Chapter Three

"I will destroy your happiness," the Evil Queen threatened lowly, her eyes smoldering with passionate hatred. These eyes now locked onto Rose Red's fearful silver ones. "If it is the last thing I do." She whirled around and stalked back down the hall, allowing Rose a moment to release a small breath of relief.

"HEY!" cried James, startling Rose once more. She stood behind her sister, clutching her gloved hand.

The queen turned, looking amused as his sudden stance of bravado. He lunged his sword through the air. Rose watched it sail in disbelief. It disappeared as the queen vanished in a wisp of black smoke. She gulped. That wasn't the last they would see of her, she was certain.

Suddenly, Rose Red felt the slightest pull. A tug at the back of her mind, a familiar calling to her. A summons. With a disdainful glance at her bracelet of silver rope, she slipped out of the chapel through the crowd without being seen. She stepped out on an abandoned balcony of the castle and sucked in an icy breath of the cool night air. Her red maid of honor's dress did little to protect her from the chill. She looked up at the thousands of twinkling stars in the inky black sky, wishing for a moment to be as free as them. To be able to merely watch the world go by, not be bound to live and serve another. She sighed, a rush of cloud forming from her lips. With arms spread she shut her eyes. Then she jumped.

Before the free falling sensation could give her more than a tingle, the magic to which she was bound took hold. Her arms turned into bright scarlet wings and her body transformed into a quaint red sparrow. The summons was getting harder to ignore as she flew. Her master may have been a patient man (if a man is what you could call him) but he made sure that she could feel the call. She despised her curse, but since her master's imprisonment, she had been allowed to live a somewhat normal life with her sister in the castle. Despite his inconsistent summons, to which she always replied.

The crimson sparrow twittered and slipped through the cavern entrance to his prison. The winding tunnel finally opened up to the magical cage barred by stone and enchantments. It was dwarven made, or so Snow had told her. It was the perfect entombment for such a trickster. Rumpelstiltskin. The sparrow twittered again and perched on a small stone ledge.

"Tsk, tsk. Come into the light, deary." The cackle echoed in the cave.

Reluctantly, the sparrow flew down onto the dusty floor before the cell. With a wave of his hand, the silver rope which had remained on the sparrow's left foot, as it had been woven around Rose's left wrist, elongated and shot to Rumpelstiltskin's hand. Now it's true form was apparent: it was a leash, a chain, not a trinket of jewelry as the people in the castle had thought. He snapped his fingers. In a puff of red smoke, the sparrow was once again Rose Red.

"Ah, there we are. Lovely to see you, Rosie. Do forgive me," he said, clutching the stone bars of his cell in one hand and the silver rope in the other, "I realize I must be taking you away from your sister's nuptials. Pity."

Not bothering to bait him, Rose simply said, "What do you want?"

"Oh," he looked around the gloomy prison with a frown, "I don't rightly know. Company, perhaps? It gets ever so lonely in this infernal place. Come, speak to me."

Rose sighed. "What about?"

"How was the wedding? Was it as grandiose as the guard has led me to believe?" he asked, inspecting his dirty fingernails.

Rose scoffed. "Oh, sure. It was simply peachy. The whole kingdom was there, ate some cake, and the highlight of the night was the Evil Queen appearing to threaten us all with no more happy endings. Good party."

Rumpelstiltskin merely cocked his head and grinned. "No more happy endings? My, that sounds quite worrisome. Yet, you don't seem to be anxious. Why's that, deary?"

She shrugged. "I'm not sure. Maybe I feel like happy endings don't really exist. So why should I be upset if they're taken away from the people who do believe in them?"

"Oh now, that seems awfully pessimistic. Perhaps it is because you yourself have been denied your happiness. Hmm? Did I take that away, too?"

Rose looked up and glared at her personal jailer. "Yes," she whispered.

Rumpelstiltskin allowed himself a triumphant smirk. "You must loathe me."

"A bit, yeah," she flippantly admitted.

"But," he continued as if she hadn't said anything, "You must also think! What might have happened if you were never given to me? Did you ever stop to consider? Perhaps I saved you from an even more dismal fate."

"Save me? Save me?" Her voice rose with her anger. "You think you rescued me? I was better off! I-" Rose was abruptly cut off as Rumpelstiltskin wove the rope around his hand, roughly pulling her closer by her wrist. He caught her arm and yanked her to the bars.

"Don't be ungrateful, deary." His face was so near hers she could feel his hot breath on her cheek. "A deal's a deal. You were the bargain."

"The traded item gets no say in her own future," Rose spat, her anger not subsiding. "How is that fair?"

"Perhaps it was time you learned that life is not fair," he hissed.

"Now I know it isn't. You've made that exceedingly clear," she hissed back.

"Oh, come, do not credit me so! Tis not only I who has shown you how unfair life can be. It is a wonder, admittedly, how naively optimistic you were despite your circumstances. How your stepmother allowed that to continue, I haven't the faintest." He laughed.

"So you condone what she's doing? What she's done?" asked Rose quietly, her anger turning into self-pity.

Rumpelstiltskin released her arm and tapped a finger to his cheek in mock-thought. "Hmm. I can neither condemn or condone what the queen has done. It is in the past and no longer matters. What she will do, however, let us say... I see the opportunity."

"You see more than that, don't you?" she said, mostly to herself.

His mystical eyes bore through her. "Ah, you mean my little...gift. I can assure you, my dear Rose, your future remains just as bleak as your present." He cackled again.

"Great," she snapped. "Sounds promising."

"Oh, now, a life bound to me cannot be so horrendous, surely? Do I not give you privileges? Do I not allow you to live as normally as you wish? All I ask of you are such small things. Yet you continue to be so discontent. In fact, you insist upon it. Do I detect, my dear, a wish to be unhappy?" he wrapped his arms around the bars with his hands dangling just within reach of her.

She took an unconscious step forward. "You think I want to be unhappy? How can I be when all I've ever known is a cage? If not imprisoned by you, then my stepmother. If not her, I then my sister. All I ever did was attempt to keep her safe. Now she has her happy ending."

"And you remain. Poor, poor Rose Red. How we all pity you." Rumpelstiltskin's voice had lowered dangerously. "Because as it is well known, yours are the only problems worth whining about."

"I am not whining!"

"No? I beg to differ, deary. You may go, I grow tired of you." He waved a hand and disappeared into the shadows in the back of his cell. As he did, he released the rope, which retracted back into the rope bracelet around her wrist. She huffed and turned heel, hearing him snap his fingers, she transformed in red mist into a sparrow and flew out of the cavern.