Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin by Liesl Shurtliff Page B

crown on his head, gold chains around his neck, gold armor on his chest, gold rings on all his fingers. His saddle was gilded gold. His boots had gold buckles. I imagined if I could see beneath his horse’s hooves, the horseshoes would be gold. Gold, gold, gleaming gold. There were servants on all sides of the king with giant paddles, and they swatted at the pixies trying to converge on the king and all his glorious gold.
    But King Bartholomew Archibald Reginald Fife …
    King Barf was chubby.
    He had a turned-up nose and floppy ears.
    He looked like a pink pig with a crown on his head.
    “My people of The Mountain,” he said, double chins wobbling. He sounded like a pig with a stuffy nose. “Your work is so valuable to The Kingdom.
    “I have traveled here personally to your village because a curiosity has come to my attention.” King Barf pulled something from his saddlebag, and the blood drainedfrom my face. He held up a single spool of thread. Gold threads perfectly coiled. My gold!
    “For several years now, I have received little gold for your tax. I am a generous king and I have sustained you, yet lo and behold, I find this gold, brought to me by one of my own advisers. Fine gold. Fine workmanship. And yet no one in The Kingdom seems to know where it came from.”
    My gold. The miller. When I traded it, I didn’t think about what he would do with it, where it would end up. But how could I not have seen this? Of course, he would trade the gold in The Kingdom. And the king, loving gold as he did, would get his hands on it eventually, and then, of course, he would wonder. It wasn’t normal gold dug out of The Mountain in clumps and pebbles, mixed with dirt. No craftsman could have molded the gold into such fine threads. This was gold only I could spin.
    King Barf’s piggy eyes turned cold and suspicious. “My soldiers will search through your homes and your mines to be sure that you are not robbing me of my rights to the gold in my kingdom. If I find you are deceiving me, stealing from me …” He squeezed the gold tight in his hand. He didn’t crush it or make it disappear, but we understood.
    A murmur went through the crowd until the soldier blew his horn again. “All citizens of The Mountain will go to their homes and await inspection!” Everyone hustled and bustled against one another, all moving in different directions.
    I stood still. I could feel Red staring at me. Finally, I looked at her, and for the first time since we had worked side by side in the sluices, Red hit me. She slapped meright over the head and said, “You really are a numbskull,” and she trudged off.
    Was there any point in arguing?
    I was doomed. There was gold lying in tangles on my floor as if it were nothing but straw. I hadn’t even bothered to hide it. And what about the miller? Did he still have gold sitting in his house? Surely he had hidden it well, or he was making some kind of plan. I could hide mine too, in The Woods. Maybe near Red’s hollow beehive log. I didn’t care about the gold, but I didn’t want to go to the dungeons for the rest of my life or sit in the stocks so people could throw mud and rotten food at me.
    I raced home. I gathered all the skeins and tangles and bits of gold that I could find, wrapped them in a rag, and ran out the back door. A few pixies that were outside flitted over and started sniffing and chattering around the bundle. Don’t swat them. Don’t cause commotion. If I let them be, then no one will notice .
    I crept through trees and huddled behind rocks, away from roads and paths where soldiers were going in and out of houses. The gnomes were running around madly with messages from soldiers to the king, only gnomes have a hard time with longer names and messages, so King Barf’s name always came out a little garbled.
    “Message for King Barf-a-hew Archy-baldy Regy-naldy Fife!”
    “No gold here!”
    “No gold there!”
    “No gold!”
    “No gold!”
    “No gold!”
    I walked