Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin (3 page)

“Foolishness,” she said. “More useful in the fire.” She gripped the wheel and pulled it so it scraped along the floor. My heart pounded. I thought she really would put it in the fire, but she let it go and went back to bed. Soon she was snoring again.

My heart raced for a long time. My finger throbbed. I felt like the spinning wheel had bitten me, like it had clamped down on me because it didn’t want me to spin. But the pixies had been dancing around me as if they
did
want me to spin. I wasn’t sure which I should listen to, the pixies or the wheel.

CHAPTER THREE
The Greedy Miller and His Daughter

I woke as the village bell chimed for the mining day to begin. Gran was still sleeping, so I took some dry bread and a little goat cheese and walked outside.

Pixies instantly flew at me, chirping and screeching. I staggered and swatted at them. Then I stepped in Nothing’s poop.

Such is my destiny.

A gnome ran right in front of me and nearly knocked me off my feet. He chanted, “Message for Bertrand, message for Bertrand,” over and over. He wouldn’t stop until he found Bertrand.

Gnomes are very useful in The Kingdom, especially in The Village, where most people can’t read any letters. Gran made me learn some, but gnomes love to spread news and deliver messages. They have some kind of sense
that lets them know when they’ve reached the right person, and they won’t stop until they do.

More gnomes were emerging from their holes in the ground, eager to gather messages and deliver them to the rightful recipients. Gnomes had little holes all over The Village, in the middle of roads, between the roots of trees, and on the edges of rocks. They looked just like rabbit holes, but supposedly gnome holes all led to a large underground cavern where they kept hoards of food. That’s what we all guessed, since gnomes are quite chubby but you never see them eating above the ground. Frederick and Bruno once tried to dig down to their hoard but gave up after they dug twelve feet and still couldn’t see a thing.

The mines were a nightmare that day. My finger throbbed and so did my head. Frederick and Bruno thought it hilarious to throw pebbles at my head every time they brought dirt to the sluices. The pixies pestered me all day. I hoped it was a sign that great amounts of gold were in the mud, but I didn’t find any.

When the mining day was done, everyone walked together toward the mill. Today was rations day. I walked behind Red while my stomach grumbled with each footstep, the chant of
food, food, food
.

When we arrived at the mill, there was lots of shouting. Old Rupert was shaking his fist in the miller’s face.

“You’re a filthy liar, you cheat! Sacks of gold I’ve mined! I’ve earned ten times as much grain as this!” Old Rupert hollered. Rupert was a rickety old man, barely able to walk; yet he still worked with a pickax in the mines.

“Upon the honor of my name, good Rupert,” the
miller said in his oily voice, “I’ve given what is fairly yours. It always seems less after the grinding.”

“Hogwash! I find lots of gold, and look! You call this fair?” Rupert shook the flour sack at the miller and then turned around and shook it at all the villagers. There couldn’t have been enough flour to bake two loaves of bread.

“Times are hard,” said the miller. “We all must tighten the belt.” He laughed and his big belly laughed with him. Such a good joke for a fat miller with ten plump children!

“You dirty cheat! Rotten swindler!”

“Now, Rupert,” said the miller with a bit of warning, “that kind of ingratitude won’t work in your favor. Suppose next week there weren’t any rations for you at all?” Rupert went silent. Finally, he hobbled away down the road, muttering curses loudly enough for all to hear.

The next woman took her meager rations without a word, and the rest of the villagers did too.

Gran always says that the miller, Oswald, is a cheat. The royal tax collector doesn’t like to come to The Mountain any more than he has to, so he simply sends up carts full of food and supplies and gives Oswald charge of all the rations from our gold to distribute as he sees fit. Gran says Oswald always takes more than his fair share. But what could we do? We weren’t mining much gold lately, and we didn’t really know how much food was stored. Only Oswald did, and Oswald decided how much food we had earned for our work. The whole village was hungry, except the miller and his family. Could a name make you greedy like mine made me small?

As I drew closer to the front of the line, a whirling motion caught my eye. The miller’s daughter, Opal, was spinning outside on the porch. I watched, transfixed. I studied how her foot pushed on the treadle and how her hands rhythmically fed the wool. The wool thinned and tightened and transformed into yarn, as if by magic.

“You enjoy the spinning, do you?” The miller was right in front of me now, and everyone else had gone. How long had I been staring at Opal?

“I’m just curious how it works,” I said.

The miller lifted his bushy eyebrows. “Spinning’s a woman’s work, but she could show you … for a price.” He lifted two bags of food, our rations. I wanted to say yes. Something inside of me ached to spin. My foot twitched with the rhythm of Opal’s spinning. My fingers itched to feed one thing through the wheel and watch it transform to another before my very eyes. I almost said yes, and then I thought of Gran. I could starve myself for weeks to learn the spinning, but I couldn’t betray Gran.

“Oh,” I said. “No. I just like to watch.”

“Yes,” said the miller. “My Opal is the jewel of The Mountain. She will marry well.”

My face heated. I wasn’t talking about
her
. Why would
I
look at her like
that
?

Sure, she was pretty, with her golden hair and ruby lips. Hans Jacob had offered the miller four sheep and a milking cow for her hand in marriage. It was a fortune! But the miller flatly refused. Opal was worth much more than that, he said. Hans Jacob left with his head low, and
everyone thought the miller was crazy. Did he expect a royal marriage?

Just at that moment, Opal looked up at me. I noticed something I hadn’t before. She was beautiful, yes, but her face looked sort of blank. Opal stared at me and then flicked out her tongue and wound it around her mouth, like a frog catching flies. Not so beautiful. She did it again, a kind of nervous tic. I wondered if Hans Jacob had noticed these things. Maybe they would make him feel better.

The miller placed my rations at my feet. “Find a little extra gold and I’ll have Opal show you how to spin. She is a fine spinner, but I’ve known some who possess a more … natural talent.” He looked down at me with a strange smile on his face. Was he being kind? I’d never known the miller to be kind.

I took the rations home, but Gran was resting, so there was nothing to eat but a bit of cheese. I fed Milk and Nothing and the chickens, and they all bleated and brayed and clucked at me for more. A pixie flew in my face and a gnome ran under my feet chanting, “Message for Gertrude! Message for Gertrude!” in an urgent voice. Another baby probably.

Suddenly the world felt crowded and noisy. I didn’t want to be around anyone or anything. I just wanted to be alone. And there’s only one place on The Mountain where you can count on being alone. The Woods.

Most people avoid The Woods because of the trolls and ogres. It’s also home to The Witch of The Woods,
and witches are best left alone. I heard of a witch who liked to catch children and cook them for her supper! And Gran told me of a witch who stole a baby right from her parents’ arms and locked her in a tower where she could never get out. What a horrible thing to steal a baby!

But the biggest danger of a witch was her magic. There was no telling what terrors a witch could manage—brew a storm right over your head, or turn you into a fat pig to eat you for dinner. Skinny as I was, I didn’t want to take any chances, so I didn’t go far—just far enough to be surrounded by tall trees where no one from The Village would see me. Here and there were tree stumps from the woodcutter. He was the only person who ever went deep into The Woods. I sat on one of the stumps.

Through the trees I could see out over the valley where The Kingdom lay. The houses looked so tiny I could cover them with my thumb. Beyond the houses was the king’s castle. That took both my hands to cover. After that there was nothing but roads that led to the villages Yonder and Beyond.

Just as we don’t name our animals, we don’t name the places where we live. We simply call them what they are or where they are—The Mountain, The Kingdom, Yonder.… I think it’s boring, but I guess we put so much thought and energy into naming babies, we don’t have any left over.

A pixie landed on my hand and I swatted it away. It squeaked and chirped and flew at me again.

This pixie had blue hair and large, glassy wings. He
looked so sweet and harmless that I forgot sense and stuck my finger out to him, as if he were a tame bird. He landed on me and giggled. He had such a smug and teasing look on his face, like he knew a secret about me. Maybe he knew where all the gold was buried.

Two more pixies landed on me. I brushed them off, gently. They darted away but then came back. One landed on my shoulder, another on my ear, then another and another. They danced on my head, my arms, my fingers, squealing and chirping. I tried to shake them off until I lost my balance and fell off the tree stump.

Then the pixies attacked. They shot at me like an explosion of many-colored sparks. One bit my arm. More bit my hands. I kicked and thrashed to get them off.

“Buzzards!” I screamed, but they shrieked and converged on me like a flying army. Another one bit my neck.

Then something showered down on top of me, and when I opened my mouth to yell, I got a mouthful of dirt. More dirt came down. It was raining dirt. The pixies shrieked louder than ever and flew away in a swarm. When I got the dirt out of my eyes, they had disappeared and I looked up to see a girl.

It was Red.

She stared at me all curious and said, “Are you made of gold or something?”

CHAPTER FOUR
Red and Her Grandmother

I lay on the ground, still as a dead chicken, and looked up at Red.

“Pixies don’t attack like that unless your pockets are full of gold,” said Red. “Did you steal some?”

“No,” I said, scrambling to my feet. I brushed off the dirt and backed away a little. Even though Red never made fun of me, she still made me nervous. Once, a boy teased Red about her name and she punched him in the nose so hard her name was running down his face. That’s when everyone understood
her
destiny.

“I’m not going to hit you,” she said, as if she could read my mind. “What are you doing in The Woods?”

“Just thinking,” I said. I wanted to ask her the same question, but suddenly Red stepped forward and pointed to my neck.

“They bit you,” she said with a suspicious glare. “Pixies
don’t bug you unless you’re near gold. They definitely don’t bite unless you
have
gold. Lots of it.”

Suddenly I became aware of the throbbing pain all over me. Four of my fingers looked like sausages. A big lump was growing out of my arm, and my shirt collar tightened around my swelling neck. Red was right. I’d never known a pixie to bite unless you were holding a big chunk of gold. But I didn’t have any. I turned out my pockets and held out my hands to show Red. “How did you get rid of the pixies?” I asked.

She held up her fists and dropped the dirt in them. “Pixies hate to be dirty. They like to stay shiny.”

I would keep a pot of dirt by my bed and by the fireplace. With the way they just attacked me, maybe I would carry a bag of dirt with me everywhere.

The village bell began to chime, making us both jump.

“Baby’s been born,” said Red.

“Yes,” I said.

Soon a gnome would run throughout the village announcing the baby’s name. After the name was spread, the villagers would talk all day about the quality of the name, the length, and the sounds. They’d discuss what kind of destiny the name would bestow upon the child.

“I hate that bell,” said Red.

“Me too.”

“And I hate gnomes.”

“Me too.” In my head I always imagined the bell ringing and the gnomes shouting, “Rump! Rump! The new boy’s name is Rump!” I wondered if Red had those same thoughts about her name. Even though it wasn’t
embarrassing, it made her different. Maybe we were both lonely because of our names.

“Why do we just name babies?” I suddenly asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t we give a name to The Mountain, or The Kingdom, or roads or animals, or even The Woods?”

Red looked at me funny. “Those things don’t need names,” she said. “Everybody knows that. Names hold power, and that power shouldn’t be wasted on something that isn’t living. A village doesn’t need a destiny.”

“But sometimes places
feel
alive. Sometimes they feel powerful, like they
could
have a destiny, just like people. Like these trees. They feel alive.”

“They
are
alive,” said Red, “but that doesn’t mean they need a name. They don’t have a destiny like we do.”

“Well, what about The Village? Wouldn’t it be nice to give our village a good name, like … Asteria or Ochenleff? That way, if you wanted to go on an adventure, you could say, ‘I’m leaving Asteria at last!’ Or if you were coming home, you could say, ‘Ah. Ochenleff, my home.’ It would be like greeting a long-lost friend, instead of a mountain full of metal, or just dirt. And maybe it
would
have a destiny then.”

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard,” said Red, but she was also smiling.

We heard the gnomes in the distance, shouting something in their gravelly little voices. Finally, a gnome ran right past us. “Furball! The name of the new daughter is Furball! Furball!”

Red and I stared at each other. Then we burst out
laughing. We laughed and laughed and curled over our stomachs. We laughed until tears were streaming from our eyes, but then something appeared from the darkness of the trees and loomed over Red.