Rumplestiltskin: Lady Hood

Chapter One

Coming home to my little shack in the woods I see I have had visitors. The coyotes enjoy singing to me in the middle of the night but in the bright light of the morning I can see there tracks in the snow.

I have my basket with me filled with bread from one of the local towns. Even though they want nothing to do with me I always exchange it for gold coins that I leave in it's place.

The cold nips my nose as I open the creaking door to the small shack. I wish I could say it was a cottage but sadly it is in such disarray that one of these days it will cave in if I don't figure out how to fix it.

I put the basket filled with bread down on a nearby table. I may have snacked on a few of them already on my way here so instead of sitting and eating like a normal human being, which I suppose I'm not in the first place, I sit down on the little chair next to my spinning wheel.

I grab for some more straw and put it in the spinning wheel and gently but firmly pull the gold it makes at a steady pace creating a consistent gold yarn. My foot is on the pedal as I push it up and down. I've known how to create wool into yarn all my life but every time I created gold. The thoughts spin through my head as I spin.

My family first thought I was tampering with it and punished me for disturbing something so valuable but once they found out what I could really do they made sure I was at the spinning wheel morning, noon, and night. We became the richest people in the land but the problem was we had no idea how to use it well. We were simple farmers who raised sheep, we never had enough until my talent was found out. We bought everything. First it was just having enough food to eat then we had furniture, new pots and pans, I felt like a queen just having enough for once. But we continued because we could. We became so rich that the nobility were threatened by us and one king in particular wanted my talents to himself. He offered up his son to marry me making me a princess.

My father jumped at the offer without a question in his mind. His daughter was so talented that she would become a princess. But a contract was made and if he was to give me to the prince he would lose his sole source of income in the process. He rejected it.

I hadn't been very fond of the prince because I hadn't even met him. But just the thought of being royalty was divine until I realized that my family would never let me go because of what I could do. They would abuse my power so they could never have to work again.

I didn't wish any harm for them but I needed to leave, to grow up, like normal children did. Whether that involved being married to a prince or living an old maid in the middle of the woods because everyone thinks you are a witch then so be it.

I didn't know anything about finances and I was worked so hard that all I could do was leave. I knew my family would suffer if you could call it that. They didn't need to hire everyone in the land to do things they could do. They didn't need clothes made out of fabric that was more expensive than anything in life should be. They could go back to living a life where we were grateful to have plenty to eat and clothes without patches and pots without holes.

When I left that night I took my first luxurious gown, navy blue with a hoop and a corset needed, a skein of gold yarn, and my treasure, my first project I knitted for myself made out of the golden yarn, a golden cloak.

At the thought I stopped spinning and grasped my golden cloak it was soft but heavy. I found that it still took on the properties of wool but was gold and smelled metallic. It made me feel beautiful and mysterious. Special, I guess you could say. For I had made it out of ordinary wool into the finest cloak any kingdom had ever seen. But after I left my home it didn't see the light of day. It made me feel too different. I wished to be normal. So I at first tried to get a normal starter job working as a stable girl. I came home to my host family, 3 aunts and their little niece, and taught the little girl how to sew until night came. Exhausted from my hard day I would generally jump into my straw bed and fall asleep but something taunted me. Even though I barely got a break from my spinning wheel back home, I missed it. I missed the soothing motions, and the click clack of the pedal as I pushed on it. I missed feeling special and turning wool into gold.