Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin (13 page)

“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.

“Now, what would you like to tell her, Robert?”

“Uh … tell her I’m sorry to make her worry. I’ll be home soon.”

Martha spouted off a long message to the gnome, including all the details of my injuries, precisely where I was, and who Martha was and her son Helmut. When she asked the gnome to repeat the message, he got it all mixed up, and so she did it again and made it longer, but he still got it all mixed up, and so they went back and
forth, and finally Martha lost patience and threw him out the window. The gnome scurried away chanting, “Red for message! Red for message!”

I wondered how long it would take him to find Red and if she’d make any sense of the message. She’d probably understand enough, and I knew what she’d think. She’d think that she had told me so.

I had spun myself a heap of trouble. Opal had promised me her firstborn child! My stomach was sick with the thought. Opal didn’t understand the magic. She didn’t think I would ever really take her baby, or perhaps she thought she could back out of her side of the bargain. But what she didn’t understand was that I
had
to take the baby! Red had explained to me that rules are rules and the magic binds you to those rules. Opal had promised her baby. She had taken my gold. I must take her baby if she ever had one.

But that was only the beginning of my troubles. There was still the spinning and the gold. Surely the king would want Opal to spin more. Would he threaten to kill his own queen if she didn’t spin more straw into gold? Would I have to stay here forever, always at the queen’s beck and call when she needed straw spun to gold?

No. I couldn’t.

I thought of all the things Opal could foolishly promise me. Her right eye. An arm and a leg. More children. I saw my destiny clearly now. I was holding a dozen crying babies and trying to spin a mountain of straw into gold while Opal screamed at me to hurry up because she’s the
queen. I felt dizzy. My head hurt. I couldn’t go home. I had to get away, far away. I had to go someplace where I wouldn’t hear about Opal or the king or a baby.

But mostly I had to find a stiltskin. A stiltskin was the only way to fix all this mess. That’s what my mother had been looking for. That’s what The Witch of The Woods said I needed.

But where could I find one? The witch said I must
look
, but look
where
? Under rocks? Under the ground? In a tree? In the sky? In Yonder or Beyond?

In the morning, the castle rang with chimes and bells, not like the single gong of the village bell in The Mountain, but dozens of them ringing in all different tones. It should have been a lovely sound, but it made my head throb and ache.

“Well, Robert,” said Martha. “I’m off to the wedding. Methinks I shall fetch a bit of gold today. Wouldn’t that be something? Be good and rest, and I shall bring you back a coin made by your very own queen. Maybe some good will come of it. There’s bread and more pies, dear. Tuck in and eat, eat, eat! I hate to see such skinny bones on a growing boy.”

When Martha was gone, I sat up and threw off the blankets. I slid out of bed, wincing at the pain in my sides. I felt dizzy on my feet and steadied myself for a moment. Martha had placed all my things neatly by the fire. My shoes and my little satchel with the bobbin and waterskin.

I ate another meat pie and a slice of bread, and because Martha had told me to eat, I put the loaf of bread in my satchel and another pie. I felt guilty, but I needed some
food to travel. I wished I could do something for Martha for being so kind to me—spin her a spool of gold, or a pile of it—but for all her kindness, she hadn’t made me any bargains. Besides, she didn’t have a spinning wheel.

And, quite frankly, I was done with spinning. It was time to leave it all behind. Forever.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In Search of a Stiltskin

Getting out of the castle was a lot simpler than getting in, especially with the wedding. I was practically flooded out by the parade of people flowing through the gates, shouting and throwing handfuls of grain. They must not be too worried about famine. But I suppose if you had a queen who could turn straw into gold, you wouldn’t worry about much of anything.

The day was sunny and warm, perfect for a wedding. Gnomes skipped and pranced among the crowds, squealing the day’s wonderful news.

                The king has wed! The king has wed,

                To the girl who spins the golden threads!

I followed the crowd down the hill, and who would have thought? Nothing was right where I’d left him, chewing
grass and looking bored. I guess no one thought it worth their while to take him, or he wouldn’t go even if they’d tried. I was actually a little proud of Nothing as I took hold of the rope and pulled him away.

Soon the royal carriage emerged from the castle gates behind me to parade through The Kingdom and display the new queen. The roads were flooded with nobles and soldiers and servants and peasants, and they all erupted into victorious shouts as the carriage came into view. There was Opal,
Queen
Opal, wearing a golden crown on her head and a gown embroidered with gold thread. She smiled but looked as blank as ever, and her tongue wound around her mouth. I wondered if she was still nervous.

King Barf’s gold crown was bigger than his head, and he was dressed in even more gold than the first time I saw him. Gold breastplate, armbands, a gold-hilted sword and scabbard, gold tassels and buckles, and gold embroidery all over. It was amazing they both weren’t devoured by pixies, but then I saw a dozen servants surrounding them, swatting the pixies away with big paddles or spraying them with dirt. The carriage was also encased in light netting.

A few unfortunate servants were tossing fat gold coins into the street, warding off the pixies as best they could. People were crawling and scratching to get at the gold. The miller and all his sons were in the crowd, and they bumped and shoved more than anyone, snarling to get the coins. It was like watching a pack of wild beasts fight over pieces of meat. Animals. That was all they were.

As I pushed my way out of the swelling crowd, I saw someone else I recognized. Kessler the peddler sat on the
side of the road, all by himself. His patchy sack lay limp and empty by his side. He was barefoot and filthy, his bright orange hair dingy from dirt and grease. But at least he had no mice around him. I wondered how he’d gotten rid of them. Perhaps he could tell me how to undo all the trouble I had caused!

Kessler held a small object up close to his face. Then he pressed the object between his hands, closed his eyes, and muttered something. When he opened his hands and peeked inside, he growled with rage and frustration, and then repeated the ritual.

“Hello, Kessler,” I said.

“What?” He looked around wildly to see who had spoken to him, and finally focused on me. “Oh yes, hello there. Fine day to you, sir.” He looked back down at his hands and muttered some more. I leaned in closer to see what he held and caught a glint of gold. One of the fat gold coins from the wedding.

“What are you trying to do?”