Stiltskin (Andrew Buckley) (4 page)

The Dwarf stopped and looked over at the edge of the river. In the water’s reflection, he could see clearly that he’d aged in those years. He counted the wrinkles around his eyes and could see that there was definitely one more than was present sixty years ago. Dwarves in Thiside aged at a literal snail’s pace.

Rumpelstiltskin was a typical Dwarf, standing a little under four feet tall with a crooked oversized Goblin-like nose, small, black, beady eyes, and scruffy grey hair. He still wore the rags that he wore in the Tower and a peaked hat that drooped down his back.

He pulled the knife out of his belt and watched as the rising sun reflected off the metal. The boy who was fishing never heard Rumpelstiltskin, never saw the evil little man sneak up behind him, and was completely ignorant about what the hell was going on when the Dwarf strangled the boy with his own fishing line. He just wanted the boy’s knife.

Rumpelstiltskin snickered. He had a plan and it was about damn time he put it into action. He had to deliver the message he promised and fulfil his end of the deal with the Hatter. Then he had other things to do, other people to find. All he had to do was find a door and, in line with the terms of his deal, it would take him exactly where he needed to be.

The little Dwarf danced in a circle, gleeful at his own maniacal brilliance. Order and peace had been kept for so long in Thiside and Othaside and it was about time that order was upset. Those damn do-gooders were going to pay for locking him up. The Hatter could do whatever he wanted but Rumpelstiltskin had his own agenda, and as much as he wanted to revel in his freedom, he had to get moving.

He took off at a run down the riverbank, keeping a lookout for what he needed. And then it caught his eye; off to his left in the middle of some dense shrubbery. The light in the middle of the shrubbery was fractured, as if there was a small tear in the very fabric of reality. The gash wasn’t very big but the distortion was crystal clear. Doors healed themselves and never appeared in the same spot twice. This particular gash in the reality of Thiside was only two feet in length, meaning it was almost closed. Soon it would vanish, and somewhere else another door would open.

Rumpelstiltskin gripped his knife tightly and stepped up to the door. Anyone could climb through a door, good or evil, big or small. Doors always went somewhere; most of the time they went to another door in Thiside unless the traveller had secured a passport from the White Rabbit allowing said traveller to pass from the world of Thiside to the world of Othaside. Rumpelstiltskin had no such passport but it didn’t matter. The wish that the Hatter had made bypassed that rule. He had wished that Rumpelstiltskin would deliver a message to his son. It was as simple as that. All Rumpelstiltskin had to do now was climb through and he’d be in Othaside.

He grabbed the inside edge of the door with one hand and hauled himself up. His feet dangled for a second as he pulled himself through. The light glow from within flashed once and the door closed up, leaving no indication that there ever was any door or any deranged evil Dwarf anywhere in the vicinity.

Travelling through a door felt like someone sticking a large hand up the traveller’s rear end and tickling the intestines. It was awkward and uncomfortable. Climbing into a doorway was easy. Coming out on the other end was always difficult as the traveller could never tell where it came out or where the door was positioned at that exact moment. In the case of the door that Rumpelstiltskin exited, it was placed perfectly over the top of an antique bathtub located in the apartment of Robert Darkly in London’s West End. Rumpelstiltskin fell unceremoniously out of the doorway and splashed into a very full and warm bathtub. He gripped his knife and seethed quietly at his misfortune and waited patiently for the annoying tingling sensation in his stomach to subside.

Several seconds later, a naked man came through the bathroom door and froze, looking surprised and slightly scared to see a Dwarf sitting in his bathtub.

Rumpelstiltskin looked into the man’s eyes and recognized exactly who the man was.

“You must be Robert Darkly,” said Rumpelstiltskin.

Robert Darkly promptly screamed like a girl and slammed the door.

Rumpelstiltskin snickered and hauled himself out of the bathtub.

In the Northern Territories of Thiside, in the quiet countryside just East of the Beast’s Castle, as the sun crested the mountain peaks and the shadows fled for cover, a world-shaking occurrence suddenly occurred.

The tiny dirt road that everyone knew as Drury Lane had been in existence since before the Castle was built, before the Beast took residency, or even before the Northern Territories had been named. The lane had always played host to one small cottage, and well before the sun decided it was time to rise, a small plume of smoke could be seen billowing from its chimney. The Muffin Man awoke at 3:00 a.m. every day to begin his work. He shaved, showered, dressed, kissed his sleeping wife, and fired up the ovens. It had been this way for over three hundred years and wasn’t likely to change anytime soon. The Muffin Man provided baked goods all over the Northern Territories. People would travel from as far as the City of Oz to sample his vanilla iced bread fingers.

Today was no different from yesterday and yesterday struck a startling resemblance to the day before that. At 7:00 a.m., the Muffin Man pulled out his last batch of dinner rolls and left them to cool. The sunlight now streamed in through an open window and a light breeze rustled the leaves on the oak tree in the garden. He looked at the old clock on the wall; another half hour would bring his delivery men and women to pick up the bundles of baked goods that would be taken away over the hills and far, far away.

The Muffin Man looked out over the landscape and felt thankful for the life he was leading; a simple baker without a care in the world. It was at that exact moment that reality turned itself inside out. Everything happened in a split second, which was much like a regular second, only shorter: the mountains that could be seen through the Muffin Man’s window volcanically erupted one by one, spraying molten lava high into the sky; clouds appeared from nothingness high in the sky; and the worst ever unrecorded snowstorm in history flashed into existence, blowing sleet and rain through the cottage’s open window. The Muffin Man shielded himself with a cookie tray. The snowstorm froze the molten lava in mid-eruption, the result of which formed giant statues of ducks performing ballet at the peak of each mountaintop. The sun spontaneously fell out of the sky, throwing the world into immediate darkness.

It was moments like these that the normal human reaction was to run for cover. The Muffin Man couldn’t help but watch from his now snow-covered kitchen. The moon flew up from behind the mountains and exploded in a shower of sparks that threw fluorescent light, much like the annoying kind found in hospitals, across the landscape and briefly silhouetted a perfectly-normal-yet-not-at-all creature off in the distance. The Muffin Man squinted at the creature but was instantly distracted as the mountains with the duck statues flipped themselves upside down while the snow-covered trees sprouted legs and ran around in circles, the Earth shook, and fire shot across the sky. A nine-thousand-pound rhinoceros blinked into existence and raced across the landscape, unaware of his real purpose in life but running felt good so he figured that was a start. Lightning cracked across the ground and it began to rain upward; gravity realigned itself and the Muffin Man found himself stuck to his ceiling. His head felt like it was about to split open as the pressure of the universe centered itself across the valley he called home, and with a small squeak, it all stopped.

The Muffin Man fell to the floor as gravity returned to its normal state; the sun reappeared exactly where it was supposed to be. The duck statues were gone, the mountains were the right way up, the snow had vanished, the trees were rooted once again, and even his kitchen was exactly as it had been. The only telltale sign of the last few moments was the nine-thousand-pound rhino that was happily charging up the valley away from the Muffin Man’s house.

The simple baker knew the silhouette of the creature he’d seen momentarily during the cataclysm. He also knew of only one creature in existence that could have caused what just happened but it was impossible. Everyone in Thiside knew that the Cat was dead.

airies came in all shapes and sizes. Well, not really sizes; they were all basically the same size, around about six inches in height. In Thiside, Fairies fell into three different classes: the Good, the Bad, and the Simplistics. The Simplistic ones lived in the Northern Territory Forests and kept to themselves. They stuck to simple life principles, which included eating, sleeping, and sex. It should be noted that Fairy sex was not like regular sex but involved a lot of wing flapping, humming, and high kicking. It was actually quite disturbing to witness, so much so that a self-help group was formed in the Eastern quarter of the City of Oz to help explain just what witnesses of such an event had actually seen.