The Wish-Granter

When someone finds themselves in a terrible predicament, of which there is no obvious or immediate solution, three responses are often taken:

1. To give up entirely, begrudgingly accepting the fate of their God.
2. Curse their God.
3. Pray.

Alternatively, one could opt for all three, in which case, the order is typically backwards.

Prayers are powerful things, but they were also cumbersome, mindless things that tended to hover in the air like stars until they crumpled in on themselves. Sometimes, a few very, very lucky ones are spotted by those with the powers to grant it; and sometimes, very, very unlucky ones are spotted by those with the powers to grant it, but are not of the morally correct sort.

His name was not known and rarely had anyone seen him. He existed primarily in the tall tales folks would spread about him, and through the course of many decades, the tales became taller, and he became shorter. 

The townspeople would have you believe he is a grotesque monster, as unsightly as a wart on a witch’s nose. But in actuality, he was stout and plump like a ripe pumpkin, nimble, but not youthful; just sneaky by habit, as an old cat may be. 

And he was no monster. If you were to ask him, he thought of himself in much the same way as any merchant might. He was a wish-granter, but granting wishes did not come free. Wishes were weighty things, and they required equally weighty things in return. 

Of course, mortals did not understand nor appreciate this, and they never thanked him. After he had gone and given them what they asked for, they would focus only on what they lost. They would cry to others about how a strange man had ‘stolen away’ their beloved heirloom or prized family goat, omitting the part where they had willingly, and sometimes quite eagerly, offered them up to him. 

He lived in a cabin deep in the forest, where only animals visited. It rested uphill from the town, and when the wind blew, whispers of the townspeople’s prayers came with it. (On this point: he had long, pointy ears which gave him excellent hearing. That was something the tales of him had not exaggerated.)

One autumn night, just as he had sat down by his fireplace to read, he heard crying. Help me…said a woman. Won’t anyone…help me…

She sounded so grave and sorrowful, he knew there was a deal to be made. So he leapt from his chair and followed the voice all the way down to the village.

The cries were coming from the castle. The castle had a great many guards surrounding it, which would have been a problem for anyone else; but, as we have said, he was very nimble. He snuck his way through the servant’s entrance, and before long he reached a big, cold cellar where a woman sat at a loom and sobbed.

She wore a rugged and potato-brown dress eaten away by moths, and she had hair as straight and yellow as the straw all around her. He recognized her as the miller’s daughter, for he was familiar with the miller and his prayers. They were always for wealth, and since he did not find such wishes to be particularly special or notable enough to be worthy of a deal, he never answered them. 

He said, “Good evening, miller’s daughter. Why are you crying?”

She blinked at him. She was so consumed by her own sorrow, she had not seen him enter. “Are you with the king?” 

"I belong not to the king, nor to any king. I heard crying and have come to help.”

“No one can help me.” She sniffed. “My father told the king I could weave straw into gold. He thought it would make the king desire to take me as his wife---whatever made him think that, I do not know! But the king has put me in this room and said that if I do not prove I can do it, he shall kill me in the morning for deception. So I am to die.”

“I can turn this straw into gold for you.”

“Why, that is impossible! No one can do such a thing!" 

“No one but me,” he said. “I grant wishes, you see. But only for a price. I will need something of equal value.”

Her face fell. “I have nothing. My father and I, we do not even have enough for food. Certainly nothing the value of gold."

“It needs only to be valuable to you. Some hair, perhaps a garden, or a farm animal.” 

She thinks. “Well. How about this necklace?” 

Around her neck was something very generously being called a necklace. Its string was coming apart and the gemstone was nothing more than a smooth, white pebble, which could almost be mistaken for a pearl in the right lighting, and if you narrowed your eyes, and if you believed it was.

He said, “Is it valuable to you?”

“My mother made it for me.”

“Is she dead, bychance?”

“Yes.”

“Then it will do.”  

He took the necklace from her and cupped it in his hands, and it went up in white, cool flames. Then he ushered the girl away from the loom and began to weave the straw. He worked fast, and before the sun had time to rise, all the straw had been turned into gold.

“There,” he said.

“Thank you! Oh, thank you so much!” 

This was the first time someone had thanked him, and he did not know what to make of it. So, he did not make anything. Without saying another word, he was out the door and back into the forest.

***

The next night, the miller's daughter cried once more.

He sighed and closed his book. He exited his warm and quite cozy cabin into the cold air of the night, made his way down the hill, through the castle, and into the cellar. 

This time, the stacks of straw reached the ceiling. She said, “He will execute me if I do not turn all this to gold by the morning.”

“What will you give me if I weave all this into gold?”

“I have nothing else," she said.

On her hand was a tarnished silver ring. “Was that ring your dead mother’s?”

She looked down at it with sudden remembrance, as though she had worn it on her finger for so long she had forgotten it was there. “No,” she answered, then said with renewed energy, “But it was an engagement ring. From my lover. He was not rich and so my father would not allow it. I wear it still, for I still love him."

“That will do.”

She removed it from her finger and placed it in his splayed palm. As soon it touched his skin, it was engulfed by flames and gone. She rose from the loom.

“Who are you?” she asked, as he began to weave.

“I am a wish-granter,” he answered.

“But what is your name?”

“It does not matter,” he said. Names had power to them, and they were better left unsaid. 

They fell into silence which lasted the whole night. By sunrise, they were surrounded by heaps of woven gold, which glimmered palely in the thin light of the cellar. She thanked him and he left without another word.

***

The day passed by, and once the moon was high, yet again the miller's daughter cried.

“What could she possibly be crying about now,” he huffed to himself, then went off to the castle.

The cellar was full of so much straw, he had to move through it rather than around it. There was only just enough room for the miller's daughter and the loom.

“I will give you my hair,” the miller's daughter offered as soon as she saw him. She had clearly thought on this. “All of it.” 

“This is a lot of straw to weave into gold. If you would like me to do it, I will need something a great deal valuable.” 

At this moment, two of the king’s guards sprang out from the straw where they had been hiding, and seized him by his arms, lifting him up into the air.

The king burst into the cellar, two more guards entering before him and parting the straw into a shoddy path for him to walk down. Though he was adorned in a long robe the shades of ruby-red and gold bricks, he himself looked poor. He was old and sickly, with a flap of flesh dripping from his chin like a turkey’s wattle. 

The king chuckled, but the chuckle turned into a cough, the aggressive sort that rattles. The kind which sounds of death.

“I knew it,” he began, a bit raspy still. A guard wiped excess phlegm from his mouth with an embroidered handkerchief, then went back to standing rigid beside him. “I knew she was not doing such a trick herself. I suspected it as soon as she said she had to be alone to do such a thing. Hah! So you are the…rather little man, who is helping her?”

He stayed silent. He did not appreciate the slight. He resented being called ‘little’, almost as much as he resented being called ‘man’. 

The king eyed him suspiciously, with two pupils as small as pepper flakes. “You can turn straw into gold?”

“I am a wish-granter,” he answered. 

“You are? So you are able to grant any wishes, even the impossible?”

“Yes.”

“Can you turn an old man young again?”

This was one of the classic wishes he came across in his doings. Youth, love, fortune…every man desired it. But few had the good sense, the willpower, or the folly to make a deal over it. 

“So long as I have something of equal value. I cannot grant wishes without an exchange," he explained.

The king replied, “I have riches. Plenty of them. Riches beyond your comprehension.”

“That will not do. It must be something of equal value and gold is not equal to a life.”

This was quite the new concept to the king, who had never known any life to be more valuable than gold. Not even the life of his sons, for he had executed all seven of them because he found their desire for an inheritance to be greedy, and he had feared they would smuggle him in his sleep to over it (when in fact, only one out of the seven had planned to do anything of the sort).

He thought for a long while. Then, thinking himself very clever, he said, “I can make a new heir and give you him. A life for a life. The young for the old.” 

This was a fair trade, and since the wish-granter was not accustomed to refusing offers (nor was he accustomed to being held up by guards), he agreed.

The guards released him. The king bent down and shook his hand, and as they shook, his wrinkles dissolved, his skin became tight, and thick brown hair grew on top of his head like a blooming flower. He was young and healthy once more.

"I will be back for your heir,” said the wish-granter. And then, before the king or the guards could stop him, he was gone.

***

A year later, the king’s son was born in fine condition. The miller's daughter, who was now the queen, held the sleeping boy with adoration.

"I will give you anything,” she said as he entered. “All the gold in the castle. All the hair on my head. Myself, if need be.”

“I am afraid I cannot change a deal after it has been made.”

“Please. Can I not make another deal? I will give you anything if you grant my wish to spare my son.”

She looked so piteous, perhaps the most piteous anyone he had ever made a deal with looked, that he felt a foreign emotion. Something we might identify as sorrow, but which he identified as a terrible omen, squeezed his heart. 

He was not in the business of stealing babies from mothers---he was, as he has emphasized before, not a monster. So against his better judgement, he said, “The only way a deal could be dissolved is if the wisher spoke my true name. I will give you three whole days to find it.”

"You cannot tell me?"

"I cannot."

She nodded gravely. “Alright. Thank you.”

He remembered why he liked her. She always said thank you.

***

For two nights, he came and sat, somewhat impatiently, as the queen rattled off all the names in the land, and the next day, all the names in the opposing land. Which was hardly a good strategy, as there were many lands, with many names. And even if she managed to scour them all, not a single being shared his name. It was his, and his alone.

By the end of the second night, she had reached some very silly names--roast-ribs, sheepshanks, spindleshanks, schweinshaxe and schweinshanks (there were many '-shanks'). When she had at last exhausted them all, he leapt off the stool and stretched his legs. The sky was copper. Dawn was approaching. 

“It seems you will not find my name before the night falls. I think I will have to celebrate. This afternoon I will be in my cabin, deep in the woods across from the castle.” She looked out the window, to the woods next to the castle. “No, across from the castle. Yes. There. That is where I will joyfully sing my name in celebration, because surely no one will be there to hear it, right?”

She shook her head no, but her eyes told him she understood.

"Wonderful,” he said, tired, and then turned to leave.

She said, “The king--he will not want to let you go. He will make another deal.”

“I do not think he has anything of value to offer me,” he said. 

***

He had not realized just how deep in the woods his cabin lay, or how well he had hidden it from mortal eyes, until the messenger boy who came to hear his song wandered the same spot several times before finally finding him. He had grown tired of singing and dancing to his silly song by this point, which went something like this: 

"Today do I bake,

tomorrow I brew,

The day after that the queen's child comes in;

And oh! I am glad that nobody knew

That the name I am called is Rumpelstiltskin!"

So by the time the messenger heard him, he was no longer singing, but rather angrily shouting, “That the name I am called is Rumpelstiltskin!” Then the boy bolted down the hill, like a nervous street urchin fleeing with stolen wares.

That night, he entered the throne room, where the king and queen sat with their newborn in a golden cradle before them, presented like an offering.

The king grinned. The queen had told him the name he must say, and it burned brightly in his eyes. “You have come to take the boy. By all means, he is yours. But first, I must speak the name of the one who steals my heir, so that it may be recorded in history. What was it…Jack?”

“No,” he answered.

“Harry?”

“No,” he answered, wondering if the king was going to delight in this game all night.  

“Ah! That is right. I recall it now. Your name is…Rumpelstilskin.”

In the story the townspeople would later tell, Rumplestiltskin made such a fuss over this he stomped his feet and split in two, and that was that. 

But they had gotten it wrong. It was the king who stomped his feet in anger, for in that moment he understood what he had not before--that revoking the deal meant he would grow old again. He stomped and stomped as his skin sagged and his hair grayed and fell from his head, and he stomped so hard, his heart wheezed one final thump, and then he keeled over and was done.

Rumplestiltskin himself had no strong reaction. The queen rose from her throne. 

“I will give you all the gold you spun, as thank you,” she offered.

He said, “I do not think that is of equal value."

And he left.