Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin (2 page)

I swirled mud in my pan, searching for a glimmer. Our village lives off The Mountain’s gold—what little there is to find. The royal tax collector gathers it and takes it to the king. King Barf. If King Barf is pleased with our gold, he sends us extra food for rations. If he’s not pleased, we are extra hungry.

King Barf isn’t actually named King Barf. His real name is King Bartholomew Archibald Reginald Fife, a fine, kingly name—a name with a great destiny, of course. But I don’t care how handsome or powerful that name makes you. It’s a mouthful. So for short I call him King Barf, though I’d never say it out loud.

A pixie flew in my face, a blur of pink hair and translucent wings. I held still as she landed on my arm and explored. I tried to gently shake her off, but she only fluttered her wings and continued her search. She was looking for gold, just like me.

Pixies are obsessed with gold. Once, they had been very helpful in the mines since they can sense large veins
of gold from a mile away and deep in the earth. Whenever a swarm of pixies would hover around a particular spot of rock, the miners knew precisely where they should dig.

But there hasn’t been much gold in The Mountain for many years. We find only small pebbles and specks. The pixies don’t dance and chirp the way they used to. Now they’re just pests, pesky thieves trying to steal what little gold we find. And they’ll bite you to get it. Pixies are no bigger than a finger and they look sweet and delicate and harmless with their sparkly wings and colorful hair, but their bites hurt worse than bee stings and squirrel bites and poison ivy combined—and I’ve had them all.

The pixie on my arm finally decided I had no gold and flew away. I scooped more mud from the sluice and swirled it around in my pan. No gold. Only mud, mud, mud.

                
Thump, thump, thump

                
Bump, bump, bump

                
Rump, Rump, Rump

I didn’t find any gold. We worked until the sun was low and a gnome came running through the mines shouting, “The day is done! The day is done!” in a voice so bright and cheery I had the urge to kick the gnome and send it flying down The Mountain. But I was relieved. Now I could go home, and maybe Gran had cooked a chicken. Maybe she would tell me a story that would help me stop thinking about my birth and name and destiny.

I set my tools aside and walked alone down The
Mountain and through The Village. Red walked alone too, a little ahead of me. The rest of the villagers traveled in clusters, some children together, others with their parents. Some carried leather purses full of gold. Those who found good amounts of gold got extra rations. If they found a great deal, they could keep some to trade in the markets. I had never found enough gold even for extra rations.

Pixies fluttered in front of my face and chirped in my ears, and I swatted at them. If only the pixies would show me a mound of gold in the earth, then maybe it wouldn’t matter that I was small. If I found lots of gold, then maybe no one would laugh at me or make fun of my name. Gold would make me worth something.

CHAPTER TWO
Spinning Wheels and Pixie Thrills

                
Home is a place to get out of the rain

                
It cradles the hurt and mends the pain

                
And no one cares about your name

                
Or the height of your head

                
Or the size of your brain

I made up that rhyme myself.

Rhymes make me feel better when I’m down. The midwife, Gertrude, told me that rhymes are a waste of brain space, but I like the way they sound. When you say the words and the sounds match, it feels like everything in the world is in its place and whatever you say is powerful and true.

My home is a tiny cottage. The roof is lopsided and leaks when it rains, but Gran is there and she doesn’t care about my name.

When I stepped inside, I was greeted by a gust of warm air that smelled of bread and onions. Gran was sewing near the fire and didn’t stop her work when I entered, but greeted me with a smile and a rhyme.

“Wash your hands, wipe your feet, give me a kiss, sit down and eat.”

Gran’s rhyme made my insides warm. She didn’t mention my birthday, and I felt light again. I obeyed all of Gran’s instructions and sat on the woven rug by the fire. I ladled some onion soup into a bowl and sipped.

“Tell me what your day was about,” said Gran.

I wouldn’t tell her about Frederick and Bruno’s gift. It would either make her very sad or very mad, and I hated to see Gran upset. I decided to turn the subject to the least awful thing about the day.

“I didn’t find any gold,” I said.

“Humph,” said Gran. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Not much gold left in The Mountain. Eat your supper.”

There were two thin slices of bread sitting on the hearth. I swallowed one in two gulps and eyed the other.

“Eat it,” said Gran.

“What about you?”

“I already ate. Stuffed as gooseberry pie.” I looked at Gran’s frail and withered frame. Her hands were knobby and the blue veins were raised above her skin. She trembled as she tried to feed thread into a needle. I knew she wasn’t eating enough, that she was going hungry to give me more food. Me, a boy who hadn’t grown in years.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“Fine, then, take it to the chickens,” she said.

I stared at the bread. I was so hungry. Not hungry enough to steal food from my gran, but hungry enough to steal food from the chickens. I took the bread and ate it, but it didn’t fill me.

I was twelve now. Twelve was the age most boys were considered men and they started working in the tunnels with pickaxes, searching for big gold. I wasn’t even allowed to pick up a shovel. With my half of a name, I was half of a person.

Sometimes I thought if I just focused hard enough, I could remember the name my mother had whispered to me before she died. Sometimes I could still hear that whisper in my ear. Rump … Rumpus, Rumpalini, Rumpalicious, Rumperdink, Rumpty-dumpty. I had spoken a hundred names aloud. It always tickled my brain like a feather, but my true name, if I really had one, never surfaced all the way.

“Gran, what if I never find my name?”

Gran’s needle paused in the air for a moment. “You mustn’t worry about it too much, dear.”

That’s what she always said if I asked about my name or my destiny. I used to think she just wanted me to be patient and not worry. I thought she was reassuring me that all would work out well, that someday I would find my name and have a great destiny. But now I realized that maybe she said it because I might never find my real name.

“Suppose I’m Rump until the day I die?” I said.

“You’re young yet,” said Gran. “Rump might turn out
to be a great destiny … in the
end
.” I saw her bite her cheeks to keep in a laugh.

“It’s not funny, Gran,” I said, though I was stifling my own laughter. Life would be awfully grim and glum if I couldn’t laugh at myself.

“Everyone is born and everyone dies,” said Gran. “And if you’re Rump until the day you die, I’ll love you just the same.”

“But what about the in-between?” I said. “It’s all the things in the middle that make a person special. How can I live a special life without a special name?”

“You can start by fetching me some firewood,” said Gran. This was her way of telling me to stop feeling sorry for myself. Life goes on. Get to work.

I stepped out the back of our cottage and took a deep breath of crisp air. Summer was fading. The leaves on the trees were turning from green to yellow. Milk, our goat, stood tethered to a tree, chewing leaves off a shrub.

“Hello, Milk,” I said. Milk bleated a greeting.

Our donkey, Nothing, wasn’t tied up or penned in because he wouldn’t move unless his tail was on fire. “Hello, Nothing,” I said. Nothing said nothing.

We don’t name animals. Names are special and saved for people, but I feel like I need to call them something, so I call our goat Milk, because that’s what she gives us, and I call our donkey Nothing, because that’s what he’s good for. He used to help my father in the mines, but I can’t get him to do a thing. So he’s Nothing, and his name makes me feel a little better about my own.

I gathered wood in my arms, and the chickens pecked around my feet for the bugs that dropped from the logs. The woodpile was getting low. I was thinking how I would need to get more from the woodcutter soon when something caught my eye. An odd-shaped piece of wood was sticking above the pile. It was curved and smooth. I pushed some logs away and saw spokes and spindles. It was a spinning wheel. I paused, confused. Spinning wheels in The Mountain were rare. I only knew what one looked like because the miller’s daughter had a spinning wheel and she would spin people’s wool for some extra gold or some of their rations. Sometimes that was cheaper than trading for cloth and yarn in the markets. But I’d never seen anyone else with one. What was a spinning wheel doing in the woodpile?

After I placed the wood by the hearth, I asked Gran about the wheel. She waved me away and stayed focused on her sewing. “Oh, that old thing. It’s rubbish. We might as well use it for firewood.”

“Where did it come from?” I asked.

“It belonged to your mother.”

Mother’s spinning wheel! Just knowing it was hers and she had spun on it made me feel like I knew her better. “Do you have anything she spun?”

“No,” said Gran in a tight voice. “She sold everything she spun.”

“May I have the spinning wheel?” I asked.

“It’s probably too warped to be useful. It would serve us better in the fire.”

“I don’t have anything from my mother. She would’ve wanted me to have something of hers.”

“Not that.”

“Please, Gran. Let me have it. For my birthday.” Gran finally looked up at me. I never talked about my birthday, but I wanted the spinning wheel. It was like a tiny part of my mother, and if we burned it, she would go away forever.

Gran sighed. “You keep it out of my way. I don’t want to trip over it.”

I worked through the last bit of daylight and into the dark, moving the woodpile so I could get to the wheel. I brought it inside and placed it next to my bed. I brushed my hands over the scratched and warped wood as if it were the finest gold. I spun the wheel and was surprised it didn’t wobble or creak. It made a soft whirring sound, almost musical. A few pixies came out from the cracks and danced upon it, chirping in their tiny voices. Gran scowled. She looked at the wheel as if it were a pile of mud all over her floor.

“Can I try it?” I asked eagerly.

“You’re too small,” said Gran. “When you’re a little bigger perhaps.”

I frowned. I hadn’t grown in four years. “I can stretch my legs, see? And we have some wool.…”

“No,” said Gran sharply, then she softened. “It’s a messy business, dear, even if you know how, and I wouldn’t want you to get your fingers caught.”

“Maybe the miller’s daughter—”

“Use some sense, child,” Gran cut me off sharply. “She’ll think you’re trying to steal business from her, and the miller will probably withhold our rations, the lying cheat.” Gran was red in the face. I stepped back a little as she took a deep breath.

“Your father meant to chop it to firewood, anyway. Your mother didn’t like to spin. She hated it. Only spun because … she had to.” Gran closed her eyes and sighed, as if talking about my parents took great amounts of energy. She never spoke of my mother or father. My father had been her only child, and he died in the mines before I was born. It must have been painful for Gran to think about. And she never spoke of my mother, I guessed because she knew so little of her. Only now I suspected Gran knew more than she let on, but for some reason, she wanted to keep it from me.

Late at night, when the fire was only a few glowing coals and Gran was snoring, I slipped out of bed and sat at the spinning wheel. I placed my hands on the wood. Even in the dim light, I could see that it was old, warped and scratched from years of rain and snow and heat. But, still, it was like a silent companion, just biding its time until it could speak to me, until we could speak to each other.

There’s wool in the cupboard
, said a small voice in my head.
Gran will never know
.

The voice was very persuasive and I was easy to persuade. I fetched the wool.

I had to stretch to reach the treadle. My foot made jerky motions as it pushed down, but soon the wheel spun with a familiar rhythm, like a song sung to me in the cradle.

Whir, whir, whir
.

My heart raced with the music, the swells and beats of the spinning making me large and full of life.

I fed some wool into the wheel, but my fingers got caught and it came to a harsh halt, pinching my hand in the spokes. I yanked my hand away, feeling the skin tear as I fell back onto the floor.

A few pixies emerged from cracks in the fireplace and flew over to the wheel. I sat still, cradling my injured finger. More pixies fluttered around the spinning wheel, dancing on the spindle and the spokes. Then they came to me. They crawled up my neck and pranced on my head and giggled. Pixie voices are so high and shrill that their giggles ring in your ears. The buzzards drove me insane. The only thing I appreciated about pixies was that their very existence gave me hope that there was still gold in The Mountain. But why were they pestering me now, when I wasn’t near any gold?

A pixie landed on my nose, tickling it. I sneezed and the pixies squealed and shot away for a moment but then came back, full of squeaky chatter.

A pixie with bright red hair and leaflike wings landed on my bleeding fingers and dug her tiny feet into my cut. It felt like the stab of a fat needle. I let out a cry of pain and then bit down on my tongue.

Gran stopped snoring.

The pixies scooped up the bits of wool around the wheel, laughing their tinkly giggles, and flew up the chimney.

Silently, I slipped into bed and wrapped my bleeding
finger in the blankets. I heard Gran slowly walk toward me. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe deep. After a minute of silence, I peeked and saw her staring at the wheel.