(Note: This draws heavily on the Brothers Grimm version.)

*

Once there was a girl who found herself locked in a dungeon and told to spin straw into gold, and all because her father had a big mouth.  He’d always been prone to exaggerating, especially down at the pub, but this time some royal advisors were in town scouting out locations for the next hunting trip, and the next thing you know, word had got back to the king.

In that time and place, if you lived your entire life without the king noticing that you existed, you called it a win.

One morning, guards arrived at the family’s door, demanding the girl who could spin straw into gold.  Her father insisted that it had just been an idle boast, but they had their orders.  When he carried on trying to stop them, one of them knocked him to the ground and dragged the girl off while he was still finding his feet.  For the rest of his life, he’d blame himself for what happened.

The girl was marched through the city and into the palace, where she stood before the king.  “Is it true?” he demanded, “Can you spin straw into gold?”

The girl couldn’t very well say no.  She didn’t want to think about what might happen to her father if she did.

The king had the guards take her to a room filled with straw, with a spinning wheel over in the corner.  “Get to work now,” said the king, “Spin all night, and if by morning you have not spun this straw into gold, then you will have to die.”  And they locked the door behind her.

For the first few minutes, the girl was frozen in panic.  Should she look for a way to escape?  Should she put the straw through the spinning wheel and pray for a miracle?   Should she just lie down on the floor and accept her fate?  Overwhelmed, the girl put her head in her hands and began to cry.

And then she heard a voice behind her.

At sunrise, the king had his guards unlock the room, and he was delighted to find piles of gold from floor to ceiling.

Just to keep the peasant girl on her toes, he had the guards check every corner for any leftover bits of straw, but he didn’t find any.  So, naturally, that night he put the girl in an even bigger room, also packed with straw, and told her to spin it into gold if she valued her life.

Once the door was locked, the girl heard the voice again.

The king was happy beyond all measure when he saw that he now had two rooms full of gold.  “You must do the same thing again tonight,” he told her, “If you succeed, you shall become my wife.”  He laughed.  “Even if you are a miller’s daughter, I will not find a richer wife in all the world!”

She laughed at his joke.  She had to.  He was the king.

The door was locked, the voice was heard, and the room was filled with gold.  And the very next day, the king announced that he and the miller’s daughter were to be married within the month.  The girl’s family weren’t invited to the wedding.  It was thought that they would lower the tone.

She didn’t feel any safer now than she had when he’d locked her in the room and told her to spin.  Every time she was alone with him, the words, Then you will have to die flashed through her head.

Within a year of her marriage, the new queen brought a beautiful child into the world.  Not long after her son’s birth, she was sitting with him in the nursery when the door opened and a comical little man came in.  She recognised him immediately, and sat bolt upright in alarm.

“Now give me that which you promised,” he told her.

The queen thought about it, and, after a long pause, nodded.  “On one condition,” she said.

Over the next few years, the king searched every inch of the land for his missing wife and child.  Back in the girl’s old village, her father tore himself apart with guilt and worry.  But neither they nor anyone else would ever see her again.

The End