RUMPELSTILTSKIN RETELLING.
"I challenge you to find my name, princess. Three tries." Light flickers beneath the recesses of his mask, the wooden fangs and shadowed eyes. "Think you can beat me?"
***
A witch doctor, user of dark magic, terrorizes a...
Opium, sleepless nights, murderous intent. Knives twisting your stomach, eternal sleep, disease, or seduction.
Rangda.
Rangda.
Rangda.
I wield my weapon, Baqir, still stained with red blood and gold skin flakes from when I'd smashed the golem on patrol. I try to limit noise as much as possible. But the sound is coming from deep within one of the crop fields, where the plant grows until it towers higher than the size of your average man or woman. The noise of the wailing baby hums down to a slight mew.
You gods-forsaken son of a bitch.
The chant continues.
Opium, sleepless nights, murderous intent. Knives twisting your stomach, eternal sleep, disease, or seduction.
Rangda.
Rangda.
Rangda.
I try to push the creeping anxiety away, the feeling that maybe this sorcerer is trying to do this for attention. That they want me to be out here in the crop fields all by lonesome. Wanting to make a statement. Capture a princess.
I'd like to see them goddamned-well-try. Then I can introduce them to Baqir personally, by smashing it through their teeth.
The man's voice echoes in the fields, like there's more than one sorcerer. An army of killers, all thirsting for blood.
The baby starts crying again.
What sick bastard kills a baby?
I break into a run. I cannot lose. I cannot have another child's blood on my hands. I run, not caring if I give away my position. Adrenaline takes me higher, makes me feel like I'm soaring above the bent-back plant stems. That nothing can stop me.
I'm blessed by the gods, after all.
I stop, nearly running into a sneering face with goggle-eyes and deeply pitted fangs, all set against a ghost-white complexion and smeared red lips.
No, that's not their face. It's a mask. But, from Papa Ryu, I should have the gift to see past lies and illusions, to see his face.
But it's like my magic's been dimmed around him. Sluggish and drugged.
"Take off the mask." I hiss, heart beating wildly. Feeling like I want to throw up or run or fight all at once like some crazed lion.
The figure moves, face set with that permanent, crazed smile. Beneath the mask, I see soft human hair that falls in dark-as-night waves, a sweat-greased patch of skin. A tall figure with lean shoulders, a bony slit of skin from eating too little for too long. Sickly, a sorcerer that's starving. Even with all that blood money?
The figure readjusts themselves, so their black cape pulls away, swirling with dotted patterns. The same unfamiliar patterns from the cloth Sol and I'd found earlier. Like rolling waves, twining around their skin. Batik, that's what the cloth traders called it, from the island kingdom of Jiwa. A batik pattern, set like blood against the black.
A tiny face, a bundle. The figure throws the baby into my arms, forcing me to drop Baqir.
When I look up, the figure's gone. Though I hear an echo of that same, multi-voiced sound. As clearly as though we're standing in a sealed chamber as opposed to a field. He's laughing at me, this skeletal sorcerer.
I tuck the baby close to my breast, both our hearts beating wildly. It's lone wail cuts past the laughter. Shaken, I begin the long walk back to Kura and General Sol's cottage.
I pull a gold coin from beneath the child's ear. When I pass Cato's temple, the Rahasian god of war, I don't even linger thinking on blasphemy. I take the Jiwanese sorcerer's blood money, rinse it clean in rainwater, and then offer it up to the god of war.
Maybe I need the gods' help after all.
I think back on that mask, the hideous, deranged laughter and the sickly skin. "Cato, protect me in battle. Make my enemies bleed rivers, tremble in my name."
I throw the gold coin into the ever-burning torch set up in the midst of the temple, the grate where sweet grass and melted fruit cakes are already burning amongst other scattered treasures. Golden cane-heads and silver earrings from a woman, bathed in lipstick rouge and kisses. The flame flares up, like it's screaming at me. A woman's cry, equally deranged.
My mind is playing tricks on me. It's been too long a night.
I nestle the child closer and return to the cottage. But I can't get the woman's name out of my head, the one the sorcerer was chanting.
Rangda.
Rangda.
Rangda...
Who are you?
***
Readers,
Thanks for all the support.
I wonder how this whole sacrificing Rangda's bloodied gold to the Rahasian war god will go. Hmm...
