Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin (8 page)

“For several years now, I have received little gold for your tax. I am a generous king and I have sustained you, yet lo and behold, I find this gold, brought to me by one of my own advisers. Fine gold. Fine workmanship. And yet no one in The Kingdom seems to know where it came from.”

My gold. The miller. When I traded it, I didn’t think about what he would
do
with it, where it would end up. But how could I
not
have seen this? Of course, he would trade the gold in The Kingdom. And the king, loving gold as he did, would get his hands on it eventually, and then, of course, he would wonder. It wasn’t normal gold dug out of The Mountain in clumps and pebbles, mixed with dirt. No craftsman could have molded the gold into such fine threads. This was gold only I could spin.

King Barf’s piggy eyes turned cold and suspicious. “My soldiers will search through your homes and your mines to be sure that you are not robbing me of my rights to the gold in my kingdom. If I find you are deceiving me, stealing from me …” He squeezed the gold tight in his hand. He didn’t crush it or make it disappear, but we understood.

A murmur went through the crowd until the soldier blew his horn again. “All citizens of The Mountain will go to their homes and await inspection!” Everyone hustled and bustled against one another, all moving in different directions.

I stood still. I could feel Red staring at me. Finally, I looked at her, and for the first time since we had worked side by side in the sluices, Red hit me. She slapped me
right over the head and said, “You really are a numbskull,” and she trudged off.

Was there any point in arguing?

I was doomed. There was gold lying in tangles on my floor as if it were nothing but straw. I hadn’t even bothered to hide it. And what about the miller? Did he still have gold sitting in his house? Surely he had hidden it well, or he was making some kind of plan. I could hide mine too, in The Woods. Maybe near Red’s hollow beehive log. I didn’t care about the gold, but I didn’t want to go to the dungeons for the rest of my life or sit in the stocks so people could throw mud and rotten food at me.

I raced home. I gathered all the skeins and tangles and bits of gold that I could find, wrapped them in a rag, and ran out the back door. A few pixies that were outside flitted over and started sniffing and chattering around the bundle.
Don’t swat them. Don’t cause commotion. If I let them be, then no one will notice
.

I crept through trees and huddled behind rocks, away from roads and paths where soldiers were going in and out of houses. The gnomes were running around madly with messages from soldiers to the king, only gnomes have a hard time with longer names and messages, so King Barf’s name always came out a little garbled.

“Message for King Barf-a-hew Archy-baldy Regy-naldy Fife!”

“No gold here!”

“No gold there!”

“No gold!”

“No gold!”

“No gold!”

I walked slowly. I was so small, no one would notice me—as long as I didn’t panic. I passed the village square and approached the mill, where the miller stood outside with his nine sons and Opal. Three soldiers were about to go inside, but the miller didn’t look nervous. Maybe he’d already traded all the gold. But when he caught sight of me creeping toward the trees with my suspicious little bundle, his eyes went wide with horror. I shook my head and tried to point in the direction of The Woods. I could slip by. If he kept the soldiers’ attention, they wouldn’t notice me.

But the pixies noticed me. All the gold in my bundle was just too much to hide from them. They flew to me one by one, and the sound grew. It started as a soft twitter, like the distant chirping of birds, and then built to a high, steady hum.

Then there was silence.

It was the kind of silence that lasts only a moment or two, but feels like a hundred hours because you’re just waiting for something awful to happen.

I remember when I had this idea that I could fly. I built myself wings out of sticks and chicken feathers, and I climbed a high rock and jumped. I didn’t fly. I broke my arm. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was just the moment before, when I went from the exhilaration of soaring through the air to the horror of plummeting toward the hard earth. I knew I was going to hit the ground and feel pain.

This was like that moment. The moment before everything went bad.

When the pixies attacked, I flung my arms up and swatted at them. I swung my bundle of gold. I clawed at the ground, flinging mud and dirt and snow in all directions. Finally, the pixies were gone and everything was quiet again. Even quieter than before.

I took stock of myself. I still had my bundle of gold tight in my hand. I turned around. The miller and his nine ugly sons and his one pretty daughter and the three soldiers all stared at me, and then at something on the ground. I followed their eyes, and my stomach twisted. There on the ground was a spool of gold, unraveling toward the soldiers.

The spool rolled again and again and my life unraveled before my eyes, one roll for every year. I snatched up the gold, clutching it to my chest, then I turned and ran for The Woods. I don’t know why I thought I could run, but I was going to, until a giant horse blocked my path and there were shiny black boots right in my face. Boots with giant gold buckles.

King Barf looked down at me, and his piggy eyes narrowed on the gold I still clutched in my hands. He sniffed, as if he could smell the rest of the gold in my bundle.

“Well, well,” he said. “The pixies seem to find you even more enchanting than they do me. How fascinating.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
The Miller’s Lie

“Give me the gold in your hands,” said King Barf.

The miller stepped in front of me and gave me a warning look. “The gold is mine, Your Majesty,” he blurted.

“Yours?” said the king and I in unison, but nobody seemed to notice me just then.

“I asked the boy to bring it. He’s my servant. Come here, boy, quick. Bring the rest!” he snapped.

I didn’t move. What trick was he playing? He would certainly be punished for hiding gold. Why would he risk his neck for me?

“Move, boy! Excuse him, Your Majesty. He’s a half-wit. Doesn’t know his own name!” The miller laughed and his big belly jiggled.

“No,” said the king. “Give the gold to me. All of it.”

I tried to move but my legs grew roots into the ground.
My tongue swelled and my brain fuzzed. I don’t know why I said it, but the words just spilled out.

“What will you give me?” I covered my mouth, and everyone gasped. The air grew still and cold. King Barf moved his horse so close to me that the tip of his sword was level with my nose.

“Give me the gold and I will spare your life,” said the king, his nasal voice now quiet and dangerous.

Slowly, trembling, I held out the gold to King Barf and he snatched it from me. He examined the skein, and then he opened the bundle and stared inside for a long time. Finally, he pulled out another spool of thread. He stretched the gold in his beefy hands and moved it back and forth, watching it gleam in the sunlight.

“How is this done?” King Barf asked, holding out the gold to the miller. I had become invisible again.

“Well, see … Your Majesty … ’tis a strange business. Full of mystery and, and … and magic.”

The king stiffened. Not many people tolerated magic, and King Barf not at all. He didn’t like anything that might have more power than he did.

“Not the witchy kind,” said the miller quickly. “A good kind … magic that makes good things. You see, my daughter here—she’s not just a beauty, she’s talented too—spins with a touch of magic. She can spin straw into gold!”

My mouth dropped and so did Opal’s. Her blank face became horrified. She looked from her father to the king, back and forth, her tongue whipping out again and again.

King Barf didn’t even glance at Opal. He simply held
the gold up to the sun, turned it so it caught the light, and smiled. “I have heard of those who can spin more than just wool or cotton. I have never seen it. Show me.”

“Oh, but you see her work in your hands!” said the miller.

“Show me the spinning. Show me how she turns it into gold.”

“Oh. Well.” The miller laughed nervously, as if he hadn’t expected this. “That’s part of the magic, Your Majesty. Not even I have seen her do it, and she does it right in my own house. But, mark me, you give her a pile of straw, a roomful of straw, and the next morning she’s spun it to gold! ’Tis a marvel.” The miller gave me the tiniest glance, and then, “We can spin you more, this very evening.”

King Barf finally looked at Opal and appraised her. Opal stood frozen and pale, not even her tongue flicked out. She was so pretty, I might have believed she really could spin straw to gold, but I knew that she couldn’t. And so did she. Opal began to tremble.

“Why have I not heard of your daughter’s marvelous gift before?” asked King Barf. “Such talents would bring me great pleasure and would be rewarded openly if I did not think it was deceitful. If I did not think you were trying to steal from me.”

The miller blathered. “Oh no, Your Majesty … Yes, Your Majesty … Of course, no … Yes, not to worry. We mean no deception. We are humble, honest subjects. We live only to serve. My daughter has just discovered this gift. It is something that has grown with her, grown with her beauty. We merely brought the gold for trading
to make sure it would hold its value, to know that it was real so that we might present a tribute to you and know that the gold was worthy of you, Your Majesty. Never to deceive you, Your Majesty.”

The king waved one of his soldiers to come forth and issued a command in his ear. The soldier went and stood beside Opal.

“It pleases me that your daughter should accompany me to my castle,” said the king. Opal looked up, her wide eyes full of terror.

The miller gaped. “Well, I … I … well, yes … ’twould be an honor, Your Majesty, but see—”

“If what you say is true,” said King Barf, “you and your family and all The Mountain shall be rewarded. But if not, the punishment for deceiving the king is severe. Dungeons or death.”

Opal was pulled up onto a horse and led away with the king’s procession. King Barf cradled the bundle of gold like a baby to his chest. He looked back at the miller with a triumphant grin. I couldn’t see Opal’s face before she disappeared.

The miller swayed and his sons gathered around him. “Oh, what have I done? What have I done? What have I done?” He buried his face in his hands.

I never liked the miller Oswald. He was a liar and a cheat and greedy. It was his fault that his daughter was
being led to her doom. But, no, that wasn’t true. It was
my
fault.
I
was the greedy one. I had spun the gold. I had traded the gold. I had fumbled and tripped and spilled the gold. Now Opal was all spun into the mess and she hadn’t done anything at all. Poor, beautiful Opal. That thought poured icy water over my head. An innocent girl was being led to her doom because of me.

A pixie fluttered up to me, shaking her fists and squealing as if she were reprimanding me. The pixie bit my nose, and in a minute it swelled so large I had to breathe through my mouth. Now my nose was bigger than my face.

I guess I deserved that.

It was still morning, but no one was working in the mines now. Everyone was scattered around the town, buzzing about King Barf and all his soldiers. A gnome ran past my feet and down the road chanting, “The king is gone! The king is gone! He took the miller’s daughter along!”

Gran once said there would be times in my life when I would be trapped, with walls all around me too high to climb and no way out. Then I would need someone from outside and above to throw down a rope and pull me up. I believed Gran; I just always thought that she would be the one to throw the rope.

I needed help. I needed advice. But I couldn’t think of a single person in all The Mountain who could help me. Red was mad at me. The miller probably wanted to strangle me. Milk and Nothing had nothing to offer. And
the magic and the gold had spun me into a bigger heap of trouble than I could have imagined.

And that’s when I realized who could possibly help—the one person who might be able to give me some answers about my mother and the spinning and the magic.

I needed The Witch of The Woods.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Witch of The Woods

I grabbed a gnome by his leg just outside The Woods. I held him upside down with both my arms. He grunted and swatted his stubby hands at me, but once I said I had a message for him to deliver, he clapped his hands and smiled, showing tiny yellow teeth. I set him down and recited my message.

For Red:

I know you are mad at me, and this might make you madder, but I am going to see the witch.

If I don’t return, please take care of Milk and Nothing.

Rump                        

“Now repeat, and be quiet. Only Red should hear this.”

The gnome repeated the message in a croaky little voice and then sped off to deliver it, chanting, “Message for Red! Message for Red!” over and over.