Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin

  “Why have you come back?” asked Bork. “And who were those boys?”

  “Those were the queen’s brothers.”

  “Can they make gold from straw too?” Bork asked. “They didn’t look too smart.”

  “They can’t make gold. Neither can the queen.” I took a deep breath. “I can, though.”

  All the slurping and grunting and snorting stopped, and the trolls stared at me. So I told them my story. All of it. The spinning, my mother, my name, and how I had come to gain Archie.

  “No wonder you reek of magic,” said Slop. “You were born in the stuff!

  “Why can’t you give him back if you don’t want him?” Slop asked.

  “Because she promised him in exchange for the gold, so I have to take him. That’s part of the magic.”

  “Why would she promise her baby?” asked Gorp.

  “I don’t know. Humans do a lot of things that make no sense.…”

  The trolls grunted in agreement and raised their cups.

  Archie started to cry, and Mard bounced and rocked him. “Too clean, poor thing.” She took handfuls of mud and slathered it on his face so he looked like a piglet in a mud puddle. I thought for sure he’d go into hysterics, but instead he stopped crying and drifted off in Mard’s arms as she rocked him. Watching this, I felt a pang in my chest. A baby should have a mother and a mother should have her baby. That is, if destiny works out the way it’s supposed to. I needed to find a way to give Archie back to Opal. That’s why I had come here.

  “I have something to show you,” said Bork.

  “What is it?”

  “Something I discovered a little while ago. Let’s go to the tree.”

  We took a torch through the trees until we came to the clearing with the apple tree, standing so still and perfect in the dark. Bork reached up and picked an apple and held it to the light of his torch.

  “This tree grew from the seeds of a poisoned apple, you know, so I’ve never tried one, but a few weeks ago I saw a strange thing. A family of raccoons came out in the middle of the night and started eating those apples. I watched them, followed them to their den, and they didn’t die. They didn’t even seem sick. So I thought maybe those apples aren’t poisonous for raccoons. But I kept watching the tree and a week later I saw some squirrels gnawing at the apples, and they didn’t get sick either. So you know what else I thought? Maybe those apples aren’t really poisonous at all. Maybe poison doesn’t have to grow from poison. Not always. This tree, I think just maybe it grew the way it wanted to grow. Those seeds, they were stronger than the magic.”

  Without warning, Bork took a bite of the apple.

  I snatched it and threw it away. “What are you doing?”

  He chewed and swallowed, and we waited. My heart pounded as I thought that any moment Bork was going to drop dead. He smacked his lips and grimaced. Surely the poison was sinking in now. “Not as good as sludge,” he said. “Well, I just thought that might be useful to you. You can think about it.”

  “Think about what?”

  “The things you know that you don’t know you know. You’re not so bright compared to a troll, but you’re a crumb smarter than most humans.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “But I’m not sure I understand.”

  “You humans always talk about magic and destiny like it’s the most powerful thing in the world. Like it controls you.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “I guess it does if you want it to. Maybe it does other humans, but you, Rump? You were born with magic. I can smell it stronger on you than on any magical object I’ve ever found, even stronger than this tree.”

  “But that’s the problem!” I said. “It’s the magic that’s caused all this trouble, just like all those things in your hoard cause trouble. I can’t do anything about it!”

  “It’s the people who cause the trouble, Rump. Not the magic itself. If you’re so full of magic, why should you be helpless?”

  “I don’t know.” I felt dizzy with confusion.

  Bork handed me the torch. “Think about it. It’s not so hard.” He walked back into the trees.

  Everything was cold and quiet now, except for the crackle of the torch. I stared at the apple tree. I still couldn’t believe Bork ate one. Maybe that poison didn’t work on trolls. Maybe it only worked on princesses. Or maybe Bork was right. Those seeds really were stronger than the magic.

  I am not a tree. I was born with a name and that name is my destiny. Rumpel has me wrapped and trapped. It controls me. My destiny controls me.

  But then a new question entered my mind.

  What is destiny?

  I knew that everyone had one, just as they had a name. And they were one and the same. Just as no person chooses their own name, no person chooses their own destiny. It isn’t up to them. But what if that wasn’t so? If Red’s granny said that I must find my destiny, doesn’t that mean I have some say in where to look?

  Maybe destiny isn’t something that just happens. Maybe destiny is something you do. Maybe destiny is like a seed and it grows. I wasn’t powerless. Even with my name, even with all the snares and tangles, I could do things, like spin straw into gold, and make terrible mistakes that ended up with girls being carried to their doom and promising me their firstborn child. That was all part of my destiny.

  My name is Rumpel.

  My name means I am bound, but I can grow more powerful than those bindings.

  I am more than the name I have always known.

  Deep inside I have a power that no one can take away from me. A deep magic more powerful than any magic placed upon me. A magic that I was born with, that grew inside me, deep in my bones.

  A stiltskin.

  I am Rumpel. I am a stiltskin.

  Rumpel.

  Stiltskin.

  I pictured my mother, holding me in her arms, dying, ready to give me a name, a name that would overpower all the magic that had trapped her. She whispered it to me. It was a name that would make me everything I am. No one else had ever heard it but me. My name is my destiny. My name is my power.

  Rumpel. Stiltskin.

  I heard Mother’s whisper reaching across years and mountains and valleys.

  Rumpel. Stiltskin.

  Rumpelstiltskin.

  The name, my name, shook in my chest. It traveled through my brain and down my arms and fingertips to my legs and toes. The sound of it echoed so loud inside of me I felt I would burst.

  I made a rhyme then and there. A rhyme full of powerful words to release into the black night.

  Tomorrow I’m free

  Today I’m alive

  The curses and tangles no longer survive

  From deep within, the wisdom came

  That Rumpelstiltskin is my name!

  I was a stiltskin. And that power was greater than the rumpel. I felt it now, all inside of me, as if just saying my name out loud had unleashed a force and it was wrapping around the tangles, ready to rip them apart.

  I picked an apple from the tree and took a bite, sweet juice filling my mouth. “I am more powerful than a tree!” I shouted into the night air, and I laughed and danced.

  A flickering shadow caught my eye and I froze mid-laugh. Frederick stepped from behind a tree into the clearing, his arms trembling as he held up a bow and arrow.

  “Don’t move,” he said. “Come out, Bruno.” He kicked at his brother, who squealed and slid out from behind another tree holding a spear tight to his chest. He was white as the moon and shaking so hard it was as if some outside force were throttling him.

  “Don’t move,” Frederick said again, pointing his bow and arrow at me. “You have to come back with us. You still have to spin all that gold, or your friend is going to get hurt. You’re going to get hurt.” Frederick took a step forward. Bruno took a step back and whimpered, mumbling, “Trolls, filthy trolls, cursed trolls.”

  I dropped my apple. I wasn’t afraid of Frederick or Bruno anymore. They looked pathetic and small, quivering with their
weapons. I was amazed that I had ever been afraid of them, had ever allowed them to bully me. But I also realized I wasn’t free yet. I had found my name. I still felt it inside me. The magic of my stiltskin was still rushing through my arms and legs and my brain, making me big and powerful. But the rumpel had yet to be untangled. Red was still trapped in the castle. There was still the miller to face. I still had Archie with me. And no one could untangle it all but me.

  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.”