The Rumpelstiltskin Problem by Vivian Vande Velde Read Free Book Online Page B

cream. Rumpelstiltskin stayed where he was, rocking miserably backward and forward in the dark.
    But there was so much unhappiness coming from the nearby castle, that it washed over even as far as the cottage.
    They were afraid, Rumpelstiltskin could tell, afraid that he would come back for the baby.
    That night's palace ball centered on the theme Guess the Monster's Name.
    "An evil named," the king said, unhappily enough for Rumpelstiltskin, beneath the goat keeper's cottage, to overhear, "is an evil conquered. If we could only name this creature..."
    Rumpelstiltskin,
Rumpelstiltskin thought. He had introduced himself to Katya.
    But apparently Katya had only been paying attention to herself, for, weeping, she said she did not know his name.
    Rumpelstiltskin took the saucer of cream the goat keeper had set out for the cat and, carrying it carefully, he burrowed into the earth, through the yard, and up through the castle floors, until he found himself in the baby's room.
    The nurse was asleep in her chair beside the baby prince's cradle.
    Good,
Rumpelstiltskin thought. The floor was painted blue, a good background color for showing up cream. Rumpelstiltskin dipped his finger into the saucer he'd carried with him and began tracing letters onto the floor: first an
R,
then a
U
...
    When he was finished, he picked up the saucer and threw it onto the floor to get everyone's attention. The nurse woke up, guards rushed in, and the king and Katya came running in, too.
    "He's come to steal our baby!" Katya screeched, though Rumpelstiltskin wasn't standing anywhere near the baby; he was standing by his name, which he'd written in cream on the blue-painted floor.
    "Don't anybody move," the king commanded. "Maybe we can try reasoning with him."
    "Why, someone's written something on the floor," one of the guards said, "and he was about to rub it out."
    Which was exactly wrong, but at least it got everybody looking at the floor.
    "It looks like a name," the nurse said. "It looks like..." She was trying to read it upside down and backward. "
N
...
I
...
K
—Nikolaus?"
    "
R,
said one of the guards, who was clever enough to see which end was up. "Could it be Robert?"
    They were all rolling their
R's
and trying to sound out
Rumpelstiltskin.
As soon as someone—it was Katya, by chance—said something that started with an
R
and had four syllables, Rumpelstiltskin pulled his hair and gave a cry that he hoped sounded more like frustration than heartfelt relief, and he stamped his foot and burrowed deep, deep into the ground. He could feel the relief of the household wash over him, thinking they had outwitted him and they were safe.
    Now he just needed to be safe from them, for they were too foolish and unreliable to stay happy for long. He burrowed past the goat keeper's cottage, past the outer walls of the town, and kept on burrowing until he reached the house of a little old lady who kept more cats than she could count.
    "Some people," Rumpelstiltskin told the cats, "just aren't happy unless they aren't happy."
    None of the cats disagreed, so Rumpelstiltskin decided that they were fine and clever cats, and he lived with them for many, many happy years.

IV. Papa Rumpelstiltskin
    Once upon a time, before bread was plastic-wrapped and sold in supermarkets, there lived a miller named Otto and his daughter, Christina.
    In the way of most fathers, Otto was proud of his daughter and liked to brag about her. "Christina is a very clever girl," he told people. "Christina is a very sweet girl," he told people. "Christina is a very brave girl," he told people.
    One of the things the miller was especially proud of was Christina's talent at spinning. "Christina," he would say, "can take the coarsest, lumpiest wool, and she can spin it into thread as thin as a spider's web." Or sometimes he'd say, "Why, I've seen Christina take flax that's so woody any other spinner would just throw it away, but Christina spins it fine as a cloud." And sometimes,