Rumplestilskin
So there was this time that me and Lou were stuck on incognito lookout duty at this guy’s castle. See, we owed us a favor to King Oberon for a little bit of financial type assistance he offered us when we was havin a bad run of luck at the rat races. (Lou wants me to put in here that them races was fixed, and I reminded him we knowed they was fixed, cause we’ve had a couple side jobs helpin with said fixins.)
So we had a fifty year stint as yeomen to King Oberon, and if he said watch this castle, well, that’s just was we’s was gonna do.
We sure wasn’t gonna hang out at this place for the pleasure of the surroundins. Now me and Lou, we’ve fallen on some rough times, but nothin like where this guy was, and it’s not like we run around tellin people we’re kings, neither. Everythin was a little grimy and fallin apart, everyone was a little skinny and cranky, and altogether, it made for the kinda place that you’d just as soon pass right on by if you was on the road.
The good part about the job was that the castle was in such poor repair, me and Lou had some real nice quarters and passages worked out that let us go anywhere in the place without being seen by nobody. Pretty sweet for stayin out of view and all, and King Oberon sent some sprites every now and again to make sure we was taken care of for provisions and all.
Of course, that meant we had to fill out these things called ‘requisition forms’ – he had this guy who was obsessed with somethin he called modernizin the operations and that this was the wave of the future or somethin.
Whatever, we figured it was somethin to do while we waited for somethin interestin to happen at Castle Charlot.
That part took a long time. Y’see, the king was apparently so disagreeable about life in general (and Lou says who could blame him, the man got a bum piece of luck- you get born as king and then it’s king of a crapheap like Castle Charlot. And I reminded Lou that you gotta make your own luck and grab opportunity by the horns and not bet on rat races. Lou conceded the point) that even his own people spent most of the time stayin the heck away from him.
So, no surprise, turns out King Crank has trouble with findin himself a noble bride. The irony bein that a nice fat dowry woulda set the place to rights in no time at all. But a girl what gots that kinda scratch, she don’t have to settle for this yutz. She could have a guy what had a nice place, a good attitude about life, a guy what would try to get along.
This wasn’t that guy.
In time, the king hadda lower his sights just a little bit from the nobility to the gentry. After all the barons and knights and squires hastily packed their daughters off to distant relatives with some lame excuses (‘Young Wanda has always wanted to learn more about alchemy from her auntie Zelda by the sea’ or ‘My little Agnes is nursing her half brother in Transylvania through a case of dragon pox’), the king gnashed his teeth and pulled his beard.
And began looking at commoner’s daughters as marriage material.
You ever notice how every village has that one guy with the very dangerous combination of a lack of sense and a lack of luck? Well, in Charlot village, that guy was the miller. Right about the time the king accepted the fact that he was gonna be marryin so far beneath his station for heirs and repairs of his fortune was right out the window, the miller stumbled on a little payday.
Like most fools and their money, (you mean like us? Lou is pipin up. I told him to shaddup) bein soon parted, this miller took his windfall straight to the tavern and started buyin rounds. And over the course of a long night, proceeds to tell this crazy story about how his daughter can spin straw into gold, and that’s where his sudden cash influx came from.
And even though it’s crazy stupid, that story ran through the town like wildfire. The next morning, the king had it along with his sparse breakfast tray, and of course he demands the girl be brought to the castle at once. Straw was about the only thing other than rocks and bad attitude the king had in abundance, so he figures he’s home free.
Now I gotta tell ya, the way the king handled the next part should really go down in like some kinda book about how not to pay your addresses to the fairer sex. He had her escorted into the throne room by two men at arms that was as bad tempered as him, tells her he’s gonna lock her in a room fulla straw, and if she hasn’t spun it into gold by mornin, he’ll chop off her and her father’s heads.
So you know me and Lou hot footed it to the room to see if she could really do this, cause, you know, if she could, we might could pick up another one of them life skills that would be really kinda helpful.
But no, the girl gets locked in with her spinnin wheel and piles and piles of straw and just sits down and starts to cry.
Me and Lou’s a lot of things, but we ain’t cold hearted. A pretty girl’s facin havin no face in the mornin, and we get to talkin about how we could help.
Before we could think of anythin that would be helpful, an imp popped up in the room, cacklin like they do.
Somethin about imps you should know, they ain’t no nice guys. They got no problem gettin their hands dirty and doin folk wrong as long as they get paid.
And I hear they eats cats, the bastidges.
They was talkin so low, we couldn’t hear what was bein said, but could make some educated type guesses. This imp guy was flappin his arms around a bunch between the girl and the wheel and the straw and I think tellin some tale about how he’d spin all the straw for her, but wanted somethin in return. They went back and forth a bit before she gave him the ring off her hand. She cried more as she twisted it off her finger– it was super clear that this little ring meant a lot to the girl.
The cold hearted imp bastidge loved it. Shook hands on it and he got to work. And sure enough, the little green bugger does know how to spin straw into gold, cause it started pilin up right quick.
And me and Lou is up in the rafters, trying to take note of everythin he done and how he done it.
Long story short, when mornin comes, the straw’s gold, the imp’s gone, and the girl, havin managed to get some sleep and comb out her hair with her fingers, don’t look half bad. In sweeps the king, absolutely filled with glee that he ain’t broke no more. It put him in such a good mood, he noticed that the girl wasn’t exactly a hag, herself, and he gets down on bended knee, apologizes for bein a yutz, asks to marry her and make a life of happily ever after again.
Just kiddin, we know that only happens in storybooks, not the real world in like what we lives in.
He grabs her up by the arm, drags her into an even bigger room filled with straw, and tells her she’s got the day and the night to spin all this into gold too. If she can do it, he’ll marry her, and if she can’t, off with her head.
Ain’t those both just charmin propositions? Here this poor girl just gave him more money than he woulda got from the dowry of the noblest of princesses, and this is how the yutz says thank you.
The poor miller’s daughter paced around and around that huge room while Lou put his observations to work. No one really seemed to get anywhere though, cause the miller’s daughter apparently wasn’t takin herself no notes the night before, and Lou’s spinnin efforts got us copper instead of gold.
“Lou! That’s not gonna help the lady, what are you doin wrong?”
“I dunno, Vin, I coulda swore that this is just how the imp did it,” he said, his round innocent face all worked up. “Maybe he was sayin somethin we couldn’t hear.”
“Maybe you should try harder,” I said, one eye lookin out the peephole at the girl.
“Maybe you should come give it a shot since you knows so much!”
And if you could believe it, that went even worse. I coulda swore I did everythin the imp had did too, and all I got was silver.
“Well this is no good,” we agreed. But feelin like we couldn’t not say nothin at all, we was just about to introduce ourselves to the miller’s daughter when that bastidge imp popped up again, wantin to play let’s make a deal.
“Oh this won’t do,” I said, and jumped down from the wall, puttin myself between the imp and the miller’s daughter.
“Look, mac, the lady ain’t got nothin to give you, so why don’t you just shove off?”
Well neither the lady nor the imp liked that too well, even after I did the mannerly thing and introduced myself.
“Why are you trying to drive away the only soul who can help me?” the lady said.
“Cause me and Lou’s can help you!”
The imp snickered, and I wanted to wipe that smirk offa his face. “You can spin straw into gold?”
I cleared my throat and shuffled my feet a little in the straw. “Not exactly, but silver spends, too.”
Both lady and imp scoffed at me. “Are you trying to get my head cut off, you little creeper? Why don’t you just go back to what you were doing, nothing useful, and let me get back to talking to my friend, here? This is really none of your affair,” she said haughtily, stickin her nose in the air. I was startin to think that maybe her and the king deserved each other.
“And I would lay bets that if you do know anything about spinning, you got it from watching me last night!” the imp said in outrage. “By rights, you owe me for teaching you!”
For some reason, this is when Lou decided to interject himself into the conversation. “I think not, my good man, for you see, at no point in the proceedins with the miller’s daughter did you stipulate that she should turn away or ignore what you were doin. You practised your craft openly, at no time checkin for the presence of anyone else that might infringe upon your right to guard a trade secret. And since we was under strict orders of King Oberon to observe anythin of notice goin on in Castle Charlot, well, youse can see the predicament it woulda put us in had we not kept an eye on what’s what goin on last night.”
You gotta love Lou. He don’t often decide to speaks up in fronta folks, but when he does, he uses the right words almost every time.
The green drained right out of the imp’s face. “You’re King Oberon’s men?”
I turned my shoulder to him and tapped the crest on my livery. “Read it and weep, catmuncher.”
He didn’t take the news with too good of grace. His face was all screwed up like he was eatin lemons with a skunky smell to ‘em. “What will you, my lords?”
Well, that was a turnaround and no mistake. We didn’t know why we was watchin the place to start with, and we didn’t want to interrupt anyone’s plans.
Lou came to my rescue again. “You can make a deal, we’s just gonna be here to make sure it’s a fair deal. King Oberon is tryin to establish ties between fae and human and youse guys what cheat people make it kinda hard to get a good rep goin.”
The imp looked like he’d had broken glass for breakfast, but the green was comin back into his face. “Gentlemen,” he said, his voice oozin oily smarm. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.” He turned to the miller’s daughter and gave her a sigh and a nod.
And you coulda knocked me over with a feather when she turned into an even greener, impier imp!
“I present to you my daughter, Wagglethurp.”
The girl turned imp curtsied to us politely.
“You see, the king needs money, my daughter needs a husband, and I happen to have a certain set of skills. But we knew presenting the matter as a straightforward proposition was not going to accomplish anything. So we were set to practice a bit of subterfuge.” He went on to tell us that he knew the king was a yutz, so he’d arranged this whole charade just so’s he had a good reason to ‘steal away’ his daughter’s firstborn and see to it the kid was brought up right.
Or as right as an imp can raise one, which me and Lou was polite enough to keep to ourselves.
“That seems like a real twisty way to end up where you’re goin,” I said. “But I can’t think of why King Oberon would object. In the end, this guy gets a wife, an heir, and a buncha money, and he ain’t no nice guy.”
Both imps was noddin at me now.
So, we let the pair get about their business, which really didn’t have nothin to do with me and Lou. Sure, we still felt sorry for Wagglethurp, but we figured she wasn’t in for nothin she didn’t sign up for.
The next mornin, the yutz king come in, saw all the gold heaped around the room, and decided to go on and marry the imp (or is it impess? I always gets that mixed up) under the next full moon. I guess he wanted time to flaunt to all of the nobles that had turned him down all about his good fortune.
We sent our report off to King Oberon and didn’t hear nothin back, so we kinda shrugged and kept an eye on things like usual.
The weddin went off with lots of stuff that normally ain’t a thing (has you ever noticed how people what’s suddenly got money feel like they gotta throw it around to prove they got it? Yeah, me and Lou could write a whole dissertation type thing on that) like solid gold goblets and plates and napkins (which is super impractical) and horseshoes (for luck, ya know). All the neighborin kingdoms and duchies sent folk to come and schmooze and try to sell the bridal couple more and more outrageous stuff to get their hands on some of that spun gold.
And mostly, they went on and bought it! In a month, they managed to start add on wings to Castle Charlot with glass in the windows and all kinds of newfangled gadgets and whatnot. They spent money like it was nothin, and I guess, in a way, it was.
Finally the day of the weddin came, and to our shock, we was invited to attend as honored guests. So’s we put on our best double breastfed suits with shined up spats and we went to see what kind of extravagant craziness the king and queen put together.
And then, wouldn’t you know it, King Oberon his self shows up at the feast.
Now, I ain’t sayin that don’t happen, even nowadays, but some folks is kinda leery of havin fae muckity mucks to fancy gatherins due to a few bad apples givin gifts that ain’t so great.
When time came for the toasts, sure enough, King Oberon was the first on his feet, smilin all friendly as he gave his speech.
He congratulated the new queen on achievin her goals, and the new king for bein so welcomin to the magical type community. It wasn’t every regular guy that would be broad enough to do what he done, and he commended him on his longsightedness.
By now the yutz king was sweatin like a brownie caught in a good deed, castin these sideways glances at Wagglethurp. who was cuttin glances over at us that promised murder and mayhem.
And me and Lou is sittin there as innocent as can be, givin King Oberon every attention.
Oberon says in light of this new era of cooperation between the worlds of man and fae, it would be his honor to accepted the king and queen’s first born for fosterin, that the boy could learn the best of both worlds and take care of all the subjects fairly.
I wanna point out here that King Oberon didn’t never call out Wagglethurp and her father on the scurvy trick they done pulled, and he didn’t do nothin to embarrass the king. He just made a statement and made a real kind, generous offer to take the heir under his wing. He was right honorable about the whole situation, and it made me proud to look to him as my lord.
Of course, it also meant that new queen and her king had a lot of gossip about ‘em, the kind that even piles of gold in every corner of the house don’t exactly cover up. Folks got way less interested in tryin to sell all kinds of crazy stuff to ‘em, and visitin in general. And the queen’s father was done out of getting to raise the heir to be as twisty and double crossin as he was.
And when the prince showed up right on schedule, not green and with all the right numbers of fingers and toes, it like to drove all the gossipy types nuts, since none of ‘em could figure out what was wrong with the kid.
And thanks to Oberon, the kid got to grow up to be a stand up guy.
But that’s another story.
Curiouser and Curiouser 