“Rump … what?” said Martha.
“Rumpelstiltskin. Isn’t that a wonderful name? I’ll tell you my whole story someday. It’s a really good one. But now isn’t the best time. May we …?” I nodded in the direction of the kitchen door. Martha simply gaped. She looked from me back up to where shrieks and screams and stomps rattled the ceiling. I took Red’s hand and walked toward the door.
“Wait!” said Martha. “Take some pies!”
We grabbed the food, thanked Martha, and then ran for it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
From Small Things
While everyone else’s attention was on the commotion above, we made a hasty dash through the gates. The pixies had started throwing skeins of gold out the windows, and men and women were scrambling about to pick them up, but of course they couldn’t. As soon as it hit the ground, the gold became like stones melded into the earth. We heard shouts as people tried to pry up the gold and then got attacked by pixies. I guess the pixies had claimed this gold as their own. They would have gold nests all over the castle now.
By the time we reached the base of The Mountain, the day was nearly gone. Red and I didn’t speak much as we traveled. We were cold and dirty and exhausted, but at least we were full from the pies Martha had given us.
As we slowly climbed The Mountain, Red kept glancing back toward the castle, her face knit into something like worry.
“They won’t come after us,” I said. “I think they’re a little busy.”
“No, it isn’t that. I just … Do you think they’ll be all right?”
I had to laugh. Red, concerned? And about the miller, no less! “They’ll be fine, once the swelling goes down.”
Then we both laughed, tears streaking our muddy faces.
“How did you do that?” she asked. “How did you … just do all that?”
I smiled. “A good name can do a lot for you.”
I told Red everything that had happened when Frederick and Bruno took me outside, all about my name, and how I knew what it was and my plan to get away.
“Rumpelstiltskin,” she said slowly. “That’s crazy. You’re trapped and tangled, but then you’re really powerfully magical.”
“Who isn’t?”
She patted me on the head. “You’re a lot smarter than you look.”
Well, that’s friendship.
“And you really are taller than me,” she said, holding her hand up to my head. “Not that it’s saying much,” she finished, punching me in the arm.
That’s friendship too.
We reached the edge of The Village just as the sun was going down, casting a sparkling pink glow all over the snow. Gran’s cottage was dark and empty and cold. It looked so lonely.
“You can come to my house. Mother wouldn’t mind. She’ll probably want to thank you for, you know, saving my life.”
“Maybe in a little while.”
Red nodded. She understood. After everything, I needed some time alone.
I walked around The Village, glancing through candlelit windows where families ate their suppers or children were snuggling in their beds.
I walked past the mill, now abandoned and silent. I wondered who would be the miller now. Surely no one as greedy as Oswald.
I walked through the mines, where tools were abandoned and the pans full of mud suggested that the villagers still were not finding much gold.
I walked just inside The Woods and felt the mysteries there. One day I would go back to Red’s granny and thank her.
Nothing had changed about The Mountain or The Village, but it all looked different to me, I guess because I had changed.
When I came back to the cottage, I noticed something that really was different. There was a hardy little sapling growing in the snow in front of the cottage. My seed! Red must have come and watered it, or maybe even her granny. Big things can grow from small ones. What would it grow to be? I hoped a giant apple tree.
Inside the cottage, I found my mother’s spinning wheel in front of the fireplace, old and scratched. It had caused so much trouble, but it was still beautiful to me, because it was hers. Because now I knew the destiny she had wished for me. I brushed my hands over the wood and spun the wheel, its whir ringing like music. I still had my mother’s bobbin in my satchel. I took it out and placed it on the wheel. I gathered a few bits of straw from the floor and held them tight in my hand.
Red once told me that magic was inside of me. She was right. But Ida had said that magic was everywhere—in the sky, in the air, in the sun. She was right, too. The magic was inside me and outside me, in everyone and everything. And everything had its own unique kind of magic. It was in trees and trolls, squirrels and rabbits, mountains and rivers and rocks. It was in my feet and fingers and in my heart. I could feel it now as I began to spin.
Straw is straw, I thought. The straw snapped and sputtered through the wheel. It floated in the air, glittering in the moonlight like bits of gold dust. Like gold, but not gold. Beautiful. Gran would have loved it, and so would Mother. I could almost feel them with me. And that’s its own kind of magic—to feel that people who are gone are still here.
EPILOGUE
Your Destiny Is Your Name
For days and weeks, I woke with my name singing in my ears. It was a beautiful sound, music unlike any in the world. It made me wish that everything could have such a name. Not just people, but animals and villages, and roads and kingdoms, even mountains.
When spring arrived, Red and I climbed as high up on The Mountain as we could, until we could see all The Village and the roads, The Kingdom, and far away, just the faint glimpse of Yonder and Beyond. My whole journey was laid out before me. I imagined I could see the trolls in The Eastern Woods, slurping sludge and maybe eating apples. I saw my aunts in Yonder, spinning their magic, Ida making rhymes and cake. Someday I would visit them again and spin and weave with their magic. And instead of tying me up in knots, the magic would bring us together. But for now I was home, back where it all began. And I had one last task to fulfill.
“I’m going to give this mountain a name,” I said.
“Why?” asked Red. “It doesn’t need a destiny like we do.”
“Yes, it does,” I said. “Everything in the world should have a destiny. And come together and get all intertwined and tangled with our own destinies.”
“Sounds like trouble,” said Red.
I smiled. “It probably is. But what is destiny without a little trouble?”
And right then and there, I stood up and hollered the name of my mountain. The name soared into the sky and clouds. I could feel the magic of it spreading over the mountain, sinking into the ground, and running right up through my feet, bursting with power and fateful glory.
A name is a powerful thing.
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Shakespeare immortalized these words in his tragic play Romeo and Juliet. The words sound true, yet I also agree with my childhood heroine Anne Shirley when she said, “I don’t believe a rose would be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.”
As I interact with other people, sometimes I can’t help but think their names reflect their looks and behavior with such exactness. Did their parents intuitively know that was the name for them, or did the name have a role in shaping their behavior and self-perception? There are many studies and theories to support the notion that our names have a significant bearing on our development and sense of identity, and perhaps even our confusion about identity.
As a child, I was terribly shy about my name, and to this day, whenever I introduce myself, people always ask me to repeat it, and sometimes spell it. Then they say the inevitable, “That’s … different.” And so I felt different. Every year when school started, I kept hoping there would be another Liesl in the class. There were always two or three Ashleys or Jennifers—sometimes even four—but no Liesls. And then of course
there were the rhyming taunts of “Liesl the Weasel” or “Liesl Diesel” (a torture I’m sure many kids can relate to). Perhaps the saddest thing about my name was that I could never find it on any of those personalized pencils and key chains in gift shops. I searched all the time, and kept hoping I would find my name between “Leslie” and “Lisa,” but to no avail. There was no question I was different, but this made me feel like I wasn’t even real.
I have long thought names were significant, and if ever there was a tale that showed their importance, it is “Rumpelstiltskin.” And yet, for the crucial role Rumpelstiltskin and his name play in the story, we know so little about him in the traditional tale. We know nothing of where he comes from, what his name means, how he gained the power to spin straw into gold, or why on earth he would want someone’s firstborn child.
So as I set out to tell the tale behind the fairy tale of “Rumpelstiltskin,” I imagined a world where names were directly tied to a person’s destiny. A name would determine not only your personality, but your future. I wanted Rump to go beyond the tale that inspired it, just as Rump learns to move beyond the name he was born with, and the assumptions people make because of it.
And so Rump’s adventures began. The story went through many changes along the way, but the heart of it has always remained the same. Rump was my way of answering that age-old question, “What’s in a name?” To all those with common names, rare names, beautiful names, strange and exotic names, or names they wish they could change: Names are powerful and so is destiny, but a person’s will is more powerful than both put together.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to my editor, Katherine Harrison, for not only her sharp critical eye but also for nurturing my story with childlike love and enthusiasm.
To my agent, Michelle Andelman, who was the first stranger to fall in love with my work and has been by my side every step of the way.
To my critique partners—Kate Coursey, Ali Cross, Krista Van Dolzer, Jennifer Jensen, and Jenilyn Tolley. You are all ferociously talented and kind.
To my mother, who worked so hard to give me opportunities, and to my father, who believed I had no limits. And I must mention all seven of my siblings—Adria, Carrie, Paul, Patrick, Chad, Caitlin, and Marisa. Sometimes you were my best friends and other times my worst enemies, but thanks for all the material!
To my children, Whitney, Ty, and Topher, who thought it was supercool to let Mom go work on her book. (Probably because you got away with all sorts of things with Dad in charge, like eating marshmallows for dinner.)
And more thanks than I can ever express to my husband, Scott, without whom this book would certainly never have come about. You make life endlessly fun and adventurous.
Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin Page 19
