"Many curses do," he comments absently, fingers delicately skimming the rippled transition between bark and wood. "One simply has to adapt to the change. Exploit it."

He had shouldered his curse without knowing, truly, what it was he had been shouldering. He could not have guessed, then, the things that would be whispered, the ancient lives that would be remembered, the terrible temptations of rage that would hold him in thrall.

"And some curses are not meant," continues Rumpelstiltskin, attention still studiously locked on the dream's warped texture, "to be born by the mortal man."