Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin (25 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Third Day’s the Charm

Archie slept soundly in the basket, caked in mud and swaddled tightly in blankets. He needed to go back to his mother, and he would. I knew that now. Nothing was binding me anymore, not the miller or the gold or a rumpel. I knew I could set everything right, and I started to spin the final stages of my plan.

“Bet you thought you were being clever,” said Frederick. He was still pointing his arrow at me as we walked, and he trembled less and less the farther we got from the trolls. We had to walk because apparently the horses got spooked when Frederick and Bruno ran screaming, and the carriage took off without them. “Bet you thought you could outsmart us,” Frederick continued. “Are you friends with the trolls, then? Father always said you were unnatural, a demon. Maybe you’re a demon troll.”

Bruno whimpered and stepped farther away from me. He looked as if he thought I would turn into a troll and eat him.

“Trolls are actually quite nice,” I said. “Much nicer than you.”

“Ha!” scoffed Frederick. “You
are
a little demon!”

The sky was lightening, and we were almost back to the castle. As we traveled, I scanned the sides of the road for what I needed. With all the gold in the castle, the pixies were naturally drawn to this place. There had to be nests everywhere. I looked carefully between rocks and in the nooks of trees. There! I could see one resting just inside a hollow tree.

“Where are you going?” asked Frederick as I fearlessly moved off the road.

“Nature calls again.”

“Get back here or I’ll shoot you!”

“Now, Frederick, I don’t think I’ll be able to spin gold very well if you do that.” I smiled back at him, enjoying his furious expression. Bruno pranced back and forth like he might wet himself.

When I reached the tree, I gingerly removed the pixie nest and placed it in the side of Archie’s basket. The ground was still frozen, so I knew the pixies would be sleeping. I found two more in some shrubs, and another sticking out from a shallow crevice between the roots of a tree. That one was shiny. I looked closer, and to my surprise and delight, the nest was woven with fine strands of gold. So King Barf hadn’t been able to keep all his gold safe.

“All right, come out now, or I’m going to come in there after you!” shouted Frederick.

Quickly, I tucked Archie’s blankets around the nests to hide them. Then I took off my coat and clawed into the hard ground for dirt and piled it up in my coat. Archie slept soundly through it all; mothers all over The Kingdom might like to know the trolls’ recipe for sludge.

Last, I reached into my satchel and pulled out Opal’s necklace and ring. I tucked them in Archie’s blankets in hopes that they would soon be returned to Opal: their true owner.

“Butt!” shouted Frederick. “If you’re not back here in ten seconds, I’ll come in there and drag you out by your ears!” He sounded serious now. I rolled up my coat and tucked it beneath my arm.

“You’re a strange little demon,” said Frederick as I came out from the brush. “What do you want with a baby, anyway?”

I just smiled, because I knew they wouldn’t believe even a tiny speck of my story.

As we reached the castle, the sun rose fully in the sky, its rays bursting all around the towers and turrets. I took deep breaths of the cold morning air. This was it. It was time to face all my tangles and traps.

As we walked through the gates, I felt one of the pixie nests shift.

“That was very foolish,” said the miller. “Your friend was afraid you had left her to die.” Red was on the floor, still bound and gagged, and she had a large, fresh welt on her cheek. The miller had hit her again!

“My baby!” cried Opal. “Give him to me!”

The miller shoved Opal back as she rushed forward. “He’s not your baby anymore, you silly girl! You can have another!” Opal collapsed on the floor, sobbing. Bruno knelt down next to her and patted her on the back.

“Now spin the gold, boy,” said the miller.

“No,” I said shakily. For all the bravery I had felt in the presence of Frederick and Bruno, the miller still frightened me.

“What?” asked the miller, his voice soft and dangerous.

Red looked at me, her eyes wide with confusion.

A faint hum came from the nests in the basket. No one else seemed to notice, but to me it was shrill. I was shaking. The miller’s face was nearly purple. He clenched and unclenched his fists. All the power I had felt just hours before had abandoned me. My words felt small and weak.

“I won’t spin,” I whispered.

Oswald stepped close to me, his belly pressed against Archie’s basket and the nests. The humming grew louder. Archie began to squirm, and he chirped like a small bird, or was it the pixies chirping? Not much time …

“We made a bargain, boy. What do you think will happen to your little friend if you don’t keep your bargain?”

Bargains, bargains … the
bargain
! I saw it now. “You have not kept your bargain either,” I said.

“What?” snarled Oswald. “Your friend is still alive! I could have—”

“That is not what you promised. You promised me my friend unharmed. Clearly, you have broken your promise, and so there is no bargain.”

The miller’s face turned a deeper red than his cherry tomato tunic. He clawed at the pile of gold next to him as though he thought to strangle me with it, but then he shouted with alarm when he realized that he could not pick it up. Just as with Opal before, the magic would not let the miller have the gold.

“No bargain, no gold,” I said with a smile.

“Why, you—” The miller lunged at me.

“I have something to say,” said Opal.

“Not now, girl.” The miller grabbed my ear and twisted.

“No! I am the queen!” Opal was standing up now with Frederick and Bruno behind her. “You don’t order me anymore! I am queen.”

The miller released me, shoving me so hard I crumpled to the floor, barely catching Archie in the basket. One nest plopped to the floor, and a pixie emerged from it sleepily. He fluttered to my hand.

“You,” said Opal, pointing a trembling finger at me. “You told me if I guessed your name in three days, you would give me back my child.”

I stared at Opal. She wanted to play guessing games now?

“I don’t—”

“No!” she screamed. “You promised and I’m going to tell you your name, and then you will give me back my baby.”

She paced before me. Everyone was silent, waiting to see what she would do. “Is your name Robert? No. Dan? No. It’s not Balthasar or Nebuchadnezzar or Spindleshanks or Cruikshanks. I know what your name is.” She whirled on me, full of gleeful triumph. “Is your name
Rumpelstiltskin
?” She tilted her head back and laughed maniacally. Behind her Frederick and Bruno grinned, like they had some delicious secret. They must have heard me say my name by the apple tree.

Rumpelstiltskin. Yes. That was my name. I had almost forgotten. For just a moment, I had still been Rump, small and helpless. But I wasn’t small anymore. I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t weak. I was tangled in a million ways, but I was strong and smart. I was a stiltskin. I pulled myself up off the floor and the pixie flitted away.

“Now give me back my baby!” Opal shouted. She ran to the basket and snatched Archie. Another nest rolled to the floor.

Opal screamed when she looked at Archie, seeing the mud caked on his face. “What have you done to him, you demon!” She rushed at me, claws outstretched, teeth bared like a wild beast.

Now was the time. It all happened in a moment, but somehow my brain sped up so that everything around me slowed down. All the things I knew now—my name, my destiny, my power—they all converged and made me strong, my mind clear so I could do what I had to do.

Watch your step
.

“Yes, yes, yes!” I shouted. “You guessed right! My name is Rumpelstiltskin!” I stomped my foot on a pixie nest,
and a hiss like a boiling kettle filled the air. I stomped on another nest and another. The floorboards beneath me raised and cracked. Everyone stood frozen, staring at me. The buzz rose to shrieks, and then the room exploded with pixies.

Opal screamed and hovered over her baby while the miller and his sons flailed their arms and legs. I shook out my coat and dumped dirt all over Red and myself just as the pixies pelted toward us. They swerved around the cloud of dirt and aimed instead for the miller and his sons.

I yanked Red to her feet and stomped again on the cracked and splintered wood that Opal had weakened with her incessant rocking. I kept on stomping until the floorboards groaned. Just before the floor collapsed, I threw the last nest at the spinning wheel. The pixies exploded all over the gold as Red and I plummeted through the floor.

We landed in a pile of potatoes—mashed potatoes now—in the castle kitchen.

Martha screamed, hovering above us with a long knife.

“Oh!” she exclaimed when she saw my face. “It’s you, Robert.” She lowered her knife.

I stood up and brushed myself off. “Hello, Martha. Could I borrow that?” I took the knife in her hand and cut the ropes from Red’s wrists and ankles. She pulled off her gag and gasped for breath.

Martha looked from the ceiling down to Red and me. The shouts and screams echoed above us. The pixies must be going nuts with all that gold. “Robert, what in the world …”

“My name isn’t really Robert,” I said to Martha. “It’s Rumpelstiltskin.”

“Rump … what?” said Martha.

“Rumpelstiltskin. Isn’t that a wonderful name? I’ll tell you my whole story someday. It’s a really good one. But now isn’t the best time. May we …?” I nodded in the direction of the kitchen door. Martha simply gaped. She looked from me back up to where shrieks and screams and stomps rattled the ceiling. I took Red’s hand and walked toward the door.

“Wait!” said Martha. “Take some pies!”

We grabbed the food, thanked Martha, and then ran for it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
From Small Things

While everyone else’s attention was on the commotion above, we made a hasty dash through the gates. The pixies had started throwing skeins of gold out the windows, and men and women were scrambling about to pick them up, but of course they couldn’t. As soon as it hit the ground, the gold became like stones melded into the earth. We heard shouts as people tried to pry up the gold and then got attacked by pixies. I guess the pixies had claimed this gold as their own. They would have gold nests all over the castle now.

By the time we reached the base of The Mountain, the day was nearly gone. Red and I didn’t speak much as we traveled. We were cold and dirty and exhausted, but at least we were full from the pies Martha had given us.

As we slowly climbed The Mountain, Red kept glancing
back toward the castle, her face knit into something like worry.

“They won’t come after us,” I said. “I think they’re a little busy.”

“No, it isn’t that. I just … Do you think they’ll be all right?”

I had to laugh. Red, concerned? And about the miller, no less! “They’ll be fine, once the swelling goes down.”

Then we both laughed, tears streaking our muddy faces.

“How did you do that?” she asked. “How did you … just
do
all that?”

I smiled. “A good name can do a lot for you.”

I told Red everything that had happened when Frederick and Bruno took me outside, all about my name, and how I knew what it was and my plan to get away.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” she said slowly. “That’s crazy. You’re trapped and tangled, but then you’re really powerfully magical.”

“Who isn’t?”

She patted me on the head. “You’re a lot smarter than you look.”

Well, that’s friendship.

“And you really
are
taller than me,” she said, holding her hand up to my head. “Not that it’s saying much,” she finished, punching me in the arm.

That’s friendship too.

We reached the edge of The Village just as the sun was going down, casting a sparkling pink glow all over the
snow. Gran’s cottage was dark and empty and cold. It looked so lonely.

“You can come to my house. Mother wouldn’t mind. She’ll probably want to thank you for, you know, saving my life.”