Tales from the Brothers Grimm and the Sisters Weird (3 page)

"That's very kind of you," Della said. "But I'm sure he'd love her if he only stopped to think about it."

In a veiy quiet voice Rumpelstiltzkin said, "I don't think love is something you stop to think about."

"What I mean is," Della said, "I'm sure he
does
love her, but he just doesn't realize it. Maybe I should tell him she's sick. If he's worried about her, then he'll see how precious she is."

"But the servants would tell him she isn't sick," Rumpelstiltzkin pointed out. "You could tell him a wicked old elf is going to steal her away unless..."

Rumpelstiltzkin paused to consider, and Della said, "You don't look wicked or old."

Rumpelstiltzkin smiled at her, which made him look even less wicked and old.

It almost made Della wish ... But that was too dangerous a thought.

"We'll tell him that you're the one who taught me how to spin straw into gold," she said. "And that in exchange I promised you my firstborn child. The only way to break the agreement..." She sighed. "Whatever you ask the king to do," she said, "it has to be something easy to make sure he can do it."

"Certainly," Rumpelstiltzkin agreed. "How easy?"

Della thought and finally said, "He has to guess your name."

"Easier," Rumpelstiltzkin suggested. "It's not that common a name."

"Tell him you'll give him three days before you'll take the baby," Della said. "Surely in that time we can arrange some way for somebody to learn your name."

But it wasn't as easy as Della thought.

The king was too busy with councils and court decisions to even ask why a wicked old elf wanted his daughter. But he did have the servants in the castle write out a list of all the names they could think of.

The next day, when Rumpelstiltzkin appeared in the throne room, the king read out every name they had, starting with Aaron and ending with Zachary.

Rumpelstiltzkin shook his head after each name, and when it was over he said they had two more days but they'd never guess.

The king had to be at the dedication of a new ship that day, but he ordered the councillors and scholars of the castle to look through all the old history chronicles and put together a list of every name they could find.

The next day, Rumpelstiltzkin again appeared in the throne room, and the king read out this new list, starting with Absolom and ending with Ziv.

Once again Rumpelstiltzkin shook his head after each name, but this time he gave Della a worried look before announcing they had one more day but they'd never guess. He was beginning to worry, Della could tell, that they never would.

The king had been invited to a hunting party with the neighboring king, but before leaving he sent servants out of the castle into the countryside to see if they could discover any new names.

As the servants trickled back home that night and the next morning, one after another with no new names, Della decided that she would have to just blurt out the name Rumpelstiltzkin and hope that the king didn't ask where she'd heard it.

Then the last of the castle servants returned.

"Good news, your majesty," this last man said to her. "Although I searched all day yesterday without finding any new names, as I was walking through the woods on the way back to the castle this morning, I came across that same elf who's been threatening the young princess. Fortunately he didn't see me. And even more fortunately he was dancing around a campfire singing, 'Yo-ho, Rumbleskilstin—'"

"Excuse me?" Della said. "
Rumbleskilstin?
"

The servant repeated it, incorrectly again, saying, "He sang, Yo-ho, Rumbleskilstin is my name. Rumbleskilstin, Rumbleskilstin, Rumbleskilstin. The king doesn't know it. The queen doesn't know it. Only I know it, and I'm Rumbleskilstin.'"

"That's quite a song," Della said,
trying
not to laugh at the picture of the normally dignified Rumpelstiltzkin dancing around a campfire, and—after all that—the servant getting the name wrong. Still, Rumpelstiltzkin certainly wouldn't complain that it wasn't exactly right. "Well," she agreed, "this is indeed fortunate. You have our gratitude, mine and the king's."

At least Della hoped the king would be grateful.

Rumpelstiltzkin appeared in the throne room at the appointed time, but the king was late getting back from an appointment with the royal wigmaker. When the king did come in, laughing and chatting with his companions, he didn't appear nearly as worried as Rumpelstiltzkin did.

"We discovered a likely name," Della told the king.

"Good," he said, fluffing his new wig, which was even curlier than his other 150 wigs.

Look at me,
Della thought at him furiously.
Look at your daughter.

But the king looked, instead, at his reflection in the mirror and blew kisses to himself.

Hugging the baby close, Della turned to Rumpelstiltzkin, who wad looking at them.
No one can change straw into gold,
Della thought to herself.
Some things are just straw, and dome things are gold, and sometimes you just have to know which is which.

She walked past the king to put her hand on Rumpelstiltzkin's arm, looked up into the young elf's eyes, and said, "Take us with you."

So Rumpelstiltzkin put his arm around her and stepped sideways, as always, between the particles.

The king, of course, hired his own messengers to spread the news of what had happened. But as for Rumpelstiltzkin and Della, they lived happily ever after. And it was Rumpelstiltzkin who chose the name for Della's baby girl. He called her Abigail, which means "a father's joy."

Once upon a time when princes still set out to seek their fortunes and when cranky old women still sometimes turned out to be witches, a prince named Sidney came to a well where an old woman asked him for help in getting water.

Now the old woman didn't have a bucket and Sidney didn't have a bucket. But he'd heard enough fairy tales about three sons setting oil down the road and meeting a strange old woman, and the first two sons were always rude and got into trouble, and the youngest son was always polite and then the old woman would give him whatever it was that he needed to fulfill his quest. So—being a middle son—Sidney always did his best to be polite to everybody, even when he wasn't on a quest.

But his best wasn't enough for this old woman, and the next thing he knew he was a bulgy-eyed green frog, which just goes to show that sometimes having a bucket is more important than being polite.

"There, you loathsome thing," the old woman said, which was hardly fair since she was the one who had made him into what he was, "stay a frog until a beautiful princess feeds you from her plate and lets you sleep on her pillow."

Travel goes a lot faster when you're riding a horse than when you're hopping, especially if your feet are less than a foot long. It took several days for Sidney to find the nearest castle, and when he got there, he didn't even know whose castle it was. Everything looked different from grass level, but he was still pretty sure he didn't know the people who lived here. He hoped there was a princess.

Sidney hopped across the drawbridge and into the dusty courtyard. There were horses and dogs and chickens. People, too, way, way high up. And lots and lots of legs. Many of them were walking so fast that he knew he was in danger of getting stepped on. He saw a well in the courtyard, but Sidney had had quite enough of wells for the time being. Hurriedly, he hopped off to the side, where there was a quiet and well-tended garden.

In the garden was a lovely, cool-looking reflecting pool, with fresh, clear water and lily pads. Sidney jumped in and it felt like heaven.

Until something bonked him on the head and dunked him.

Sidney came up sputtering, just as a beautiful girl of about his own age came running up to the pool.

"Oh, no!" the girl cried. "My golden ball."

"Excuse me," Sidney said, "are you a princess?"

The girl didn't answer. She just flung herself onto the bench by the pool's edge and began to weep.

Sidney, in the middle of the pool, looked down and could see the ball just settling into the soft mud below him. He paddled closer to the girl. "Excuse me," he said again, "are you a princess?"

"What a twit," the girl snapped, never even looking up. "Of course I am. Don't I look like one?"

"Yes, you do," Sidney admitted apologetically. "And a very lovely one at that. I think the two of us can help each other out."

"I don't want to help you out," the princess said. "I want to have my ball back."

"That's what I mean," Sidney said.

The princess finally looked at him. "You can get my ball?" she asked.

Sidney nodded.

"Well, then, do it."

"Yes," Sidney said, "but then, afterward, will you let me eat from your plate and sleep on your pillow? I'm a prince, you see, and I have a magic spell on me, and that's the only way to break it."

The princess's lip curled in disgust. "I need that ball. It's my father's paperweight and I wasn't supposed to be playing with it."

"I don't have to eat a
lot
from your plate," Sidney told her, "and I can sleep
way over
on the side of the pillow and not take up much room at all."

"Oh, all right," the princess said.

Sidney dove into the water. The ball was heavy, but with a great deal of struggling he finally managed to get it up close enough that the princess could reach over and grasp it. As she turned the ball over in her hands to make sure it wasn't damaged, Sidney jumped up onto the bench next to her. "Now," he said just as she shook the water off the ball, drenching him all over again. He coughed a little bit, and when he looked up again, she was gone.

"Wait," he called, catching sight of her leaving the garden.

But she didn't.

By the time he made it out of the garden, across the courtyard, and into the castle, the princess was sitting down to dinner with her family.

Sidney kicked on the dining-room door. "Hey," he yelled. "Hey, princess!"

He heard the king ask, "What's that noise?"

"Nothing," the princess answered.

"Princess!" Sidney yelled. "It's me, the frog prince. You accidentally left me behind."

The king's voice said, "He says he's a frog prince. What does he mean, you left him behind?"

"I don't know," the princess said.

"You promised you'd help me." Sidney wasn't used to yelling, and his throat was getting sore.

"You promised you'd help him?" the king asked.

"No," the princess said.

There was no other way. Sidney called out, "In return for getting back your father's golden ball paperweight that you were playing with and dropped into the pool in the garden."

"The golden paperweight that left a wet spot on my papers this afternoon?" the king asked.

"I don't know anything about it," the princess said.

The king must have brought his fist down on the table. Sidney could hear the dishes rattle. "A promise," the king said, "is a promise. Let the frog in."

Servants came and opened the big golden doors.

Sidney hopped into the dining room, which was decorated with mirrors and crystal chandeliers and hundreds of flickering candles. He hopped until he came to the princess's chair.

"What, exactly," the king asked his daughter, "did you promise him?"

"I can't remember," the princess said.

"That I could eat from your plate," Sidney reminded her. "That I could sleep on your pillow. I promised not to eat too much and to use only the corner of the pillow."

"A promise is a promise," the king repeated.

The princess lifted Sidney, not very gently, and plunked him down on the white linen tablecloth beside her china dish.

Sidney nibbled on a piece of lettuce that was hanging off the edge of the dish.

The princess put her napkin up to her mouth and made gagging sounds. "I'm all finished," she announced, shoving the plate away.

"Then you may leave the table," the king said. "Don't forget your little friend."

The princess scooped up Sidney and brought him up the stairs to her bedroom, stamping her feet all the way.

"Thank you," Sidney yelled back down the stairs to the king.

"You horrid beast," the princess growled at Sidney. "You told him about the paperweight. Now I'm going to be in trouble."

"It was your own fault for walking away so fast that I couldn't keep up," Sidney said. "Are you going to put me on your pillow now?"

"I'll put you on my pillow!" the princess shouted. "But I'll put you on my wall first."

She flung Sidney with all her might against the wall.

"Ow!" Sidney cried, landing in a heap on the floor.

"Now here's the pillow," the princess said, throwing that on top of him.

But as soon as the pillow touched Sidney's head, he instantly regained his normal shape.

"Oh my!" the princess gasped. She was going to be in serious trouble with her father now, she thought. Here she had a man in her room and her father was never going to believe that this was the same person who had come into her room as a frog. Even now she could hear her father coming up the stairs, demanding, "What's all the commotion?"