My Unfair Godmother

  The sparks kept dropping around my feet. I couldn’t stand here all night like a human candle. “Okay, maybe I thought about escaping. It occurred to me I could drop gold on the guard’s head and knock him out.”

  The hat vanished and the room instantly darkened. In the dimmer torchlight, Hudson smiled. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll let the guard know he needs to watch out for heavy, falling objects.” He walked to the door. “You’re the easiest prisoner I’ve had to guard yet.”

  “I’m not speaking to you again. Ever.”

  He opened the door and stepped outside. “I think you will when you want to go home.” Then he shut the door with a final-sounding thud.

  He was awful. This whole place was awful. And I was stuck here. Even though I said I couldn’t cry, I sat back down on the straw and did just that. I cried in frustration because I was tired, hungry, worried, and apparently not smart enough to remember that when I lied, my head ignited. And now I had no way to escape.

  Straw pieces stuck to the blankets and they scratched, but it was too cold not to wrap up. Between my tears and the cold air, I had the sniffles. I needed some tissues, which of course hadn’t been invented yet.

  A puff of light went off by my side, and I turned, hoping to see Chrissy.

  Instead a man stood in front of me.

  Chapter 10

  Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t short and dwarfish like I had expected. He was tall and so painfully thin that if his picture had been on a poster, people would have sent relief money to his country. His stringy brown hair had an unusual tint to it, almost burgundy, and his eyes were deep-set and intense. He wore a golden vest over a flowing white shirt, copper-colored breeches that ended at his knee, and white silk stockings. It was the outfit of the wealthy—but the wealthy of a later time period. I wondered if he knew what century we were in.

  He walked toward me, his long legs scissoring across the room. “There, there, don’t weep.” He held out a handkerchief in his spindly fingers. They reminded me of spiders, of things that scurried off to dark corners.

  I took the handkerchief from him. “Thank you.”

  I wiped my nose, then realized I didn’t know what to do with the handkerchief. Certainly Rumpelstiltskin wouldn’t want a mucky handkerchief back. But maybe he did. I didn’t know what people did before tissues. My history teacher had never covered that sort of thing.

  When he didn’t reach for it, I kept it in my lap.

  “Tell me what distresses you, Mistress Miller.” His voice had a deep whispering quality to it, like wind rushing through trees.

  I didn’t answer. I knew what I should say, but I couldn’t speak. Once I did, I would be following the script of this story—sliding toward a destiny I didn’t want.

  Rumpelstiltskin smiled, which made his cheekbones jut out in sharp contrast to the sunken valleys of his cheeks. “Don’t be alarmed at my appearance here. I am your fairy godfather.”

  “Fairy godfather?” I repeated.

  “Aye. No doubt you’ve heard stories of how fairies sometimes appear to worthy young maidens in their time of need.” He leaned over and wiped a stray tear from my cheek. “You’ve been unjustly imprisoned to save your father’s life, and you’ll forfeit your own unless this straw is changed to gold by morning.”

  I nodded and shivered.

  “I can spin the straw into gold for you if you’ll but give me a small token of your trust.”

  “What do you want?” I asked. In the story, Rumpelstiltskin asked for both a necklace and a ring, but this no longer felt like a children’s story. This fairy—the way his eyes hungrily followed my movements—set my nerves on edge. He was dangerous. I could feel it.

  Rumpelstiltskin’s gaze ran over me and stopped at my neck. He ran one of his fingers along my throat. I tried not to flinch. His finger was cold and smooth. The way snakes feel. “Give me your necklace,” he said.

  It was a simple gold chain with a heart that my best friend in New York had given to me before I left. I took it off slowly. I didn’t have many mementos from my friends and knew I’d never see this one again. “Why does a fairy who can spin straw into gold want a gold necklace?”

  He smiled at me with grayish white teeth and plucked the necklace from my hand. “It’s merely a token that proves you’ve agreed to do business with me. The Unified Magical Alliance is particular about such things.”

  “The Unified Magical Alliance?” Chrissy had talked about them too, but it didn’t seem like they should be part of the fairy tale. Did he know I wasn’t the real miller’s daughter and that this was part of a wish?

  Rumpelstiltskin tucked my necklace into his vest pocket. “You need not worry your pretty little head about the Alliance. Rest and let me do the work.”

  He picked up the spindle from the stool and tossed it aside like it was trash. When he sat down, the largest spinning wheel I had ever seen materialized in front of him.

  I watched him from a distance. “Do you know a fairy named Chrysanthemum Everstar?”

  He tensed at the name, then picked up a handful of straw and examined it. “The fay folk are many. Quite a few have escaped my notice. Why do you ask?”

  He hadn’t answered my question, and the way he tensed made me think that he did know her. I could have told him everything—how I was from the future and Chrissy had sent me here mistakenly. But I didn’t trust him and didn’t want to give him more information than I had to. What sort of person says he’s your fairy godfather and then tries to take your baby from you later? It had been a long time since I’d read the fairy tale, but I had a vague recollection that Rumpelstiltskin wanted to eat the child.

  Rumpelstiltskin pressed the foot pedal, testing it, and the wheel spun so fast the spokes blurred together. He kept his gaze on me, waiting for me to say how I knew Chrissy.

  “She granted me a favor once,” I told him, “but it didn’t turn out like it was supposed to. I want to talk to her.”

  Rumpelstiltskin fed some straw into the spindle. It jumped from his hand like tiny birds landing in their nests. The straw went over the wheel, broken and bumpy, then impossibly turned into a smooth, golden strand on the other side. It looked like liquid light winding around the bobbin.

  Rumpelstiltskin motioned to the pile, and a stream of straw swirled onto the spinning wheel. “Did you give this Chrysanthemum Everstar any sort of token for the favor she granted you?”

  “Um, no.” She had never asked for anything.

  “Ah, then it was a gift, not a bargain, and sadly you’ve no recourse. It does no good to complain about shoddy workmanship if her magic was a present.” The corner of his thin lips lifted. “A bargain is binding though. The UMA makes sure of that.”

  “Oh.” I suddenly wished I had read Chrissy’s contract more carefully. I also wondered why Rumpelstiltskin didn’t give me a contract since his bargains were binding. Perhaps he didn’t think I could read.

  He stroked the edge of the spinning wheel. “You’ve no cause to worry about my work though. You’ll have nothing but the finest gold when I’m through.”

  I didn’t feel like talking to him any longer so I sat down next to the door. I watched the wheel turning, watched the hypnotic spinning and the torch light winking reflections off the gold.

  Rumpelstiltskin sung a low, lilting song as he worked, and I caught snatches of words: “Today do I bake, tomorrow I brew.” But these weren’t the words I thought about as he spun. It was the phrase he’d said earlier that repeated over and over to the thumping of the foot pedal. You’ll have nothing but the finest gold when I’m through. You’ll have nothing. You’ll have nothing. You’ll have nothing but gold when I’m through.

  Rumpelstiltskin looked over and saw me watching. “The night is far spent,” he said. “You must sleep.” As though it were a command that I had to obey, I felt exhaustion sweeping over me. I shut my eyes, lay down, and was asleep.

  • • •

  The next morning, I was awakened by the sound of a voice from the othe
r side of the door. I didn’t recognize the speaker. His voice was high-pitched and condescending. “If she is as pretty as you say, perhaps we will stay her execution for a few days, but we doubt we will take a liking to her. That last maiden you brought to our attention—the musical one—we found her dulcimers dull, her vielle vile, and don’t even get us started on her gemshorn.”

  We? Who was talking? I sat up, wiping away strands of hair from my face. Only a few shafts of morning light made their way through the shutter cracks. Everything in the room was dark and muted.

  The bolt slid across the door, and I scooted a little bit away.

  “We are quite a bit more discerning about women than you are, Haverton, and we have better taste too. We hope you aren’t wasting our time again.”

  The door swung open, letting more light into the room. The bushy-bearded knight strode in with a man who couldn’t have been anyone but King John. He wore yellow-and-orange-striped silk robes clasped together at his throat with a doorknob-sized broach. His shoulder-length brown hair was noticeably thin on top or perhaps even absent. He had draped a large section of hair from the back of his head across the top to cover the bald spot and to act as bangs—a medieval version of a bad comb-over.

  He surveyed me and his lips puckered sourly. “We thought you said she had golden hair. There’s not a speck of gold anywhere in it.”

  Oh. King John talked about himself as “we.” Royalty did that sometimes.

  Haverton, the bearded knight, nodded. “My apologies, sire. I only meant that she was blond.”

  King John’s lips stayed puckered. “You should learn to speak correctly. Sloppy metaphors lead to confusion and we have quite enough of that in the kingdom already. Don’t you recall the time you said the chancellor was casting his pearls before swine?”

  Haverton hung his head a bit. “Yes, sire.”

  “We were nearly trampled by a herd of pigs while we searched their pen.”

  “I humbly apologize for that again, sire.”

  “And our green robes still smell like manure.” King John flicked his fingers in my direction as though shooing away an insect. “She isn’t golden. She is merely a girl dressed in odd clothing. Probably a French spy come here to ferret out our secrets. We should execute her at once for espionage.”

  I stood up so quickly that I nearly toppled over as I curtsied. “I’m not a French spy, Your Highness. I wouldn’t have come here at all except that I was dragged here by your men and—”

  King John put up one hand to silence me. “Can you prove you’re not French?”

  I hesitated, unsure how to do that.

  He humphed at my hesitation like it proved my guilt. “Do you speak French?”

  “No.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Do you know how to spell ‘rendezvous’?”

  “Um, probably not. I’ve never been great at spelling foreign words.”

  “ ‘Hors d’oeuvres’?”

  “Why yes, I’d love some.”

  King John didn’t have a sense of humor. He simply stared at me, waiting. I cleared my throat. “No, sire, I don’t know how to spell ‘hors d’oeuvres,’ either.”

  He gave me another elegant flick of his fingers. “That proves nothing. The French don’t know how to spell that word either.” King John turned to Haverton. “We are not impressed with the girl. True, she is pretty, but she doesn’t have golden hair and she is a bad speller. We are wondering about your judgment now, Haverton.” He shook his head resolutely. “We are not impressed at all.”

  Then again, it was entirely possible King John kept calling himself “we” because he was referring to the other voices in his head.

  Haverton walked to the window. “But, Your Highness, you have not even properly seen the girl.” He opened the shutters, and the morning light spilled into the room. Two dozen golden spools shimmered in the sunshine along the back wall.

  Both men stared at them. “Wait,” King John said. “We have changed our mind. We are quite impressed.”

  Haverton’s jaw dropped in amazement. His gaze shot to mine. “How can this be?” he sputtered. “You spun the straw to gold?”

  I figured it was a rhetorical question so I didn’t answer. I hadn’t actually done it, and I didn’t want my liar’s hat to go off.

  Neither of the men noticed my silence. Haverton paced around the spools, eyeing them in shock. King John dropped to his knees in front of the gold like a man about to pray to the god of greed. As he bent down to examine a spool, his comb-over flopped off the top of his head. It made me feel vaguely like I’d been flashed.

  He pulled a shiny thread away from the spool, stroking it like it were a cat, even holding it to his nose and sniffing it. Which made me wonder if gold had a smell.

  “She’s a lovely maiden,” King John said without looking at me. “We are quite smitten, overcome with love, in fact. And now we shall take this gold back to our chamber and get better acquainted.”

  I was pretty sure he meant he wanted to get better acquainted with the gold and not with me.

  With one hand, he tried to pick up a spool. It didn’t budge. He used both hands, with the same result. Either it was very heavy, or he was very weak. Or both. He got to his feet, bent over, and tried again. The spool still didn’t lift off the ground. Mostly he just managed to look like he was doing some sort of yellow-and-orange-striped yoga bends.

  Haverton took hold of my arm. “How did you do this?”

  I couldn’t lie, but I wasn’t supposed to tell the king about Rumpelstiltskin. At least, in the fairy tale, the miller’s daughter never let him know how the straw had been turned to gold—not even when their baby was in danger. And if she hadn’t told him, it seemed I shouldn’t either.

  I stammered out, “This gold is more than my father’s share in taxes. You must let me go back to my family now.”

  Haverton shook his head, but not at me—he didn’t give my demand enough notice to refuse it. He was shaking his head at himself. “What a pied ninny I am.”

  I nodded, then stopped. Maybe that wasn’t something I was supposed to agree with.

  “I should have known the truth when I saw the riches at your manor,” Haverton said. To King John, he said, “Clearly the girl has a magical gift.”

  King John gave up trying to lift the gold and dropped back to his knees in front of the spool. “Yes, yes, she’s charming, but she made the gold too heavy. If we ask our guards to move it, they will rob us blind. They’re rogues, every one of them.” He took hold of the end of a golden thread and unwound it from the spool. Chortling, he said, “This is how we shall carry it—half a spool at a time.”

  I tried to pull my arm away from Haverton but he didn’t let go. He turned my hand over so it was palm up. “Your hands have no calluses or cracks. The straw didn’t even blister them. How did you spin it into gold?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He leaned closer, his foul breath puffing into my face. “The king demands to know.”

  Actually, the king was humming and winding thread from his thumb to his elbow. It was no wonder, really, that the miller’s daughter never told him anything.

  Haverton tightened his grip on my arm. “How did you do it?”

  Then again, just because the miller’s daughter never told the king about Rumpelstiltskin, that didn’t mean I shouldn’t. Perhaps if I veered from the story script now, I would get a different ending.

  Of course, it might be a worse ending. It was hard to judge what King John would do since, at this point, he seemed completely fixated on creating a golden cocoon around his arm. I swallowed hard. “I’ll tell you the truth if you promise not to hurt my family.”

  My answer only made Haverton squeeze my arm harder. “You shall tell me the truth regardless. Now.”

  I held firm. “My father hasn’t lied, spoken treason, or refused to pay taxes.”

  Haverton pulled me a step closer. “You silly girl, no one cares about your father, but I’ll have my men drag him here in s
hackles if you don’t speak at once.”

  I didn’t have a choice. I spoke. “A man appeared in the room last night and told me he was my fairy godfather. He spun the straw into gold so you wouldn’t kill me. It wasn’t my doing at all, so there’s no use keeping me here in the castle. I don’t have a magical gift.”

  Scowling, Haverton let me go. I rubbed my arm where he had squeezed it.

  “Haverton!” King John called.

  I looked at King John to see his reaction to my confession, but he still wasn’t paying attention to me. He had somehow managed to tangle the thread around the broach at his neck and was struggling to free himself, one-handed.

  Haverton went to his side, wrestling with the thread to unsnarl it.

  “Our heart’s love not only made the gold too heavy,” King John said, “she made it too unwieldy. She must do better tonight.”

  “But didn’t you hear me?” I asked. “I don’t have any magical gifts.”

  King John smiled warmly. “Your modesty does you credit, my dear. You have a magic godfather and that is gift enough.” He held his cocooned hand out to me like he was asking me to dance. “Tonight you shall stay in a bigger room with more straw. When your fairy godfather arrives, you shall beseech him to spin it into lighter gold.”

  Unable to free the king from the golden tangles, Haverton took out a knife and cut through parts of the thread. This allowed him to slip the bulk of the golden jumble off the king’s arm.

  King John stretched his fingers. “And if your fairy godfather doesn’t appear, my love, well, ’tis no great inconvenience to execute you tomorrow instead of today. We are nothing if not flexible.”

  I let out a horrified gasp. Despite his terms of endearment, I was still a prisoner with a death sentence. Telling King John the truth hadn’t made one bit of difference.

  King John walked over and patted my shoulder. “No need to fret,” he said cheerfully. “Your fairy godfather won’t let you come to harm.” He kept patting. “Although one can never tell with fairies. They’re such flighty creatures.” He put his hand to his chest and chuckled. “Fairies are flighty creatures. What witty wordplay.”