“Santa Monica Pylon” by Amy Bernays
Gold and Straw
by Harry R. Campion
She knows. I can see it from my first moment in the chamber. I fix the smile on my face, but an icy drop falls into the still pool of my heart and ripples of despair march outward. The door I’ve made closes soundlessly behind me and vanishes as she turns without a greeting.
Her features are as blank and schooled as ever, but her eyes, when they meet mine, are steady and do not slide away in shame and confusion. Her hand, smoothing a wrinkle from the sky blue blanket in the cradle, is steady and her shoulders, shoulders I’d last seen bowed as though under the weight of the sky, are squared and level.
I incline my head and body. “How are you this evening, my lady?”
“Shall we begin?” Elation, a rude eagerness in her voice she has not allowed herself these last two moons. She knows.
“If you wish.”
She draws a rolled sheet of foolscap from her sleeve and consults it. I’m not deceived for a moment.
“Aloysius? Bartolemay?” She raises her eyebrows.
I shake my head. “No, my lady.”
She looks at me sharply, but I do not correct myself. I will not call her Highness.
“Crispengill? Dungarry?”
“No, my lady.”
“Ephraim? Ferdinand?”
No. Golliwall? Horatio? No. Igenwall? Jasper? No, my lady…
Does it occur to her, I wonder, that I saved her life? Her father’s life as well? Does she remember that she was threatened with imprisonment, torture, death by the man she now calls husband? Does she like being queen so much that she forgets that that same king and loving husband’s loins were more bestirred by the sight of gold than her beauty?
Kiirkenny? No. Lemuel? No. Murgatroyed? No, my lady…
Does she guess that every night for a year, I have lain in my jeweled bed beneath a silken canopy and seen only the perfection of her face before my eyes? Would she believe me if I told her that in four hundred and eighty-seven years, she is the first woman I’ve ever loved for her challenging laugh and ready wit? Can I even hope that as she lies beside or beneath that tyrannical bastard that she thinks of my clever hands and skilful touch? Does she know how much the boy means to me?
“Nicodemus? Obadiah? Peregrine?”
“No…my lady. None of them is he.”
I will not have the chance to teach the lad the True Songs, the music of the Tuatha that can make water into wine, leaves into songbirds, straw into gold. He will never see the inside of the great hills, feel the jeweled depths of the seas on his skin, or taste the wind from atop the thundering clouds. I will never take him in my arms and whisper in his ear a name of power and mystery.
“Quentin?” she asks, her rich voice swelling, her cruel game nearing its end.
“Nay, my lady,” I answer, my voice suddenly quiet, miserable, that of a stranger. A monster. She thinks me an unnatural creature.
“Can it, perhaps…be…”
Her eyes meet mine and whatever she sees there gives her pause; I see her falter.
It isn’t too late. I can rescue you both if you will let me. I will clothe you in raiment greater than mortal woman e’er dreamt. For the sake of love, I will move the stars to spell your name in the eldest language. I will raise him to be hero and savior, peacebringer to the mortal race. I will fill your hands and those of the boy with secrets more precious than the treasures of man. Do not say his—
“Rumplestiltskin.”
Gone. Never to be regained. Each geis is unique, never to be recreated.
“That is his name…my lady.”
“No longer.” She stands protectively before the cradle.
She has chosen for them both. Shameless whore. I will go. Foolish mortal bitch. I will summon my power with my dignity and open a new door in the floor of this tower room. Leave the doomed wretch and plaything. To her I will vanish as if swallowed by the stone. The boy is condemned by the loss of the true name I gave him. He will be given a mortal name, an earthly destiny and believe a human monarch his father, live and die with and like his mother.
I will not know my son.
Visit Harry R. Campion’s Web site, http://yangandcampion.googlepages.com.