It was a dark, cold night, with eerie winds whistling
through the trees. As Jerome approached
the Poison Apple tavern, it only seemed to grow darker and colder, and much
eerier, especially since some of the trees through which the wind whistled were
consciously alive…and watching him.
Still, it wasn’t whatever enchanted trees might be watching that worried
Jerome – after all, their bark was
worse than their bite – as much as any of the Fairy Godmother’s more prosaic but
also more dangerous human thugs. He kept
looking back over his shoulder to make sure that none were lurking in the murky,
shifting shadows.
Jerome clutched his cloak about him tighter as he drew
near the tavern’s tall, thick wooden door with a shut viewing slot some five
feet up. He could make out the muted
sounds of piano music and raucousness leaking through from within. The elf knocked. A moment later the slot was slid open from
the other side and Jerome found himself staring into a large brown eye.
“Password?” a voice from the other side grumbled.
“Oh…Uh…Of gods and mothers,” Jerome stammered.
The eye scrutinized him in silence for a bit longer, and
then the voice grunted and the slot slid shut.
A moment later the door opened with a rusty creek and Jerome cautiously
walked in. He looked back over his
shoulder to see a tall, tough looking cyclops, whose
eye had so carefully examined him, close the door behind him and assume a
watchful stand beside it.
The tavern was its usual smoky, foul-smelling, noisy
self. Clientele ranging from pirates to
witches to fairies to God-knew-what populated the tables and the
barstools. At the piano the pirate
Captain Hook, who had apparently partaken of some of the establishment’s
refreshments himself that night, pounded out “Piano Man” to his own
gravelly-throated, off-key accompaniment.
Near the center of the room some gibbering goblins were playing darts –
using blowguns – with a terrified, top hat and tails adorned cricket attached
to the dartboard’s bulls-eye as a target. Elsewhere a black-gowned, hook-nosed witch was
playing pool with a spangle-cloaked, long-bearded wizard, the witch using her
broomstick as a cue, the wizard his staff.
Over on one side of the room some drunken Vikings were dwarf tossing. On another side of the room some drunken
dwarves were imp tossing.
Jerome wasn’t interested in any of that. Instead, his gaze fixed on one corner of the
room which contained a small, especially dimly lit booth with a wooden sign
nailed above it that showed an arrow pointing down and the unevenly scrawled
words: “YE OLDE SCHEMERS’ SPOT: Reserved for nefarious negotiations, perfidious
plots, and dastardly deals.” As he drew
near to it he uttered a quiet curse. The
booth was empty.
He spied across
the room until he spotted the figure of a small being, an imp,
sitting at a table, an odd rectangular-brimmed
hat atop his head. Unfortunately the
fellow had apparently passed out, and his head was resting on the
tabletop. One of his hands, also resting
on the tabletop, still clutched a partially full ale mug. Jerome approached the figure, picking up on
his snoring as he did so. Jerome looked
down at him, noting that the sleeves of his tunic didn’t cover the entire arms,
and that one wrist had a picture of a baby’s pacifier tattooed on it. The elf reached down shook his shoulder. “Rumpelstiltskin?” he asked.
The imp awoke – to a degree – and groggily raised his
scraggly-bearded head. His bloodshot
eyes slowly opened – one eye did, anyway; the other remained half-closed – and
he looked at Jerome without quite managing to focus on him. “Yeah. Whaddyawant?” he said
hoarsely.
The elf winced at the smell of Rumpelstiltskin’s
fermented breath. “I’m here to make a
deal,” Jerome said, trying to keep his voice as hushed as he could in this
place and still be heard.
“Ssssorry,” Rumpelstiltskin
slurred. “I’m retired. You wanna speak to
my nephew, Freddy Rumpelstiltskin.”
“Yes, I know,”
Jerome said, looking up and trying to see if he could spy the other
Rumpelstiltskin in the tavern. “Do you
know if he’s gong to be here to—”
There was a loud thump.
Jerome looked back down to see Rumpelstiltskin’s
head back on the table. A few seconds
later and he started snoring again.
Jerome sighed.
Resignedly he strode over to the bar and took a seat on one of the
barstools beside a young woman. A few
moments later a tall, muscular barmaid appeared across the bar from him. Despite neatly styled brunet hair and modest
makeup, her hard features were completely unattractive. The scowl on her face didn’t help. “What’ll it be?” she asked in a deep, gruff,
distinctly unfeminine voice.
“Nectar, Doris,” Jerome responded. “Hard.”
“One hard nectar, coming up,” Doris said, and turned to get
his drink.
As the barmaid was working, Jerome glanced at the woman on
the barstool beside him. She was a
reasonably attractive blonde who appeared to be in her early twenties, although
rather smallish despite being an adult – all of which where positives in the
elf’s book. She wasn’t paying attention
to him yet; she seemed focused on eating from a bowl in front of her which contained
the last vestiges of some curds and whey.
Jerome was about to speak to her when a huge black spider crawled up onto
the barstool to the woman’s other side.
She looked over and saw it, then shrieked, leaped from her barstool, and
ran screaming across the room and out the door, which the cyclops
calmly opened when he saw her coming and then closed behind her.
The spider shook its head and rolled all eight eyes. “How typical,” it said. Then it waved a couple of hairy limbs toward
the barmaid. “Oh, Doris?” it called.
“I’ll be with ya in a minute,
Shelly,” Doris said testily as she headed toward Jerome, a cup in her
hand. “And the next dine & dash you
cause, you’re paying their tab.”
“Sorry,” the spider said contritely.
“Thank you,” Jerome said.
He tossed some coins for the drink onto the bar, and then asked in a
hushed voice, “Also, I was wondering if you could help me. Is…He Who Must Be Named here tonight?”
“Rumpelstiltskin?”
Jerome nodded.
Doris gestured over toward the snoring imp that
he’d spoken with earlier. “You tried –”
“The other one,” Jerome said.
“Well, I’ve not seen him tonight, but…hmmm,”
“I am somebody,” Jerome said.
“Then you might be in luck tonight, Jesse,” she said
“That’s ‘Jerome’,” he corrected her.
“Whatever,”
“Yes, I know. Thanks,”
he said.
Jerome picked up his drink and slowly headed toward the
booth, sneaking cautious glances across the room and back over either shoulder
in turn to make sure nobody was watching him. The only person aside from the cyclops who appeared to be paying any attention was a
mysterious black-bearded stranger who wore the hooded cowl and dark garb of one
of those wild and dangerous men from a distant, rough-and-tumble land: rangers,
Jerome thought they were called, or perhaps islanders. The stranger sat quietly alone at a nearby table
smoking a long-necked pipe while seeming to be taking in everything with stoic
scrutiny. But then Jerome caught a whiff
of what the man was smoking and realized that what he’d mistaken for aloof
vigilance was instead a vacant stare, and so the elf felt a little relieved as
he slunk self-consciously into the booth.
He rested an elbow of one arm on the tabletop and propped his head on its
hand in such a way that most of his face was obscured from the tavern
patrons. He then took a deep drink of
the nectar and shuddered at its potency.
Still, it helped steel his nerves.
He was throwing his head back and starting to take another, even deeper swig
when someone abruptly slid into the booth on the opposite side of its table
from him and said cheerily, “Well! Good
evening, Jerome!”
Startled, Jerome did a spit-take, spewing nectar across
the table and over the face and torso of the newcomer sitting there. Jerome sat his cup down and, wiping his
mouth with a sleeve, found himself looking into the dampened and scowling face
of another small, pointed-eared imp, this one with a triangular face topped
with unkempt reddish-brown hair and anchored by a too-long chin. “Thanks anyway, Jerome,” the fellow said
sarcastically, grabbing a napkin and wiping his face, “but I prefer to pay for
my own drinks.”
“Oh! Rumpelstiltskin!” Jerome said, blushing in
embarrassment. “I beg your pardon! I didn’t mean –”
Rumpelstiltskin waved the apology off with the hand that
held the napkin. “Never mind,” he
said. “It’ll be worth it if you’re bringing
another of your reports from the lair of the F.G.M.”
“Indeed I am!” Jerome said. That brought a smile back to Rumpelstiltskin’s face as he blotted his tunic with the
napkin. The little being had such magic envy. Jerome hoped that would help his bargaining.
“Good,” Rumpelstiltskin said, tossing the napkin aside and
reaching into a satchel strapped to his side and pulling out a small cloth
bag. He tossed it on the table; it
landed with the sound of the metallic clink of coins. “Lay it on me.”
“This news,” Jerome said, paused to gulp slightly, and
then continued, “is special. I think it
warrants…thrice the normal pay.”
Rumpelstiltskin raised an eyebrow. “Now, Jerome,” he said in a calm, reasonable
tone, “let’s not get greedy. Avarice is one of the seven big ones, you
know.”
Jerome shook his head.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“This concerns the Godmother and her relationship with the crown
itself!”
“Really?” Rumpelstiltskin said, this time
raising both eyebrows, unable to repress his intrigue.
“Really really,” Jerome said,
delighted to see Rumpelstiltskin’s interest. “So, if you could just pay me –”
“Not so fast, not so fast,” Rumpelstiltskin said, waving
him back. “Do I look like I’m made of money?” he asked, gesturing to
his modest apparel. “If I were, do you
think I’d live in a blasted carriage park?
F.G.M. takes every means she can, legal and otherwise, to keep us other
magic users in the kingdom from making anywhere near enough to challenge her status. What am I to do?”
It would help, Jerome thought, if you actually offered
fair deals in your magical contracts instead of loading them with such legal
fine print and so many hidden “gotchas” that your reputation
makes that of used coach salesmen look like that of Saint George. But Jerome didn’t say any of that. Instead, what he did say was, “I know. But believe me, a skilled, resourceful magic
user such as yourself can use this information to end the Godmother’s dominance. Perhaps even supplant her. Is that not worth at least three small, relatively insignificant bags of gold?” A twinge of pain throbbed in Jerome’s molar,
and he laid a hand to his jaw.
“Besides,” he added, “I’m in desperate need of a dentist to fix a
tooth.”
“A dentist?” Rumpelstiltskin’s
eyes brightened. “Why didn’t you say
so? Who needs a dentist? Tell you what, I’ll draw up a quick contract
which says if you tell me what you know, I’ll fix your tooth and –”
“No no, no contracts!” Jerome protested. “The last person who signed one of your
contracts to fix his toothaches woke the next morning toothless and with a pair
of dentures in a glass on his nightstand!”
“Well, it fixed his problem, didn’t it?” Rumpelstiltskin
asked. Seeing Jerome’s expression, he
relented. “Okay, okay. I’ll give you two bags of gold now.” He
tossed a second small bag onto the table.
“And if I find this information as useful as you claim it is, then I’ll give you a third. But only if. Is that
a deal?”
Jerome thought it over for a few seconds, then said, “All
right” and reached out and slid the two bags to his side of the table.
“Okay,” Rumpelstiltskin said, “spill the beans, Jack.”
“That’s ‘Jerome’.”
“Whatever.”
Jerome then told Rumpelstiltskin everything that he’d
heard during the conversation between the Fairy Godmother and the royal
couple. As he did so, Rumpelstiltskin’s face took on more and more interest in
what he was hearing, and toward the end he seemed almost enraptured.
“Well,” Jerome said after he had finished, “what do you
think?”
But Rumpelstiltskin did not seem to hear him; he was
staring off into space, the expression on his face like one who was having an
epiphany.
“Rumpelstiltskin?” Jerome said. He had assumed by his reaction that
Rumpelstiltskin had found the information as valuable as Jerome had hoped; now
Jerome feared that Rumpelstiltskin was having an attack of apoplexy instead.
“Let’s see,” Rumpelstiltskin started muttering quietly to
himself as if Jerome wasn’t there, “I’ll probably need a good recommendation
from someone notable…hmmm…wait, I know!
I can make a deal with King Midas that if he gives me a recommendation
then I’ll change that gold statue in his hallway back into his daughter…no need
to let them know how she got that way
to begin with, of course…yes…and I’ll need to act fast in case she’s not
bluffing about that ‘week’ thing…hmmm…”
“Rumpelstiltskin?” Jerome repeated, a bit more
loudly.
Rumpelstiltskin, his eyes still glazed, looked at
Jerome. “Huh?”
“The information.
You agree it’s worth three bags, do you not?”
“Oh,” Rumpelstiltskin said, snapping back to the reality. “Jerome, my friend, in this case I feel
you’ve truly earned your due. Here…” and
with that, he reached into his satchel, pulled out a third bag, and tossed it
to Jerome.
Jerome caught the bag and was staring down greedily at it
as Rumpelstiltskin got up from the booth with a buoyant, “Have a nice evening!”
“Oh, wait!” Jerome said as Rumpelstiltskin started to turn
away. As he turned back to face him,
Jerome said, “You will remember my
service to you over the years if you supplant the Godmother, won’t you?”
“Supplant the Godmother?”
Rumpelstiltskin said, and tried to suppress a laugh.
Jerome was confused by his reaction, but pressed on. “Yes.
Please. I don’t ask for anything
elaborate...if I could just be made the shop supervisor instead of just the
reception clerk –”
Rumpelstiltskin help up a stifling hand, prompting Jerome
to halt his pleading. “Don’t worry, my
friend,” Rumpelstiltskin said, “I’m sure that one day you’ll get everything you
deserve.”
“That’s all that I ask,” Jerome said.
“Indeed,” Rumpelstiltskin said. Then he did release a short guffaw which
Jerome found more unnerving than joyous.
Rumpelstiltskin then turned and capered away on his curly-toed shoes, a spring in his step and a
merry tune whistling through his lips.
Jerome sighed as he watched his benefactor leave.
Rumpelstiltskin didn’t even honor the spirit of his written agreements; how was
Jerome to expect him to even remember a verbal one? Still, if he could manage to bring down the
Fairy Godmother, then how could things possibly be any worse?