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“Please. Keep her safe.” The queen’s voice was rich, strong, in spite of her tears.
“What if you don’t come back?” he asked her.
The queen glanced over her shoulder before looking back at him, her eyes brimming with sadness.
“Then promise me you won’t let her be tainted by this. By us.” She wiped a tear from her cheek before her expression hardened into something more stoic. “A life for a life. You owe me.” She pressed her lips to the child's head—my head—once more, and closed the windows to a large balcony where Uncle was standing.
The sounds of fighting were everywhere, and Uncle was scared. Not for himself. For the first time, he was worried for someone else. For the infant in his arms. Forme. And the woman who had given her to him.
Then, the images changed.
He shushed the tiny baby me and rocked her to sleep, humming in his grating voice. If the other memory had been tinged with the dark hue of violence, this one was seen through warm, rosy tones.
The child was growing on him. A once-proud, heartless troll had somehow let this creature into his world, and she was slowly conquering it.
He hadn’t heard from the Queen of Ellaria in over a month, but he had heard of the bloody war that Ellaria had lost to the western fairy kingdom of Thandria. That the entire royal family had fallen.
My chest tightened with the sadness he felt at his next thought.
He was going to have to give her up. His life wasn’t suited to a child.
Then, the pictures flashed forward, and a human was there. She had long, wavy brown hair, and sparkling blue eyes. Though she was younger than I remembered her, I knew her instantly.
Mama.
She had her hands in the dirt, planting tulip bulbs, looking sadder than I had ever seen her.
“Why are you crying?” Uncle asked her, though I heard in his thoughts that he already knew the answer. He had been asking around about the kind woman for days now.
She didn’t look at him with fear or disgust or disdain; the usual reactions he elicited. Only gave a small sigh, telling him the short story of how her husband had died, leaving her childless. She had no desire to remarry, but a baby—she wanted that more than anything in the world.
“Would you care if the child you had was not like the rest?”
The woman straightened her shoulders, already resembling a fiercely protective mother to a child that was only hypothetical to her.
“Of course not,” she answered.
And Rumplestiltskin knew what he had to do, even if it broke whatever was left of his heart to part with the child.
“I have a solution to your problem, but it would require an oath from you to never tell anyone where she came from.”
Mama considered for a moment before responding.
“As long as I have an oath from you, in return, that she was not stolen, not taken from a loving family… that she truly has no home to return to. I will not be the cause of another person’s suffering.”
Something in Uncle’s chest eased at every sign of Mama’s overwhelming goodness.
“You have my word,” he said.
“Then you have mine.”
The images shifted again as he passed the infant off to Mama.
There was no hesitation in her as she took the baby in a tiny walnut-shell crib—only love, joy. He promised he would check in. He would help whenever needed, but that was as much for his sake as for the woman’s. He couldn’t imagine not seeing how the girl grew up.
Time jumped ahead, and I saw myself hopping from flower to flower, my teal curls streaming behind me, all through Uncle’s concerned gaze.
The girl could walk. She could run. She was dangerously close to being able to fly. He knew the wings would identify her as the princess who was supposed to be dead, so he searched the world for the concoction that would keep her safe, that would keep them from growing.
