The Rumpelstiltskin Problem (9 page)

"Gold," Luella said, "however much of it you want. Tomorrow when I'm named queen-to-be, I can give you however much your heart desires."

"
Tomorrow,
" Rumpelstiltskin echoed.

"Well, yes," Luella said with a slight hint of exasperation creeping into her tone. "I have nothing to give you tonight, but tomorrow when the king announces I am to be wed—"

"I," Rumpelstiltskin interrupted, shaking her head, "I don't want your gold, you silly girl. If I can spin straw into gold, what need have I of gold?"

"Well, you took the ring and the locket," Luella said peevishly. "All right, then, pick something besides gold. Gems, clothes, horses." She was getting nowhere. "Servants, lands, a title."

The more she talked, the more Rumpelstiltskin got aggravated with her.
I should never have helped her at all,
she thought.
Spoiled thing that she is. Of course the king will
marry her. He'll probably even be satisfied with the gold that he has, if he has her, too. They'll live in this castle, with servants to wait on them, and the people of the kingdom to love them, and she'll have dozens of babies, all as pretty and empty-headed as she is.

Luella stamped her foot. "Well, what do you want, you horrid little man?" she demanded.

Rumpelstiltskin had to fight herself to keep from grabbing Luella and shaking her. "I am
not
a little man," she shouted. "And what I want..."
Oh, go ahead, say it.
"What I want is your firstborn child." She couldn't believe the words had come out of her.

Luella gave a hoot of disbelief or protest.

"I mean the child no harm," Rumpelstiltskin said. "And you're young, you're healthy. What's to stop you from having a score of children?"

"You can't be serious," Luella said.

Rumpelstiltskin shrugged. "How serious was the king when he said you must spin or die?"

Luella looked at all that straw.

"You won't have
any
children if you don't give him that gold," Rumpelstiltskin told her.

"All right, all right," Luella said. "First children are always brats, anyway."

So Rumpelstiltskin spun.

***

Whatever Luella told the king, within a month they were married, and within a year the kingdom was celebrating the birth of the royal couple's first child: a baby girl.

Rumpelstiltskin heard no rumors about herself, but she knew that the promise Luella had made to her was one that not even Luella could forget.

One day, after the baby's birth but before its christening, Rumpelstiltskin returned to the castle. That night, while the king was in the great hall celebrating with his lords and barons, Rumpelstiltskin climbed up the castle wall to the room in the eastern tower that, she had learned, was the nursery.

The night was warm and the shutters were open. How could Luella be so careless, so unaware of her danger? Rumpelstiltskin looked in and saw the young mother sitting in a chair, rocking her baby.

Rumpelstiltskin leapt down into the room.

Luella almost dropped the baby, she stood up so quickly. "You!" she cried. "I'd hoped you'd died."

Which at least was an honest reaction, if not a nice one.

Rumpelstiltskin looked down at herself, checking her hands—backs and palms—before looking up at Luella and answering, "Apparently not." Then she said, "I've come for the child you promised me."

"No!" Luella cried. "You can't have her. I've told my husband all about how you came and spun the gold for me. He doesn't care. He's satisfied with the gold he has, and now he loves me, and he would not give me up for anything."

"Lucky you," Rumpelstiltskin said. "But that's neither here nor there. You promised the child in return for my doing a task, and the task was done." Her arms ached with longing to hold the sweetly cooing baby, whose hands flailed about helplessly.
I would be a better mother than you,
she thought.

"Please," Luella wailed, "spare my baby." She fell to her knees. "I beg you. The king and I will reward you in whatever way you ask."

"I ask," Rumpelstiltskin said, "for the baby."

"Why do you want the life of my baby?" Luella sobbed.

"I don't want her life," Rumpelstiltskin assured her. "I mean the child no harm. I want to raise her, as a daughter." She held her arms out for the child, but still she was surprised, unpleasantly so. She wouldn't have thought that Luella was capable of such strong feelings for the child.

"Please, please, please," Luella begged, weeping. "I was so afraid before that I was willing to agree to anything you said. But now I'm even more afraid, on my child's behalf. Please give me another chance to make a different bargain."

Rumpelstiltskin's head was spinning with the mother's tears, and then the door opened and the king walked in.

His face went from jovial to terror stricken as he saw Rumpelstiltskin. "Oh, no!" he cried. "It's the ugly little man you told me about!"

But before Rumpelstiltskin could protest that she wasn't a man, Luella gave a warning hiss. "No, no," she warned her husband, "he doesn't like to be called little."

"Sorry," the king said, so desperate Rumpelstiltskin felt pity for him. "Sorry. Please, please, take anything but our child. Take me, instead."

"Where was that offer thirty years ago?" Rumpelstiltskin muttered. Still, her heart had softened, and she said, "I will give you one more chance."

"Oh, good!" Luella said. Then, very clearly, very distinctly, she said, "I
do not
want you to spin more straw into gold." Triumphantly she added, "There!"

"That's not the chance I meant," Rumpelstiltskin said. "I will pose a riddle. Answer correctly, and I'll let you keep the child." She paused to consider, because she didn't want them to win. What riddle could they never guess? She studied the king and the queen—two self-absorbed people who didn't even look at her closely enough to realize she wasn't a man. She felt her lips twitch in a smile. "What," she asked, "is my name?"

Luella and the king looked at each other in desperate confusion. "How many guesses do we get?" the king asked.

Rumpelstiltskin smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand, but said, "Five guesses."

"Uhm, could it be George?" Luella asked. "Or Stanislaus?"

"Bubba?" the king asked. "Skippy?"

But just then the door flew open and in walked the miller, Luella's father. "Where is that beautiful new granddaughter of mine?" he asked in a cheery voice. Then his eyes went from his daughter, holding the baby, to the king, standing next to her—both looking frantic—to Rumpelstiltskin.

The miller hastily held up his fingers in the sign meant to stop the evil eye. "It's our old neighbor, the witch Rumpelstiltskin!" he cried.

In that self-satisfied tone that only those who are used to being positive of themselves can achieve, Luella shouted, "Is your name Rumpelstiltskin?"

Rumpelstiltskin stamped her foot, infuriated that her own soft heart had lost her what she most desired. With a cry that was part pain and part fury, she jumped out the window, practically skimming over the surface of the stones that formed the tower.

She went back to her home, whose only joy was her garden, and she never again returned to the castle, determined to raise vegetables rather than children. Still, years later she tried once again to steal a child from parents who struck her as being unfit. They were the couple who lived on the other side of her yard, a couple with an unwholesome appetite for the greens she grew in her garden. She actually ended up raising that child for a while, though in the end things didn't work out there either. But that's a different story.

Once upon a time, before movie stars or rock singers or professional athletes, the people everybody most wanted to meet were kings and queens.

In one particular land there was a king named Gregory. King Gregory was young and handsome and known to be kind, and he was also unmarried—all of which made him very popular with young ladies. But King Gregory's kingdom was being threatened by greedy King Norvin to the west, so Gregory decided he needed to get in touch with his people to make sure they would never choose Norvin over him. Gregory took to getting out of his royal carriage as he traveled through the countryside, and he would walk alongside it, talking to the villagers or farmers he met along the way.

One day as Gregory was passing through a small town, he stopped to watch a blacksmith at his forge. "You do excellent work," Gregory told him. "You're a credit to your craft."

"Thank you, sire," the blacksmith said, pausing only to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

"What about me?" asked a voice from the group that had gathered to watch the king watch the blacksmith. A short man in a long apron stepped forward and announced, "I'm the town's only miller. I think I can honestly say that I keep the town in breads and cakes."

"We passed your fine mill on the way in," Gregory told him enthusiastically. "An admirable place. A praiseworthy establishment. This community is lucky to have you." King Gregory shook the man'sjiand, then turned back to watch the smith hammer the heated metal to a smooth thin surface.

But the miller pushed his way to the front of the onlookers and tugged on the king's sleeve, demanding his attention. "It's hard work, milling," he said. "Much more complicated than people might think."

"I'm certain it is," Gregory agreed.

"It's one of those things that only
looks
easy to do, but there's all sorts of considerations: the humidity—you wouldn't believe how much the weather affects my work—and the quality of the grain and whether it's early in the season or late, and the weight of the stone, and—"

Gregory shook the man's hand again. "It's incredible that the works gets done at all." He managed to slip his hand out of the miller's grasp. Smiling to the townspeople, he made his way out the door and across the street to where his carriage waited.

The miller followed him. "Of course," he said, "I have my daughter to help me. And a fine daughter she is."

"Well, then, you're both fortunate," Gregory said pleasantly. The royal footman got down from his perch to help the king into the carriage.

"My daughter," the miller continued, "her name is Carleen, she's a beautiful girl.
Beautiful.
I think I can honestly say she's the most beautiful girl in the country."

People were always trying to arrange for the king to meet their daughters—who were always the most beautiful girl in the country. But Gregory only said, without sarcasm, "Is she?" and settled into his seat.

But the day being fine, the window was open, and the miller leaned in. "I swear," he said. He spoke each word separately and distinctly: "
The. Most. Beautiful.
She would make an excellent wife for
any
man."

Gregory didn't point out that he was looking for more in a wife than beauty. He just smiled politely and gestured for the driver to start.

The miller walked alongside the carriage. "And she isn't
just
beautiful," the miller continued, as though he'd read the king's mind. "She's a good girl. And smart. And talented."

"She sounds a credit to her parents and her community," Gregory said. He rapped his knuckles on the front wall of the carriage—a signal to the driver to speed up.

The miller trotted to keep up. "Why, she can sing," he said, "sweet as a nightingale." He was beginning to pant from his attempt to match the pace of the horses. "She weaves cloth of colors that don't even have names yet." As the miller finally began to fall behind, Gregory could no longer see his face, but only his hand clutching the window frame. The miller spoke louder and faster. "And the clothes she sews make the fat look thin, the old look young, the ugly look beautiful." He finally let go of the window. "Not that
she
needs help to look beautiful," he called after the carriage. "I think I can honestly say
that.
She's as good as gold."

Gregory waved out the window.

"In fact," the miller shouted as the carriage made its way up the hill, "she can spin straw into gold."

"That must come in very handy for you," Gregory said. "I'd love to meet her some day." He hoped that the laughter didn't come through in his voice, because he didn't want to hurt the miller's feelings.

He didn't realize that hurting the miller's feelings was the least of his worries.

The following night, just as the castle household was getting ready to settle down for bed, there was a loud commotion at the front gate.

King Gregory went outside to a spot that overlooked the gate. He could see that it was not greedy King Norvin's army come to demand tribute, but apparently only one person, wrapped in a threadbare traveling cloak, banging on the heavy oak door. "What is it?" Gregory asked the captain of the guard. "What's the trouble?"

"It's a young woman, sire, demanding entrance. I told her to come back tomorrow morning, but she says you invited her here. She says she's later than expected and you'll be frantic and that if I don't let her in, once you find out I kept her waiting, you'll have my head chopped off." The captain shrugged apologetically, for it was not Gregory's way to threaten to chop off people's heads.

"I invited her?" Gregory repeated, wondering if he had forgotten some social engagement with a neighboring princess.

"Her name," the captain said, "is Carleen of the town of Roxburough—Carleen the miller's daughter, she says."

Gregory remembered the miller. He sighed in exasperation that the annoying man had sent his poor daughter all the way here for nothing. And apparently on foot. But he couldn't just tell her that; he couldn't say: "Walk on back home even though it's the middle of the night. Your father was wrong. I
don't
want to meet you."

Instead he leaned over the wall and called to the porter at the door, "Let her in. See that she has a comfortable room for the night and that she's given something warm to eat."

Carleen the miller's daughter looked up at the sound of his voice. "Thank you, Your Highness," she called.