Dummkopfstiltskin: The Adventures of Dummkopfstiltskin

By Bobby Carroll and Ethan Carroll

Dummkopfstiltskin is a fractured fairy tale. He travels in and out of most well-known fairy tales, while not altering those basic story lines, searching for his own niche in fairy tale lore. Being a simpleton, he meets with many disappointments before finding acceptance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bobby Carroll
• Release date: Mar 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386393924

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Authors’ Note

Dummkopfstiltskin is a fairy tale, nothing more. As such, all characters appearing in this work are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons or other fictional characters, living, dead, or imagined, is purely coincidental. Likewise, any perceived anachronisms or puns should be taken tongue-in-cheek. So, just relax, suspend disbelief, and enjoy the story.

The Early Years

Long ago, in the deep forests of what is now known as Germany, lived a witch named Helga the Horrible and her two sons. The oldest son was named Rumpelstiltskin, and the younger son, by two years, was named Tumpelstiltskin. Yes, it would seem that any imagination the witch possessed when naming her first child had vanished by the birth of her second.

Now, Helga the Horrible may seem a rather unpleasant name, and one may be asking ‘exactly how does a witch come to be labeled as such?’ Quite by design actually, as it happens that, early in life, each witch is put through a series of tests that help to determine the most befitting name for her. Helga was not Horrible in the sense that she cast capricious and wicked spells or evoked fear of wrath from everyone within a one hundred mile radius. It was simply her breath that made her so horrible. Though it was nothing clinically diagnosable (she had perfect teeth, practiced good dental hygiene, and made regular visits to the dentist), the fact remained that her breath made it next to impossible for anyone to have a face-to-face conversation with her. Just the slightest sigh would cause flowers to wilt and paint to peal from the walls, which was actually useful during home restoration projects. Setting this one defect aside, Helga was an acceptable mother, and an astute study of things. With the experience of one child under her belt, she could sense, early on, that Tumpelstiltskin was not developing at the rate of a normal child. ‘In which ways?’ one might ask. Oh, just subtle things a mother can pick up on, like still wearing a diaper at age five, perpetually falling for the old mud pie gag, continually being mystified by the ‘got your nose’ trick, and so on. Eventually, she took him to see the family doctor, with the hope of getting a professional explanation.

After a series of tests, the doctor arrived at his diagnosis.

Your son, said he is what we refer to in the fairy tale trade as a simpleton.

Are you sure, replied a bewildered Helga. I thought you were going to say something more pedestrian, like ‘he needs his MMR vaccine’.

Oh no, nothing that bourgeois, and please face the other way when you talk to me replied the doctor, waving away the fumes from her breath. I am quite certain of my results, he continued. You see, I administered a series of tests to young Tumplestiltskin, tests that any child his age should be able to pass. I gave him a picture of a cat, three alphabet blocks (C, A, and T), and asked him to arrange the blocks to spell the word ‘cat.’ Of course, you realize that there are only six distinct ways to arrange three objects. After the thirty-fifth consecutive incorrect attempt by young Tumpelstiltskin, I aborted the test. It is worth noting that the original order in which I presented the blocks to him was, in fact, the correct order. We then moved on to a much simpler test, placing a square peg into the proper matching cutout in a board. Now, just to be perfectly clear, this was a conventional board, with one instance each of the common shapes: square, circle, star, triangle, quarter moon, etc. I now have a board where all of the cut outs are square, except the one that was originally square, which is now in the shape of a loggerhead turtle. Good detail on the turtle, I might add.

Helga left the doctor’s office dejected. Weeks passed before she was able to turn her negative feelings into positive energy. Being a witch, she eventually became adamant that she could produce a spell capable of transforming her youngest into something more desirable.

There has never been a simpleton in this family, and there never will be, she proudly professed.

Helga worked diligently to craft the perfect spell, and she tested many variations on Tumpelstiltskin. The results were typically disagreeable, but she was always able to reverse the spells. After many years of trying, she simply gave up. Oh, it was not for a lack of basic training, mind you, as she could produce all of the standard spells: transforming a prince into a frog and a boy into a raven, bringing a puppet to life, inducing indefinite sleep, and what not. But, in this case, she was attempting to modify two basic spells and compound them together: boy to frog, followed by frog to prince, something that was clearly far too advanced for a level two witch.

Eventually, she came to terms with her plight and made the only decision that a loving, caring, affectionate, warmhearted, tender, compassionate, solicitous, thoughtful, kind, altruistic mother could make, and legally changed Tumpelstiltskin’s name to Dummkopfstiltskin. You see, in the fairy tale world, careers are determined early on. One can either be a hero, a villain, a victim, a support player, or a simpleton. Over time, Helga grew to be less disheartened and resolved herself to the belief that it must have been some defect in his father’s Y chromosome that had resulted in Dummkopfstiltskin being a simpleton. After all, the oldest boy, Rumpelstiltskin, was developing quite normally and actually displaying some rather extraordinary skills, such as the ability to turn straw into gold (a fact she was keeping silent about, until just the right time). And so, Helga set about raising her boys, as best she knew how, in preparation for the day they would venture out on their own.

In so much as Dummkopfstiltskin was doomed to be a simpleton, it was equally clear, at even so young of an age, that Rumpelstiltskin was ideally suited to be a villain, and he quickly realized that young Dummkopfstiltskin could be unwittingly manipulated into doing his bidding. By the age of twelve, Rumpelstiltskin had become vice president of the scam-a-week club. One such scam involved positioning himself as a troll under one of the village bridges, over which the children would cross on their way to school. He convinced Dummkopfstiltskin to place ‘bridge closed’ signs at all of the other bridges, forcing the children to cross his bridge, with the idea being that he would shake them down for their lunch money. Unfortunately, Dummkopfstiltskin, acting like the utter dummkopf he was, placed the ‘bridge closed’ signs at every bridge, except the one that was actually closed and in need of repairs. Many children were injured when the bridge collapsed. Helga was forced to pay restitution. They likely would have been run out of town, had it not been for some, shall we say, compromising information she held over the town Bürgermeister, and the fact that he and his flunkies refused to discuss the matter with her, in a face-to-face (breath-to-breath) manner.

Time passed by, and soon, Rumpelstiltskin reached the age of thirteen. This was the age when all young fairy tale wannabes were expected to demonstrate some perfected skill that would secure their niche in fairy tale lore. As mentioned earlier, Rumpelstiltskin had developed the knack for spinning straw into gold. At the school talent show, he demonstrated this skill and was quickly declared the hit of the season. After school, Rumpelstiltskin and some of his friends went out to celebrate and sample some libations.

It proved difficult for anyone to keep mum on what they had seen. Consequently, word traveled quickly throughout the kingdom. The king himself was so impressed that he ordered the royal guards to find Rumpelstiltskin and bring him henceforth. You see, with regards to increasing the wealth of his kingdom, the king had limited options. Basically, he could either impose more taxes on his subjects or mount an offensive against a neighboring kingdom, and, in victory, pillage what he so desired. Additional taxes were never popular, and going to war could be fraught with peril, as one could not predict the outcome of such an event. The king saw, in Rumpelstiltskin, a safer approach to increasing his wealth. The next day, a hung-over Rumpelstiltskin