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What's in a name?	By : jinna1979 Category: Fairy Tales, Fables, Folklore, Legends, and Myth > Fairy Tales Views: 16599 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction,I do not own Rumpelstiltskin. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons,living or dead, is purely coincidental

Chapter List
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While Millicent stared at the mountain of straw before her, servants continued to file in and out of her room, adding to the pile. A maid walked up to her with a bundle of fabric and curtly informed her that she was to change into fresh clothes after taking a bath. Upon hearing the word bath, Millicent's attention was finally drawn away from the straw. She looked around the room and noticed servants pouring buckets of water into a large wooden basin that lay behind a screen. At one point in her life, she might have felt slightly uncomfortable with the notion that all the separated her naked body from a group of strangers was a screen, but after having urinated on herself, and having been spit on, it suddenly seemed rather trivial. She was determined to have that bath, screen or no screen. Millicent was ready to rip the soiled dress from her body, but somehow, she contained herself, as she walked behind the screen, and allowed a pair of very young maids, one of the pregnant, help her undress. She stepped into the hot bath gratefully, feeling as though she would melt into a puddle of contented pleasure. The water soothed her aching muscles and bruises, and eased a bit of the fear and anxiety in her heart. It was as though all the experiences of the past week were being washed from her body and she felt like a phoenix, ready to rise from the ashes.

The young maids came up to the side of the bath, sponges in hand, but Millicent shook her head, refusing their service. The pair of them seemed so frail and tired, especially the pregnant one, and Millicent couldn't bring herself to make demands upon them. They backed away without protest, standing behind the tub, their eyes fixed upon the ground. Millicent lay bonelessly in the tub until the water began to turn cold, washing herself leisurely, and only when it became uncomfortable did she step out of the tub. One maid brought a towel to her, while the other brought the bundle of fabric that she was to wear. Millicent dried herself and shook out the bundle of fabric, and although the garment was not a servant's uniform, it was hardly better. She put on the brown dress, wincing at the scratchiness of the fabric, but she was thankful to have something clean to wear, even if it felt like she was wearing a garment made of nettles. She thanked the maids for the help, but they seemed unresponsive to the praise, keeping their eyes lowered.

Millicent walked out from behind the screen, feeling ready to handle almost anything. Behind her, the maids scuttled about, cleaning up the area around the tub before leaving the room. However, in the time it had taken her to have her bath, the mound of straw in her room had grown even larger, much to her dismay. A spinning wheel and chair had been brought in, and set near the corner of the room next to the feather mattress that was to be her new bed. A few more servants continued to enter the room, adding bundles of straw to the massive pile, but there seemed to be no more room and soon, she was left alone with nothing but a room packed with straw and a spinning wheel. Millicent stood before the enormous mound of straw, her mind racing as she wondered if there was a way she could talk herself out of the impossible task. Her father always told her she was silver-tongued, but then again, her father was fairly biased in his opinion about her.

At that moment, there was a knock on the door, but before Millicent could give her permission for entry, a servant opened the door and the king entered her room, his eyes sweeping over the straw with satisfaction. Millicent opened her mouth, ready for to give the king a million reasons why she would not be able to spin the straw into gold, but before a single sound could leave her mouth, the king spoke.

"All this must be spun into gold before morning, as you love your life," he told her, though his eyes remained on the mountain of straw, rather than on Millicent. Without another word, he exited the room, not feeling inclined to listen to the whining voice of any pitiful female, witch or not.

Millicent stood before the closed door, stunned. Though she knew what the king had expected of her, she thought that she would at least be able to convince him to see reason in the situation. Now, it seemed as though she had less than one day to live, for tomorrow morning, the king was sure to have her executed if he saw that not a single strand of straw was spun into gold. In a daze, Millicent walked over the the feather mattress and plopped down ungracefully. She stared at the spinning wheel that sat next to it, wondering how she landed in such a situation where the cursed item would be her death. Suddenly, the miserable fate she had suffered in the dungeon didn't seem quite so bad - at least she had not been expected to carry out any impossible tasks.

Rumpelstiltskin was able to make himself comfortable just about anywhere, so he had been half asleep in a cell not far from Millicent when the king had entered into the dungeon with his entourage. The loud banging of the door had woken him immediately, and he had almost jumped up, ready for battle to defend Millicent against whatever force assailed her. He had a cell key in hand, incase he needed to free her as a last minute action, but mostly, he kept his magical senses ready. His clear night vision enabled him to see that whoever had entered the room was not just a group of ordinary servants and staff. The body language of the gray haired man who entered suggested that he was a man who commanded the world around him. His black and silver clothing was of exceptional quality, and he had the expression of a man who was not to be trifled with.

Rumpelstiltskin was not fully aware of the reasons why Millicent had come to this castle - after all, he had followed her just to be near her, but he had never spoken to her to ascertain whether she came of her own accord or if she had been coerced, though he had suspected the latter. When Rumpelstiltskin laid eyes upon the domineering grey haired man, he rightly guessed that this man was the reason why Millicent was at the castle. He took an immediate dislike to the steely eyed man. It was more than just the fact that he brought Millicent to this cold and austere place - the man himself had an aura of darkness about him that suggested that he was a man of brutal and malicious inclinations. There was a glimmer in the grey haired man's eyes that suggested a certain degree of pleasure as he looked upon the wretched form of Millicent, suffering in her cell. From the way the man's entourage looked at him with a mixture of fear and submission, Rumpelstiltskin was able to guess that the man he looked upon was the king of this miserable fortress.

The way that the king spoke to Millicent as though she were a mangy mongrel instead of a person made Rumeplstiltskin want to hex the man to the ends of the earth, but somehow he managed to contain his overflowing anger. It frustrated him to no end that his plans to free Millicent had been foiled, but at least the king had ordered his staff to free Millicent from the hell hole of the dungeon.

He followed the servants that dragged Millicent up to her rooms, taking care to remember their faces so that he could haunt their nightmares because of their rough treatment of her. Looking out the slit of the windows, Rumpelstiltskin noted that it was mid afternoon. The dreary monotonous days at the castle had caused him to lose sense of time - more so because all his concentration had previously been put to trying to free Millicent; an effort now wasted. He kept himself mostly invisible since all the servants in the castle were in a frantic state of busyness and his idle manner made him look suspicious. The fear that the servants exhibited of looking any less than fully occupied was palpable and their nervous energy made Rumpelstiltskin slightly sympathetic of them, though for the most part he was indifferent to their plight after what they had done to Millicent.

He noticed that the servants were taking Millicent to a higher floor than where she had previously resided, which sparked his interest since he knew those room were generally reserved for noble guests. A row of servants were in the corridor holding high bundles of straw, which they deposited into one of the rooms. Curiously, that was the very room which Millicent was pushed into. Unnoticed, Rumpelstiltskin followed Millicent into her room, which one would have described as having massive proportions if the vast majority of it wasn't stuffed with straw. It was almost a comical sight watching the servants trying to add more straw to the packed space, but Millicent's expression of dread prevented him from feeling any amusement. Clearly all the straw meant something to Millicent. Millicent's attention was drawn away from the pile when a surly-faced maid mentioned a bath, and Rumpelstiltskin suddenly felt like a failure for having neglected to even bring Millicent water and a sponge to clean herself. Dirtiness never troubled the faeries - dirt, rain, leaves, mud, trees and flowers were all part of the same vastness of the earth and whether one was a flower faerie or a soil faerie made little difference. However, mortals had completely different notions about what was considered clean or not. Still, the rank odors should have moved him to do something, and he mentally kicked himself for his inattentiveness.

After Millicent's bath, he noticed that she was wearing a new garment, and although the fabric was coarse, the shade of brown reminded him of trees in the winter, and it complemented her pale skin and coppery hair. She looked radiant and new, her beauty knocking the breath from his lungs. She also looked invigorated, her bearing tall as though she had suddenly found the strength to face the world head on. Sadly, her new found resolution did not last, for her face fell when she gazed upon the mound of straw which had gotten bigger than ever. He noticed that aside from the straw and the bed, a spinning wheel had been placed in the room, and he wondered how it was all related. Was the spinning wheel supposed to be for her entertainment, or was she now under the service of the king somehow? The answer to Rumpelstiltskin's questions were uncovered soon thereafter when the king swept into her room arrogantly without permission, and proclaimed that he expected to see the straw spun into gold if she valued her life. The king departed with as much rudeness as he had entered, and Rumpelstiltskin stared at Millicent speculatively, wondering if she had hidden abilities that he knew nothing about, or if there had somehow been a grave miscommunication between her and the king.

Millicent walked towards the spinning wheel, but instead of making use of it, she sat down upon the feather bed, with a look of hopelessness upon her face. Rumpelstiltskin could clearly see the defeated set of her shoulders, and the way she gazed at the spinning wheel as though the item itself had proclaimed her death and not the king. Though Rumpelstiltskin did not actually have the ability to change matter from one form to another, he did have very powerful illusion magic that could make one thing seem like another. It was certainly within his abilities to make the straw look as though it had been spun into gold.
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