Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin

by Liesl Shurtliff

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  One Bargain Too Many

  I woke with a start. How long had I slept?

  Someone was sobbing. Was I too late? I dug through the straw until I rolled out of the pile and onto the floor at Opal’s feet. Opal squealed. Her face was red and wet, but it got redder, and her sad eyes narrowed to angry slits.

  “Where have you been?!” Opal demanded, hands on her hips.

  “Unloading straw.”

  Piles of straw reached nearly to the ceiling. They were stacked right up against the fireplace, where flames snapped precariously. Opal stood between the fireplace and the spinning wheel.

  “Well, just look at this room,” she said, as if she were my mother and scolding me for not picking it up.

  “Lots of straw,” I said.

  “Exactly! The king has promised to make me queen after this batch, and if you mess it up, you’ll be the first person I behead!”

  I was going to say that if I messed it up, she wouldn’t be queen to behead anyone, but I was too tired to argue. My only comfort was that if I messed up, Opal and the miller would be punished too. I imagined them both chained in a dungeon.

  I sagged into the wheel and piled straw on my lap. The window was covered by straw, so I couldn’t see if it was still light out or if night had fallen. It had been early morning when I fell asleep, but there was so much straw. No matter what time it was, I needed to work fast. I took a deep breath and twisted the straw into the wheel and pressed my foot on the treadle. All the aches and cramps returned.

  I spun as fast as I could, and Opal paced in a little circle, rubbing her hands together impatiently. “Can’t you spin any faster?”

  “No.”

  “Keep the straw close to you! Don’t let it spill!” She snatched some of the straw that had fallen from my lap and threw it on my head. “Don’t you know what will happen if every last bit isn’t turned to gold by morning? No wonder my brothers say you’re a numbskull.”

  I stopped spinning. “Would you like to continue?”

  Opal pressed her lips together and glared. “Keep spinning, or else …”

  Or else we were both dead. I worked faster than ever. I piled the straw on top of me and worked the treadle as if I were pumping in order to breathe.

  Hours passed. My whole body felt like one big cramp from sitting at odd angles and spinning for so long. Despite the growing pile of gold, the straw loomed over me like a beast prepared to swallow me whole.

  I worked faster. Soon I could see the tapestries on the walls. Then the windows. It was dark out, which meant there was still time.

  The sky began to lighten as I was coming close to finishing. The walls were now stacked with skeins of gold. I kept an open space between me and the window so I could leave. I just hoped these walls were as easy to climb as the other tower.

  Only a few handfuls of straw remained at my feet. Opal had fallen asleep by the fire, her head resting on a pile of gold. A string of slobber hung from her mouth. The fingers of one hand were clasped around a finger on her other hand, as if she were missing something there. Her ring.

  I stopped spinning.

  I hadn’t made Opal give me something. I’d been so concerned with getting the spinning done in time that I forgot to ask. I had spun the gold, but what would happen if we didn’t bargain? Would it turn back to straw? Would someone get hurt? Maybe I wouldn’t be able to leave the castle.

  “Opal,” I whispered loudly. “Opal, wake up.”

  “Huh?” She sat up. Her face had big red marks on one side from the way she’d slept in the gold. Her hair was pushed up and ratted all funny. She smacked her lips and wiped the slobber from her mouth. “Are you done yet?” She yawned.

  “Almost, but you forgot to give me something.”

  “You never asked,” she said with an innocent smile.

  “Well, I’m asking now. What will you give me?”

  “Nothing,” she said haughtily, like she already thought herself a queen. “You’ve almost finished spinning, and I have nothing left to give. I already gave you my two most valuable possessions.” She still rubbed at her ring finger.

  “Well,” I said, spinning the last of the straw, “I can’t let you have the gold unless you give me something. In fact, I can’t even leave here until you give me something. Won’t it be a surprise when the king comes in and finds me here, sitting at the spinning wheel?”

  Her face scrunched up in anger, making her look wild and ugly. “Get off! Get away from that wheel!” she growled. “No one would believe a little numbskull like you could do it! This gold is mine!” She bent over to pick up a skein of gold, but couldn’t. She tugged and pulled and scratched, but it was like the gold had all melded to the floor and hardened together. I let out a mirthless laugh. She couldn’t take it! The magic wouldn’t let her.

  “What have you done?” she snarled. “You little scoundrel! I’ll have your head for this!”

  “The gold isn’t yours,” I said calmly. “You didn’t give me something, so it’s not yours. When the king comes, he won’t be able to get it, either.” I smiled. Magic is so clever and logical!

  The wild look fell from Opal’s face. She seemed to shrivel, and her tongue flicked out and wound around and around.

  “Give you something,” she muttered. She scratched at herself, pulled at her hair, yanked at her dress. Oh no, was she going to give me her dress?

  “You don’t have to give me a thing,” I said desperately. “You could make me a promise to give me something later.” I had no idea if that would work, but Opal was making me nervous, and suddenly the witch’s warning was echoing in my brain. Strange promises can come out of the desperate.

  “Promise you something?” She thought out loud. “Well, I’ll be queen. I suppose I’ll be able to give you most anything. But I can’t give you gold, no, the king, my future husband, won’t allow it. But what can I be sure I can give you? I don’t know what my possessions will be.”

  I was getting impatient. The sun was spilling over the stables now. “Just promise me something. You can give me anything, anything you know is yours. I’m not asking for your firstborn child.”

  “My child? You want a child?”

  “No, that’s not what I—”

  “Of course, you will probably never be able to have any of your own. And I might have more than I can care for.” She was rambling to herself now. “My mother had ten children, and her mother had a dozen. I’m sure I shall be the same. What is wrong with giving one to someone who shall have none? Or if I never have one, I won’t have to give it away. What harm is it to promise something that may never be?”

  “Opal—” There were footsteps coming up the tower. I wanted to tell her it didn’t need to be a baby. It could be a biscuit, it could be an apple, it could be her dress! But my tongue became a rock in my mouth. “Just give me something,” I said. “What will you give me?”

  The footsteps came closer, and Opal tensed. “Get out! Get out! You cannot be here when he comes!” She pushed me toward the window.

  “What will you give me? You can’t take the gold until you give me something!” I teetered on the windowsill.

  Opal looked back at the door and at the gold all around her. Keys jingled in the lock.

  “Opal!”

  “I’ll give you my firstborn child. I promise.” She snatched a skein of gold and held it to her chest. She smiled triumphantly at me and stroked the gold as if it were a furry pet.

  The door swung open.

  I fell out the window.

  That moment would have been a good time to have a pile of straw beneath me. But for all the straw I had dealt with in my life, there was not even a tiny bit when I needed it most. I hit the ground, bounced and rolled, and finally came to rest against a thorny shrub.

  “Ouch,” I croaked, and squeezed my eyes shut. Pain spread all over me and on me and in me. Thorn pricks and bruises and cuts and—

  “Ouch!” It hurt to breathe. I think I broke
my ribs and possibly my arm. I wasn’t sure I could even feel my legs.

  A flurry of movement and noise surrounded me, but everything was blurred and spinning.

  “What’s that?”

  “He just fell from that tower!”

  “Is he dead?”

  “He’s alive, I think.”

  Someone bent over me. “Are you alive?”

  “I’m alive,” I said breathlessly, “and I’m going to have a baby.”

  “What did he just say?”

  “Something about a baby.”

  “A baby,” I said, and then I blacked out.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Martha’s Endless Tales

  “The king is going to marry tomorrow? A commoner?”

  “It’s what they’re saying. A very rich commoner. Supposedly she can turn straw into gold. They say she’s a witch.”

  A man and a woman were speaking in hushed but dramatic voices. I tried to open my eyes, but my lids were heavy.

  “But the king wouldn’t marry a witch!”

  “He would if she could turn straw into gold. Nothin’ the king loves more than gold, and I think he’d do anything to get it.”

  I felt like I was waking from a very bad dream where I had just been promised a baby, into another bad dream where my whole body felt like I had fallen out of a tower. Then I remembered that both were true. I groaned.

  “Oh, he’s waking! Poor thing.”

  I opened my eyes to see the woman leaning over me. She was very plump, and even though she seemed worried, I thought she must be a kind person. Her cheeks were round and red as apples, and all the lines in her face looked like they naturally moved upward into broad smiles and hearty laughs.

  “Here now, little lamb,” she said. “Drink up. There’s a lad.” She placed a cup to my mouth and I drank a hot broth. It helped me wake up a little and I looked around to see where I was.

  The room was large and bustling. I hadn’t noticed all the other noise, but servants were coming and going, bringing dishes and trays and buckets and rags. Two large fireplaces were burning bright with large pots over the flames. The walls were gray crumbling stone. I was in the kitchens of the castle. This was not where I wanted to be.

  “You took quite a fall there, boy.” A man came and stood beside me. He wore a red-and-gold uniform, with a big sword at his side. I shrank back. “Don’t worry,” he chuckled. “I’m not going to hurt you, though you were causing mischief, now, weren’t you?” The guard didn’t seem accusing; rather, amused. He was much younger than the kind woman, but he had the same laughing face, covered with a beard.

  “Oh, Helmut, he’s just a curious boy,” said the woman, chuckling. “Remember how you were, now, always sneaking around corners, trying to get a peepsy at anything mysterious or exciting. I remember the time you pinched a swig of the king’s finest wine when you were just a lad and it all came back up on my clean kitchen floor!”

  “Yes, you whacked me a good one for that,” said the soldier, “which is why I straightened out and became a keeper of the peace from little hooligans like—”

  “He was only curious. No crime in that, now is there? Probably heard the gossip and came runnin’ to see. I’m curious too. Mighta climbed the tower myself if I didn’t think I’d bring down the whole castle.” She chuckled and her whole plump body laughed with her, like Oswald the miller, only I liked her—and her laugh—much better. It made me want to laugh too, only instead of laughing, my body seized up in pain and I coughed my lungs out.

  “Oh, now, there, there, little lamb, drink some more. You’ve banged yourself up quite a bit. There’s no padding on those scrawny bones of yours. Can be quite useful, you know.” She patted her wide hips.

  “Now, then, what’s your name? Everyone prefers to be called by their name, don’t they?”

  Not everyone.

  “Robert,” I said. The lie just slipped from my mouth, and I realized it was what Opal had called me. But I was glad I didn’t tell her my real name. Everyone on The Mountain already knew, so I’d never had to explain it to anyone, and I didn’t want to explain it now. I didn’t have the energy.

  “Well, Robert,” said the woman, “I’m Martha, one of the king’s cooks, and this is my son, Helmut. I named him so he could be a stalwart soldier, brave and fearless—”

  “Which I am,” said Helmut.

  “But, really, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. I might as well have named him Fluffy.”

  “That’s enough, you old bat,” said Helmut, but he was smiling.

  “That’s ‘Mother’ to you, Fluffy. Now give me those stockings.”

  Helmut held out a pair of stockings worn through with holes, and Martha began to darn them. It reminded me painfully of Gran. Gran used to darn my stockings. Now they had a lot of holes in them. I could feel my toes sticking out, rubbing against the worn leather of my shoes.

  “Well,” said Helmut, “I’d best get back to my post. Looks like we’ll need to be extra vigilant to keep young hooligans from trying to get a peek at the future queen. The king has ordered a double guard around her chamber.” He winked at me, then kissed his mother on the cheek and left. Martha looked after him as though she were very proud, even if she did tease him about his gentleness. I wondered if my mother ever would have looked at me like that, had she lived.

  “Now, Robert,” she said. I looked around a bit, wondering who she was talking to, until I remembered that I was Robert. “What brings you here? You don’t belong in the castle, now, do you?” I froze, my mind racing to come up with some explanation, but Martha didn’t wait for an answer. “Oh, don’t tell me. I can tell it’s a secret, and so you’d better keep it because I won’t.

  “Strange business, this girl and the gold. No good can come of it, if you ask me. I never saw anything good come of magic in the end, you know. Always a price to pay. I knew a woman who worked in the kitchens who went to a witch to get a potion to make her beautiful, and the potion did make her beautiful but it gave her horrible breath, so what good could it do? And she got old besides. There is no potion I know of for curing old age. Ah, me.”

  Martha talked without breathing, ten words for every stitch in the stocking, and she stitched fast, but I didn’t mind, because it saved me from having to explain myself.

  “Now, this business with the gold … If that King Bartholomew Archibald Reginald Fife is as wise as his name, which I seriously doubt, he’ll keep away from this mischief and focus on crops. Gold won’t feed a kingdom.”

  It wouldn’t? On The Mountain, gold had always meant food. The miller Oswald said it himself. “Gold means food.” And the more you found, the more you ate. But then I supposed the food had to come from somewhere. “Is there not much food in The Kingdom?” I asked Martha.

  “Oh, goodness, didn’t you know? But, no, you’re so young, you can’t be more than ten.” This surprised me. Even though I was twelve, I’d never passed for eight. I was delighted to be pronounced ten.

  “Well,” continued Martha, “the crops in The Valley have suffered from bad weather and such. It’s not a famine this year, but if we have another poor harvest … well, then, we can all add a little more water to our stew.” So there really had been a shortage of food. Perhaps I had judged the miller Oswald too harshly.

  “But the scarcity is everywhere,” Martha continued. “We haven’t had much gold come from The Mountain, and that is our main source of trade, you know. And gold is all the king cares about. Dear me, have you been in the castle? Gold everywhere. Not in the kitchens, of course, but everywhere else—gold mirrors, gold vases, even the floors are gilded with gold, and the king drapes himself in gold every day.”

  Martha continued stitching as she spoke. “He could probably trade the gold with another kingdom for some extra food, but oh no, it is the delight of his life. The servants spend half their time warding off pixies. Oh, dear me, what a nuisance. I know a wench who’s swollen half the time from all the bites. But if that troubles the king, you’d never
know it. And here we are on the brink of starvation.” She sighed, the first breath I’d heard from her in ten minutes.

  “Well, you can’t neglect your crops and expect to feast. Maybe this girl will set us right in the end. Perhaps she can make gold into milk and potatoes.”

  Martha went on, speaking of different calamities magic had brought, and the gossip about the girl who could turn straw into gold. She knew all the details of the wedding that was to take place the next day, down to what flowers would go on the cake and in the bride’s hair, and how the king was planning to throw out gold coins to the crowds.

  Martha continued to talk as she bustled around the kitchen, chopping meat and vegetables. She fed me a delicious meat pie, and when I tried to get up, she pushed me back down and told me I wouldn’t be moving that night. “But you tell me where to find your mother and I’ll fetch a gnome to send her a message so she doesn’t worry. You need to rest after such a fall.”

  “Well … I …”

  “Oh, I see,” she chuckled. “She doesn’t know where you’ve gone. You are a mischievous little one. Well, I can’t say my Helmut didn’t do the same, always seemed to be up to his nose in trouble, but still she’ll worry her heart out for you, so we must send a message. I’ll say that you’ve had a bit of an accident. No need to give the details, but tell her you’re safe and Martha will care for you until you’re well enough to go home. Now what is your mother’s name, dear?”

  My tongue wagged. “Red,” I blurted. If a message had to go to someone, it might as well go to her. That way I wouldn’t have to explain anything to Martha.

  “Strange name. She must be a curious person.” I silently agreed. “But, then, I don’t put much stock in names these days. I knew a girl named Gladiola who was supposed to be beautiful but she grew crooked and cross-eyed, and then there’s my Helmut, ah, me.” She laughed and moved to the window. “Message!” she said in a high, singsong voice, and she pulled up a fat little gnome who wriggled with excitement.