Gold

The girl sits spinning in the sunshine in the back room. It’s mid-afternoon, the light is soft, and all is well. The potatoes have been peeled, the soup has been on for hours, and her mother has been lying in her grave so long that it feels normal and almost isn’t sad any more. Her father is whistling in the flour room.

The wind carries the scent of cut grass in the sunshine, of warm straw.

A prince is on his way here, she thinks, as she often does. A prince from afar, who is coming to fetch me. His horse as white as his teeth. And he will let me sit behind him. We will ride at a gallop, his arms warm, his hair long, as gold and yellow as straw, and he will never let go of me, the man I love.

Men rarely ride along the path by the miller’s house. Just her father sometimes, when he has to make a delivery. The mill is a long way from everything else.

But a girl can always dream, and this afternoon her dream feels more real than the summer’s day. Everything smells so much of love and straw that she can almost hear the horse’s hooves. She gently puckers her lips for the moment when she will need them. After all, a girl had better be prepared.

The afternoon is so soft that she can easily reach her hands through it to what lies beyond, and before she knows it, she is spinning her thoughts into a golden thread. Her dream always has a part two: The Proposal; and also a part three: Engaged! When she has enough time, she can spin it out even further: The Royal Wedding, The Honeymoon, and then Happily Ever After… The thread becomes longer and longer. It gleams in the sunlight.

Just before The Wedding Night, it is time to put on the potatoes. She winds the thread onto a reel and gets up to light the stove.

‘Did you make that? Really?’

The miller looks at his daughter as if seeing her for the first time. Her? That dreamy, dozy daughter of his? Who always forgets everything, who never has anything interesting to say… She suddenly made this?

‘You spun it? But how?’

She mumbles something vague. He seldom gets a clear story with a beginning, a middle and an end from her.

He rubs one fat finger over the thread. It’s good stuff.

What beautiful work, he could say. Or: This is amazing. Well done! But he’s not that kind of father. He prefers to point out what she does wrong and where she needs to improve. He doesn’t want her to get too big for her boots.

‘You could have cooked the potatoes for longer,’ he says, munching two at once.

‘Yes, Father,’ she nods. And she goes on eating, like a good daughter who doesn’t get any fancy ideas in her head.

He puts the reel of thread in his pocket.

He forgets it for a while and doesn’t think about it again until he makes his weekly delivery to the royal palace.

A tall senior footman peers at the sacks, with a frown on his face.

Oh yes, thinks the miller. There was a worm in the flour last time. A tiny little worm. One worm in an entire sack – big deal! You wouldn’t even taste it, as he knows from experience. But who’s going to have to pay, as always? That’s right: him.

‘One more chance, I said,’ the red-jacketed beanpole warns him. ‘Or we’ll find another mill. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?’

Of course he hasn’t forgotten. But he hasn’t had time to mill any more flour this week, so this week’s flour is more or less the same as last week’s flour. Which he could have sieved, of course. Which he should have thought to do, of course. But there you go.

The footman takes out a little gold sieve with tiny holes. Those worms won’t be any smaller now, not after eating flour for a whole week.

Think of something! the miller urges himself, sweating. Use your brain! Come up with a plan! Trying to look more confident than he feels, he slips his hands into his pockets.

Where his fingers find the reel.

‘Oh, by the way, um… Peter…’ he begins slowly.

‘Pierre,’ says the footman, correcting him.

‘While we’re talking, Pierre… I’ve, um, got something… um, something that might…’

The tall footman acts as if the miller has not spoken and continues to pick at the rope on the sack.

‘Something… um… quite extraordinary, an… um…’ The miller can feel his armpits growing sticky under his shirt. ‘An outstanding op… opportunity. I’ve got…’

He might as well not be saying anything. The footman is already holding the sieve over the mass of worms that the sack has most likely become. One-two-three and he’ll be in there. And four-five-six the miller will be out of a job.

‘Gold!’ the miller blurts. ‘I’ve got some gold for you!’

The hand with the sieve pauses.

‘Gold?’

‘Yes! Yes!’ The miller almost nods his head off. ‘Real gold. Lots of it!’

‘And I’m supposed to believe you?’

‘Yes! Here! I can prove it! Look!’ Shaking, he pulls out the reel. What is he actually giving him? The other day, it really did seem like gold. But actual gold? It can’t possibly be. She can’t just spin gold out of nowhere, can she, that daughter of his? No one can do that.

Suspiciously, the footman looks at the thread. Pulls a little from the reel. Gives it a sniff.

‘And there’s more,’ the miller says quickly. ‘For you. For your boss. As much as you want!’

‘Have you found a goldmine on that barren little piece of land of yours?’ The footman sneers his sneeriest sneer, but his hand returns the sieve to his inside pocket.

‘It’s not a mine. But it’s mine, um, my… err…’

‘What are you babbling about, man?’

‘My child. My daughter. She made this.’

‘Your daughter?’

‘My wonderful dearest darling daughter.’ The miller sighs. He suddenly loves her so much.

For the twentieth time, the king looks at the little reel in his hand. He narrows his eyes.

Could it be? he thinks. Could it really be gold? It would be such a help if it were.

You can’t keep plucking a kingdom’s feathers forever. And the beautiful peacock that his country once was is now as bald as a frog. Taxes, regulations, fines for almost everything – what else is a ruler to do?

That’s right: borrow, and he has done exactly that – and far more than was wise. His creditors are slowly running out of patience.

And depriving himself of any of the things he cares so much about, his clothes, his dainty appetisers, his side dishes, the furnishing of his palace – in short, his entire lifestyle – that would be going much too far. Wouldn’t it? He has truly earned it all by… By being the ruler that he is. And that ruler happens to have grown accustomed to his wardrobe, his dinners with many courses, and especially what all of it says about him: how well he has done in life.

So, he does not intend to miss out on any opportunities to replenish the treasury, no matter how small and unlikely they might be. For the twenty-first time, he looks at the reel of thread that his footman has brought to him. And nods.

‘The horses, Sire?’

‘The horses, Pierre.’

Straw

It is a very different afternoon. It already seems like autumn. It is drizzling and the clouds are low.

The girl is sitting in the same chair, but the dreaming is not working out so well today. Her father’s acting strangely, and she doesn’t know why. He keeps coming in all the time, looking at her and then going to sit on the bench outside. When she gets up and walks to the back door, he hurries over to her.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Nowhere.’ Where is there to go?

‘You just stay put,’ her father says. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’

‘But the chickens need to be fed.’

‘The chickens can wait for a while. Stay inside. Do some spinning or something.’

‘I’ve run out of wool,’ she says. ‘I ran out ages ago.’

‘So, what did you use last time, last week, to spin that, um… thread?’

‘Oh, just something. A bit of straw.’

‘Straw, I see,’ her father says with a nod and looks out of the window yet again.

The girl doesn’t want to be difficult, but she wasn’t expecting it to be like this.