Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin (20 page)

“Don’t move.”

“I’m not.”

“Stop talking!”

I shut my mouth.

With one hand, Hadel untied her apron and gently placed the nests on the ground. She took a bucket and filled it with dirt and walked slowly toward me. “I’m going to pour this on you, but don’t move until I say, understand? Don’t answer. Don’t move, don’t even blink.”

Of course I needed to blink. My eyes burned and my nose started to itch. I think I needed to sneeze again. And now my eyes were watering. Hadel walked slowly toward me. Painfully slow. Tears ran down my cheeks and the pixies swarmed on my face. The sneeze was burning in my nose. I tried to hold it in, but that only made it worse. I exploded.

“Ah—CHOO!”

Hadel pounced on me and flipped the bucket on top of me. The dirt poured down my head and face and arms.

The pixies scattered and screamed. Hadel took their nest and pulled out the bits of wool and leaves and made a trail for them, leading the pixies away from me to the hollow log. Slowly, the pixies calmed, gathered their bedding, and flew back into the nest.

As soon as the pixies had settled, Hadel hobbled to me, her wide eye boring into mine. “Has that ever happened before?”

Of course it had happened before. Pixies were always pestering me. But Hadel already suspected that something wasn’t right with me, and I wasn’t about to give her any more reason to think so.

“No,” I said. “Pixies usually hate me.”

“Do they?” She seemed amused. “Pixies have always been abundant here. They like shiny things, pretty things, but their numbers seem to be even greater since you arrived. Like they smell what they really love.
Gold
.”

“Gold?” I said, as though I had never heard of this before.

“Yes, gold. They can smell it from far away, and deep down in the earth. They smell it like a wolf smells blood, Robert.” She lowered her one big eye right level with mine. My heart was beating very hard in my chest so I could hear it pounding in my ears.

“My name isn’t Robert,” I said quietly. “My mother, she didn’t ever get to say my whole name before she died. No one ever heard all of it, you see. The only part she said was ‘Rump.’ ” I laughed nervously, but Hadel didn’t. She only widened her big eye. She knew what the name was really supposed to be. Tears burned in my eyes. I didn’t want to cry, not now in front of Hadel. I held my breath until the burning stopped.

“So you’ve spun, have you?” asked Hadel. Her voice was a little softer now.

I nodded.

“Spun yourself into trouble?”

“A wi— My friend’s granny told me that there was a way to get out of it. She said I needed a stiltskin.”

“A stiltskin,” mused Hadel. “Yes, I’ve heard of them. Very rare, mysterious magic. I’ve never seen one. But, yes … maybe. Still, even with a stiltskin, it would be difficult.”

“Is there anything else? Is there any other help for it?”

Hadel put her knobby hand on my shoulder and pressed down. “There’s only one thing I know for sure about spinning.”

I waited, my whole chest expanding with hope.

“When you get your wool tangled in a knot, only the tangler can get it untangled.”

And with that, she scooped up her apron of pixie nests and hobbled away. She did not ask me to help.

“Is something wrong, Robert? You look pale.” Ida brushed her hands on my cheek. “You didn’t eat. Are you ill?”

“Just tired.”

“Too tired to eat?”

Hadel glanced up at me but didn’t say anything. She didn’t tell Ida or Balthilda about my name, and somehow this made me feel more hopeless, as if there was no need to explain because there was nothing they could do.

Ida sent me to bed early, but no sleep came. I waited for my aunts to settle in, and once I heard their even breathing and snores, I crept into the wool room with a handful of straw. The spinning wheel shone in a sliver of moonlight. I sat down. It was just a bunch of wood. In my hands was straw. Straw and wood, plain and totally unmagical. I tried to feel the magic in the air. I lifted my hands and closed my eyes and pictured pushing all the magic away. Back into the earth or the sun or wherever it came from.

                
Straw is straw

                
Gold is gold

                
This straw I hold

                
Won’t turn to gold

I started pushing down on the treadle, and I fed the straw through the wheel.
Straw is straw. Gold is …

Gold. The straw turned to gold. I broke off the strand of gold and wrapped it around my finger. I tried again. Straw, straw, straw.

Gold. I ripped off the thread and crushed it to a tiny ball. I would not let the rumpel overpower me!

By my feet was Hadel’s wool basket. I took a handful of wool. Maybe straw always turned to gold, but I could spin wool without magic.

                
Wool is dull

                
Wool is old

                
No dull wool

                
Can shine like gold

I spun with raging speed. If I was fast enough, maybe the magic wouldn’t have time to work. I saw a gray strand emerge from the wheel. My heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t changing! Then the dull gray lightened and shimmered, and before my very eyes it transformed into a thick, shining thread, stretched tight over the wheel. Gold.

There were rocks in my throat. I broke the thread off quickly and jumped away from the wheel, like somehow I had infected it with my curse.

I went back to bed with the gold threads wound tightly around my finger, making it numb and tingly. I thought of my mother, holding me at birth, whispering my name in my ear.

Rumpel …

Trapped. Tangled. Ensnared. But why? Why would a mother who loved her child bestow such a fate upon him? I wanted there to be more, another explanation, but the more I thought about it, the more trapped and tangled I felt, and I knew that there was nothing more. Only the cruel echo of my name.

Rumpel, Rumpel, Rumpel
.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Warnings from Red

In a week the world was white with the first snow. My aunts huddled in the wool room near the fire with their work. I didn’t want to be around any of that, so I took a walk to the village. Gnomes waddled around with their tongues out, trying to catch snowflakes. That reminded me painfully of Red. I scooped up a girl gnome with pigtails and a pudgy nose. “This message is for Red in The Mountain.”

“Message for Red in The Mountain!” she squealed.

I hadn’t gotten a message from Red since I came to live with my aunts. I was a little worried. Was she all right? I wanted to talk to her, but with the gnome wriggling in my arms, I found I didn’t know what to say.

Dear Red,

I’m living with my three aunts, who are witches. My real name is Rumpel, and it means
I’m trapped in magic forever and no one can help me. Opal is having a baby, and I might have to take it.

I just didn’t think that message would inspire Red to respond. Mostly, I wanted to send her something so she would send a message back.

Dear Red,

I’m in Yonder now. It’s not so cold here, and guess what? I have three aunts! And guess what else? I grew! Maybe I’m taller than you now. Also they call me Robert here, so it’s probably better if you do too.

Your friend,
Robert       

The gnome scurried down the road until she was just a speck in all the white.

After that I walked to the village every day, even though it would be at least a week before a gnome came back with a message.

It took sixteen days. The gnome was so frozen I had to take him home and thaw him in front of the fire before he could say anything to me. I was delighted at first, but then Red’s message wasn’t so cheerful.

Dear Robert,

Lord Greedy-Fatty-Miller-Oswald is withholding more rations because we’re finding even less gold. I
think the king has found Opal out. Don’t worry, I won’t say a thing about you-know-what. Obviously, Opal can’t make gold out of straw, but the king can’t kill her because … you know …, and so the king has turned his wrath on The Mountain, demanding more gold. But there is no gold. So everyone is really hungry and grumpy.

Red      

P.S. You might be taller than me, but I can still pound you.

So King Barf was punishing The Mountain through “Lord” Oswald. How he must have raged when he discovered Opal couldn’t really spin the gold! Maybe she told the king about me to spare herself. Maybe soldiers were already searching for me. No. That couldn’t be. It had been too long. Opal and the miller were probably afraid to tell the king that they had deceived him. They must have come up with an explanation for why she couldn’t spin the straw into gold anymore, like expecting a baby takes away her magic powers. Yes, I could believe that. But I wasn’t too confident that Opal would think to say it.

Poor Red! She sounded so miserable. Maybe I could cheer her up with a rhyme, but the gnome who brought Red’s message ran away as fast as he could from my message. I guess even gnomes have their limits. I found another in the village and sent Red a poem.

                I know a miller

                Greedy and fat

                Smells like a troll

                
Looks like a rat

                He steals all the gold

                And he creeps like a cat

                But one day The Mountain

                Fell down on him

                SPLAT!

I waited seven days and then went to the village every day to search for a gnome from Red. Sixteen days. Seventeen. Eighteen. I told myself it was because of the snow and ice. Maybe the gnomes refused to take any more messages such a long distance.

Twenty days.

Twenty-five days.

Thirty-four days! It took thirty-four days to get a reply, and her message was even less cheerful than the last. She didn’t say anything about my poem.

Dear Robert,

The miller has been asking me about you. He asked if I knew where you were or if I’d heard from you. I wanted to punch his nosey nose, but I can’t do that, so later I punched Frederick for no good reason. Well, he’s Frederick. That’s a reason.

Don’t send a gnome back. I think the miller is starting to sniff with his oversized nose.

Your friend,
Red            

P.S. As always, Granny says watch your step.

The miller was asking about me. I tried to swallow the hard lump that had risen in my throat. He couldn’t possibly find me here, could he? I was far away in Yonder, tucked in a little wood with three witches who were my aunts. I was safe. Wasn’t I?

But what if the miller could find me? I didn’t want to believe it was possible, but if he could, I feared what he would do. He could hurt my aunts, or use them just as he’d used me. Staying with them this long had been selfish on my part. I was putting them in danger, and they deserved nothing but kindness from me.

I should probably leave now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Destiny Calls

I was not safe, and neither was anyone who cared about me. I tried to brush off the feeling, especially when I sat with my aunts in the warmth of their home, eating their good food, and watching their magical spinning and knitting and weaving. But it was no use. The more I tried to tell myself not to worry, the more I worried and knew that I had to leave.

I left my aunts on a frigid morning without so much as a goodbye. I couldn’t risk them knowing where I was headed, and I didn’t think I could bear the looks on their faces, especially Ida. I would miss her most. I would miss our rhymes. I made up a farewell rhyme as I walked away.

                
Home is a place with three dear aunts

                
They cook good food and sew nice pants

                
They spin and knit and weave and mend

                
Goodbye for now, my three dear friends

I walked through the forest while it was still dark. My satchel weighed down on my shoulder, heavy with the food I had stolen from my aunts. My stomach was heavy with guilt.

The frozen snow crunched beneath my feet. I had decided I would go to the mountains beyond Beyond. It was the farthest place from The Kingdom that I knew of. I could live all alone, in a mountain cave far away from anyone, and herd goats and live off their milk and whatever the land would give me. I had considered going back to the trolls, thinking they might be able to protect me from my own magic. But I wasn’t too fond of the idea of eating sludge for the rest of my life. My stomach wriggled at the thought. Besides, they were so close to The Kingdom, and I knew they got news of weddings and babies. The risk was too great.

I emerged from the trees and was on the road before dawn. The air was bitter cold, and I wrapped myself tighter inside the thick coat my aunts had made me. Soon I’d left the village behind.