He really shouldn't be here. If any of the adults–and there are fifty-seven of them, from noblemen to generals to scullery maids and grooms–notice him, they'll overreact, and who knows what that will lead to; whether they try to kill him or make a deal with him, the future will be altered from the one he scryed last night.

"Show me Bae," he'd demanded of the fire, but as always, the vision his magic produced was something entirely different. . .wasn't it? The blue at the heart of the flame took shape, became an eye, and the orange darkened and became a cascade of auburn hair, a woman, and somewhere in his head he heard chimes ringing. Words popped into his head: a message from the magic? Or his own lonely imagination? "The boy will be your undoing, but she will make you whole again."

"Who is she? Where?" After three hundred years of searching for Bae, Rumple was nearly at his breaking point. "Take me to her."

And for once, his magic obeyed him, apparently literally. He'd blinked and found himself teetering in the night, standing on a tree limb. His eyes adjusted immediately to the dark–an advantage of those creepy golden eyes, somewhere between a cat's and a snake's–and he took his bearings from the stars. Somewhere in the warm southern climes, then, his view of the sea that he could smell a few miles to the west blocked by a tall stone wall. Above and a few yards beyond, a window opened and artificial light flooded through. A female voice called a greeting. "Hello? I know you're out there. Come and see me."

He tilted his head back to see a small figure leaning from the window. Because the lamplight lit her from behind, he couldn't see her face, only her shadow. "Hello? Please don't hide from me."

A child, a young one, she was; a couple of years older and she would have overlooked him. But there was something about the littler ones that magic seemed to favor, and so it often permitted a child to sense what parents or older siblings could not. Deep in his psyche he heard the chimes again: this was the right one, the woman-to-be, the remaker that his vision had revealed to him.

What he was contemplating now, he absolutely should not do, for if she became aggitated in any way–excited or fearful, either one–something she might do or feel now could alter the future, and then perhaps she wouldn't do what magic intended for her to do for him, whatever it was that would mend him.

Rumplestiltskin had tremendous patience. He had patience that could build a mountain from a pebble, a lake from a raindrop. He had never needed to count curiosity among his many character flaws. But magic does not lie, and somehow this woman-to-be would connect him to Bae. Just a peek, ten seconds at most; tomorrow when she awoke, the girl would assume she'd dreamt him. A simple, harmless spell cast over the canopy of her bed would ensure she slept deeply and dreamfully. If he could, he'd make himself invisible to her, but she was too young for magic to fool her. But what he could do was to take his cue from the image above him: place light at his back, so she would see only his shadow.

Lords, the last thing the poor child needed was to be subjected to the Dark One's face.

Ten seconds, then, because it would be years before she came into his life again to change him, and he'd waited insufferably long already for anyone or anything that could prove his patience and planning wouldn't be in vain. If he could just glimpse this child's face, perhaps he'd find a renewal of hope.

Avoiding all the showiness–the puff of magic smoke, the cackle, the exaggerated gestures–with which he usually popped in, he transported himself into her chamber.

In her cotton nightgown and bare feet, she trotted right up to him and stared, unabashed, too young for etiquette and fear. "Hello. Will you save my mama?"

"What?" Hardly as tall as his hip, nevertheless she had caught him completely off guard.

"My mama," she repeated impatiently. "You can save her, can't you?" When he didnt't answer, she stamped her foot. "Well, say something! Save her with your magic."

"I. . . . That's. . ."

"Well, are you the Ruel Ghorm or aren't you?"

"Oh." Nervously he glanced at his escape route. His ten seconds had long been gone; so should he be.

But it was difficult to ignore the bold, barefoot princess who was scowling at him, doubting his abilities as well as his identity. This child could stand up to witches and dragons; she was a female Baelfire. "Can you fix my mama or can't you?"

He'd heard similar questions many times before, but this time, he wouldn't even send out a diagnosing spell to assess the patient's condition. The Fates, not Rumplestiltskin, must decide whether the child's mother recovered. "I can't. I'm sorry, little princess."

"Why can't you? You have magic, don't you?"

"I. . .yes, but some sicknesses are too strong even for magic." He swallowed hard, because the dampness gathering on her pudgy cheeks would slay him if he didn't run away now.

"But I prayed to you. Every night, I prayed to you."

The Ruel Ghorm would someday answer for this. Good gods, he couldn't stop himself, though he was risking his future with Bae by intervening. He crouched, opened his palm and conjured a blue bottle and a doll-sized spoon. "Here. I can't fix your mama, but this will help her to sleep. One spoonful in her tea. Can you do that? Just one tonight, and tomorrow night one more, and one more every night until the medicine is gone. All right?"

She took the spoon and the bottle.

"Say it, child: how many spoonfuls tonight?"

"One." The gravity in her face told him he needn't test her further. She would remember and she wouldn't be tempted to administer too much. Just in case, though, he placed a little limitor spell on the bottle.

She trotted into the hallway, and he knew she was on her way to her mother's chambers. With the ensconced torches of the hallway flooding her with light, the girl paused, then suddenly curtseyed before running off.

He came back just once more, a week later, on the night after her mama's funeral. She still had a kind and attentive, if not affectionate, nanny to look after her, and a kind, if preoccupied, papa who would from time to time remember she was there and spend some time with her. She would fare better than most motherless children. And there was a reason, he was certain, that the Fates had given her these circumstances to grow under. She would become the woman she was supposed to be, for her papa and her people, and somehow she would fix the Dark One.

When he peeked in on her, she was asleep, her thumb in her mouth, her covers kicked off. He drew the blankets back up to tuck her in; a northeaster would blow in tonight and in the morning the grass would break under a coat of ice. He picked up the doll she had dropped to the floor, a very plain doll, too simple to have been bought, just a faceless cornhusk doll that the child had probably twisted together herself, with a little help from a servant. It did have one remarkable feature, though: a tiny blue coat decorated with jagged lines.

He smiled, recognizing from the coat that this doll represented her magic visitor. Through the doll, she would remember him–though she might continue for years to think of him as the Ruel Ghorm.

That thought he couldn't abide. One small, final spell, then, before he vanished from her chambers and her childhood. He whispered into the space where the doll's ear would be: "Rumplestiltskin." Then he laid it on her pillow before climbing out her window.