“I’ll go and get someone to help.”
The stench of vomit filled the back of the carriage, making me feel even more nauseated. In the darkness of the carriage, I could barely see Jay at all, so I held his hand, willing the blood to keep pumping through it, circulating around his body. It didn’t take a lot of light to see the patch of blood on his trousers growing. I’d moved past the stage of hoping he’d walk again and moved onto willing him to survive the night. The doctors didn’t say anything to me, but I could tell by their concerned whispers that this was more serious than I’d first thought. Within minutes, a group of four doctors or nurses, I couldn’t tell, ran out and began to pull Jay on his stretcher from the carriage. The two physicians that had traveled with us helped, leaving me alone in the carriage surrounded by the stink of my own stomach contents.
In all my years, I’d never been ignored. As a princess, people talked to me first, making sure I was happy above all others. Now, in the dark as the team hoisted Jay onto a gurney, I’d never felt more alone. I was paralyzed with fear, scared to even get out of the carriage.
“Come on. He’ll need you when he wakes up.” I looked up to see Williamson standing outside the carriage door with his hand out. I took it and felt the cool breeze and fresh air as I stepped down.
I followed the team in through the hospital doors from the darkness of the night to the burning lights of the hospital reception.
The team of people dashed down a corridor, and when I tried to follow, a woman held out her hand to stop me.
“I’m afraid you can’t go down there, miss.”
I looked at her through tearful eyes. A look of recognition dawned on her face, and she fell into a curtsy.
“I’m most awfully sorry, Your Highness, I didn’t know...”
She didn’t know. She couldn’t. My daughter was gone, and Jay might not survive the night.
“It’s okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t, because what else could I say? What else was there to say?
17th May
At some point, the night had given way to day. At the hospital, the medics had rushed Jay into the operating room, and I had been shown to a private room for grieving families. The nurse assured me it was only because they didn’t want the general public staring at me, but it felt appropriate. I was grieving. The loss of my daughter, the possible loss of Jay. No one would give me an idea of if he’d survive the surgery. All I could do was watch the sun come up through the window and sip on weak coffee that was brought to me every half hour or so.
The tears I’d cried so freely before had dried up. The pain was as acute as before, but the tears wouldn’t come. Pressure built in my head, which I was only able to alleviate with the steady flow of coffee.
The manager of the hospital came to ask if I needed anything. I could tell she didn’t quite know what to say to me. I wondered if she’d been told about Fae or if she thought I was only sad over Jay.
“Do you know if he’s all right yet?”
She shook her head sadly. “Not yet. They are doing everything they can. We’ll know more when he’s out of surgery. I promise, he’s got the best of the best looking after him.”
Her words were meant to be a comfort, but they didn’t pierce the wall of pain that surrounded me. “They are doing everything they can” meant nothing.
I paced the room for hours until the door opened, and a familiar face greeted me. It was Williamson. He’d gone home and changed and was now in a fresh uniform. Avery stood behind him.
“Any news?” I asked, but I already knew the answer was no. It was written on their faces. Before they even spoke, I fell into Williamson’s arms and began to weep. The hours of pent-up emotion came pouring out of me in the form of tears.
Williamson and Avery had been my shadows for a long time. They’d gone everywhere I had, watching over me. I’d never thought of them as friends, but now as Williamson held me tight as I drenched his jacket and Avery rubbed my back, I was glad they were there with me.
I didn’t notice when the door opened, but when Williamson pulled back, I saw that the hospital manager had once again entered the room. This time she had a smile on her face, and she beckoned me to follow her out of the room.
We walked down a corridor decorated with bright paintings. I hadn’t noticed when I’d come in, but the hospital was an old stone building with beautiful moldings and a polished stone floor. We stopped at a door with the number 11 on a brass plate screwed to it.
“His doctor is in here with him. I’ll make sure you aren’t disturbed.”
Jay was still asleep, both his legs splinted and bandaged. Next to him, his doctor was writing something in a chart.
The man walked around the bed to greet me. Instead of the usual bow, he held out his hand.
“I’m Dr. Coveney. I’m the surgeon who operated on your friend. He’s a strong one. His left leg will be in a splint for at least three months, the right considerably longer. We’ll have to take it month by month to see how he does.”
“Will he walk again?”
“I don’t want to give you false hope. There was a lot of damage, especially to his right leg. I believe he will regain movement, but how much, I wouldn’t like to say right now. We’ve placed the bones back together. It was a nasty break, but the bone was in clean pieces rather than shattered completely. He’ll need a lot of work to get any movement back. It’s going to be a long journey, and there is a chance he might never walk again.”
My insides hurt with all the pain. It was too much. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”
The doctor nodded his head. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more, but I promise he’ll receive the best care. He’s been given something for the pain. He’ll be a little woozy when he wakes up.”
The surgeon left as Jay began to murmur. I ran to his side and stroked his head as his eyes fluttered open.
“Fae?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. Saying she was still missing would only make it more real, and I didn’t want it to be more real than it already was.
I felt his body stiffen. His legs must have hurt with the movement, but his face showed no pain, only anger.
“I’m sorry, Lia. I’ll find him. I’ll find him and kill him with my own bare hands.”
“Shh, you’re not well. My father has half the kingdom out looking for Fae and for Rumpel… him. There’s nothing more you can do right now. You need to rest.”
He clenched his fists. “Rest? How can I rest knowing Fae is with that… that… creature. I don’t even know what he is. He’s not human.”
“You have to rest because I need you. I need you, Jay.”
My body trembled, but I held the tears back. He didn’t need me to dissolve into a soggy mess on his hospital bed.
Jay finally took his eyes from the ceiling where he’d fixed them on some spot and turned them to me. “I’ll bring her back. Once I’m healed, I’ll go and look for her, and I won’t stop until I find her.” He took my hand in his. “I promise you, Lia. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll bring her back safely to you.”
My already broken heart shredded even further. “You can’t. The doctors think you’ll need months of recovery time.”
He looked down at his legs, seeming to notice them for the first time since waking up. Both were covered by a sheet, but the shape of them made it clear they were heavily bandaged and splinted.
His voice cracked. “What exactly did the doctor say? Will my recovery time be sooner if I work hard at rehabilitation?”
I lowered my voice, trying to keep it as gentle as possible, as though a quiet voice could soften the blow I was about to give him.
“The doctor told me that it will be a long road, and there is a chance...”
“He told you that I’ll never walk again, right?”
I shook my head. “He said there was a chance of that, but he also said that he expected you to regain some movement. I know you. You never let anything stop you when y
ou put your mind to something. You’re the guy who gave me a date in a warehouse full of straw just so we could be alone, remember?”
“This isn’t a date, and I’m assuming this is no warehouse,” he replied.
“No, but to give up hope is to give up everything, and I refuse to do that. I’m not giving up on Fae, and I won’t give up on you.”
The anger dropped from his face, but it was replaced by something much worse. He looked helpless and hopeless.
“I promised myself that I’d always protect you, and when Fae came along, I promised myself I’d protect her too. The last thing Luka said to me before he died was to look after you. I’ve failed on every level.”
“You haven’t failed me. You did everything you could.” I squeezed his hand. “You have a decision to make right now. You can either succumb to self-pity, or you can take a deep breath and help me fight this. I don’t know how, but if I know anything about you, you’ll come up with something. I love you, Jay. It took me a long time to see it, but when it finally hit me, it punched me with such a force. You and I are in this together.” I stood up. “I’m going to get you a drink. When I come back, I want no more self-pity, because if there is something I do know, it’s that self-pity never solved any problem.”
Out in the corridor, I practically bumped into the hospital manager, who seemed to be in deep conversation with Williamson and Avery. I was pleased to see they both had a cup of coffee in their hands.
“Please, can I have some water or juice for Jay?” I asked the manager.
“Of course. I spoke to the doctor. The best physiotherapists are being brought in by the hospital. I’ve also spoken to some friends in a clinic in Enchantia and they said they’re available to come over and try some magical remedies for your friend. Of course, we don’t usually practice magic here as a rule, but for the royal family, we’ll make an exception. I’m led to believe that although magic doesn’t work perfectly for all normal ailments and scrapes, it certainly can help when it’s used along with proper medicine.”
She left to fetch some juice. It was clear that Jay was only getting this treatment because of who I was. I wondered what would have happened if he was just some regular person off the street. Still, that wasn’t my concern, and I had too much to worry about without wondering if everyone else in the hospital was getting weak coffee and promises of magical help.
“Let’s look at this logically,” Jay said as I nudged the door to his room open with my hip to get in with a jug of juice and two cups.
I noticed he’d managed to sit himself up a little by propping pillows behind his back. He looked a lot more animated than he had just moments before. The pain of losing Fae still gripped me, but his strength fortified my resolve to keep fighting.
“What do we know about Rumple?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, pouring him a cup of the juice and passing it to him. “He’s a thief, he’s magic, he’s wicked, he’s strange.” I sat down in the chair next to the bed. “He likes to make unfair bargains.”
“Exactly!” Jay said pointing his index finger at me. “Every person who has ever met him has made a bargain with him, and all of them have lost something huge for the price of something small. Your mother is a perfect example. She needed help because her father was being abusive. Rumple could have done anything to her father. He’s magic, he could have made him disappear if he wanted, but, instead he spun gold for her, and in exchange, he asked for her firstborn. You were collateral damage. I guess he took Fae because your mother never gave birth.”
“Actually, that’s not quite true,” I said, remembering what he’d told me in my room as he’d snatched Fae. “Remember the guy who helped us save the unicorns from the magical net in the river? That was him. He took Fae in exchange for that knife he lent me. Apparently, I told him I’d give him anything he wanted, and he took that statement literally.”
Jay winced at my words, and the edges of his mouth began to fall. “The man, or whatever he is, is the worst form of pond scum.”
“He is. I wondered why he looked so much like Luka. I guess it was his way of making him seem believable to me… trustworthy.”
“That just proves my point, though. Rumpel only turns up when people are in dire need. When they’re at their most desperate. That’s when he can get what he wants out of them.”
All the stories I’d heard about him certainly seemed to point in that direction. “My mother was in real need. I was only in need because of the unicorns drowning, although he was the one that threw that net down in the first place. It was hardly a fair trade.”
“Going back to using you to get back to your mother,” Jay said, leaning forward. “Maybe Rumple was the one who put the idea of your mother being able to spin straw into gold into her father’s head in the first place. From what your mother said the other morning, the man was a drunk. He probably picked up the notion in a tavern or something.”
“That might be true, but we’ll never know. My grandfather died years ago. I don’t know how this helps us anyway.”
“It helps because we know Rumpelstiltskin turns up when he sees opportunity. He takes people and manipulates them. Usually, the people he manipulates are at the very end of their rope. What if we hire someone who pretends to be wealthy but down on their luck? Maybe a sick kid or something? We could have them sitting in a bar telling people that they’d give every penny they have to make their son well.”
I mulled it over in my mind. There were so many taverns in the local area. Hundreds. The chances of him being in one at the same time as the person we hired were slim. Still, if this plan gave Jay some hope, maybe he’d recover quicker.
“I’ll speak to Williamson and ask him to go to the castle,” I said. “I doubt my father will be in, but my mother will. She can set this up.”
“Great, but instead of hiring one person, tell her to hire as many as she can,” Jay said. “Come up with many different reasons a person could be down on their luck. We need to mix the story up a bit, because we don’t know what it is he wants now.”
I asked Williamson to bring my mother to the hospital rather than sending her a message. I knew her well enough to know that she’d want to speak to Jay and me about the plan.
Deep in my heart, I knew it was pointless. Rumple had what he wanted right now. In the future, he’d need something else to keep him occupied, but right now, he’d be keeping a low profile. He wasn’t the kind of criminal that liked to flaunt his wins. Still, if this kept Jay and Mother occupied and gave them something to do, it would take their attention off me. I’d made a decision, and I knew that if either of them knew what I was about to do, they’d stop me. In Jay’s case, he’d either try and talk me out of it or try and come with me despite two broken legs. My mother would be even more drastic and have guards watch my every move.
When she turned up, it was with a task force of palace advisors. Usually, she wouldn’t travel without guards, but there were simply none left. With the exception of Williamson and Avery at the hospital, they all were out scouring The Vale for my baby girl.
“Williamson told me you had a plan,” my mother said, taking the only other seat in the room. Behind her, the advisors stood in a semicircle, all of them with notepads in their hands ready to write things down.
“We know a bit about Rumpelstiltskin,” Jay began. He was so much more animated than before. “We know he likes to barter, but he only does it when he knows the prize at stake is huge, and he can’t lose. He has a strange sense of what’s right. He could easily steal the things he covets, but he doesn’t. He makes people swap them for his help...”
I stood up while Jay talked and filled my mother and the advisors in on his plan. He looked so much happier now that he had purpose. My mother, too, was absorbed in every word he said.
“I’m just going out to get some air,” I said, opening the hospital door. Jay and my mother barely noticed.
“Tell Jay and my mother that I’ve gone out to look for Fae,�
�� I said to Avery. “Tell them I’ll be taking the mother unicorn.”
I waited for either Avery or Williamson, who was also listening, to try to stop me. They wouldn’t be able to, of course, but they’d do their best. It was a mark of the seriousness of the situation that they didn’t even try.
“I’ll take you on horseback up to the castle,” Avery said. “She’ll probably be around there.”
The journey to the castle was swift, and as predicted, Zacharina was standing in the meadow near the castle. Epiphany stood with her.
Jumping down from Avery’s horse, I ran over to Zacharina.
“I have no good news to tell you, dear child. The unicorns have spread far and wide searching for her.”
“I know. I’m grateful. I was hoping you’d let me search for her. I was hoping you’d take me.”
“I’ll take you anywhere you wish. You know that, but your fear of heights...”
“The fear of not finding my daughter is much greater.”
She nodded, then bent her knees to allow me to climb onto her back. I knew before we even launched into the air that I wouldn’t find Fae. If my father, all his guards, and all the unicorns couldn’t, then I didn’t stand a chance, but by not helping to look for her, I was dying inside. I’d given Jay a reason to feel hope by giving him a task to set his mind to. Flying around The Vale was my task. If it took away some of the pain in my heart and allowed me to breathe a little more easily, at least then I’d be able to think clearly.
The gust of wind that hit my face as we took to the air made me gasp. My stomach lurched as the ground got further and further away, but I kept my eyes on the ground, hunting for any clue as to Rumpelstiltskin’s whereabouts. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. He was hardly likely to be walking the streets with my daughter.
I instructed Zacharina to head away from Shipley. The town would be thoroughly searched by the castle guards. Instead, I was going to comb the countryside for small outbuildings or tiny cottages away from other people.
Epiphany flew beside us, pumping her wings frantically to keep up. We flew for hours, dipping to the ground every so often to knock on a door or peek through a window of an isolated cottage. As the sun began to set, I knew I’d done no better than the castle guards had. I’d knocked on the doors of scores of cottages, only to be looked upon with curiosity. I guessed it wasn’t every day that the daughter of the king knocked on people’s doors.
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