#12 - Tinkerbell's Covenant

The Queen of the Land of Never Return inspected her territories of the dead. Billions upon billions of fairy folk went about their business. It wasn’t a green and watery world like the world they departed from, but it was lush in its own definitive way. It was after all, a place of ends, for beyond the Land of Never Returns, there is little else. Only post wizard-folk and mannikins make the occasional trip through the heart’s void, a place of unbeknownst wonders and horrors.

The rest live in Queen Tinkerbell’s world. The dead live in little grey homes. They start little families. They run little businesses. Their trade mostly revolves around fashion, like you know, clothes and stuff. The other popular trade is visit-time. Some of the dead buy time to appear on Fairyland as ghosts, or visions, or dreams, to communicate and to visit (and sometimes haunt) the living. It is an expensive privilege, so very few buy it.

The Land of Never Return busied itself under the vision of Queen Tinkerbell. The city was prosperous. It wasn’t necessarily happy, but it had a purpose. It had to exist. Queen Tinkerbell hovered far above the land, and dwelled in the pink clouds, far from the sights of her people.

She had been the Queen for a trillion years. And she was bored. She had built and established her kingdom to the point of autonomy. Her guidance was needed less everyday. Her responsibilities were fading. She had little to do. She had no man to love (who could love a Queen of the dead?).

Queen Tinkerbell was bored.

She flicked her wand, and sprayed pixie dust into thin air, and breathed death into the nothingness before her, and conjured a little infant. A little boy child. He was a beautiful baby, with blond hair, emerald eyesm and ruby lips like the Queen herself. He cried his first cry of life, only he had no life. Queen Tinkerbell held her baby boy, and sang folk lullabies of the pixies.

Then Queen Tinkerbell summoned Rumplestilkskin to her courts.

”Rumplestiltskin, I am the bearer of Snow White’s covenant with you,” declared the Queen.

“I know,” answered Rumplestiltskin, still plump and hardy as was his days in Fairyland (He ran an entertainment business, where he would spin golden ropes of hope and hook it to the land of the living, and the dead would climb it, catch a glimpse of life, then have the rope disappear, and let the holder fall back into death). “And I see that your Highness has a baby boy now. I congratulate you.”

“Thank you,” replied the Queen. She sat still on her throne, and her baby fidgeted little. After running her bright emerald eyes from top to bottom of her son, she cast her eyes on the manikin, and declared her baby to be his. “Take this child. He is yours. I made him for you.”

“Thank you, my Queen. But may I ask why you did this? Your switch of curses with Snow White and the Prince of Thieves was a fair one, and you did not have to ever fulfill the vow. Yet you created this child for me. Why?”

“Well. I was bored.”

*

At night, Rumplestiltskin spun perfect ropes of life, and weaved an unbreakable basket. He laid a cloth in the basket, and placed the baby boy there. The baby was fast asleep and breathed heavily. As the Land of Never Return slept, Rumplestiltskin threw his magic rope into the skies, hooked it with the land of the living, and prepared to hoist his baby away to freedom.

Rumpy looked at his baby, and whispered, “You are born of the dead, yet you are alive. You can live here, but you can live in Fairyland too. Because you are born of an eternal presence, you will live forever in the land of the living. You will never grow old. You will never be kept to the ground. You will live free forever, until the day you decide yourself that you want to return to me.”

And he hoisted the baby into the land of the living.

Rumplestiltskin shed a tear as the unbreakable basket felt sunshine. He could almost hear the baby cry.

“Goodbye, little Peter. Goodbye.”

*

Queen Tinkerbell smiled as she saw all that transpired.

*

End