The Miller's Daughter and the Little Man

Mira’s father kept the mill, and the mill kept them. Every morning the wheel turned, every evening the flour settled, and every night her father talked. He talked in the market. He talked at the inn. He talked so much that one Tuesday, with a cup in his hand, he told the king’s own steward that his daughter could spin straw into gold.

“Straw,” he said. “Plain straw. She spins it and it comes out gold.”

The steward told the king before supper. The king did not laugh. He sent two guards to the mill with a cart, and the cart was full of straw, and the guards did not explain.

Mira’s father went with her to the castle. His face was the colour of old dough.

“Is it true?” the king asked him.

“It is true,” her father said, because he had said it so many times.

The king turned to Mira. “Then spin this straw by morning. All of it. If you do, I will be pleased. If you do not, you will not see the morning.”

“I cannot,” Mira said.

“You can,” said her father, and then he was led out, and the door was locked.

So Mira sat in a small room with a heap of straw and a spinning wheel and one candle. The straw smelled of the field. She put her hands on the wheel and turned it, and a thin thread came out, yellow and dry, and it was straw.

She turned it again, and again, until her arms ached. The candle burned down. Straw, straw, straw.

At midnight the door opened. Nobody came in. She looked up and there he was, a little man no taller than the stool, in a coat the colour of bark.

“Why are you crying?” he asked.

“Because the king will kill me in the morning,” she said.

“And what will you give me if I spin it?”

She had nothing but the necklace her mother left her. She lifted it off. “This,” she said.

He took it, and he sat at the wheel, and the wheel turned by itself. It turned and turned, and the straw went in, and the gold came out, bright as honey, heavy as rain. By the first grey light the room was full of it, and the little man was gone.

The king came in and stopped. He picked up a coil of gold and weighed it in his hand.

“Good,” he said. “Tonight you will spin more.”

“I have no more,” said Mira.

“You have tonight,” said the king, and the guards took her to a bigger room, and the door was locked.

***

This room was twice the size. The straw came up to her waist and the wheel stood in the middle like a small dark sentry. Mira sat down and did not cry, because crying had not helped before.

At midnight the door opened, and the little man came in with his hands behind his back.

“Why are you crying?” he asked again.

“I am not crying,” she said. “But I will be. The king wants more gold.”

“And what will you give me?”

She had one thing left. Her ring, thin and gold, the only gold her family ever owned. She pulled it off her finger and held it out.

“This,” she said. “It was my grandmother’s.”

He turned it in the candlelight. “It is warm,” he said. “I like warm things.”

Then he sat at the wheel. He did not touch it. The wheel began to turn, slow at first, then faster, and the straw fed itself in, and the gold came out in ropes and ribbons. Mira watched until she could not keep her eyes open, and she slept on the floor with her head on her arm.

When she woke, the room was gold and the little man was gone. The king came in with his steward, and the steward counted, and the king smiled for the first time.

“One more night,” he said. “One more room. Then you will marry me, and be queen.”

“And if I cannot?” she asked.

“Then you will not marry me,” he said, and his smile went away.

***

That night the room was the largest yet, and the straw was stacked to the ceiling. The little man came at midnight, and he did not ask what she would give him. He looked at her a long time.

“A child,” he said. “Your first child. That is my price.”

Mira thought of the locked doors and the morning. “Yes,” she said, and the wheel began to turn.

In the morning the king came in with his steward. The steward counted, and the king walked the length of the room, touching the coils of gold. “You will marry me,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

“And if I had not spun it?” she asked.

“Then you would have disappointed me,” he said. He said it lightly, as if disappointment were a small thing. But Mira saw the way he looked at the door, and she knew what happened to people who disappointed him.

The wedding was quick. There was a crown, and a hall full of people she did not know, and candles that smoked. That night she lay in a wide bed and listened to the wind. She was queen now, and the doors were unlocked, and she still could not sleep.

***

A year went by. In the spring, Mira had a daughter. The baby was small and loud and warm, and Mira held her all the first night and did not put her down. She named her Anna, after her own mother.

On the third night, the little man came into the nursery. Mira was sitting by the crib with a candle. She had known he would come. She had known since the promise, and she had not been able to think of a way out.

“You have something of mine,” he said.

“She is not a thing,” said Mira.

“She is what you promised.” He stood at the foot of the crib and looked down at Anna. His face was not cruel. It was patient, which was worse.

Mira knelt on the floor. “Please,” she said. “Anything else. Take the crown. Take the gold. Take my hands if you want them.”

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “Three days. I will give you three days to guess my name. If you find it, you keep the child.”

“And if I do not?”

“Then the child is mine.” He turned and went to the door. “You will not find it,” he said, and he was gone.

Mira stayed on the floor until the candle burned low. Then she stood up, and she called for the fastest messengers in the kingdom.

***

Mira sent riders out that same night. She sent them north to the hills and south to the coast. She sent them east to the market towns and west to the river villages. “Bring me every name you hear,” she told them. “Write them down. Bring them all.”

The first day, the messengers came back with long lists. Mira sat by the cradle and read each one aloud. “Bartholomew. Caspar. Timothy. Wilfred.” The little man did not come, but she felt him listening. She could almost hear him laughing somewhere in the walls.

On the second day, more names arrived. “Hugh. Percival. Oswald. Gregory.” She said them to the empty room. Nothing. Anna slept on, small and warm. Mira’s hands shook, but she kept reading.

On the third morning, she had tried every name she knew. She had tried the names of kings and farmers, of saints and stable boys. She had tried names that were not names at all, just sounds. The sun was going down, and she had nothing left.

Then a messenger came in, dusty and out of breath. He had ridden hard from the deep woods. “My lady,” he said, “I have no name for you. But I saw something strange.”

“Tell me,” said Mira.

“I was lost in the trees,” he said. “I came to a clearing, and there was a fire. A little man was dancing around it. He was singing. He sang that the queen would never guess his name, and then he sang the name itself. It was Rumpelstiltskin.”

Mira stood very still. The candle flickered. Anna made a small sound in her sleep. “Rumpelstiltskin,” Mira whispered. She said it again, louder, to be sure. Then she laughed, once, and covered her mouth with her hand.

***

That night, the little man came. He stepped out of the shadow by the door and stood at the foot of the crib. “Three days are up,” he said. “What is my name?”

Mira looked at him. She had been afraid of him for so long. Now she felt something else. She felt the name sitting on her tongue like a small stone.

“Is it Conrad?” she said.

He smiled. “No.”

“Is it Henry?”

“No.”

She took a breath. “Is it Rumpelstiltskin?”

The little man’s face went white. Then red. He stamped his foot on the floor, hard, and the boards cracked. He stamped again, and the whole room shook. He shouted something that was not a word, and then he was gone. There was only a puff of smoke and the smell of burnt wood.

Mira ran to the crib and picked up Anna. The baby woke and fussed, then settled against her shoulder. The room was quiet. The fire in the grate had gone out.

In the morning, the king found the cracked floor and asked what had happened. Mira told him the truth, all of it. He listened, and then he said, “I will never let anyone boast about you again.” Mira did not answer. She was watching Anna reach for a sunbeam.

She kept the name in her pocket, like a coin she might need one day. But she never said it out loud again.