Rumpelstiltskin held out his thin hand to me. “Shall we shake on our bargain, Mistress Miller?”
He was trying to trick me into agreeing to his terms. I felt a surge of anger deeper than this room and this story. He wanted to hurt me and expected me to thank him for it.
I wasn’t about to calmly go along with it. As soon as I got The Change Enchantment from Clover, I was going back to my day. I wouldn’t make any bargains here that could bring Rumpelstiltskin to my future hospital maternity room. This deal would be on my terms.
I shook my head. “No. You want my firstborn child. I’m not going to give him to you.”
Rumpelstiltskin drew a sharp breath and took a step backward. I’d surprised him, but he recovered soon enough. A mask of humor came over his face. “Why would you think that? What need do I have of a human child?”
“If you don’t want my child, then fine, write it down in a contract. You can have any piece of jewelry you want, but you can’t have my children. Ever. I’ll make that bargain with you.”
His face grew hard, and his lips twitched in anger. “I saved your life twice, and now I offer you untold wealth. You’re an ungrateful girl. You care nothing for all I’ve done for you.”
“So I’ve been told by my parents more than once. You can’t guilt me into anything. I’ve had practice resisting that sort of thing. Go ahead—ask how long my mother was in labor with me.” I nodded philosophically. “Eighteen hours. Without painkillers.”
He pointed a bony finger at me. “You’ll die without my help.”
I paced slowly back and forth in front of him. “Are you allowed to buy human children? Does the Alliance know about this?” I had hoped that the name of the Alliance would strike some fear into him. After all, they had stripped him of his fairy powers.
But he laughed, and it was a hollow sound. “When you’re queen, you can have as many children as you desire. You’ll have none if you die in the morning.”
I didn’t answer, just kept pacing. The chain rattled dully against the ground as I moved.
He strolled over to one of the straw mounds, his silhouette as sparse as a shadow. He scooped up a handful, muttered something I couldn’t hear, and the straw changed to golden sticks in his palm. He held them out to me. “Think of the wealth you’ll have. You’ll want for nothing.”
“Unless I want my firstborn child.”
He turned his palm and tipped the golden straw to the ground. “Mistress Miller … be reasonable.”
It irked me that he kept calling me “Mistress Miller,” as though I didn’t need an actual name. Mistress Miller was a title that had nothing to do with me. I had never milled anything in my life.
I stopped pacing and folded my arms. “Why do you want a baby anyway?”
“Does it matter? Would you believe me if I told you?” His lips twisted into a suggestion of a grin. “Very well, then. I want to be a father.”
He was right. I didn’t believe him.
He picked up another piece of straw and twirled it lazily between his fingers. “This child doesn’t even exist yet, and you’re willing to give your life for it? What an odd species you are.” He muttered something and the straw between his fingers turned to gold mid twirl. “Although perhaps it’s just you, and not your species. Plenty of your kind discard their own children, don’t they? Tell me, did your father let out a peep when the king’s men carted you off to the castle to pay for his sins?”
“I told him to let the king’s men take me.”
Rumpelstiltskin tilted his head in mock understanding. “And he listened to you. How noble.”
“My father is a good person,” I said.
Rumpelstiltskin ignored my statement. “Besides, maybe your firstborn child will be a girl and thus quite expendable.”
I expected him to sneer after saying this, but he didn’t. He regarded me as though making a valid point. He not only believed girls were dispensable, he expected me to agree with him. Then I remembered what I had learned in history class about men’s attitudes toward women during the Middle Ages. Women were property, without a say in anything. Men wanted sons, and women were just the means of creating them.
No wonder Rumpelstiltskin called me Mistress Miller. He had probably never bothered to learn my name.
Pointedly I said, “I don’t think girls are expendable.”
“You must think that you are expendable if you’re not willing to bargain with me. You’ll be killed in the morning—you and your family.” He tapped the golden straw against his lip, considering the matter. “I wonder how King John will do it.”
The mention of my family made me shiver. “My family is safe.”
“For the moment, true, but not for long, since I’ll tell the guards where they are if you don’t agree to my terms. Your family will be easy enough to catch.”
My heart banged into my ribs. Rumpelstiltskin had given me the mirror to trick me into revealing my family’s location, and I had done it. How could I have been so foolish?
He flipped the straw he’d been twirling. It gleamed for one brief moment in the candlelight, then sank and disappeared into the straw mound. “You may not care about your own life, but are you willing to trade the lives of your entire family for an unborn baby?”
I swallowed hard. I had to make the bargain. My only choice was in the wording. “Fine. If you give me the enchantment so I can turn things into gold, I’ll let you have any of my possessions—but you only have a year from this day to ask. Any children I have after the year 1200 are forever out of your reach.”
Rumpelstiltskin sauntered over to me. “You think you can put off the wedding night for a year?”
I didn’t answer. He laughed again. “Very well. I agree to your terms. You’re a fair maiden and I’ll wager on King John’s impatience.” He reached out and took my hand. I felt like I was shaking hands with a skeleton.
Then he stepped away from me and rubbed his bony hands together, not for warmth—in anticipation, to get down to business. “If I still had my wand, I could give you the enchantment that way. As it is, things are more complicated.”
He undid the top buttons of his shirt, revealing a pale, sickly chest. Chrissy had a glow about her skin, but Rumpelstiltskin had the pallor of a corpse. He reached under the folds of his shirt, flinched, and yanked something shiny off his skin. As he walked toward me, he held out the object for me to see. It was a golden heart, pulsing in his hand like a living thing.
I stepped backward. “What is that?”
“It’s the enchantment. Once I give this to you, only you will be able to take it off again. I wouldn’t though—all sorts of folk would try to steal it from you.”
I watched the thrumming heart, and took another nervous step backward. “And once I’m wearing it, I’ll be able to turn whatever I want into gold?”
“Just touch the object, say its name, and repeat, ‘Gold, gold, gold.’ Whatever you touch will transform.”
“If you could change objects that easily, why did you bother spinning the straw into gold?”
He smiled like it was a foolish question. “Because that’s what the king requested. Now then, stay still so I can give you your new heart.”
He reached out and put the golden heart on the exposed skin above the collar of my dress. I jolted with shock. The heart was so cold it burned. Rumpelstiltskin moved his hand away, and I expected the heart to fall to the ground. It didn’t. It flattened itself and slowly slid downward under the collar of my dress. I could feel the freezing trail it left until it perched directly over my own heart. Then it burrowed into my skin.
I gasped and put my hand to my chest. “It hurts.”
“Most things in life do.”
It was squeezing my own heart, making it hard to breathe. “How long will the pain last?”
He shrugged. “Does that matter? Now you can have all the gold you want.”
I tried to pull it off. Rumpelstiltskin had said I’d be able to take it off. I pried at its edg
es but it only dug deeper into my skin. “What does gold matter if I can’t breathe?” I asked. He didn’t answer. I looked up and found I was alone in the room.
The pain was worse now. I sank to the ground, still keeping my hand over my heart. I felt something wet, and when I looked down, I saw blood dotting my hand.
I needed help, magical help. Clover had said he would come when I had gold for him, but I was chained to the beam and couldn’t even reach the straw, let alone turn any of it to gold. I pulled at my chain in frustration. It rattled angrily, as though I had woken it from a deep sleep. How could I reach the straw to change it?
But then again, maybe it was better that I couldn’t. I grasped hold of the chain. “Chain and shackle, gold, gold, gold!”
The words brought an extra jolt to my heart, and I flinched so hard I nearly missed the transformation. Like an artist painting a bold color across a canvas, a golden color swept across the dull gray of the chains. The chain was denser now and so heavy it weighed my hand down.
I didn’t take time to examine it. “Clover!” I called. “I have gold for you!”
The leprechaun appeared near the candle, still wearing his new outfit. He gazed at the mountains of straw surrounding us. “Do you? Where? It looks like you’ve been slacking off to me.”
“Over here.” I tried to sit as still as possible. If I didn’t move, my heart hurt less.
Clover walked toward me and saw the chain. “Well,” he said. “I guess that’s what you call being tied to your money, isn’t it?”
“The enchantment is squeezing my heart,” I told him. “How do I make it stop?”
He grunted and picked up one link of the chain to examine it. “That enchantment was never meant for human folk. Of course it’s not going to fit right. But don’t worry, the pain will subside in a bit.” He glanced over at me, and his attention zeroed in on the bloodstains dotting my dress. “You’re too tenderhearted,” he said. “It’s making you bleed. Try not to feel things so much.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” I said.
Clover let out a sigh. “Women. This is why no one ever puts you in charge of wars, butchering animals, or assembling hockey teams.” He held up a link of the chain. “Here, look at this for a bit and it will help. See how it gleams and shimmers? See how smooth it is? Like a sunbeam, it is. Like a sturdy friend. Now doesn’t your heart feel better?”
It didn’t. But focusing on my objectives did lessen the pain. And my objective now was to get The Change Enchantment from Clover and get out of here. I only hoped the book wasn’t painful too.
“You can have this entire golden chain and shackle if you’ll give me The Change Enchantment,” I said.
Clover momentarily stopped stroking the chain. “We agreed to trade for two spools of gold.”
I lifted my hand, showing him the shackle. “I can’t reach the straw. I won’t be able to change it until morning when Haverton comes to free me and then they’ll probably watch me all day. Who knows how long it will take until I can get some spools for you, and your creditors are waiting.”
Clover plucked at his beard, looked back at the mountains of straw, then stroked the chain again. “Very well.” He leaned toward me. “But you mustn’t tell Chrissy. As far as she knows, I was never here and this story is going exactly as planned.” He reached into his jacket and took out the tiny book I’d seen earlier. He placed it in my palm and it grew until it was the size of a picture book. The spinning wheel on the front not only shone like embossed gold, but the wheel turned slowly. A quill pen was attached to the inside cover in a flap. Instead of black ink, I saw a drop of liquid gold at its point.
Clover lowered his voice to a whisper. “Complete the story your own way and write the moral in the back of the book. Once you do that, your fairy tale is done, and Chrissy will have to take the lot of you home.” He cast a nervous glance around the room. “And if she doesn’t know you changed things, all the better.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Aye,” he said, but he wasn’t paying attention to me any longer. He took the gold chain in his hands and kissed it. At once the links broke apart. They flew in the air, suspended, and spun into small disks—coins. A black pot appeared below them, and they rained down into it, clinking noisily as they landed.
Clover tipped his hat at me. “I’m off to pay me debts, then see the lads for a bit of poker.” And with that, the leprechaun and his pot vanished.
Chapter 14
I rubbed my hand where the handcuff had been. I was free from that at least. I walked over to the candle, wincing. The pain in my chest had subsided but moving made it worse. I eased myself down to sitting position and opened the book. On the first page, written in elaborate script, was a paragraph telling how the miller’s daughter had been taken from her home. On the opposite page was a finely painted picture of the events. And I was the girl in the picture.
Time stopped as I stared at the illustration. There I was, captured in an artist’s brush strokes, being led to the carriage. My hair flowed around my shoulders in luxurious blond waves that I was sure hadn’t been there in the real event, and I wore a brown dress instead of the jeans I’d really had on. Apparently illustrators took liberties with stories too.
In the picture, I was looking over my shoulder at my family. My eyes were wide, frightened, apologetic.
I ran my finger along the page as though I might be able to rub away the expression. Clover was right. I did feel things too much.
I turned the page. It showed me in the tower room next to the stack of straw, staring at it and weeping. I didn’t like seeing myself that way, vulnerable, where any passing reader could see my pain. I flipped to the next page. It was my first meeting with Rumpelstiltskin. I was handing him my necklace as he looked at me hungrily. Who had painted these pictures? How had they known these details? Did the book just magically record them?
I flipped ahead until I reached a picture where I wore a maroon and gold dress and was shaking hands with Rumpelstiltskin—that had happened only moments ago.
I turned the page, holding my breath to see what it would reveal. A picture of me in a wedding dress, a crown upon my head, was fading. For a moment I saw my own eyes staring up at me and then they disappeared, leaving the page blank. I flipped through the rest of the book. It was a series of empty pages. Lines on one side, a framed picture of nothing on the other.
I wanted to hug the book in relief. Instead, I picked up the quill and scribbled down words as fast as they came to me.
The miller’s daughter changed the straw into gold, took some with her, and was able to walk out the unlocked door and flee the castle yard altogether. She met up with her family outside the castle walls where they had been safely waiting for her. The king was so happy to have so much gold that he spent the next week counting and admiring it and didn’t come after the miller’s daughter or her family.
I glanced back at what I’d written. To my horror, it was fading off the page.
“No!” I brought the book closer to my face hoping the words would still exist if I looked at them close up.
But they were gone. What did that mean?
Maybe the words hadn’t remained in the book because I hadn’t actually done the things I’d written. Maybe I couldn’t finish the story by dictating the events. But then, how did I finish it? Was there some sort of formula for knowing when a story ended?
I stared at the book.
Who was to say the story wasn’t already finished? I was the author. I voted that this was a good place for the story to end. Which meant all I needed was a moral, and we would be back in the twenty-first century.
I put the pen on the top of the page.
The miller’s daughter was extremely grateful that she didn’t have to marry the horrid king who’d been threatening to kill her, and she learned an important moral: Do not make bargains with magical beings. The End.
The golden ink shimmered in the candlelight, then faded away. I felt spar
ks of panic igniting inside me. This had to work. It was my way home. I just had to get the moral right. Luckily, I had the entire night before King John came for me. I would find the right one.
I sat by the candle and wrote every moral that seemed possible. I tried vague ones: Good prevails over evil. All that glitters isn’t gold. I tried specific ones: Fairy men are male chauvinists. Be careful what you wish for if your fairy godmother is more concerned about finding a new job than improving your life.
I tried my first ideas: Don’t brag about things you can’t do. Make sure your father doesn’t brag about things you can’t do.
Nothing stuck.
Finally I put down the book and rubbed my eyes. It was useless, and it was late, and there was obviously something that Clover hadn’t told me. I called him, knowing even as I did, that he wouldn’t come. He was off playing poker and the best I could hope for was that he’d lose quickly and come back for more gold.
I picked up the pen again and wrote: Poker is a terrible vice.
Nope. It faded away as soon as I added the period at the end of the sentence.
I would have to escape on my own, and hope that I could figure out the right moral soon. I tucked the pen into its flap, then stood up, stiff from sitting hunched over the book for so long. I walked to the nearest pile of straw, placed my hands on top of it, and whispered, “Straw, gold, gold, gold.”
I felt a stab of pain in my chest, as though the power had ripped its way out of my heart, but the transformation was immediate. The straw under my hands was no longer light and prickly. It was a jumble of golden sticks. However, only the straw I’d been touching changed. The rest of it still stood there, unaffected.
At this rate, it would take the entire night and then some to change all the straw.
I really did hope that if King John found the room filled with gold in the morning, he’d be more concerned with guarding, moving, and inventorying it than tracking me down. Could I add measurements to the chant?
I put my hands on a different patch of straw. “Straw mound, gold, gold, gold.” The pain was so bad I gasped and shut my eyes, but when I opened them the entire mound had been reduced to a pile of golden twigs.