Cynical Tales for Cynical Children Read online

  All character motivation aside there's the all important lesson to be taught to children and although the only lesson in the more modern versions of this story might be along the lines of

  “Get a haircut you hippie!”

  It doesn't take a great deal of digging before one realizes the original moral of this story.

  “Nothing happens by chance. Even things which seem to happen by chance don't

  happen by chance”

  Grizelda, for instance, recognized her tower as the only place where she felt safe from the outside world, was faced with a problem. If she'd simply moved in and kicked the ladder away, it would be little more than a week before some wandering hero and his pussycat decided to climb to the top.

  Her seemingly innocent planting of rapunzel was a move which was coldly calculated to kick off a series of events which ensured her tower gained a fearsome reputation and allowed her to live out the rest of her days in solitary bliss while the only other person she cares about in the world is able marry into a family of a much higher social standing than she would have been able to achieve if she'd stayed with her original family. Once again, nothing happens by chance.

  RUMPELSTILTSKIN

  In which we learn the intricacies of negotiating contract law.

  Consequences. Those little reactions to a course of action so often carried out without considering what happens next. You might be at a dinner party when some words are said about an acquaintance, you rush to defend your friends reputation, some more words get bandied about and the next morning you're looking at your opponent down the barrel of a dueling cannon because they were repeating something they'd heard from someone else about something which didn't concern you before and, while it concerns you now, isn't at the front of your mind.1

  A duel to the death over some words is, perhaps, a rather extreme example yet it's the consequences of our actions upon which the world turns and for those practiced in the art of manipulating others they can ensure the world turns in their favor

  What happens then when two of these aforementioned people meet and attempt to get the better of each other?

  On the surface it would seem this story is just that, an interesting moral tale about the importance of telling the truth and the damage done by breaking your word and prevaricating about the whole thing.

  Or is it?

  Once again we only need peek under the baby blanket of narrative in order to look down upon the child of plot and realize something about this entire story smells, has always smelt and will continue to smell.

  This isn't a happy little story about promises made and kept ladies and gentlemen, rather this is a treatise which is an attempt to paint one party as a villain when all he's trying to do is get his promised compensation for a hard nights work. It's time to wrap up in your safety gear and plunge into this dire story of trials, fraud and breach of contract.

  t starts off simply enough. There was once a woman named Millicent who had a daughter named Althea, rather predictably this small fact made her a mother.2 While this has happened many times throughout history and, it is to be hoped, will continue happening for the Iforeseeable future we are forced to concentrate our gaze on this family in particular due to a rather distressing tendency on the part of Millicent.

  Like many other parents she took pride in the achievements of Althea to the point where she occasionally lived somewhat vicariously through her daughter and on more than one occasion Millicent could be heard to recount her daughters accomplishments with a touch of, exaggeration. 3 Many people, upon hearing her latest tall tale about Althea, knew enough to politely smile and then go straight to the source in order to get the real story.

  As might be expected Millicent happened to be in the market one day and was enthralling everyone with yet another recounting of her daughters abilities. This particular recounting happened to reach the ear of the king who was enjoying a quiet day of mingling with the commoners4 and, having never heard of either metaphor or prevarication, he took Millicent at her word.

  This meant Althea was visited by the royal guard in the middle of laundry day, taken to a certain room in the royal castle which had been filled with royal straw and was royally ordered to get spinning or else.

  1

  You know, where the cannonball is about to be.

  2

  Please, stop me if I'm getting too technical

  3

  Exaggeration is just the polite way of saying “bold faced lie”

  4

  This is where the drama happens.

  With no explanation about what she was supposed to do but with a suspicion about who had gotten her into this latest mess she spent a good half hour using increasingly unprintable language before one of the mounds of straw began rustling.

  “Wonderful. As if this day wasn't bad enough now there's mice”

  “I'm no mouse” a short man with an incredibly fancy hat emerged from the mound of straw and bowed with only a touch of irony.

  “Who are you then? Some servant come to make sure I'm spinning straw into whatever my mother has claimed I can turn straw into this time?”

  “Me? Serve the king? That's a good one. Who I am is the person able to get you out of this terrible situation”

  “Is there a secret passageway? Is that how you got in?”

  “Oh? You think you'd be safe if you managed to escape this room? The guard would hunt you down and if they couldn't find you then they'd go after your mother”

  “What, you mean my mother who got me into this mess in the first place? Give me a minute to think about this”

  “My point is I do actually know the secret of spinning straw into gold and I'm fully prepared to spend all night making the horrible stuff so you don't have to suffer any of the dreaded 'or else' they promised when they shoved you in here”

  “It's gold then” Althea frowned “she usually tells people it's straw into strings of pearls”

  “It is gold and my price is one commensurate with such a task. Your first born child for instance”

  “What child? I don't have any children”

  “Then you're clearly getting the best of the bargain. I assume we have an accord?” The strange pair shook hands and then the man went to work.

  At first Althea watched the man as he worked and listened to his explanation which started with “It's perfectly simple” and then devolved into the kind of technical gibberish so beloved of computer programmers and Star Trek engineers5, while he droned on in his explanation he worked through the night and in the morning the room of straw had been transformed into a room of gold.

  Althea was pleased since she didn't have to sit through any sort of 'or else', the king was pleased because he had a room of gold and the little man, well he had left before the dawn broke so nobody knew if he was pleased or not.6

  A few years later Althea met a nice man7, got married and obtained a baby through methods I don't get paid enough to speculate about. One night she was quietly gazing up at the moon when one of the bushes in her garden began rustling in a manner which struck her as somewhat familiar.

  “Evening milady. You remember me I take it?” the man wore the same clothing although his bow had moved on from being ironic to holding a slight tinge of mocking.

  “I, I do sir”

  “And having remembered me so well you no doubt remember our bargain?”

  Althea nodded carefully and held the baby tighter.

  “That's interesting. Really, because I do believe I'm currently looking at your firstborn child there and you're not giving him to me as we agreed”

  “Wait! It's not that simple”

  “It is actually”

  5

  Naturally I could provide a copy of the complete instructions for turning straw into gold although this would increase my page count by nine hundred and for the sake of my suffering fingers I have elected to leave it out if this edition.

  6

  Presumably he was. There's a certain satis
faction you get after a hard nights work.

  7

  A nice man who barely rates a mention in this story. His identity therefore is somewhat fluid and changes depending on which version of the story you are reading. Sometimes she's married to a prince and other times it's a handsome soldier who caught her eye. Whoever he is they appear to be happy enough.

  “No its not! You took advantage of my circumstances. When I made such a terrible bargain I never thought I'd have a child I love and value so dearly”

  “I know you value her. I value her too and as I recall she was valued at a room full of gold” the man shook his fist “so think before you go back on our deal or I'll tell everyone exactly what happened on that fateful night”

  “Exactly what happened?”

  “Down to the last golden straw!”

  “Even the part about you making bargains for unborn children?”

  “Yes! I mean no! Wait, what?”

  The newest mother in the kingdom tossed her hair back defiantly “If it means I get to keep my daughter then I'm prepared to let the world know I can't spin straw into gold. I assume you are equally prepared to stand up and admit your interest in young children?”

  “You play a dangerous game” the man grumbled “how then do we resolve this matter? Because no matter how you slice it I've not been paid for my nights work”

  “It occurs to me I don't know your actual name. I've just been calling you 'the man' this whole time”

  “Ha! You don’t know my name and you never will! Names have power and I'm not about to pass it around to just anybody”

  “Then what do I call you? I don't want to be known as the mother who gave her baby away and I certainly don't want to be known as the mother who gave her baby away to a complete stranger with no name”

  “Three nights”

  “That's a strange name Mr Nights”

  “It's not my name! This is my proposition to you. For the next three nights I'll come to you and if you are able to call me by my real and proper name then I'll drop all claim to the child which is rightfully mine and you'll never see me again. At the end of the three nights, when you haven't been able to discover my name then I win your child lock, stock and fetlock8”

  The new mother hesitated “Honestly? There isn't some kind of catch, which means I have to serve you for a hundred years?”

  “You've read too many fairy stories” the man informed her coolly “and I'm not the one whose honesty is in question”

  “Then I accept” once again they shook on the deal and the little man left with a promise to return by sundown.

  One of the advantages of being a new mother is you accumulate a plethora of books on baby names and on the first night, when the little man appeared with the going down of the sun, she wasted no time in reciting all the names in all the books from cover to cover.

  On the second night she cracked open the dictionary because people get given a variety of peculiar names9. None fit the man and even the slim volume of regimental nicknames proved to be useless.

  With the dawn of a new day the little man left with a happy step.

  It was on this third and final day the servants, having been dispatched to the wildest parts of the kingdom in order to discuss the problem with the wild things who lived there10 returned with a long list of possibilities and the sun was low in the sky when the final servant returned with a list of names and a story to tell.

  8

  He wins the child even though she's already his. It's probably best not to stare directly into the plot-holes lest they begin to stare back and then it would just get weird.

  9

  Despite these unique monikers such people tend to grow up disappointingly normal while Jack, Ted and Charles go on to lead far more colorful lives.

  10 Taking the time to participate in the traditional wild rumpus.

  In the dark forest he'd taken the wrong path and in his efforts to return to the correct track he'd gotten lost and eventually stumbled across a particular arrangement of trees where the little man himself was sitting and after partaking of a large amount of beer, was singing a song which included his name.

  “Rumpelstiltskin? It's no weirder than the other names on these lists. But it was really him and you're certain this isn't some kind of trick?"

  “I don't think so. Not with the amount he'd been drinking”

  “Well I'll add it to the list and we'll see what happens”

  “Are you ready to bring this to a close milady?” the little man who may or may not have been called Rumpelstiltskin asked with an artful politeness “this is the third and final night after all”

  “Are you so certain you want my child? She really is a handful. Two handfuls in your case”

  “Short jokes? Is that what we're reduced to?”

  “I'm sure I was just getting my name lists in order. Now are you Bal Ashubberath, mother of a thousand young, destroyer of hope and devastator of worlds?”

  “Nope”

  The night dragged on and Althea read out strange titles of the infernal regions, eldritch names of forgotten gods and the true names of a myriad of beings of power11. None of it worked on the little man who sat there shaking his head and looking increasingly smug until finally, as the first rays of dawn were just beginning to appear he gave her a chilling warning.

  “You'll want to take extreme care because this is your final guess at my name. Nobody will ever be able to say you didn't fight hard for your child but you never stood a chance”

  “I wouldn't be too certain. RUMPELSTILTSKIN!”

  “What?” the little man stopped in the middle of reaching out for the baby

  “One of my servants discovered you singing about how you, Rumpelstiltskin, were so very clever but strong drink is a mocker and you spilled that most vital of secrets to his ears and to mine”

  “That's not! I mean you didn't discover it!” Rumpelstiltskin blustered furiously “it was your servant!”

  “What name? You mean Rumpelstiltskin” she named him correctly for the third and final time “you never said I had to be the one to find out your name. I only had to call you by it and you would give up all claim to my child. I've fulfilled my end of the deal, will you uphold yours?”

  Rumpelstiltskin looked at her in fury and stamped his foot so hard the floor gave way and he was trapped waist deep in the floor and neither Althea, nor the servants, nor the husband or even the baby took any notice of him anymore since he'd formally released his claim to the child.

  With a wild abandon and no little amount of rumpusing12 the entire household began living happily ever after

  11 Some of whom stirred in their eternal slumbers and began to take notice of the waking world. This is a genre I won't be making sarcastic remarks about, just in case they knock on my door in order to express their displeasure.

  12 Which ultimately resulted in another child and it is at this point we draw the curtain of discretion .

  EXCOGITATION

  •

  Why didn't anyone try to tell the king he wanted the impossible?

  What we appear to have encountered is yet another dictatorship where the man in charge is always right even when he's wrong and if anyone out there dares to suggest otherwise he's got a special room where the 'or else' happens at which point the eternal question of right and wrong becomes something of a moot point.

  •

  How clever was the king?

  “We live in a horrible neighborhood where the rats eat better than we do. Our debts are crippling and my husband ran off with some tavern hussy. However we keep on smiling because my daughter spins regularly spins straw into gold”

  “Why that sounds perfectly logical. Bring your daughter to the castle at once”

  It's easy to mock13 and perhaps rather than bargaining her first born the daughter might have picked the lock, gathered up the straw and taken it down to the markets to sell for a tidy profit.

  While I'm not saying she would have been paid i
n gold for a load of straw it's important to remember this entire story takes place in a kingdom where the ruler believes straw can be spun into gold so it's not totally outside the reams of possibility.

  •

  How did Rumpelstiltskin get free?

  Presumably, as the rumpusing wound down and everyone began settling down to their own personal happy ever after someone was kind enough to pull him out of the floor. The alternative solution is putting a cloth over his head and pretending he's some kind of predatory footstool.

  •

  If she'd bargained away her firstborn child and really wanted kids why didn't she adopt?

  It solves the problem in the short term although the happy couple would need to be incredibly careful for the rest of their lives.

  13 Easy for me I mean. I've had special training.

  RATIOCINATION

  It's easy to see why Rumpelstiltskin was wary of getting the law involved in this affair. Even though Althea was in blatant breach of contract, to whit one room of gold for one baby, it's really going to be impossible for him to get any sort of fair hearing since no judge worth his Whig is ever going to award in favor of an obvious child trafficker who will certainly spirit the child away to parts unknown.

  In his defense Rumpelstiltskin clearly chose the wrong time appear and make his demands for the child.

  Althea was standing outside with the slumbering baby in her arms and feeling particularly maternal while the full moon illuminated the cool city night when he made his entrance so it should have been obvious he wasn't ever going to come away with the baby on that first night.

  Realistically speaking he should have visited after one of those long nights where the baby just wont go to sleep and daddy dearest is snoring loudly in bed despite promising he'd be the one who would get up for the night feedings.