“Chrissy!” I called. “Chrissy, help!”
If ever I needed a fairy godmother to show up, it was right now. But there was no sign of her. No glimmering, no fountain of lights.
Rumpelstiltskin rolled his eyes. “By law, she can’t interfere with another fairy’s bargain. And besides, Chrysanthemum Everstar is only a chit of a fairy anyway.” He paused, his gaze sliding around the forest, checking to make sure she really hadn’t come. When he saw we were alone, he smiled again. “Fairy girls, like mortal girls, are best suited for growing flowers and having babies. You’ve done admirably in that regard. I was expecting to have to wait nine months for you to produce an heir. It’s so considerate of you to come up with one sooner. Was it dark magic or just incompetent magic that made it so?”
I didn’t answer. Rumpelstiltskin had been close enough to my baby that he could have reached into the sling and grabbed him, but he hadn’t. Perhaps the spell wouldn’t work if Rumpelstiltskin took the baby from someone, perhaps the baby had to be given. I wouldn’t do it. “Our contract was made under duress,” I told him, taking another step backward, “and technically I didn’t give birth to this baby in the time period we agreed on, so the contract isn’t valid.”
I wiped at the words that clung to my arm. They didn’t come off.
“I still have magic,” he said. “Enchantments I’ve taken from trolls and goblins. Did you know trolls can turn things into stone?” He took a step toward me, grinding his graying teeth. “Chrysanthemum may have told you that I can’t take the child by force, but that doesn’t mean I can’t turn you to stone and lift the child from your arms. In fact, I should turn you both to stone and you can keep your babe company for eternity. Either way will break the spell. I bought love that can’t be bought. All that’s left now is to take the baby to the vault.”
To emphasize his threat, Rumpelstiltskin put a hand on a nearby tree and chanted, “Oak tree, stone, stone, stone.” Underneath his fingertips, a gray color grew and spread, simultaneously rushing down to the ground and up through the branches.
Rumpelstiltskin dropped his hand without even looking back at the tree to see his stone creation. “I hope you didn’t miss the lesson in that example, Mistress Miller.”
I nodded, an idea forming in my mind. “Yes, it’s a very important lesson—if you happen to be a tree. I suppose that will teach the rest of the shrubbery to tell you what’s happening in the forest.”
He stepped toward me, his eyes churning with even more ferocity. Anger toward me, anger toward the other fairies. Rage had blinded him. Otherwise he would have understood the warning in the fairy tale when he read it. I was only frustrated for not figuring it out before. Chrissy had hinted at it the last time I’d seen her by warning Hudson to remain a nameless character.
“Enough of this,” Rumpelstiltskin roared, and the leaves on the trees around us shook on their branches, sounding like vengeful rattlesnakes. He strode over to me and grabbed hold of my arm. I didn’t stop him. At the same time that he said, “Mistress Miller, stone, stone, stone!” I said, “Rumpelstiltskin, gold, gold, gold!”
He let out a sharp breath as though he’d been struck. Where he held on to my arm, I could see his fingers turning to gold.
“My name isn’t Mistress Miller,” I said. “And you don’t know my name or my son’s name, so you have no power to turn us to stone.” I was infinitely glad right then that I hadn’t named the baby.
Rumpelstiltskin shrieked in indignation and tried to pull his hand away from me. He was stuck though—his fingers were an unbendable golden band around my arm. He stared at me, his eyes wide and furious. The gold traveled up his wrist haltingly as he fought the transformation. I couldn’t tell how fast it was progressing but I had no doubt he would cut off his own arm if it would do any good.
“The story,” he gasped out and looked to where he had thrown the book. “I’ll find your name in the story.” He waved his free hand and uttered breathless words I couldn’t understand. The book flew to him like a tame bird, landing on his outstretched palm. The pages ruffled open in front of him, showing him the text.
“It won’t do any good.” I couldn’t keep some smugness from creeping into my voice. “The only name the fairy tale ever mentions is yours. I guess the writer thought my name didn’t matter since women are only here to raise flowers and babies.”
Rumpelstiltskin didn’t look at me. His eyes sped hungrily across the flipping pages. He grimaced when he reached the end of the story and saw I was right. The heroine was referred to as “the miller’s daughter” at the beginning of the story and “the queen” at the end.
No name. Not for me, and not for my baby. Rumpelstiltskin threw the book down and clawed at his chest, as if hoping to halt the gold’s progression this way. He only succeeded in ripping off his cloak. It fell to the ground, revealing a golden edge that traveled up his neck. He couldn’t stop it. “No!” he screamed, and it rang across the forest, sending the leaves into another rattling chorus.
He was still screaming “No!” when the gold crept onto his face. The word broke off sharply and seemed to fall back, silent, against his lips.
I stared at him for a moment, making sure he wouldn’t suddenly open his eyes and shake off his gold coating.
He didn’t. He was frozen there, the rage permanently engraved on his twisted face.
Now that my mind was no longer wrapped up in fear, I felt several things at once: the squirming baby in the sling, startled by Rumpelstiltskin’s shout; pain—both sharp in my heart from using the gold enchantment and throbbing in my arm from Rumpelstiltskin’s unbendable grip; and panic. How was I going to get him off of me? He was solid gold and too heavy to move. I was trapped here. The thought of being stuck alone in the forest with a dead fairy clutching onto me made my skin crawl.
I pulled my arm hard. It didn’t budge.
Off in the forest, I saw a bobbing stream of light. The beam of a flashlight. “Tansy!” Hudson called out. He must have heard Rumpelstiltskin’s screams. I could tell he was running.
“I’m here!” I yelled back. I watched the beam come closer. He wasn’t far away. “And I am so glad you didn’t call out my name a minute earlier.”
Who would have thought my name could have been used as a tool against me?
The baby let out another cry of protest, and I rubbed his back to calm him, but I, too, was shaking. Not with fear, but with relief. I was foolish, really, not to figure out beforehand that my enchantment could be used as a weapon. It seemed so clear now that in the fairy tale, Rumpelstiltskin had asked the queen if she knew his name not because he wanted to offer her a second chance to keep her baby, but because he knew the queen could change him into a golden statue with one touch. He had asked the question for his own protection.
Hudson came closer. He wasn’t alone. My father was just a few paces behind him, along with my family, Robin Hood, and the Merry Men. Flashlights and torches weaved their way through the forest in my direction.
Hudson and my father reached me first. “What happened?” Hudson asked, swiping his beam of light across the fairy’s form.
“Rumpelstiltskin tried to kill me—I was so afraid.” My liar’s hat disappeared at this truth, dimming the area around me. “I turned him to gold and now my arm is stuck.”
Both Hudson and my father went to my side but kept their flashlights pointed at the grimacing statue, checking to make sure it didn’t move. Hudson tried to wrench my arm out of Rumpelstiltskin’s hand, without any better luck than I’d had. My father gave Rumpelstiltskin’s fingers a useless tug. “We need something slick.” He turned to find Sandra getting closer, and called out to her, “Do you have something slippery to put on Tansy’s arm?”
She hurried toward me, breathing hard. “I have some sunscreen and lip balm in my backpack.”
While she got it out, Hudson looked at the sling. “How is the baby?”
I checked; he was blinking sleepy eyes up at me. “He’s fine.”
&nbs
p; “What?” my father coughed out. “What baby?”
Hudson shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Tansy, I was going to let you break the news to him.”
My father’s voice rose. “Break what news to me? What baby?” He swept his flashlight beam over me until he saw the sling. In disbelief, he moved the corner of the cloth to get a better view. “Where did you get a baby from?” His voice was full of alarm, as though I might have borrowed the baby from some unsuspecting villager and forgotten to return him.
Robin Hood had just reached us, and he lifted his hands and took a step away from me. “I but kissed the maid once. Only once.”
“Chrissy brought him from my future,” I said. “He’s mine.” I couldn’t help smiling at the baby, at his smooth round cheeks and big brown eyes. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
Sandra peeked at the baby and immediately started cooing.
My father simply stared at him, stunned. “A baby from your future?” He held up his flashlight for a better look.
Sandra leaned toward the sling. “Oh, Tansy, he’s so cute.” To my dad she said, “He looks like you, Frank.”
The baby reached out, trying to grab the flashlight beam. My dad tilted his head, studying him. “He looks like someone, but I can’t put my finger on it … someone with dark hair …” My dad stopped speaking, and his gaze zeroed in on Hudson. “Huh,” he said, and his eyes narrowed. “This baby had better not show up for quite some time in the future.”
Which goes to show you that your parents can embarrass you in any situation.
Nick wasn’t a lot better. While Sandra spread sunscreen on my arm, he smirked at Hudson and said, “Dude,” then shook his head a lot.
Robin Hood walked around Rumpelstiltskin, surveying him from head to toe. “You didn’t jest when you said Tansy had a golden present for us.” He held his torch up to see Rumpelstiltskin’s face better. “But why did she form it in such a hideous shape? Can you imagine us dragging this thing through a village to a blacksmith?” He held his torch directly under Rumpelstiltskin’s twisted lips. “It would frighten children and put chickens off laying.”
I gestured down the path. “The gold for you is back there.” I let my gaze slide back to Rumpelstiltskin’s frozen, twisted face. “This isn’t a present. It was a fairy who tried to kill me.”
Robin Hood’s eyes widened in surprise. “Your magic is strong enough to destroy fairies?” He took a couple of uneasy steps away from me. “My lady will remember that although I held up several stores in her village, I have always been her humble servant.”
His nervousness made me smile. I didn’t clarify that Rumpelstiltskin had only been an ex-fairy. It wouldn’t hurt Robin Hood to worry about getting on my bad side.
He gave me a deep bow. “By your leave, my men and I will retrieve the gold you say is by yonder tree.” He turned and hurried into the forest and the Merry Men followed.
Once my arm was coated with sunscreen, I tried pulling it out of Rumpelstiltskin’s grasp. It didn’t work. “My hand is starting to feel like it’s going to explode,” I said. “Is there some way to cut this off?”
Nick fingered Rumpelstiltskin’s grip. “Not with the tools we have.”
Hudson took hold of my arm and pulled with no better results. “Maybe the wizard can do something. I’ll go get him.” Without waiting for my response, he turned and jogged down the trail in the direction of the carriage.
I didn’t know if my arm could make it until Hudson came back with the wizard—and I also doubted the wizard would willingly help me, but I knew who might. “Clover!” I called, and didn’t bother explaining to my parents why I was yelling out random plant names. “Clover, I need your help. I can pay you in gold.”
The leprechaun appeared, standing on Rumpelstiltskin’s shoulder. He wore a different green jacket with olive-toned embroidered leaves and a matching bowler on top of his head. He looped his fingers behind his belt. “Gold, you say?”
My father held his flashlight up so Clover looked like he was standing in the middle of a spotlight. “Is that the same leprechaun we saw before?”
I didn’t bother answering. I needed Clover’s help, but I wasn’t sure he would help me if he realized that was what he was doing. I had to make it seem like I was offering him another bargain. “Clover, if you tell me what moral to write in the magic book, you can have this golden statue.”
Clover rubbed his beard in consideration. “Statue, eh? Looks an awful lot like that ghoul of an ex-fairy, Rumpelstilskabob.”
“He’s a statue now, and worth his weight in gold. Think how rich you’ll be.”
Clover kept rubbing his beard. “ ’Tis a precious lot of gold, but it would be bad luck to play poker with coins made from an ex-fairy. And none of the shops would take it—can you see me tipping a waitress with part of a megalomaniac ex-fairy?”
I tugged uselessly at my arm. “Then I’ll change something else to gold for you if you’ll just help get this thing off of me.”
“Help you?” Clover pulled the brim of his hat down farther on his eyes. “I gave you The Change Enchantment to help you and got in a ripe lot of trouble from Chrysanthemum. She wrote me up for interfering in your story. All in a snit, she was.” He raised one of his tiny fingers at me, shaking it. “You weren’t supposed to tell her about it.”
My hand was throbbing. I could feel my pulse drumming in my arm like a hammer. “Well, it wasn’t much of a bargain for me. The enchantment didn’t work. I wrote every moral I could think of, but none of them took us home.”
“Did you wait until the story ended before you went scribbling morals down?”
“The story never ended,” I said. “It just kept adding new pages.”
He flicked his hand in my direction. “Well, that’s your problem then. If you had read books, you would know that you had to face the villain before the story could finish.” Clover tapped his foot against Rumpelstiltskin’s shoulder and it made a metallic clang. “As for the moral of Rumpelstiltskin, I already told it to you. It’s that you’ve got to figure things out yourself, but you shouldn’t worry because there will be folks to help you—in this case, me, seeing as you didn’t figure out the moral by yourself. Even though I told it to you.” He leaned backward on his heels in a self-satisfied manner. “When you get out your pen next, you could sum it up by saying, ‘Humans need leprechauns to save their sorry britches.’ ”
It didn’t seem like a very good moral, but I didn’t argue. If it would get us home, I’d write it word for word.
Clover tilted the brim of his hat. “I suppose I can use this gold to pay me union dues to the UMA. It’s enough to last a couple of centuries. And they’ll be stuck with the lot of it as nobody else will want tainted currency.” Clover chuckled happily. “Serves them right for making me Chrysanthemum Everstar’s glorified errand boy.”
Clover was still smiling when he disappeared from Rumpelstiltskin’s shoulder. The next moment, a wave of fissures spread through the statue. The metal cracked like ice breaking and crumbled to the ground in a rush of gold coins.
I rubbed my freed arm and watched the pile of coins shine in the flashlight beams. And then the pile disappeared too. The only trace that Rumpelstiltskin had ever been there was a heap of clothes and the pins-and-needles sensation in my hand as the blood rushed back into it.
Dad held his flashlight to my arm, examining the bruised skin. “Are you okay?”
I nodded.
Sandra gave me a sideways hug so she didn’t squish the baby, then checked on him again. This involved more ooohing on her part. He reached out for her, and she took him out of the sling, cooing as she held him. I took the book out of the diaper bag and flipped through the pages. New illustrations had been added. My showdown in the forest with Rumpelstiltskin lay on one page. On the next, he was a hideous gold statue. The last picture showed Hudson standing by my side and my family hugging me. It read, “And the miller’s daughter lived happily ever after. The end.”
Even tho
ugh my family was reading the book over my shoulder, I called out, “It ended! I live happily ever after.” This sentence brought me a ridiculous amount of relief—like the book had put a stamp of approval on my life. I was going to live happily ever after.
I pulled out the pen but didn’t put it to the paper. “I’ll wait for Hudson to come back.”
“Start it now,” my father said, “and you can write the last bit when he returns.”
Nick nodded. “Yeah, save the part about people needing leprechauns to save their britches until he gets here. I’m sure he’ll want to know what the real moral of the story was.”
I sat down on the ground and spread the book out in my lap. “I should have known all along it would be a biased moral.”
I didn’t start writing until I saw Hudson running back down the trail. He slowed to a walk when he saw the statue was gone. “What happened to our buddy Rumple?”
“Clover took him,” I said. “He’s going to use the gold to pay his UMA dues for the next century or two.”
“Ah.” Hudson drew a couple of deep breaths and walked over to me. “Greed pays off again.”
“There’s another good moral from the story,” Nick said.
I finished writing the sentence Clover had told me, but like the others, it faded from the book. I gripped the pen hard, then threw it onto the open page. “No!” I yelled.
Alarmed, Hudson took the book from my hands. He read the last page and looked at me quizzically. “You didn’t want to live happily ever after?”
“Not that. Clover told me the moral of the story and it still didn’t work.”
Nick shook his head and glanced at the book. “So much for leprechauns saving our sorry britches.”
I suppressed a frustrated scream. Nothing worked. What sort of awful enchanted book was this?
Hudson helped me up and handed the book back to me. “Let’s hope the wizard’s magic works better.”
Chapter 23