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Rumplestiltskin didn’t normally take deals like this. If they didn’t further his ends, he much preferred deals that were big and flashy, or ones he could twist out of the desperate soul’s control to remind the masses that magic wasn’t to be used lightly. This one was simple, asked of him by an aristocratic family, powerful by the way mortals measured things, but still unable to get what they wanted through mortal means.
Their boy, the father had explained, had a stammer, and nothing they tried had cured him of it. They were willing to pay the Dealmaker’s price, and, as an opening bid, offered half their land and the hand of their eldest daughter, if only he’d fix their son.
Rumplestiltskin was tempted, for a moment, to agree to this deal and chop off the girl’s hand, just to teach this man to word his offers more carefully. He waved that idea away quickly; taking the girl’s hand would be pointless, and only slightly poetic.
He sneered at the man. What need had he, the most powerful sorcerer in all the realms, of a wife? And what would he do with a tract of land so far from his castle? No, the Dealmaker’s price for this act was the ring worn on the small finger of this man’s right hand.
Rumplestiltskin expected a fight. It was the family’s signet ring, an ancient piece that showed just how long the family had had power. So he was surprised—perhaps even shocked—when the man hastily tugged the band off his finger and held it out for Rumplestiltskin to take. Was this man so really so desperate for his son to be fixed (to appear perfect), that he would give up his history?
But take it he did, then told the man to bring to boy in. With the boy in front of him, Rumplestiltskin snapped at the parents to get out, and everything after that moment was burned in exact detail into his memory.
Rumplestiltskin giggled gleefully and brought his hands together in a sharp clap. “No need to fear, dearie. I’ll have you fixed in a moment.”
And the boy, the tiny lad hardly half Rumplestiltskin’s own height, looked up at the most powerful magician in any world without fear, but with a dark anger to rival the Dark One’s own burning in his pale green eyes, and spoke: “I’m n-n-not broken.”
Rumplestiltskin kept the ring. When he presented the still-stammering, now-grinning boy to his parents (complete with a gleeful, “All fixed!”) and they demanded back the price paid because no magic had been done, Rumplestiltskin replied with what the boy had asked him to say, with his own small addition. “I’m keeping the ring against your wasting my time, and as a reminder that there’s no point in giving your son a new voice when you won’t listen to the one he already has.”
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The memory of this boy stayed with Rumplestiltskin for the rest of his life, and it comes back to him as he gazes down at the precious little girl Belle has just given him. The newborn’s hair is drying, and he can already see that she has her mother’s curls. She’s beautiful, withered arm and all.
Belle’s blue eyes, finally open now after having been clenched tight in pain, fill with worry and a little hope. “Can you fix her, Rumple? So she can live a normal life?”
Belle means well, Rumplestiltskin knows; she wants their daughter to lead a charmed life, with everything going right, but there is nothing wrong.
The man who used to be the Dark One, the man who is still the most powerful sorcerer in all the realms, smiles down at his little girl and say, “No, I can’t fix her, because she isn’t broken.”