller than Rumpelstiltskin, and he rolled his eyes as he brandished his wooden sword. The boy had dark hair, striking features and also wore the clothes of nobility.
"You should have said that when we first entered, or are you afraid of the demon?"
The surrounding group of boys all laughed as she became red-faced.
"I am not afraid!" Her back straightened and she held her head up just a little higher.
"Oh really?" Gaston circled her and continued, "You know he eats children, especially girls who read silly books!"
"Papa said-"
"Papa, oh papa, come help me!" Rumpelstiltskin wrinkled his nose as Gaston mocked her.
"Stop it!" she yelled, her face growing redder and tears were now on the verge of spilling.s Rumpelstiltskin felt like enchanting stones and sending them their way. He had never been this close to such a large group of children and he now saw that perhaps all those year of longing to play with the village children were misspent. These children deserved to be eaten. It was a shame that he only ate vegetables. He pointed to a tree nearby and sent an enchantment that snapped a few limbs towards the forest floor.
The children fell silent but Gaston pressed on. "What did you bring the stupid book for anyways? Don't you know how to play?"
Gaston reached for her book and tried to pull it away but she refused to hand it over without a fight.
"Let GO!" she yelled and then kicked him in the shin, resulting in the taller boy letting go of the book. He balled his fists and a scowl appeared on his face.
"You'll pay for that!" he said in a murderous tone. The little girl held the book tight to her chest and Rumpelstiltskin was ready to scare them into leaving his home.
"GET OUT!" he boomed, enchanting his voice to resonate throughout most of the forest. The boys screamed and began to run back towards the way they came. Gaston did so as well but not before shoving the girl forcefully to the floor and leaving her there.
"Wait!" she cried, beginning to sob as the boy disappeared into the trees. Her pretty blue dress and face were now covered in the mud she had landed on but she payed no attention to that as she reached for her now ruined book. She carefully picked it up and tried in vain to clean it with her soiled dress.
Rumpelstiltskin turned his back on her and prepared himself to venture deeper into the woods. However, her sobs and her inability to get up and go home stalled him.
He had remembered crying only a few times when he was younger and the last time he had cried was because he had enchanted a chicken to fly like a falcon but it had only resulted in the poor animal losing its head. Zoso had found him crying in the small hut he had built for him and Rumpelstiltskin began to cry harder when he gave him a confused look.
"There, there Rumpelstiltskin. What is the matter?" Zoso said softly, rubbing circles into his small back. He had been only five years of age then.
"I-I killed the chicken." His voice was small and he cast his gaze downwards.
Zoso flashed a momentary look of worry before asking what happened with trepidation. "Did you do this purposefully? To harm the animal?"
"No, I wanted to make it fly but-but I killed it instead."
The older man smiled and chuckled and realized the young magical creature was looking up to him with a look of concern.
"I am telling the truth!"
"Yes, yes Rumpel, but you...well you...come here," he sat at the large rocking chair at the farthermost corner of the hut and placed the small Rumpelstiltskin atop his lap. "Sometimes we as...people make mistakes that we cannot fix. We also learn from our mistakes. Will you be enchanting chickens to fly again?"
Rumpelstiltskin nodded no vigorously.
"See, and the next time you use your magic you must be wary of using it for amusement-"
"Is that why I am not allowed in the village Zoso? Because my magic is dangerous?"
The boy's sorrowful look pained the older man. He knew the small creature was asking more than that.
"Yes my boy, unfortunately, not everyone enjoys the wonders of magic."
Rumpelstiltskin sighed as her sobs became louder and turned around to emerge out of the brush slowly and quietly. She was sobbing into her dress, her book long forgotten in the puddle of mud nearby. Her head snapped to where he had stepped on a few leaves and she began to retreat as quickly as she could.
"Please don't eat me!" she looked so distraught that it angered him.
"I am not going to eat you!" he said a little louder than he had intended to. She relaxed momentarily before she took in his appearance. He knew his skin was not like theirs. The texture was rough in a few places and varied between gold and an underlying green tone that came and went. His nails were black and were longer than he had seen on the villagers and his eyes were a striking yellow. Zoso dressed him in mismatched clothes that were far different than the pastels and soft browns the children wore.
"Are you going to skin me alive?"
"Why would I do that?" Rumpelstiltskin was getting more and more aggravated with her questions. He had always wondered what it was like to meet another villager but perhaps Zoso had been right: they would never be able to understand him for who he really was.
She hiccuped once and ceased her sobbing. Mud still covered her face but he could see clear cerulean eyes underneath all the filth. With a swift movement she was up and on her feet and approached him slowly as if he were a wild animal who should not be startled. She stopped when she was an arm's length away and locked eyes with him.
Rumpelstiltskin was a little taller than her but the way she was staring at him made him feel smaller than he actually was.
"Why do you look like that?" she asked as she stretched out her hand and touched his cheek softly.
"Because I am made of magic." He simply repeated what Zoso had told him. Rumpelstiltskin thought that perhaps she was dangerous but Zoso had never told him he couldn't interact with a person inside the forest, only outside of it.
Her eyes widened in amazement.
"Magic?" she asked in wonder. Her whole face lit up and the smile she put on made him feel much better about how different he looked. "My book talks about magic! It has all these wonderful stories of it and- and it's ruined." She looked sorrowfully at the book on the floor. He picked it up and held it up for them to see.
"We can try cleaning it by the stream," he suggested. The book was far heavier than he had thought and he looked upon it in amazement. Zoso never brought books but Rumpelstiltskin had only seen the nobles of the village with possession of them.
"Oh can we? I hope we can, my mama gave it to me just yesterday and I didn't mean to get it dirty. What's your name?"
"My name?" he asked stupidly, momentarily forgetting the first word he had learned to speak.
"Yes silly." She looked at him with expectant eyes.
"Oh, it's Rumpelstiltskin."
"Rum-pel-stilt-skin? That's a nice name, how do you spell it?" she asked as she began to follow him to the stream.
"Spell? Like magic?" he looked down at the book in his hands and saw strange symbols glittering out from under the mud.
"No I mean how do you write it?"
"I-I can't write."
She let out an audible gasp. "Didn't your mama ever teach you to write?"
If Rumpelstiltskin had their kind of skin, he would surely look as red as she had earlier.
"I don't have a mama." He had often wondered what it would have been like to have one of those.
"What about your papa? Couldn't he teach you how to write?" her look of concern grew more and more as her brows furrowed.
Zoso was the closest thing to a father that he would ever have but even so, he knew that the older man was not his real father. He also knew mentioning Zoso would compromise the older man's situation in the village.
"I don't have a papa either."
Her gaze fell on him as he tried so desperately to look straight ahead. He had been warned by Zoso many times that the villagers did not like anything that was different from themselves, especially creatures that did not know where they had come from.
"Well, I'll teach you to write," she responded, the kindest smile showing through the now dried mud. "I get lessons from my governess and sometime my mama gives me lessons, too. I can teach you what they teach me!"
He nodded his head silently as they reached the stream.
"My name is Belle," she said happily, curtseying before him. Rumpelstiltskin ignored it and started to wash away the mud carefully from the book's binding.
"You're supposed to bow Rumpelstiltskin, like this." Her eyes looked expectantly at him as she bent in that odd way.
"Why?" he had successfully cleaned the outside of the book and opened it to see the ink begin to run from the muddy water it had landed on. He had once restored a broken figurine Zoso had brought for him and he placed one hand on the pages of the book and concentrated to try to repeat the act. Belle stared in amazement as he closed his eyes and purple smoke emanated from his hand.
"You did it!" Belle yelled and jumped as she looked at her newly restored book. He let his breath out and felt relieved that he replicated his magic without mistake. The pictures in the book showed a knight fighting a monster and a woman dressed regally and cowering behind him.
"Let me clean myself and I'll read it to you." He watched as she scrubbed at the mud on her face with the water and partially washed it off of her hair, making it even more unruly than it had been before. Once her face was free of the filth she smiled widely at him and sat down, pointing to the spot next to her for him to sit. Rumpelstiltskin looked at her in marvel as he felt his heart flutter. He had never been up close with another child, or girl for that matter, and all he wanted to do was stare at her and watch her every move. With the book now between both of them she began to read in the most captivating way.
"Once upon a time, in a land far, far away..." He had never been so entranced by anything or anyone. Zoso had had a multitude of tricks that Rumpelstiltskin would simply gaze in wonder at but Belle's reading put him at ease. It turned out the knight had fallen in love, a new concept to Rumpel, with the princess, or the daughter of a king. She had been taken by this creature and with the help of a magical fairy, the knight was able to rescue her.
"What is he doing to her?" he asked innocently as the picture showed the two protagonists touching lips to lips.
"They're kissing Rumpelstiltskin, when two adults are in love they kiss."
"Why?"
Belle furrowed her brows, something she did often. She was seven and smart but she hadn't given thought to the idea of why adults kiss, just that they do.
"I-I don't know," Belle responded defeatedly. "I'll go ask mama! She should know," her tone returned to a more cheerful one and she stood to leave with her large book held tight against her chest. Rumpelstiltskin felt as if he was losing the warmth of a flame on a cold winter's night.
"Come with me," she asked excitedly, "we'll ask mama together."
"I can't leave the forest," he said as he stood as well. He hadn't told Zoso about his secret excursions into the village but he felt as though that should be kept secret from this girl as well.
"Well, we can walk together until the forest stops and I'll come back tomorrow and tell you what she said." It sounded more like she was asking permission.
He stayed quiet and walked by her side to the edge of the forest. She asked an awful lot of questions that he would simply nod yes or no to. Once they reached where the forest met the outskirts of the village she turned to face him.
"Do you like living in the forest?" Her head tilted and he couldn't help but notice as she looked from the forest to the sky and then to the village and the somewhat large castle atop its largest hill.
He nodded yes automatically. His wavy hair covered his face as he looked at his feet.
"Will you meet me here tomorrow at noon? When the sun is at its highest? I- I don't want to get lost looking for you..."her voice trailed off as she looked towards the sun which was dangerously close to sunset.
Rumpelstiltskin nodded again. His feet had become quite interesting enclosed in the shoes Zoso had brought him.
"You promise?" Belle asked, anticipation on her features.
He brought his eyes up to meet hers. "I promise."
She exhaled and looked cheerful once more. "Then you can hold my book for me and I will come read to you tomorrow." Belle shoved the book forcefully into his hands and started running towards the village. It was a long stretch of grass and he marveled as her skirts bellowed behind her. She tripped only once, then turned around and waved at Rumpelstiltskin happily and continued to run.
He knew he did not have much practice in appearing and reappearing out of thin air but he shut his eyes and hoped he would get it right. Rumpelstiltskin opened one and then the other and frantically hid the large book under his bed of hay, ignoring the fact that he had done his trick successfully and transported himself to his small hovel. He repeated the process and jumped happily as he found himself once more where he had left Belle, who was now a small figure that was nearing the small houses. As his invisibility enchantment took effect, he felt himself run after her at a much faster speed than any human could ever run. He dodged vendors and villagers on their way to their homes but never once did he take his eyes off of her. When he neared her in the village square, an impressively dressed man approached her and led her to a grand carriage, the nicest he had ever seen, and he watched as it took her up the main path towards the castle. It was as far as Rumpelstiltskin would follow but at least he had made sure she was heading somewhere safe.