Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin

by Liesl Shurtliff

  When Gran wasn’t looking, I removed the bobbin from the spinning wheel, wrapped it in a rag, and tied it to my waist.

  I didn’t see Frederick or Bruno in the mines. Any other day this would have made me happy, but today it made me anxious.

  The pixies swarmed around me more than ever. When I threw dirt over my head, they’d fly away for a minute or two, but they always came back. So I just let them crawl all over me, their tiny chant ringing in my ears: “Gold, gold, gold!”

  “Wow, look at him! Look at the pixies!” said a little girl working closest to me along the sluice. “You must be finding hoards of gold.”

  I didn’t find a speck.

  When the sun was low, I waited for Red to come out of the tunnels. She had dirt smeared all over her face and looked cross. She walked right past me but I still followed her.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I want to show you something.”

  “Show me, then.”

  I looked around, wary. “And I need to tell you something.”

  She walked even faster. “So tell me something.”

  “It has to be someplace where no one will see or hear”—I brushed the pixies out of my eyes—“and where there are as few pixies as possible.”

  Red scowled at me and kept walking. But after a while she stopped and turned back. “Hurry up, I’m hungry.”

  I followed Red down the mountainside and through The Village. When we passed the mill, I got a cold prickle on my neck, like someone was watching me. I hurried past.

  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when Red went into The Woods, but it was getting cold and dark. I stopped just inside the trees.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To a place where no one will hear or see, and where there are no pixies. That is what you want, isn’t it?” Red folded her arms impatiently.

  “Is it safe?” I asked.

  “If you stay on the path. And don’t ask questions.”

  “What path?” I looked down and my mouth fell open. There was a path beneath my feet, clearly trodden and winding farther into The Woods. I would have sworn it hadn’t been there before. I had never seen it. “How—?” I started, but Red cut me off.

  “I said, don’t ask questions.” I closed my mouth and followed.

  Red led us deep into The Woods, much deeper than I’d usually go. She didn’t seem afraid, though. In fact, she seemed more comfortable here than she was in The Village. She touched the trees as if they were friends. A bird fluttered down to a low branch and chirped as though he were saying something to Red, and I had the feeling she understood the bird, even though she pretended not to notice.

  “Do you come here often?” I asked. Red glared at me. “Sorry.” I wasn’t supposed to ask questions, but questions were all that rose to my mind.

  The path curved and twisted. Where was she taking me and how much farther was it? I bit my tongue to keep in the questions. Then I started to hear something, a low hum. It got louder as we walked. Suddenly we rounded a corner and came upon a giant fallen tree. The tree was swarming with bees. I froze. I saw Red’s thinking, of course. Bees and pixies don’t like each other, so where you find a swarm of one, you probably won’t find the other. But bee stings didn’t sound much better than pixie bites. I stayed far back.

  Red walked right to the edge of the swarm. Slowly, like a creeping cat, she moved through the buzzing wall of bees, reached her hand down the log, and pulled out a chunk of honeycomb, dripping with golden honey. She moved back just as slowly. Bees crawled all over her head and arms and even her face, but she didn’t flinch, and soon they all flew away, back to their honey log. She broke the honeycomb in half and gave me a piece. “Gold you can eat,” she said, and we licked the sticky mess.

  “You could trade this for grain,” I said. “Probably lots.”

  “Wouldn’t want to,” said Red.

  “Why?” She could get a whole sack of grain for just this one chunk of honeycomb.

  “Because some things people like to keep to themselves. This has always been my tree, and I don’t want anyone else to know about it. If you tell, I’ll punch your teeth out.”

  It made me feel really special that she would share it with me.

  “And don’t think you can come here without me, either.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” Even if I dared to walk this far into The Woods alone, I wouldn’t be able to get the honeycomb like she did, not without getting stung a thousand times.

  We sucked all the honey off and chewed the waxy comb. Then we licked our fingers. It was so sweet I almost forgot why we had come here until Red pointed at the bundle tied to my waist and asked, “What did you want to show me?”

  I untied the bobbin and held it out for her to see. She glanced at it, then stared blankly at me. “It was my mother’s,” I said.

  Red raised her eyebrows, suddenly interested. “She was a spinner. From Yonder.”

  I looked at her, confused. “Yonder?” Gran never told me my mother was from Yonder, and she didn’t tell me about the spinning until I found the wheel. It made me mad that Red knew these things and I didn’t. “How do you know that? How did you know she was a spinner?”

  “Some people know,” she said, not looking at me, and I could tell she was hiding something.

  “What people?”

  “Some people,” she said, and her nostrils flared.

  “The bobbin,” I said. “I think it’s special.” I didn’t want to say “magic.” I knew how Red felt about that.

  “It’s just a bobbin,” she said.

  “But special, maybe.”

  “How’s it special? What does it do?”

  I chose my words carefully. “I think it spins things different. Makes things change.”

  “Bobbins don’t spin. They just catch whatever you’re spinning.” Then her eyes widened as though she suddenly realized something. “What did you spin?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “I just … What if you could spin one thing into something different, not just wool into yarn?”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as … What if you could take some … straw and spin … uh … gold?”

  Red stared at me. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  “We need gold. Wouldn’t that be great?”

  “Maybe.”

  She didn’t believe me. “If a cow can give milk and chickens can lay eggs and dragons can make fire, then why can’t a magic bobbin make gold?”

  “Because this bobbin isn’t magic,” she said. “But you might be.”

  “Me? Magic? No, I’m not.” Using magic was one thing. Being magic sounded like a mountain of disaster.

  “If anything changes to gold when you spin, it’s coming from inside of you, not the bobbin.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m just guessing.”

  “Well, maybe you’re guessing wrong.”

  Red sighed. “It doesn’t really matter where the magic is coming from. What matters is that it’s magic, and magic makes trouble. Your mother used magic to spin and she got into a lot of trouble because of it. There’s always a consequence for using magic.”

  “But this would be a good consequence,” I said. “Gold.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And gold would solve a lot of problems.” Stomach problems, for sure.

  “Maybe, but—”

  “And it’s not like I want it all for myself—”

  Red hit me on the head so I would stop talking. “Those are just the natural, regular consequences, Rump. There will be magical consequences too. Magic has its own rules.”

  “How do you know? Don’t tell me it’s just a guess.”

  Red gritted her teeth. “Didn’t you learn anything when you watched Kessler get chased by every mouse on The Mountain?”

  “But nothing happened when I spun! I didn’t catch on fire or get attacked by mic
e! I just made gold! Fat skeins of gold that could feed the whole village!” I clapped my hands over my mouth, but Red didn’t look surprised.

  “Rump,” she said in a soft voice, “does anyone else know about this?”

  I sighed. “Frederick and Bruno were looking through my window this morning, right after I spun the gold.”

  Red frowned.

  “But,” I went on, if only to make myself feel better, “they probably didn’t know what they were seeing. Probably just looked like a pile of yarn to them.”

  Red’s frown deepened.

  And that’s when I realized what kind of worry I had. The worry went from my head and sunk down to my chest and settled to a sickness in my stomach. Frederick and Bruno might be complete idiots, but any village idiot knows gold when they see it.

  The next rations day, the line at the mill was very long. Everyone was eager to stock up before winter came, and it was almost here. The air was biting now. There was always frost in the mornings. The pixies were more subdued, and they began building nests for their winter sleep. Now we were just waiting for the snow.

  When it was my turn, the miller gave me a sack of meal, bigger than usual. I looked at him, surprised. No one else got this much meal.

  “Gold means food,” the miller said gleefully.

  I looked at him, confused. I had found only a few pebbles of gold in the last week. And the miller wasn’t kind or generous.

  I opened the sack just outside the cottage and a thick, dusty powder billowed out. I choked and coughed as the dust went into my lungs. The miller had filled the bag with chalk and sawdust.

  Gold means food.

  The miller was giving me a message.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Gold Means Secrets

  I did not know what to do. We needed food. The miller had the food and he wanted gold. I had lots of gold, spun into perfect little coils with my mother’s spinning wheel. Spun with magic that Red insisted was dangerous.

  “Where are the rations?” Gran asked. I was empty-handed, having thrown away the sack full of sawdust.

  “I suppose I didn’t find enough gold,” I said, looking at my feet.

  “Well, I’ll go give that miller a piece of my mind.” Gran rose up from her chair, then staggered and fell back.

  “Gran!” I rushed to her, but she waved me away.

  “Only a little dizzy spell.” She closed her eyes and took a few breaths. Her hands shook. She needed food. I would have to take some of the gold to the miller. Maybe I could mix the coils with some dirt and other gold flecks and pebbles from the mines. He might not notice the difference. But a dark feeling rose in me. If the miller was as greedy as he seemed, he would notice. So I kept the gold hidden and hoped that the miller had only made a mistake with the sack of sawdust.

  “We will make do,” Gran said. “We have the chickens and the goat. So we won’t starve.”

  We killed one of our two hens. The meat would have to last us until the next rations day.

  Gran and I ate in silence. Eating the chicken should have been a celebration, a great luxury, but we were both melancholy. My gaze kept wandering over to the spinning wheel and to my bed, where the gold was hidden.

  Gran followed my gaze. “I hope you haven’t touched that wheel,” she said. “You don’t know how to work it properly. You could hurt yourself.”

  “Did my mother hurt herself?” I asked. The question flew out of me without warning.

  Gran froze with a bit of chicken raised to her mouth. She lowered her hands. “Why would you ask such a thing?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me she was from Yonder?”

  “Who told you that?” Gran asked.

  “Red.”

  “Red. Yes, well, her grandmother …”

  “What did my mother spin?” I asked.

  Gran stiffened. “What did she spin? What do people usually spin? Why—? Have you—?” She looked from the wheel back to me. I could see her struggling, trying to decide what to say.

  “Your mother spun trouble,” she said, “and then left it on my hands.”

  “Is that how you think of me?” I asked. “As the trouble she left?”

  “Oh, child.”

  “Rump!” I shouted. “My name is Rump!”

  Gran’s eyes were shiny with tears. “You are my grandson, Rump. I have always loved you. I have always tried to protect you, and I will do my best to protect you now. Do not concern yourself with your mother or her spinning wheel. It will only bring you sorrow.”

  I didn’t ask any more. I felt strange, like things had shifted around me when I wasn’t looking, but I didn’t know what it meant.

  The strangeness crept into my dream that night. A woman was spinning by the fireplace. She had long black hair and green eyes, like mine. I had never seen this woman before, but I knew she was my mother. She was spinning straw into gold.

  She smiled at the gold at first, and the glittering skeins piled around her feet, like a golden pool. But as the pile grew larger, her smile faded. Her spinning slowed and seemed to be difficult, but still she spun. The pile grew and grew and grew, spreading wider and rising higher. When the gold reached my mother’s chin, she looked panicked, like she was submerged in water and didn’t know how to swim. When it reached her eyes, they were full of fear. Finally, the gold covered her whole head, and I couldn’t see her anymore. But the pile of gold still grew.

  When it reached the ceiling, I woke up.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Gold Found, Treasure Lost

  Rations day came again at last. I went outside, eager to get an early start, and was showered with sparkling white. Winter had arrived. At first I was happy, because a fresh blanket of snow made the world look peaceful and new. Nothing bad could happen in such fluffy white. But then the cold bit my skin and I remembered what winter really meant.

  It meant that soon the pass up The Mountain would be closed. No one would be able to get through to trade gold for food. It meant slow, grueling work in a frozen mine. It meant cold and hunger—more hunger than usual.

  Milk gave only drippings of milk, our one remaining hen had no eggs, and Nothing bellowed at me because his hooves were frozen to the ground. When I finally pawed him loose with icy fingers, he kicked me from behind and I landed face-first in the snow.

  I hate winter.

  When I arrived at the mines, Frederick threw a snowball at my face. Bruno got me on the back of the head. Then a tree branch dumped a load of snow down the neck of my shirt.

  Winter hates me.

  It was a long day in the mines. I kept myself from going crazy by making up rhymes.

  Frozen fingers,

  Frozen toes

  Where are you, gold?

  Nobody knows.

  Spin a sock, spin a hat

  Spin a stupid, ugly rat

  A furry cat

  A winged bat

  Spin them in a tasty stew

  I like the sound of that!

  I went to the mill for my rations and waited in the long line with a grumbling stomach. I had found a little more gold than usual this week. I think it helped that the pixies were now sleeping for the winter. If gold meant food, then the miller would have to give me my rations. But when I reached the front of the line, he simply looked down at me over his bulging belly and said, “No gold, no food.” His eyes had a greedy gleam. He knew.

  I understood my dream now. I hadn’t spun that much gold, but it was already choking me.

  When I came home, Gran was still in bed. Her eyes were open, but she just stared up at the ceiling.

  “Gran?”

  She blinked but didn’t look at me or speak.

  “Gran? Are you all right?” I walked to her and placed my hand on her cheek. I pulled away quickly. Her skin was so hot it burned my cold palm.

  I stumbled backward and fell, then ran outside and down the road to Red’s house. I didn’t know anywhere else to go. I pounded on the door, hoping someone was home.

  A woman
swung open the door, brandishing a wooden spoon. Red’s mother. She looked fierce, just like Red, but she gave a start when she saw me panting and crying.

  “Rump?” Red peered out from behind her mother.

  “My gran … something’s wrong. Please …”

  Red’s mother threw down her spoon and grabbed her cloak. “Come,” she said. Red followed, and we ran back to the cottage.

  When we walked in, Red’s mother went right to Gran. “Elsbith …” She gently touched Gran’s forehead. “Red, go outside and get a bucket of snow.”

  I stood by the bed while Red’s mother looked Gran over. Gran opened her eyes and made a little gurgling sound, but she didn’t speak. It was like she was trying to say something, but the words were heavy and got twisted on her tongue.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

  Red’s mother didn’t look at me. “She’s old.”

  “But what’s wrong with her?”

  “Oh, child.” She looked at me now, and her eyes were so full of pity I thought I might be sick. “No one can keep going forever. She’s ill. Her brain isn’t working right.”

  Her brain! I needed Gran’s brain!

  “Can you help her? Will she get better?”

  She gave me a tragic smile. “We’ll just have to see.”

  My whole body sagged, and she touched my shoulder. “It will be all right.”

  Red and her mother placed cold cloths on Gran’s face and rubbed warm ones on her feet. They boiled water and the leftover chicken bones and spooned the broth in Gran’s mouth. A lot just dripped down her cheeks and chin, but Gran seemed a little more awake while we fed her. She looked at me, or at least I thought she did, and then she fell asleep.

  “She should sleep for the night,” said Red’s mother. She picked up her cloak and went to the door. “I’ll be back in the morning. Come, Red.”

  “I’ll be there in a moment.” Red’s mother nodded and shut the door.

  Red only waited a few seconds before she did what I knew she would: boss me.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t.”