A while ago I started a project I called "Tales of the Misunderstood Witch," which retold some popular fairy tales from the other point of view. It didn't get very far at the time, but I did get this one story finished or at least mostly finished. Hmmmm ... maybe I'll have to go back to these. It was rather fun.
Rumpelstiltskin OR The tale of the alchemist who never wanted a baby anyway
There once was a dwarf named Rumpelstiltskin. He hated his name – why couldn’t his mother have named him Harry or Bob or Richard? – although he supposed he should feel lucky he wasn’t named Dopey, Sneezy or Grumpy like his cousins. Still, when someone asked his name he told them “call me Stilts” and left it at that.
Like all dwarves, Stilts had a skill for working with metal. He didn’t mine metal ore like his cousins or forge metal like his old school buddies. Stilts was an alchemist, and he had the ability to transmute one metal into another. But while most alchemists concentrated on turning less valuable metals into gold, Stilts spent his time turning all sorts of metals into all sorts of other metals – just because he could. He turned gold into brass and brass into silver and silver into lead. He even tried turning metals into non-metals: silver into glass or porcelain and copper into marble. He spent hours upon hours and days upon days in his small workshop deep in the woods with his experiments.
One evening, when he had traveled into the city to buy supplies, he found himself wandering past the lower levels of the king’s castle. To his surprise, he heard the sounds of a woman sobbing coming from one of the cellars. He found the nearest door – the lock posed no problem to a talented alchemist – and stepped inside to find a beautiful young girl sitting in front of the spinning wheel surrounded by piles of straw. He took a closer look and realized he knew her, although she probably didn’t know him. He had seen her helping her father at the grist mill outside the forest where he lived.
“Good evening, miller’s daughter,” he greeted her pleasantly. “Why are you crying?”
“Oh,” she cried, startled mid-sob. “I have got to spin gold out of straw, and I don’t understand the business.”
The poor girl went on to explain that her father, an insecure man with an inferiority complex, had bragged to the king that his daughter was not only beautiful, but could turn straw into gold with her spinning wheel. The king had promptly had his guards grab the girl and lock her in this room full of straw.
“He told me to get to work and if by early morning I haven’t spun this straw into gold, I will die,” she said, and began sobbing even harder.
Make gold from straw? Stilts had never tried that before. What a challenge!
“What will you give me if I spin it for you?” he asked the girl.
“I will give you my necklace,” she replied, holding out a beautifully worked pendant made of tarnished copper. Stilts practically drooled. Once he changed it to gold – or better yet, platinum – it would be priceless.
He motioned the girl aside, hopped onto her chair and set to work. He had never worked plant material into a metal before and it took him a moment to get the hang of it, but in no time at all he had the knack and he began filling bobbin after bobbin with fine threads of gold.
The sun was just starting to rise when he finished, and he ducked quickly into the hall and hid behind the door as the king entered. He heard the king chuckle with glee as he gazed upon the piles of gold wire.
Stilts ducked into a dark corner as the king led the girl down the hall to a larger cellar, this one also piled high with straw. “Now set to work,” the king told her before shutting her in. “If you value your life, you will spin all this into gold by tomorrow morning.” He locked the door and strode away.
The little man waited for a moment, pondering. He really should get back to his workshop and the necklace the girl had given him would let him buy enough supplies that he wouldn’t have to return to the city for months. But he could hear the miller’s daughter crying again and he felt sorry for the girl. With a heavy sigh, he transmuted the lock and entered the room.
“What will you give me if I spin all this straw into gold?” he asked her. “The ring from my finger,” she answered, and showed him a delicate ring that matched the pendant he’d earned the night before.
Stilts took the ring and set down to work. It went faster now that he had the knack of it, and by the time dawn’s light started to stain the night sky, the room was filled with bobbins of gold wire.
Again the king came and again the dwarf hid behind the door while the girl was led to yet another room, this one as big and the first two rooms put together and piled to the ceiling with bales of straw.
“This, too, must be spun in one night, and if you accomplish it you shall be my wife,” the king told the girl before locking her inside. As the king walked away, Stilts saw the greed in his eyes. The little man was exhausted but he vowed to help the girl one last time.
“What will you give me if I spin the straw for you this time?” he asked the girl upon entering the room.
“I have nothing left to give,” she answered, her eyes full of tears.
Stilts thought for a moment. What could he ask for? A lifetime supply of milled wheat? He didn’t need land or riches; he had plenty of both. An arm, a leg, her firstborn child? What would he ever do with those? “Hee, hee, hee,” he chuckled to himself. “You’re firstborn child.” He did not realize he had spoken aloud.
“I agree,” the miller’s daughter told him. “I promise you my first child I have after I am queen.”
Stilts was stunned. The girl must truly be desperate to promise such a thing. And if she did happen to have a child, what, exactly, was he supposed to do with it? Still, a deal was a deal, so he agreed and set to work.
The dwarf was so exhausted after three days of non-stop work that he left town as soon as he was done spinning the last bobbin of gold. He missed the wedding – it was held only two days later – and didn’t return to the king’s city for almost a year. He had slept for a week then dove headfirst into his alchemy, almost forgetting the Queen’s debt to him. He expanded his experiments to include turning wildflowers into copper and copper into butterfly wings and his work consumed him.
Eventually his supplies ran out and he returned to the city to restock. He had barely taken a step inside the gates when he heard the glad news: The miller’s daughter, who was now the Queen, had given birth to a child. With a start, he remembered strange bargain he had made with the girl.
He still wasn’t sure what he would do with a baby, but a deal was a deal. Maybe he could talk her into something else, like a team of horses or a couple of good mules.
He made his way into the castle and found the Queen’s apartment, sneaking into her room late at night when she was alone. “Remember me?” he greeted her kindly. “It is time to give me what you promised me.”
Immediately the girl ran to the cradle by the window and started wailing and crying. She started offering him, gold, silver, rubies and sapphires by the wagon load if he would only leave the child. Stilts couldn’t get a word in edgewise! Besides, what use would he have for all those riches; he could make most of it himself.
“No,” he told her. “I would rather have something living than all the treasures of the world.”
The Queen started to moan even louder and was hugging the baby so tightly Stilts feared she would smother it. And he was baffled by her reaction. Sure, it was her child, but it wasn’t like he was going to do anything terrible to the baby. And he didn’t live that far away. They could probably arrange to visit a couple times a year. And besides, couldn’t she have other children?
And he didn’t even want the baby! He tried to talk, to make another deal, but she just kept sobbing and moaning. The crying was definitely getting on his nerves. He just wanted to leave, but he also couldn’t just let her off the hook; they had a deal.
“I will give you three days,” he told the weeping Queen. “If at the end of that time you cannot tell my name, you must give up the child to me.”
He left quickly, proud of his solution. Not many people knew his full name, but he had visited her father’s mill for years and she should be able to find out his name without too much trouble. She would be able to keep her child and he wouldn’t have to figure out what to do with a baby. Train it as an assistant, maybe? That would take years! Still, an assistant would be nice. Maybe, he thought, he could hire someone here in the city.
But when he returned to the Queen after the first day, he was disappointed. She wasn’t even close! She tried Caspar, Melchior and even Balthazar. “That is not my name,” he told her, and left.
The second night was also a disappointment. The Queen had obviously had someone go through the servants’ quarters and write down all the names – she tried Roast-ribs and Sheepshanks and Spindleshanks – but she obviously hadn’t bothered to ask her own father if he knew the name of a dwarf alchemist. “That is not my name,” he repeated, and left.
A few hours later, Stilts saw one of the Queen’s messengers riding along the road that led to the woods. Here was his chance! He passed the messenger by a shortcut and quickly built a huge fire in front of his house. As soon as he heard the horse approach, he began to dance and caper around the fire, singing at the top of his lungs:
“Today do I bake, tomorrow I brew,
The day after that the Queen’s child comes in;
And oh! I am glad that nobody knew
That the name I am called is Rumpelstiltskin!”
Sure enough, the messenger heard him and rode back quickly the way he had come. When he arrived that night, the Queen sat calmly, a slightly smug look on her face.
“Now, Mrs. Queen, what is my name?” he asked her.
“Are you called Jack,” she asked, obviously wanting to draw things out a bit.
“No,” he answered.
“Are you called Harry?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin!” she cried.
Stilts hid a smile and began stomping his feet as if angry. Really, why had he ever thought he wanted a baby? He could smell the kid’s dirty diaper from here.
“The devil told you that! The devil told you that!” he screamed, stamping his feet harder and harder until he cracked the floor and disappeared from the Queen’s view. He slipped from the castle, please with his performance. On the way home he stopped at the market and bought a team of oxen, then swung by a lumber camp and hired a boy who didn’t speak much but who had muscles like and ox.
And they lived happily ever after.
