Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin

by Liesl Shurtliff

  “Now, what would you like to tell her, Robert?”

  “Uh … tell her I’m sorry to make her worry. I’ll be home soon.”

  Martha spouted off a long message to the gnome, including all the details of my injuries, precisely where I was, and who Martha was and her son Helmut. When she asked the gnome to repeat the message, he got it all mixed up, and so she did it again and made it longer, but he still got it all mixed up, and so they went back and forth, and finally Martha lost patience and threw him out the window. The gnome scurried away chanting, “Red for message! Red for message!”

  I wondered how long it would take him to find Red and if she’d make any sense of the message. She’d probably understand enough, and I knew what she’d think. She’d think that she had told me so.

  I had spun myself a heap of trouble. Opal had promised me her firstborn child! My stomach was sick with the thought. Opal didn’t understand the magic. She didn’t think I would ever really take her baby, or perhaps she thought she could back out of her side of the bargain. But what she didn’t understand was that I had to take the baby! Red had explained to me that rules are rules and the magic binds you to those rules. Opal had promised her baby. She had taken my gold. I must take her baby if she ever had one.

  But that was only the beginning of my troubles. There was still the spinning and the gold. Surely the king would want Opal to spin more. Would he threaten to kill his own queen if she didn’t spin more straw into gold? Would I have to stay here forever, always at the queen’s beck and call when she needed straw spun to gold?

  No. I couldn’t.

  I thought of all the things Opal could foolishly promise me. Her right eye. An arm and a leg. More children. I saw my destiny clearly now. I was holding a dozen crying babies and trying to spin a mountain of straw into gold while Opal screamed at me to hurry up because she’s the queen. I felt dizzy. My head hurt. I couldn’t go home. I had to get away, far away. I had to go someplace where I wouldn’t hear about Opal or the king or a baby.

  But mostly I had to find a stiltskin. A stiltskin was the only way to fix all this mess. That’s what my mother had been looking for. That’s what The Witch of The Woods said I needed.

  But where could I find one? The witch said I must look, but look where? Under rocks? Under the ground? In a tree? In the sky? In Yonder or Beyond?

  In the morning, the castle rang with chimes and bells, not like the single gong of the village bell in The Mountain, but dozens of them ringing in all different tones. It should have been a lovely sound, but it made my head throb and ache.

  “Well, Robert,” said Martha. “I’m off to the wedding. Methinks I shall fetch a bit of gold today. Wouldn’t that be something? Be good and rest, and I shall bring you back a coin made by your very own queen. Maybe some good will come of it. There’s bread and more pies, dear. Tuck in and eat, eat, eat! I hate to see such skinny bones on a growing boy.”

  When Martha was gone, I sat up and threw off the blankets. I slid out of bed, wincing at the pain in my sides. I felt dizzy on my feet and steadied myself for a moment. Martha had placed all my things neatly by the fire. My shoes and my little satchel with the bobbin and waterskin.

  I ate another meat pie and a slice of bread, and because Martha had told me to eat, I put the loaf of bread in my satchel and another pie. I felt guilty, but I needed some food to travel. I wished I could do something for Martha for being so kind to me—spin her a spool of gold, or a pile of it—but for all her kindness, she hadn’t made me any bargains. Besides, she didn’t have a spinning wheel.

  And, quite frankly, I was done with spinning. It was time to leave it all behind. Forever.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  In Search of a Stiltskin

  Getting out of the castle was a lot simpler than getting in, especially with the wedding. I was practically flooded out by the parade of people flowing through the gates, shouting and throwing handfuls of grain. They must not be too worried about famine. But I suppose if you had a queen who could turn straw into gold, you wouldn’t worry about much of anything.

  The day was sunny and warm, perfect for a wedding. Gnomes skipped and pranced among the crowds, squealing the day’s wonderful news.

  The king has wed! The king has wed,

  To the girl who spins the golden threads!

  I followed the crowd down the hill, and who would have thought? Nothing was right where I’d left him, chewing grass and looking bored. I guess no one thought it worth their while to take him, or he wouldn’t go even if they’d tried. I was actually a little proud of Nothing as I took hold of the rope and pulled him away.

  Soon the royal carriage emerged from the castle gates behind me to parade through The Kingdom and display the new queen. The roads were flooded with nobles and soldiers and servants and peasants, and they all erupted into victorious shouts as the carriage came into view. There was Opal, Queen Opal, wearing a golden crown on her head and a gown embroidered with gold thread. She smiled but looked as blank as ever, and her tongue wound around her mouth. I wondered if she was still nervous.

  King Barf’s gold crown was bigger than his head, and he was dressed in even more gold than the first time I saw him. Gold breastplate, armbands, a gold-hilted sword and scabbard, gold tassels and buckles, and gold embroidery all over. It was amazing they both weren’t devoured by pixies, but then I saw a dozen servants surrounding them, swatting the pixies away with big paddles or spraying them with dirt. The carriage was also encased in light netting.

  A few unfortunate servants were tossing fat gold coins into the street, warding off the pixies as best they could. People were crawling and scratching to get at the gold. The miller and all his sons were in the crowd, and they bumped and shoved more than anyone, snarling to get the coins. It was like watching a pack of wild beasts fight over pieces of meat. Animals. That was all they were.

  As I pushed my way out of the swelling crowd, I saw someone else I recognized. Kessler the peddler sat on the side of the road, all by himself. His patchy sack lay limp and empty by his side. He was barefoot and filthy, his bright orange hair dingy from dirt and grease. But at least he had no mice around him. I wondered how he’d gotten rid of them. Perhaps he could tell me how to undo all the trouble I had caused!

  Kessler held a small object up close to his face. Then he pressed the object between his hands, closed his eyes, and muttered something. When he opened his hands and peeked inside, he growled with rage and frustration, and then repeated the ritual.

  “Hello, Kessler,” I said.

  “What?” He looked around wildly to see who had spoken to him, and finally focused on me. “Oh yes, hello there. Fine day to you, sir.” He looked back down at his hands and muttered some more. I leaned in closer to see what he held and caught a glint of gold. One of the fat gold coins from the wedding.

  “What are you trying to do?”

  “Multiply, multiply,” he said, and scratched at his head. “More gold. More, more, more.” He started muttering again and rubbed the coin between his hands.

  “What happened to the mice? How did you make them go away?” I asked.

  “What? Mice? Oh. They’re gone. I can make things disappear, you know. Would you like to see? But, oh … I forgot, I forgot. What did I forget?” He scratched and pulled at his hair. Then he went back to his gold coin, holding it to his face and whispering to it.

  I stared at him, horrified. Poor Kessler! He had been driven mad by his magic, yet he couldn’t stop. Was this what was to become of me?

  I pulled at Nothing and we turned down a road that led away from the crowds, and the king and queen, and Kessler.

  I crossed a bridge over a river and came to a sign that pointed in the direction I was headed. It read:

  YONDER AND BEYOND

  Yonder. Where my mother was from. Yonder was far from The King’s City, and if her family was still there, perhaps they would know about the spinning and how I could get out of this heap of trouble. Maybe I could even learn my n
ame.

  We had barely traveled a mile when dusk approached.

  I wanted to get a little farther from The Kingdom, but Nothing kept turning around and going in the other direction. Then when I had him headed the right way, he kept stopping to graze the grass. We were moving so slowly that the ants beneath us reached a destination before we did. I made up a rhyme about Nothing:

  Nothing’s a fool

  He does nothing but drool

  But I rule as fool

  ’Cause I stepped in his pool

  Of drool

  It was getting dark in The Eastern Woods. I was exhausted even though we’d probably traveled only two miles after all of Nothing’s walking in the wrong direction, and my whole body was still stiff and sore from my fall.

  Then a gnome scurried up the road squealing, “Message for Rump! Message for Rump!” The gnome came right up to my feet. “Message for Rump! Message for Rump!”

  “I’m Rump,” I said, irritated.

  The gnome jumped with glee, but he was breathing hard. He must have run a long time to catch up with me. Did these creatures ever lose energy? The gnome cleared his throat and got on with delivering his message, half shouting, half squealing.

  Dear Rump,

  You idiot. What did you do, fall out of a tower? We know Opal will be queen now, and Granny says if you keep spinning for her, it will come to no good—if it hasn’t already. No more bargains. Get away from her as fast as you can and hide. Opal will have to deal on her own.

  Your friend,

  Red

  P.S. Granny told me to remind you: Watch your step.

  Of course! Such useful advice after I’d already fallen out of a tower.

  The gnome bounced eagerly in front of me, hoping to carry another message. I snatched him by the ears and held him up.

  “Take this message back to Red.”

  Dear Red,

  I fell out of the tower because Opal promised to give me her firstborn child in exchange for the gold. What would you have done? I’ve already taken your advice to get as far away as possible. I’m traveling to Yonder, if I don’t starve before I get there, or get eaten by pixies, or trolls, or annoyed to death by gnomes.

  Your friend,

  Rump

  “Now repeat,” I told the gnome.

  The gnome repeated the message, even the part about the gnomes annoying me, with squealing excitement. It occurred to me that gnomes didn’t really have brains, just some space in their heads that stored all our words and spat them back out when they reached the receiver. They could even insult themselves with glee.

  The gnome scurried off screeching, “Message for Red! Message for Red!” I wondered if he would stop to sleep or eat before he got there. I knew I needed to eat and find a place to sleep. I had to stop for the night, and I couldn’t rely on the hope that I might find a farm or a village soon.

  The side of the road was thick with trees and shrubs. Maybe I could find some early berries, or some edible mushrooms, so I could save Martha’s bread and pie for later. Who knew how long I would be on the road? I tugged at Nothing to go into the trees but he didn’t move.

  “There’s better grazing in here,” I said. I tugged some more but Nothing didn’t budge. I slapped his rear and yanked and pulled, and then he drove forward and knocked me flat on my back. The wind whooshed out of me. I stuck my tongue out at Nothing and left him grazing in the road.

  I walked into the trees a ways. It was early spring, so the plants were just starting to sprout and grow buds, but nothing was edible yet. I turned up leaves and dug a bit in the dirt, but I didn’t find so much as a snail. I walked farther and suddenly, right before me, was the most amazing sight. An apple tree! A huge apple tree, its branches bent to the earth with the weight of apples. Ripe red juicy apples, beckoning me to sink my teeth into them.

  My mouth watered. I stepped forward and reached for an apple.

  SNAP!

  Schwip!

  Schlunk!

  Instantly, I was seized by my ankle and yanked upside down into the air. I yelped and wriggled, but my ankle was held fast by some kind of rope. Next moment I heard something big lumbering through the brush.

  “We’ve got one! We’ve got one!” A creature burst through the trees. “We’ve got … a boy?”

  More creatures came rushing through the trees. They were all big and brutish with arms as thick as my stomach that hung down to their knees. Their faces were squashed and animal-like, with bulbous noses and yellow eyes and teeth.

  Trolls!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Trolls, Witches, and Poison Apples

  The trolls heaved and grunted at the sight of me. They smacked their lips. “Well done, Brother. Looks like your trap caught us a nice, tasty boy.”

  “But I wanted a goat,” said the first troll.

  “Oh no, a boy is even better, much more succulent. Practically a feast.” They all snorted and hopped up and down.

  “He’s awful skinny. Do you think his legs will have any meat?”

  “I get the fingers. They look like the juiciest part of him.”

  “I’ll take the rear. I’ve been longing for a rump roast.”

  I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. Rump roast! My destiny was to be eaten!

  “He laughed! I like this human. Let’s eat him now.” The trolls closed in on me and licked their lips with horribly long gray tongues. I twisted and writhed, trying to free myself. If I could just get down, I had a sliver of a chance of getting away, but it was no use. My bindings only tightened with my squirming, and the trolls were now packed in a circle around me. I squeezed my eyes shut and prepared for the worst.

  “Wait!” said a troll. I opened my eyes. The troll held out his arms to stop the others from coming closer. Maybe he wanted to eat me all by himself. He sniffed hard through his fat, misshapen nose. “Do you smell that?” The other trolls sniffed too and stalked forward, until they were all right up close. From upside down, I could see straight up their noses, all hairy and slimy.

  “He smells …,” said one troll.

  “… not like most humans,” finished another.

  “Cut him down,” said the first troll. “And don’t let him go.”

  It was hard to tell from upside down, but I thought the trolls looked a little confused.

  With a quick slash, I was released and fell right at the feet of my captor. I looked up at him and squealed. He was terrifyingly ugly and smelled even worse. “Bring him over near the fire,” he told the others. “Mard will want to see this.”

  The fire. They didn’t want to eat me cold. The trolls dragged me through the trees like a dead rabbit. I couldn’t speak or even move.

  “Scared out of his senses,” laughed one troll.

  “We have that effect on humans.”

  The trolls dragged my limp body farther into the trees until we reached a small clearing where there was a large fire and even more trolls sitting around it. They released me and I scrambled to my hands and knees to search for a way to escape, but I was surrounded. Surrounded by smelly, ugly, man-eating trolls. A pot of some stinking brew was boiling over a fire. Maybe they intended to cook me in that.

  “What’s this?” said a girl troll. The only reason I thought she was a girl was because her voice was slightly higher and she had two long, tangled braids. Otherwise, she looked the same as the rest.

  “This boy tried to eat the apples,” said the troll dragging me.

  “Of course he did,” said the girl troll. “But what did you bring him here for?”

  “Bork did it,” said one. “He said to not let him go!”

  The first troll, the one they called Bork, reached down and lifted me up by the back of my shirt with one hand. I flailed my arms as I hung in the air. “Smell ’im, Mard,” said Bork.

  The girl troll bent down and sniffed a little, and then a lot. I held my breath so I wouldn’t have to sniff her. Finally, her eyes widened and she looked up at Bork.

  “Strang
e,” said the girl troll. I guessed her name was Mard.

  “I know,” said Bork. “I almost wish he had eaten one of those apples, just to see what would’ve happened.”

  A few trolls growled at Bork. They all seemed to think he had said something really horrible. A few of the trolls closed in on me. Maybe they thought the apples would spoil the taste of their dinner. All this talk of food was making me hungry, and if I couldn’t eat before I died, I’d like to die quickly. “Could we get this over with, please?” I said.

  The trolls looked at me, confused. I guess they didn’t often have people begging to be eaten.

  “Get what over with?” said one. “Who do you think you are, making demands?”

  “Well, I’ve been through a lot and I could use a break. So if you could just eat me fast …”

  The trolls were all silent for a moment as they looked from each other to me and back to each other. Then they all started laughing, or I guessed they were laughing. Their bodies were heaving like laughter, but the laughs sounded more like growls and howls and snorts. Bork suddenly released me, and I fell to the ground with a grunt. All my sore bones screamed at me.

  “He’s begging us to eat him!” said a troll.

  “We don’t really want to eat you. What of you is there to eat?”

  “But—” I started.

  “Here.” Mard, the girl troll, handed me a cup of what looked like steaming mud, or something worse. “You must be hungry, seeing as you were trying to eat those apples. Have some sludge.” The sludge was greenish brown and it stank and moved. All the trolls were slurping it down like it was honey, but that made it even less appetizing.

  I looked down at the sludge and then back up at the trolls. “You’re not going to eat me?”

  “Eck! Blech!” said a troll, another girl, I thought. It was still hard to tell.

  “It’s a bit of a joke that humans believe we’ll eat them,” said Bork.

  “And they think they actually taste good. So vain.”