Chapter Text
Rumpelstiltskin woke with a jolt as the wagon came to a stop, and he immediately closed his eyes again, trying to recapture the dream that he had been so rudely pulled from.
It had been a good dream. Rumpel liked to think that he had always been blessed with good dreams because his waking life was such a nightmare, but the dreams weren’t exactly all that much of a consolation. In the dream, he’d been working in a shop that repaired furniture and his Aunt Elvira had been there in the back room, sitting at her spinning wheel like she always had done.
It was no use, the dream was showing no signs of returning, so he heaved himself out of bed with a groan and rolled up his blankets into a bundle that would serve as a somewhat comfortable chair for the rest of the day. Creeping over to the corner of the wagon, he slid a hand through the bars and tweaked back the canvas that covered his cage whilst the show was on the road, taking a peek at the place they had arrived in this morning.
The sky was dull and grey, threatening rain at any moment, and Rumpel couldn’t decide if that was a blessing or a curse. Grey skies and rain meant less patrons braving the elements and coming to the show, and that meant less people gawking and him and his fellow oddities. Unfortunately, less people gawking meant less people paying good money, and that meant that Zoso was going to be in a very bad mood; a bad mood that was usually taken out on his unfortunate exhibits. Today was going to be a day of walking on eggshells, it seemed.
Aside from the weather, everything else about the place seemed to be much the same as the last place that they had stopped in, and the place before that. Rumpelstiltskin had long since given up taking much notice of his surroundings. Back when he had been young, and Aunt Elvira had managed, in her wisdom, to preserve some of his innocence by making everything into an adventure for him. He had been excited to wake up every morning in a new place, and to track their travels on the worn-out little map that Elvira had always carried with her. He had no idea if his random pinpointing of places on the map was anywhere near accurate, but it had brought him comfort at the time.
Rumpelstiltskin let the canvas drop back into place and went over to the little wooden chest that contained what few personal possessions he’d been able to salvage and keep over the years. Elvira’s map was still there at the bottom, along with her photograph carefully torn out of one of Zoso’s advertising pamphlets. She’d been the only light in his life for so long, and he kept her picture out of fear that there would come a day when he wouldn’t remember her smile. He could no longer remember a time before the cage, and he’d spent far more years of his life without Elvira than he had with her.
He washed up quickly with the remains of yesterday’s water and pulled on clean clothes. Elvira had always been very particular about clean clothing; despite their circumstances there was no excuse for looking scruffy. Even after she’d gone, it was something that Rumpelstiltskin had found himself adhering to. At least it reminded him that he was a man, not a thing. Zoso and Killian tried so hard to convince him and his fellow oddities that they were things, subhuman, not really people, but Rumpelstiltskin, even in the depths of the despair that he had sunk into over the years, still held on to that kernel of belief that Elvira had instilled in him when his father had first brought him to the show and handed him over to Zoso in return for a purse of gold coins. We are not things.
“Come on, come on, up and at ‘em, wakey wakey, look lively!”
Zoso’s creaking voice cut through the camp like a knife, accompanied by the loud clanging sound of his stick rapping against the cage bars. Rumpelstiltskin raised an eyebrow to himself. He didn’t think that any of the exhibits in Zoso’s Fantastic Freak Show had ever looked lively in all of the time he had been there. There was something about being in a cage that killed any kind of liveliness they might have once possessed before they’d been sold into this soul-destroying servitude.
The canvas over his cage was drawn back fully and Rumpelstiltskin watched Zoso’s helpers setting up for the day’s takings, hanging up the signs next to each of the ‘attractions’ and getting ready to take money at the gate. Killian was coming around with the day’s rations of food and water, grousing as usual about his menial tasks. The only reason he stuck around was because he was hoping to inherit the show from Zoso when the latter finally shuffled off the mortal coil. Considering that Zoso had never looked anything other than old and haggard and terrifying in all the many years that Rumpelstiltskin had known him, he was privately convinced that the old man was never going to die, and Killian would be stuck dispensing rations and emptying slop buckets for the rest of his career.
The thought made him exceedingly happy.
He settled down in the shadows in the far corner of the cage to eat his breakfast. He couldn’t really see anyone from here, but at least that meant that no-one could see him either. He wasn’t really in the mood for company. Directly opposite him, Curi was watching the world with unnerving, unblinking eyes. Poor girl, she was the youngest among them by far, named something he couldn’t pronounce from a place he didn’t know, and she spoke no language he’d ever heard in his time. She’d had the misfortune of being born with twisted ankle bones, so her feet looked like they were on backwards; Zoso had dressed her up in green and advertised her as his little demon.
He smiled at her and she smiled back wanly before retreating away into the darkness.
Rumpelstiltskin looked down at his hands and the green-gold scaled skin that sometimes glittered in firelight. The Human Crocodile, Zoso had said eagerly when Rumpelstiltskin’s father had first dragged him to the freak show, determined to get rid of his son and his strange skin condition for good. Zoso had rubbed his hands together with glee, not afraid of the child as so many others had been in his time, but excited for how much money a new addition to his attractions could make him.
How many times had Rumpelstiltskin dreamed that his skin was a normal human colour and he could escape this place for good? How many times had he dreamed he could escape, only to realise that he had absolutely nowhere to go should he manage to leave? The very existence of Zoso’s show told him that the world was not kind to those who looked different, and he highly doubted that anyone would be willing to help out a poor scaled spinner on the run.
He missed Elvira, his self-styled bearded auntie. They’d shared this cage until she’d died, and whilst Rumpelstiltskin knew he ought to be grateful for the fact his living accommodations were larger than everyone else’s, all he could think about at that moment was how lonely his existence was. Elvira’s spinning wheel still stood in the cage, still lovingly attended, and there was roving to spin today. Spinning helped him to forget what was going on around him and forget that he was in a cage, and it helped him to remember Elvira.
“Hey. Crocodile. Showtime.”
Rumpelstiltskin ignored Killian’s voice, even when the man stuck his hook menacingly through the cage bars, beckoning him closer. Beyond him, Rumpelstiltskin could see that the show was opening up for its morning session; despite the misty rain there were more than enough people willing to brave the weather to come to the circus and get a glimpse of Zoso’s famous freaks.
Rumpelstiltskin grabbed a handful of the fresh roving that Zoso had dumped in his cage the night before, and settled down to work, giving the wheel a good pull to start it turning. Time for another day to begin.
He’d been spinning for most of the day, ignoring the callouses that were forming on his fingers and the ache in his leg from working the treadle, because spinning helped him to block out the jeering and gawking crowd around him. It was late afternoon and the sun was beginning to cast long shadows; Zoso had lit the braziers because even he knew that freaks that died of cold weren’t going to bring in any customers. It was getting to the end of the day and the show would be closing soon; the circus that they were accompanying had just finished its final performance and people were coming out of the tent for a final look at the sideshows before they returned to their homes. Opposite, Curi was singing to herself softly, stopping and smiling every time she heard the tigers roar in the tent.
It took Rumpelstiltskin quite a while to realise that someone was staring at him; he was so used to it by now that he no longer felt the same sensation of being watched. This person had been staring at him for a long time, longer than people usually stayed looking at him when he was spinning. Once they realised that the crocodile didn’t actually have a snout and tail, they lost interest pretty quickly.
He looked around and at first he didn’t see her; she was several inches shorter than most of the patrons. As a rule, Zoso didn’t allow children into the show. It was an advertising tactic more than anything, saying that the freaks were too dangerous and too disturbing for young minds. Rumpelstiltskin had scoffed at that. Zoso and Killian were far more dangerous than any of his fellow prisoners.
She was a little girl, about ten perhaps, licking a candy apple and watching Rumpelstiltskin with ferocious intensity but not a hint of fear. There were no sign of any adults in the vicinity, so she must have snuck in whilst someone’s back was turned.
“Hello,” she said. “What’s your name?”
Rumpelstiltskin blinked. “Pardon?”
“What’s your name?” the girl repeated. “I’m Emma.”
Rumpelstiltskin left the spinning wheel and came over to the bars, crouching down so that he was on a level with his young visitor.
“Rumpelstiltskin,” he said. “My name is Rumpelstiltskin.”
It sounded so foreign in his ears; only Elvira had called him by his given name. To everyone else he was simply the crocodile.
Emma grinned. “Your skin looks so pretty in the firelight.”
Rumpelstiltskin scoffed. “I don’t think pretty’s the right word to describe me.”
His voice was hoarse and throaty; he hadn’t said so many words together since Curi had first arrived and he’d been trying to comfort her and stop her crying. He hadn’t had what could pass for a conversation in even longer.
“No, I think it’s pretty. I don’t know why they said that you would be too scary for me to see. You’re not scary at all. You’re just a man.”
“Yes, I am. Just a man in a cage with a spinning wheel. Sadly, not everyone shares your opinion. To everyone else, I’m very scary.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t look like them.”
Emma frowned at her candy apple. “That’s silly.”
She fell silent, continuing to contemplate the candy apple for a long time, then she looked up at him again. “Do you like candy?”
Rumpelstiltskin’s mouth began to water just at the thought of it. He loved candy, and he hadn’t had it for so long. Back when Elvira had been alive, she’d had a long-standing deal with the man who’d been Killian’s predecessor as Zoso’s assistant. She would spin him extra yarn for his wife and family, and in return he would bring candy for her and Rumpelstiltskin.
He nodded, and Emma unceremoniously thrust the candy apple through the bars. “I haven’t licked it that much. I have some toffee too, somewhere.”
Rumpelstiltskin took a huge bite out of the apple before anyone could notice what was happening. If Killian saw that he was enjoying a candy treat then he’d get it off him by hook or by crook, literally. It was the best and sweetest thing that he’d tasted for what felt like a lifetime, and immediately he was transported back to better days, if not days that were completely good.
Emma pulled some more paper-wrapped candies out of her pockets, scattering them on the floor of his cage, and Rumpelstiltskin quickly gathered them up and stashed them in the chest for later as he continued to crunch the apple.
“Hey!”
Rumpelstiltskin rolled his eyes as he heard Killian’s shout. He knew that this brief moment of respite had been too good to last. Emma turned to see who had yelled as Rumpel shoved the rest of the candy apple in his mouth, core and all. As much as he would liked to have taken his time to enjoy it, instant gratification was better than no gratification at all.
The girl’s eyes widened as she saw the man with the hook for a hand coming towards her, and she bolted away from the cage, back towards the main circus tent just as a well-dressed couple, obviously her parents, came running out, calling her name with distress.
“Emma! Emma! Where are you? Where have you been? You know you can’t run off like that!”
Killian came over to Rumpel’s cage. “Well done, Crocodile. Still scaring little children off. Looks like you haven’t lost your touch after all.”
Over by the tent, Emma was explaining in rapid fire to her parents about the crocodile who wasn’t a crocodile and the man with a hook who’d scared her off. The couple looked over at Killian and Rumpel, their disdain for once directed towards the man on the outside of the bars rather than the man beyond them, and they hurried their daughter away.
Opposite, Curi started giggling, for all she didn’t speak English she certainly understood the situation, and Killian just snarled at her. She snarled right back, a low growl that mimicked the tigers’, and Killian decided to beat a tactical retreat at that point.
It had been such a short conversation, but Rumpelstiltskin could still taste the caramel and apple on his tongue, and he knew that he had not imagined it. For the briefest of moments, he was able to hold on to the feeble hope that perhaps all was not lost, and that there was a flicker of light somewhere out there.
Then Zoso began putting out the lamps, shutting up the show for the night, and he was once more plunged into an ocean of darkness as the canvases were rolled down again. He let his eyes become accustomed to the lack of light, and he listened to the little songs that the rest of the oddities were singing around the campsite. Elvira had sung the same songs to him when he had been a boy, but they did not hold the same calming power as they always used to.
Rumpelstiltskin unrolled his bedding and lay down, looking up through a little gap in the canvas where it did not quite meet the solid roof of the cage. There were no stars tonight, and he had long since given up wishing on them.
X
He’d only just dropped off to sleep when a commotion outside pulled him suddenly and forcefully back into the waking world. He wondered if it was one of the moneylenders that Zoso had got into trouble with in the past caught up with them again. It wouldn’t be the first time that there had been altercations, but Zoso was wily and Killian was violent and between them they were usually able to deal with any trouble that might arise.
He crept over to the canvas covered bars and tweaked the corner back just as he had done that morning, looking out to see what was going on. In the orange light of the brazier, he could only see one man talking to Zoso and Killian. This was certainly not one of the brawls of previous years; they were talking rather civilly. The shouting and screaming that he had heard was coming not from the men, but from the large trunk that the newcomer had dragged in on a wheeled trolley.
Rumpelstiltskin rubbed his eyes and waggled his fingers in his ears for a moment, but no, he was not dreaming. The trunk was yelling. Once his brain had woken up a little more, he realised that it was not the trunk yelling at all. It was someone inside the trunk, and whoever they were, Rumpelstiltskin knew that he had never heard anyone sound quite so angry.
“Be quiet!” the man hissed, smacking the lid of the trunk.
The trunk lid smacked back, the locks on it rattling, and the female voice within yelled again.
“NO, I WILL NOT BE QUIET, YOU MONSTER!”
“Well, she’s certainly vocal, Mr French,” Zoso was saying. “But I’m still not sure what her appeal would be. Screaming is not a particular talent and dwarfs are ten a penny these days, hardly the kind of garish attraction I take pride in displaying.”
“She’s not a dwarf,” Mr French said, hitting the lid of the trunk again. Rumpelstiltskin’s brow furrowed because the trunk was in no way large enough to hold an average-sized human being. “She’s just over five feet.”
“And she’s in there?” Killian asked incredulously. “What did you do, chop her into bits?”
Zoso smacked his assistance up the back of the head. “She can hardly be screaming blue murder if she’s in pieces, can she?” he hissed, before turning back to Mr French. “This does make things more interesting. Tell me more.”
“She can bend,” Mr French said. “You can fold her into whatever space you want, her joints will bend however you need them.”
“Ah yes, I can just see it now.” Zoso was wearing that hungry expression that Rumpelstiltskin still remembered from the time his father had sold him on. “The Girl with Rubber Bones. I think she’ll prove most lucrative, Mr French.”
“So how much will you give me for her?”
“I’m not sure, Mr French. You see, I’ve seen your type before. You’re far too eager to sell and you need more than she’s worth.”
He named his price, and Mr French’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. He’d obviously been hoping for a lot more.
“I know that’s lower than you were expecting,” Zoso continued, “but if you’ve got to the point where you’re selling your own daughter to raise funds, then I don’t believe you’re in much of a position to argue.”
There was a long tense silence, during which the girl in the trunk also seemed to have quietened down in order to hear what was going on.
Eventually, Mr French nodded. “Very well.”
Zoso grinned his gap-toothed smile. “Excellent. If you’ll follow me to my office, Mr French, we’ll sort out the particulars. Jones, find some accommodation for our new guest.”
“All the cages are occupied,” Killian pointed out.
“You can leave her in the trunk for all I care,” Mr French muttered darkly. “More trouble than she’s worth, that one.”
“Now now, Mr French, she’ll run out of air in there sooner or later and that would be a terrible return on investment for me, wouldn’t it? Put her in with the Crocodile,” he called to Killian as he led Mr French over to his caravan. “There’s room in there, and she’ll be all right with him. He’s long since lost his bite. Although who knows? Maybe fresh meat will bring his appetite back.”
Rumpelstiltskin scrambled away from the canvas and back to his bedding as Killian began to drag the trunk over to his cage. He heard the scraping of locks and tinkling of chains, and then the screaming began again in true earnest and in full volume as the young woman was obviously brought out of the trunk and bundled through the canvas into the cage.
“I hate you!” she screamed, grabbing the bars and bellowing at the canvas as Killian relocked the cage, but Rumpelstiltskin knew that her ire was directed not at her gaoler but at the father who had abandoned her to this circus.
She was yelling incoherently now, just sheer rage bubbling up and out. Even in the low light, Rumpelstiltskin could tell that her face was flushed bright red, but whether that was through anger or having been stuffed in a trunk for however long, he didn’t know.
Finally, once it was clear that this was the point of no return and that Mr French had left the grounds with his cash in pocket, she slumped down onto her knees, still clinging to the bars as she sobbed.
Rumpelstiltskin didn’t know what to do. Did she even realise that she wasn’t alone in here?
At last, he decided to do what Elvira had done for him when he’d been six years old and in the same position, and he grabbed one of his blankets, coming over and draping it around the young woman’s shoulders, kneeling down beside her.
She pulled the blanket in close and glanced over at him.
“Thank you.”
If she felt any fear at his strange appearance then she didn’t show it, but then again, perhaps her eyes weren’t accustomed to the dark as much as his were and she couldn’t see him.
“I’m very sorry that this has happened to you,” he said.
She didn’t respond, just looking down at her hands and rolling her wrists in directions that no-one should have been able to move them. The joints popped, and she gave a little sigh of relief before looking over at him again. She blinked slowly as her vision adjusted, but at no point did she baulk at his scaly skin.
“So how did you come to be here?” she asked.
“Much the same way as you.”
“What, sold by your father for drinking money?” She scoffed.
Rumpelstiltskin just nodded, and she saw that he was in earnest. “I’m sorry.”
She paused to roll her shoulders and elbows; flexible as she might be, being stuck in the trunk had obviously made her stiff.
“I’m Belle,” she said eventually.
“Rumpelstiltskin.”
It was the second time he’d said his name that day. If this carried on then it was going to become a habit. He was certainly going to have to get used to hearing it on a more regular basis if Belle was going to be staying with him for any length of time.
For a moment, he felt a strange and unfamiliar surge of panic at the thought of a woman staying in his vicinity for any length of time, especially one like Belle who was obviously educated and who had obviously been well-off before her father had fallen on hard and alcoholic times. He pushed the feeling aside to focus on the present.
“Your parents named you Rumpelstiltskin? Like the Spindle Imp?” She seemed more disbelieving of this than of his tale of how he came to be in Zoso’s clutches.
“No. My parents didn’t name me anything, as far as I can remember. Aunt Elvira called me Rumpelstiltskin.”
Belle’s eyes focussed on the spinning wheel in the corner and she nodded. “Fair enough. How long have you been here?”
“I don’t know.” Rumpelstiltskin looked over towards the wooden back of the cage and all the scratch marks there. “I gave up counting the days after I ran out of room.”
“Oh my word, you poor thing.”
She stood up and carefully made her way across the floor to run her fingers over the wall. “So many years,” she murmured. “Have you never been out in all that time?”
Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. “They make sure I can’t get out,” he said. “I don’t know where they think I would go if I could, though.”
Belle opened her mouth to say something but seemed to decide better of it and closed it again, coming back over to sit beside him by the bars. They stayed in silence for a while until Belle gave a little shiver, pulling the blanket in closer around herself and shuffling a little closer to his side.
“What’s it like here?” she asked. For the first time there seemed to be fear in her voice. “All whilst I was growing up, it was always a threat hanging over me. My father always used to say that if I didn’t behave myself, he’d take me to the side show like the freak I am.”
“You’re not a freak,” Rumpelstiltskin said firmly. “None of us are. We’re people, not things.”
He must have spoken with more vehemence than he realised, for Belle looked at him with an expression of pride and admiration. He flushed, looking away.
“Sorry. Aunt Elvira used to say it.”
“No, no. I think it’s wonderful that it’s something you still adhere to even after all the years you’ve been here.” She slipped a hand out of the folds of the blanket that enveloped her and touched his hand lightly. “Thank you, Rumpelstiltskin.”
Her hand stayed resting on his, and Rumpelstiltskin didn’t pull away. His skin was not sensitive in that regard; his condition was cosmetic only and did not cause him any pain or discomfort, but most people recoiled at the idea of touching the shimmering scales. Those that didn’t, those who were more morbidly fascinated by his skin, would reach through the bars and prod him, and he had learned to pull back almost on instinct, before they could make contact, sometimes without even seeing that they were there. Belle, however, showed no signs of being disgusted by his strange texture, nor fascinated by it. For all she might have looked completely normal to the average person in the street who had not seen her folded into a trunk, she was one of them. She was like him, and she knew what it was like to be someone who didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the world.
“You asked what it was like here,” Rumpelstiltskin began again eventually, remembering her earlier question before he’d got side-tracked. He wasn’t really sure if he should tell her the truth, but she wouldn’t appreciate a candy-coated lie when she would see the reality for herself over the course of the next few hours.
Belle nodded. “Part of me doesn’t want to know. The rest of me wants to be prepared. I mean, it’s night time now, and I think that for people like us there’s always safety in darkness. It’s when the world wakes up and can see who we are that things turn sour. I guess I’m lucky in that respect. I’ve always been able to hide.”
It was those few words that gave Rumpelstiltskin the first kernel of an idea in his head. He pushed it away to one side; it was something that would require a lot of concentration and brainpower to make work and he wasn’t in a position to be even considering it yet. All he could do right now was to make sure that Belle was as comfortable as she could be in her new surroundings and prepare her for the life that she had been so unceremoniously thrust into.
“As long as you stay quiet and keep your head down, you’ll be fine,” Rumpelstiltskin said, although given the noise that Belle had been making when she’d first been brought to the show, he thought that advice might have already fallen by the wayside. Killian and Zoso would have already pegged her as a troublemaker, and Rumpelstiltskin had already made a mental note to make sure that he was always between Killian and Belle as much as possible. “Zoso uses fear as a tactic more than anything. He’s scary, and he plays off that, but ultimately he’s old and frail and he uses that stick for support more than he likes to admit. Not that I think he’ll ever actually die, because he’s been like that for as long as I can remember. It’s Killian that you’ve got to watch out for. Killian follows through on Zoso’s threats.”
There was also the fact that Killian always had a gun shoved in the back of his trousers and had a literal hook for a hand, which already made him twice as dangerous as Zoso even without his hair-trigger temper.
“Yes.” Belle shuddered. “Yes, I got that impression. What happened to his hand?”
Rumpelstiltskin smiled at the memory. For all he would never wish ill on his fellow man, Killian was one person whom he’d never really considered a fellow man, mostly because Killian didn’t consider Rumpelstiltskin to be a man at all, so it was hard to extend him the same courtesy. It was a bittersweet memory really, because they could have been rid of him once and for all but all he lost was a hand.
“That was an accident,” Rumpelstiltskin said. “Although, there are a few of us who think that it might not have been. I’ll tell you tomorrow, once you’ve seen Curi.”
“Curi?”
Rumpelstiltskin drew back the canvas a little and pointed out Curi’s cage opposite. “I can’t pronounce her real name. Curupira, Curipria, Caipirinha, something like that. For now, we’ll suffice it to say that Killian is scared of tigers.”
A little smile quirked the corner of Belle’s mouth. It was the first time that she had shown any sign of a smile since she had arrived, and Rumpelstiltskin smiled back, trying to encourage her, although it probably came out as more of a grimace. Keeping a positive mental attitude was important, Aunt Elvira had always said. We might be in a bad place, but there’s no point in not trying to make the best of it or there’ll be no point to living life anymore and we might as well all give up here and now.
It was strange how these lessons of Aunt Elvira’s kept coming back to him now, even when he had forgotten them for so long in her absence. Now that he was falling into her role, with Belle as his fearful new charge, everything was coming full circle and giving him a fresh sense of purpose.
“You should get some sleep,” he said, indicating his bedroll. “Zoso will bring you more blankets in the morning, but for now you can take my bed.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine on the floor.”
Belle raised an eyebrow, evidently not believing a word of what he’d just said, but then she just shrugged.
“All right then. Thank you.”
She gave her blanket back to Rumpelstiltskin and made her way over to his bedroll, curling up on herself inside it, facing away from him. Now he could see just how she’d managed to fit inside that trunk. She was so small, but although she could have looked so fragile and birdlike, there was a strength in her, a tenacity and resilience that mirrored the incredible resilience of her joints. She was definitely scared; Rumpelstiltskin would have been concerned for her sanity if she had not been scared. All the same, he thought that she would be a survivor. They were all survivors here. The ones who weren’t didn’t last all that long.
He wrapped the blanket around himself, still warm from Belle, and got comfortable against the wooden back wall, closing his eyes to sleep. The presence of another body in his cage was unusual, and although he had always been able to sleep soundly whilst Elvira had been living with him, he’d been on his own for so long now that it was strange to be able to hear another person’s breathing.
Gradually though, Belle’s evened out into a light dozing pattern, and slumber found him not long after.
It was still dark when Rumpelstiltskin woke, the braziers still crackling with life outside, and he was disorientated for a moment, unsure of his surroundings and stiff from his unusual sleeping position. He couldn’t have been out for all that long, the shadows on the canvas hadn’t moved. He wondered what had roused him, and almost immediately found his answer. Beside him on the bedroll, the bundle of blankets that was Belle was shaking with silent sobs. For the second time that night, Rumpelstiltskin had no idea what to do. All he could do was try to think of what would make him feel better had he been in Belle’s position once more, and hope that it would stick if he did the same thing for her.
Carefully, he got to his feet, not wanting to disturb Belle, but immediately she stiffened, her crying stopping. She turned over, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks as he crossed the floor; and he stopped, frozen and feeling absurdly guilty at having been caught, although for no reason at all.
“I’m sorry,” Belle whispered, her voice thick and choked from tears. “Sorry I woke you.”
Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. “It’s no matter. I have something that I think will help.”
He went over to his chest, taking out a clean handkerchief and one of the toffees that Emma had given to him earlier in the day, and he presented them both to Belle. Far from having the desired effect, however, she simply immediately burst into a fresh flood of tears.
“Belle? Belle, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make things worse…”
Belle shook her head. “No, no, you haven’t. You’re being so lovely, and I’m just so miserable…”
She dried her eyes on the handkerchief, staring down at the toffee in her hand.
“Go on,” Rumpelstiltskin urged. “Sweets always make me feel better when things get bad.”
“Well, I don’t think that they can get much worse. Thank you so much.” Belle unwrapped the toffee and popped it in her mouth, and she finally gave a weak little smile as she sucked thoughtfully.
“Thank you,” she said again, after a while of silence. “You know, Rumpelstiltskin, I’m beginning to think that you’re some kind of miracle.”
“Me? A miracle? How?”
“Because you’re so kind. I just can’t understand how you can have gone through so much and been here in this hellhole for so long and yet still be so kind.”
Rumpelstiltskin felt heat rise in his face, and he was glad that his skin didn’t show flushing.
“We’re people, not things,” he reiterated. “Treat others as you would want to be treated yourself. Even if the world is cruel to us, we can still be compassionate towards each other. We have to be. It’s us and them, and if we are cruel to each other, then they’ll always win. That’s what Aunt Elvira used to say, and it’s how I try to live, even if only within these confines.”
Belle was silent for a long time, just watching him.
“Your Aunt Elvira sounds like an amazing woman to have raised someone in these circumstances to be as compassionate as you are,” she said quietly. “I would like to have met her.”
Rumpelstiltskin nodded. “She was amazing.”
Although it had not done so before, the thought of Elvira suddenly brought an uncomfortable lump to his throat. Perhaps it was because he had been thinking about her so much today, and he had been reminded so much of the love that she had shown him during his first terrified few days in the cage. Wherever she was now, at least she was free, and that thought would have to be enough to comfort him in her absence.
Thankfully, Belle sensed that the conversation was closed, and she made no further comment, just continuing to suck her toffee in silence.
“Are you not cold like that?” she asked presently as he settled himself back into the position that he had been sleeping in before.
“I’ll be fine.” That said, he was still stiff just from the hour or so that he’d been asleep before, and it was only going to get worse come the morning proper. Belle was obviously thinking along the same lines.
“It looks like we’re going to be living in close quarters for quite a while, Rumpelstiltskin,” she said. “I think we might as well get used to it. Come and lie down. Stay warm and comfortable. After everything that you’ve already done for me, I think that the least I can do is let you sleep in your own bed.”
Rumpelstiltskin conceded, the need to stretch out his back finally outweighing everything else, and Belle shuffled over on the thin bedroll to allow him to lie beside her. They were so close that they were almost touching, but not quite, just enough for Rumpelstiltskin to be very conscious of Belle’s presence. This was absolutely definitely not the same as when he’d been a boy and he’d crawled into Aunt Elvira’s bed when the nightmares had come after his father had abandoned him.
Luckily, he was too tired to overthink it any more than that, and dreamless sleep returned quickly.
X
When Rumpelstiltskin next woke, it was definitely morning. He could hear the show being set up for the day’s takings again, and he could immediately tell that Belle was no longer lying next to him where she’d been when he’d fallen asleep. He squinted against the bright light pouring in from the areas where the canvas didn’t meet the cage, and he found her in the corner where they’d sat the previous evening. She’d hitched the canvas up and was reading by the daylight, although where she’d got a book from was anyone’s guess.
She gave him a little smile as she realised he was watching her, and she held up the book.
“It was tucked in my petticoat,” she said. “It was the only thing I managed to grab before my father shoved me in the trunk, but there was no way I was leaving without it. It’s my favourite book. My mother used to read it to me when I was little. I suppose I wanted to bring a little piece of her with me.”
Rumpelstiltskin thought of Elvira’s spinning wheel, and her picture in the bottom of his chest. That was a sentiment that he could well understand.
“Have you ever read it?” Belle continued. Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. He couldn’t exactly admit that he’d been brought to the sideshow before he was old enough to be learning his letters and Aunt Elvira hadn’t been literate either, so he’d never been able to read.
“Oh, it’s amazing. Daring swordfights, a prince in disguise… It’s got everything.” She gave a little sigh. “Books are such a wonderful way to escape from the world. For those few moments that you’re reading, you’re able to forget who you are and what’s happening to you. It’s perfect.”
She certainly made it sound perfect, and for a moment, Rumpelstiltskin felt a pang of jealousy that he would never have the chance for such an idyllic escape.
“Someone’s coming.”
Rumpelstiltskin gave a squawk of alarm and quickly turned away as Belle pulled her skirt up and shoved the book back into the waistband of her petticoat, making herself decent just as the canvas was drawn up fully to signal the beginning of another day. The usual chaos of feeding, watering, and cleaning up started, and Zoso came by to check that his newest acquisition had survived her first night, warning her in no uncertain terms that if she did not perform for the paying public, then he would fit glass panels in her trunk and lock her back in there for twelve hours a day for people to marvel at.
Belle just glowered at him, her face the very picture of incandescent fury, but she heeded Rumpelstiltskin’s words of the previous night and did not put up a fight. It wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t a fight that she could win.
At least, Rumpelstiltskin thought, the little idea that he’d had earlier coming back to him, it was not a fight that she could win yet.
“Pig,” she muttered under her breath after Zoso had left. “I can’t tell who’s worse, him or Killian.” She looked over at Rumpelstiltskin. “You were going to tell me about Killian’s accident that might not have been an accident,” she reminded him. “I’ve met Curi now. We bonded over backwards feet.”
Rumpelstiltskin raised an eyebrow, and Belle twisted her ankle joints until they popped. Her feet weren’t at quite the same dramatic angle as Curi’s, but it was still impressive. Across the way, Curi was smiling at the sight.
The show had only just opened and there weren’t that many visitors arriving yet, so Rumpelstiltskin sat down beside Belle. There was time to tell the tale.
“So, tigers,” Belle began.
Rumpelstiltskin nodded. “The circus we travel alongside has tigers.”
“I know. I’ve already heard them.”
“One day, the tigers escaped. Ironically, we were all safe because we were in our cages. I think all of us were secretly wishing that the poor beasts would go for Zoso and Killian. Zoso was sensible and got out of the way, deciding to leave it to the circus tamers to deal with the problem. Killian wasn’t quite as fast and was a damn sight stupider.”
“A tiger took his hand off?”
Rumpelstiltskin nodded.
“Good for the tiger,” Belle muttered. “But how was that possibly not an accident?”
Rumpelstiltskin nodded towards Curi.
“I think she told them to do it.”
“What? She… You can’t be serious.”
“Whatever else you might say about the tigers, they were pussycats when they got near her. I swear she’s got some kind of power over them. She was talking to them, stroking them through the bars. A minute later, one of them was chewing on Killian.”
Belle’s eyes widened, and she looked over at Curi’s cage with awe. “Good for her.”
With Killian’s gruesome story told and a newfound admiration for Curi imparted, Belle settled down on the pile of bedding that Zoso had finally seen fit to give her, and she looked out of the bars, staring at the visitors just as they stared at her.
“I think we’ve truly reached the nadir of society,” she said, glancing over at Rumpelstiltskin at his wheel.
He shrugged. “You get used to it after a while. Most of the time I don’t even realise that they’re staring at me anymore. It gets easier to bear if you just ignore them and pretend they aren’t there. They lose interest after a while, and it annoys Zoso and Killian no end when their exhibits don’t draw in the crowds they want.”
“Don’t they retaliate, though?” Belle was looking over towards Killian and Zoso at the entrance to the show, and at Killian’s vicious-looking hook. Even though she now knew the story of how he had come by it, that didn’t change the fact that it could do a lot of damage if he was in the right mindset, and Rumpelstiltskin knew from experience that it didn’t take a lot to put him in the right mindset. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind.
“Sometimes. They tend not to bother with me anymore. I’ve been here so long that I’ve become part of the furniture, and I’m used to the fact that people are going to stare at me no matter what I’m doing, whether I’m acting the part of a crocodile or a man. So, I prefer to remember that I’m a man, however much I might look like a beast.”
Belle got up off her bedding and came over to him, and he felt her warm hand on his shoulder.
“You’re not a beast,” she said. “You’re the kindest and most wonderful person I’ve ever met.”
“You’ve only known me for a day,” Rumpelstiltskin pointed out, feeling the heat in his face rising again.
“I think that’s enough to make a good impression.” She looked on in fascination at his spinning, and Rumpelstiltskin shifted over on the bench to make room for her to sit down. “You spin a lot.”
Rumpelstiltskin nodded. “That’s the other reason why Zoso keeps me around despite me being not at all interesting to the public most of the time. I bring in the extra revenue from the spinning, so I earn my keep in a different way.”
He could tell that Belle wanted to say something. There was something in her face that betrayed her indignation and righteous anger at the state of the world. Had they not been in a cage with members of the public gawping at them, then Rumpelstiltskin had no doubts that she would have just let rip with a tirade on the unfairness of it all. He gave her a sharp look, shaking his head, and she let out a long and shaky breath through her nose, closing her eyes.
“It’s just so unfair,” she muttered. “You don’t deserve this. None of us do.”
“I know that,” Rumpelstiltskin said. “But there’s not a lot else that we can do about it. These are the cards that I’ve been dealt, and I just have to accept them.”
“But why?” Belle asked. There was a pleading tone in her voice and she grabbed Rumpelstiltskin’s arm, the motion of the wheel coming to an abrupt halt. He shook her off, unused to sudden contact. “Why do you have to accept them?”
“Look at me, Belle,” he hissed. “What kind of society would accept me?”
In the back of his mind, he remembered the tales that Aunt Elvira had used to tell him, of a far-off, magical place where people like them could live in peace, their differences celebrated rather than jeered and used for cheap entertainment. When he’d been a boy and he’d first come to the sideshow, he’d believed her, and he’d waited in vain for the day when he could somehow be spirited away to this fairy tale land, and everything would be good.
As time had gone on, however, he’d realised that it was simply a story she’d told him so as not to let him lose hope. With Elvira gone, Rumpelstiltskin’s hope of ever having a normal life had waned dramatically.
He’d never had the luxury of the same rage against the world that Belle had. He’d never been a part of the world in order to rage at it in that way. He’d been an outsider looking in for as long as he could remember, and there was nothing that he could do about that. He completely understood Belle’s anger. He was angry himself, all the time, but there was nothing that he could do about it, so he kept it bottled up, kept it away from the rest of his life. The world was unfair, but he had never known it to be fair. He’d never had that same taste of acceptance that Belle had had before she’d come to the sideshow, and he would never know rejection in the same way that she did. She had been part of society. It had welcomed her, until her father’s intervention. Rumpel had never had that welcome, and he knew that he never would. It wasn’t something that he liked, but it was something that he’d made his peace with. He didn’t have any other choice.
Belle, though… Belle had a choice. Belle had potential. And Belle certainly didn’t belong here in the sideshow when there was an entire world out there that she could live in unnoticed and undisturbed. Almost from the moment that he had first become aware of her, kicking and screaming inside the trunk, Rumpelstiltskin had known that unlike him, she was destined for far better things than life in a cage. The world that she raged against now was hers for the taking, and he would do whatever he could to help her take it.
Whilst he had been lost in thought, he hadn’t noticed Belle looking at him intently, and he remembered that he’d asked her a question to which she was obviously trying to find the answer. What kind of society would accept him? The fact that it was taking her so long to say something told him all he needed to know. As much as she might want to change things about their current situation, she knew that there was nothing that could be done for him. His fate was a done deal and had been from the moment he was born.
“Look, Belle, some of us weren’t meant to be happy, and that’s something I’ve long since learned to live with.”
Belle shook her head. “You have to have hope,” she whispered. “There’s something better out there for you, I know it. This can’t be the only way for you to live your life.”
“The world is not kind to people like me, Belle.” He sighed. “You can see that just from looking outside those bars.”
“Rumpel, these people who come and gawk at you every day don’t represent the entirety of the world. There has to be somewhere better out there.”
“There isn’t,” Rumpelstiltskin snapped. “Not for me.”
“So, you’re just going to sit here and accept your fate? This is what you’re going to do for the rest of your life, just sit here and spin whilst the world watches?”
“What else is there for me to do, Belle? This is a world that I will never be able to be a part of, and nothing you or Elvira can say will change that.”
Belle got up from the spinning wheel bench with a huff and went back to her corner, drawing her knees up close to her chest and resting her head on them, her face turned away from him. She was still so young and still so full of life; she’d only been here for less than twenty-four hours and she’d not had time to become disillusioned. If Rumpelstiltskin had his way, then she would not be here long enough for that to happen. He might have accepted his own fate, but he could not accept hers. Her frustration was refreshing, even if it was directed at him at the moment. He didn’t want her to lose it.
Belle stayed in her corner for most of the rest of the day, and Rumpelstiltskin was beginning to think that she’d fallen asleep. Zoso kept looking over at her, his mouth set in a thin line of anger that his newest attraction wasn’t performing. If Belle was a bad investment, then Rumpelstiltskin dreaded to think what might happen to her. He’d seen many other oddities come and go during his time at the show, and he knew that Zoso didn’t simply let them go when they were no longer as lucrative as he’d hoped they’d be. For now, he seemed to accept that this was Belle’s first day, and she was still missing her home and getting used to life in the show.
The visitors, however, seemed to have other ideas. Rumpelstiltskin had first noticed the group of young men as soon as they had entered the show. He knew their type; most of the rest of the oddities did. They were the type that liked to rattle cages and try to provoke reactions from those within. He glanced over at the cage opposite. Curi had retreated into the darkest shadows and he knew that nothing would coax her out again until the group had gone. They were clearly inebriated, drunk off bottles of beer procured at the circus, and Rumpelstiltskin had been watching their progress around the paddock as much as he could from his vantage point by the spinning wheel.
When they arrived at his and Belle’s cage, he stiffened, the hairs on the back of his neck pricking up. Whilst he didn’t always notice people staring at him in fearful fascination or morbid curiosity, he could always tell when people were leering with the intention of causing some kind of trouble.
He let the wheel fall still and silent and didn’t move, watching the young men out of the corner of his eye. Belle was watching them too, and it quickly turned into a stand-off, each group daring the other to make the first move. Rumpelstiltskin knew that it would not be him and Belle who would end the strange siege.
“Hey, rubber girl,” one of them called. “Let’s see you bend over.”
Belle didn’t deign to respond, just fixing the cat-caller with a glare.
“You know, they make girls out of rubber,” another one said. “I wonder how she matches up.”
The comments got lewder and lewder, and Rumpelstiltskin could feel the blood boiling in his veins. Of all the things that he’d seen and heard and put up with over the course of his stay with the show, he’d never heard anything quite this insulting, because none of the other ladies who’d ever been part of the show had ever been conventionally beautiful like Belle had been. There had always been something about them that the general public, bound by society’s standards, considered unattractive.
He stood up from the wheel, sending the bench flying but knowing better than to do anything that might damage Elvira’s precious wheel and the only thing that brought him any kind of peace.
If they wanted a crocodile, then they would get a crocodile. If they thought he was a beast, then they’d damn well get a beast.
Within a second he was at the bars, a snarl pulling back the corners of his mouth and one arm reaching out through the bars to scratch at the worst offender’s face. His fingernails had always been hard and claw-like, and whilst Elvira had always kept them filed down in case he hurt himself, now that he was an adult, he’d always liked the idea of having some kind of self-defence about his person at all times.
The suddenness of the attack was enough to shock the group into moving away, pulling their bleeding companion with them. Perhaps if they hadn’t been drunk, they would have stayed and goaded him into a further fight.
Behind them, Killian was looking on, and he clapped his hand and hook together in mock applause.
“So, it seems like the crocodile does have some bite left in him after all,” he said, coming over. “We did wonder if some fresh meat in your cage would stir your blood a little. Good to see you defending your turf. Maybe we can get a performance like that out of you every day.”
He looked over at Belle and gave her a wink. Belle just glowered at him and made a rude hand gesture. She was certainly not going to be a part of whatever it was that Killian was planning.
It was almost time for the show to close, and Rumpelstiltskin came back over to the spinning wheel, righting the bench and sitting down on it, running his hands through his hair and staring down at his feet. Now that the adrenaline had worn off and the vicious anger that he had felt was winding down, he was ashamed of his outburst. At the time, it had been the only thing he could think of to stop the young men, because he couldn’t just sit there and ignore them. If it had been him that they were taunting, then he could have taken it; he had never risen to them before. But because it had been Belle, he’d felt compelled to act. It wasn’t just his own life anymore. He was thinking of Belle as well.
He felt her small hand on his shoulder once more.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“I made a complete spectacle of myself,” he muttered.
“You did what you had to. The only thing you could do. And you did it for me. I know how much your humanity means to you, Rumpel, and I know how much you cling to it, and cling to the truth that you’re a man, not a beast. I know how much it must have hurt you to sacrifice a part of that today, but you did it, and you did it for me. So, thank you, Rumpelstiltskin.”
Her lips pressed against his cheek, and Rumpelstiltskin could feel their warmth long after she moved away.