---

Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold – Part Three

by S.B. Divya

I was hidden in a tree near the mill when the Duke of Bavaria arrived in Talgove. I had never seen the man before, but the coat of arms matched the hangings I’d seen in Salzburg. The sizeable retinue stopped by the water wheel.

Blasius emerged from the building, staggering and red-faced from drink. “My lord,” the miller said, his face wrinkled in confusion, “the steward’s house and the inn are —”

“I’m here for Trudy of-the-mill,” the duke interrupted. “Your daughter, I presume?”

Balsius’s befuddlement deepened. “Yes, but —”

“I hear that she can spin flax into gold, that she has a special instrument from a witch who used to live in these parts. I wish to witness this skill for myself.” The duke grinned.

The miller executed a deep, sloppy bow. “My lord, indeed she is a talented spinner and weaver. Beautiful, too.”

“Then let us see this lovely and gifted creature.”

Still bent at the waist, Blasius went inside. I held myself as still as wood and waited. What was he up to? Trudy had never learned how to make gold thread from my mother, and she certainly couldn’t magically transform flax. I could. Had someone discovered my gift and mixed up their stories?

A sharp cry sounded from inside the building. Blasius emerged, holding Trudy’s wrist in one hand and one of my mother’s spindles in another.

“See here!” He thrust Trudy forward and gestured at her head. “She made the golden thread for this embroidery. This ring, and the chain about her neck, too. Those used to be silver. She learned from a witch who used to live near our village. Take her! She will do well in your household.”

My stomach twisted with rage and disgust. Trudy’s wimple came from one of my mother’s fabrics. She wore my mother’s wedding band and necklace. How had they obtained the jewelry except from my mother’s body? How dare Blasius abuse my mother’s memory like that? And why would he lie about it? He’s desperate to see her married well. With Ilsebill secured to Konrad, there was no good match in the village for Trudy. Her looks — the golden hair, the womanly curves — had always attracted attention from men.

A flush covered Trudy’s round cheeks. She kept her gaze fixed on the ground, and her hands trembled. I sat in my tree, frozen with indecision and fear. I could think of nothing in my power that would help her without revealing my secret.

“Quite attractive,” the duke murmured. Then, louder, “I will take her to Salzburg with me. I wish to have some gold thread made for my wardrobe. If she succeeds in her witchcraft, I will take this young lady to Regensburg and keep her safely with my treasury.”

The men in the duke’s retinue snickered. Trudy’s flush crept down and across her neck.

“Yes, good,” Blasius said. He bobbed his head and swayed.

“And if she fails, she will be burned.”

At that, Blasius fell to his knees, his face pale. “But, my lord —”

“I am your duke, and you will not deny me again or else you will hang for the crime of consorting with witches.”

Trudy put a hand on her father’s shoulder. To my surprise, she kept her chin level and her face calm as the duke took her up and placed her on his horse. Blasius stayed on his knees in the dust. As the retinue rode away, Ilsebill came running down the lane, Konrad stewards-son a few strides behind her. They stopped by Blasius’s side and stared at the receding horses.

“What happened?” Konrad demanded.

As the miller related a semi-coherent version of Trudy’s fate and his impossible claim about her, Ilse raised her eyes and stared straight at my perch. She inclined her head ever so slightly toward our old meeting spot. She couldn’t possibly have seen me, could she? But her head had turned so precisely in my direction, and that tilt . . . she must have caught me out. When? How often had she noticed me skulking around the village?

My ears turned hot. To think that Ilsebill had known I was spying on her, that I was aware of her misery and yet did nothing — I couldn’t pretend after that. For surety, I shaped my lips and tongue and whistled like a snow finch.

---

That evening, the spring moon rose full and clear. It illuminated Ilsebill’s skin with a pale glow as she approached our intertwined trees. I dropped from my usual perch to the clearing and met her gaze. For several breaths, neither of us spoke. Up close, I could see more clearly what suffering had done to her, the way her cheeks carved into her face, the sloppiness of the stitching along her sleeve, the shadows under her eyes. I wanted to lift her to the highest branches and fly away somewhere safe and warm.

“Will you help her?” Ilse said in a volume barely above the call of night birds and insects. “You can save Trudy. If you run, you can get to Salzburg before the night is over. Turn the duke into gold. Give my sister enough to get passage down the river. She may be spoiled, but better a woman of ill-repute than dead.”

I wasn’t so sure of that assessment, but I found myself nodding. Anything to make Ilse’s life a little easier. “I’ll go. I’ll do . . . something, but I have no desire to kill anyone, especially a duke.”

Ilse’s expression took on a grim hardness I’d never seen. “You would if you understood what it’s like when a man . . . well, you’ll never have to know, will you?”

But I understood exactly what she meant by that pause, and the implication about her relations with Konrad. My wrapped hands balled into fists. Perhaps I could kill the duke, if I thought of him as Konrad and Trudy as my dear Ilse.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. About so many things.

She bowed her head and left me. No gifts this time, nothing to help me on my way, not even a word of thanks. Perhaps she thought I didn’t deserve the latter until after I’d saved her sister. Perhaps she was right.

---

I arrived in Salzburg a couple of hours before matins. It took little effort to find Trudy’s whereabouts thanks to the torchlight seeping from the cracks of her room’s walls. Getting inside was more of a challenge, but stone is stone, whether it’s shaped by human hands or nature’s. I climbed up and squirmed my way through the gaps under the timber roof.

Trudy gave a startled gasp when I dropped into her room. “You! You’re Rum  — Rumpel . . . you’re Niraja’s boy. What are you doing here?”

You have to help her, I told myself sternly, even if she can hardly recall your name.

I sketched a low bow. “I’m here to help, at the behest of your dear sister.”

When I straightened, I noticed the piles of flax around the room. One of my mother’s spindles — traded to Herlinde in our first year at Talgove — rested on a table. I waved at them and raised a questioning brow.

Trudy sat back onto a stool and burst into tears. “The duke — he said that he’s a man of his word, so he — he locked me in here and said that if I can spin this flax into thread as golden as my hair, he — he’ll let me live. I have no gold to work with, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to do.”

I didn’t ask if he had already taken her maidenhood. What difference would it make? At least he’d given her a way to stay alive. I wouldn’t have to kill him that night.

“Very well, you spin the flax. I’ll transform it into gold.”

Trudy gaped for a second. “You can really do that? I thought my father was telling drunken tales about Niraja.”

“He was, but he happened to guess right.” I didn’t bother to enlighten her about my mother or the truth of my gift. My gaze fell upon her finger. “You must give me your ring in return.”

She nodded.

“And promise never to tell anyone what I can do.”

“I swear.”

As Trudy set to work, I unwound the cloths from my right hand. She handled the spindle with the same deftness that my mother had, and soon, piles of thread coiled on the floor. I passed my fingers through them. It wasn’t perfect, but enough turned gold that the duke wouldn’t notice the spots I’d missed.

Trudy didn’t have the sharp curiosity and courage of her sister, but she was no fool. She saw what I did, and understanding grew in her eyes. I hoped she stayed true to her word and didn’t give me away.

As dawn’s light seeped through the cracks in the walls, we finished.

Trudy clutched my arm. Her eyes were red from the long night with no food or water.

“Thank you,” she rasped.

Thank your sister, I wanted to say. Instead, I nodded and slipped away.

---

I found a place to curl up and sleep in Salzburg. The next day, as I was taking a meal, I overheard people gossiping about the duke and his golden lady, and the miracle she’d worked overnight. That it was now a miracle and not witchcraft did not surprise me. Rumor said that he would ask her to repeat her holy transformation again.

I skulked around the city until nightfall, then made my way to the manor and Trudy’s room. This time, she had a window. Through it, I observed her sitting by the spindle with an even larger pile of flax mounded on the floor.

Her face lit with relief upon seeing me. “Thank the Almighty! I made the duke believe that I could only work my miracle alone and at night.”

“And only with flax?”

“He hasn’t asked about other types of thread.” She frowned. “Is that a problem?”

“No.” I loosed the binding on my right hand. “I’ll need something of yours in exchange again.”

She reached behind her head and unclasped my mother’s necklace. “This?”

I nodded. “That belonged to my mother, as did your ring.”

She had the decency to blush. “I’m sorry. My father made me wear them. He’s had them ever since . . . the fire.”

You’re doing this for Ilsebill, I reminded myself, not for her father.

We set to work and discovered that both of us could go faster after all the practice from the previous night. In spite of the larger amount, we finished earlier.

“Will you come back tomorrow?” Trudy asked.

Wearily, I nodded. “If I must, I’ll help you again, but we cannot allow the duke to exploit you like this forever. If he demands more, tell him that tomorrow is the last time you can do this, that God spoke to you and told him to be satisfied henceforth.”

Her eyes wide, Trudy agreed. I didn’t envy her position, having to lie to the duke and convince him of her limits.

I spent the next day thinking up ways I could spirit Trudy from the house. My golden touch wouldn’t help except to bribe the guards, but I wasn’t sure they’d accept coins from the likes of me. If anything, my possession of that kind of wealth might arouse suspicion. The window into the room was too small for Trudy to fit through. If I brought some chisels with me, perhaps we could loosen some stones in the wall and get her out that way. I wasn’t sure if we could work quickly or quietly enough for that, but it was the best I could come up with.

As I was about to barter for the tools, I overheard a new rumor: the duke had declared that tonight Trudy would perform her third and final miracle, and in the morning, the archbishop of Salzburg would witness their marriage before the couple departed for Regensburg. I abandoned the chisels. We already knew that the duke was a man of his word. I wouldn’t need to help Trudy escape.

I slipped into her room as early as I dared, for that night, the mounds of flax were enormous.

“Did he gather every bit he could find in all of Bavaria?” I groused.

Trudy glowed with happiness. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. A duchess! Just imagine it — me, a miller’s second daughter from Talgove.”

I frowned at her.

“What’s the matter?”

“I need you to give me something in exchange.”

She huffed impatiently. “I have nothing left but my gown, and you can’t have that. Wait until tomorrow. After I become duchess, I can give you anything you want.”

Would it work? I had never used my gift in trade for a promised item. If that failed, not only would Trudy lose her chance at marriage with the duke, I would no longer have my golden touch. I cursed myself for not buying the chisels when I could.

I didn’t want to risk my hands for Trudy, but Ilsebill’s quiet desperation rang in my mind. She had enough pain in her life. She didn’t need her sister’s death added to it. For the sake of her future, I decided to gamble with my own.

And that’s when the idea came to me.

“I want your first child with the duke,” I said.

Trudy stared.

“He’ll marry you tomorrow, and he’ll waste no time getting you with child. After the infant is baptized, I will collect it.” I will leave it at your sister’s doorstep, and perhaps then her miserable husband will stop tormenting her.

I had to hope that Trudy wasn’t as barren as her sister. It was my fault that Ilsebill suffered from Konrad’s abuse. Trading my hands — my gift — for her happiness seemed a fair exchange.

Trudy hesitated long enough that I thought she might refuse, but in the end, she agreed.

By the time we finished, both of our hands were raw from the work. The flax remained as golden as the other nights when I left it with Trudy.

I emerged from the building and made my way to the cave where I usually slept. The faint glow of pre-dawn painted the eastern sky with indigo. To be absolutely certain I hadn’t cursed myself, I touched a small pebble with my bare finger. It turned gold. I exhaled the breath I’d held. I wanted a good life for Ilsebill, but I couldn’t help the cowardly fear for my own fate had the worst come to pass. I tucked the precious stone into my pocket and fell into an exhausted slumber.

---

The next day, true to his word, the duke married Trudy. As the abbey bells pealed to announce the joyous occasion, I ran away from Salzburg. How long before Trudy spilled my secret to her noble husband? I could no longer consider Bavaria a safe place to stay. My unthinking feet carried me toward Talgove and Ilsebill and the travel chest that held my only valuable possessions.

I waited in my usual perch where I could see Ilse come out to hang laundry. When she came out of the house, I whistled like a snow finch. She turned toward me and nodded. I slipped away through the treetops and went to our meeting place. While I waited for her, I retrieved my chest and opened the false bottom. The clever device had preserved the family silks, my golden fox, and the last of my mother’s woven cloth-of-gold. I’d stowed them all in my pack. If I’d been inclined to take the roads, I would’ve worried about bandits, but I was used to finding game trails and dry stream beds to make my way through the wilderness.

A little while after sunset, I heard rustling footsteps, and Ilsebill arrived at the clearing. The moon gave us only a sliver of light, but that was enough for me to see the worry and hope that mixed on her face.

“You have a duchess for a sister,” I said.

Ilse blinked. “I — what do you mean? What happened?”

I told her almost everything. She worried when I divulged that Trudy now knew the secret of my hands. She understood when I told her I’d asked for Trudy’s jewelry in exchange. She wept when I told her about the wedding bells.

“Ram . . . thank you.”

I didn’t mention how many items of jewelry, nor the dangerous bargain I’d made. Ilsebill wouldn’t accept her sister’s child, but she would take in an abandoned one. The deception — much as it pained me — was necessary.

I dared to close the distance between us and took her hands in mine. “I can’t stay in Bavaria. If the duke learns the truth from Trudy, he’ll have his men looking for me.”

This time, she didn’t protest. “Farewell, Padmanabhan Rampalalakshmicharan.”

“Farewell, Ilsebill stewards-wife.” I lifted her fingers to my lips, pressed hard, then let her go.

---

I left Bavaria for half a year. In that time, I traveled east and did my best to trace a portion of the route that would take me home. I allowed myself to acquire simple jewelry and turn it gold so that I could pay my way. I also trimmed and curled my hair, shaved my face, and traded my clothes for the colorful robes of a Roman merchant — someone well-off but not wealthy enough to attract attention. Leather gloves covered my cloth-bound hands. Like my childhood days, I never stayed anywhere long enough for people to know me.

The most dangerous time came when I went to Regensburg. I had to know if Trudy was with child. As the seat of the duchy of Bavaria, the city had plenty of spying eyes. It wasn’t as big or busy as Salzburg, which made keeping my anonymity more challenging. Luckily, my new attire hid my crooked limbs, and my gold distracted people from my short stature. People see what they want, not what is.

I arrived by boat on a rainy day in autumn and stayed for three days and three nights, spending as generously as I dared, until I could comfortably ask the innkeeper whether the duke had an heir. The duchess was with child, he informed me, expecting a birth in spring. She would take her confinement in Salzburg, closer to the archbishop who would christen the child. I thanked Goddess Parvathi that Trudy was more fertile than her sister.

I spent the worst part of winter in the gentler climates of the Roman Empire before making my way back to Salzburg. I didn’t dare stay in the city — someone might recognize the golden spider — so I kept to my old caves and trees and subsisted on dried meat and fruit. My stashes of wood sat where I’d left them, dry and perfect for keeping warm. I listened for the abbey bells to tell me whether the child had been christened.

At last, on an unusually warm and cloudy spring day, I heard them ring. The rain started as the procession left the church and headed back to the duke’s residence in Salzburg. I followed them from my vantage points in the trees, eventually running ahead to hide myself where I could see Trudy and the baby enter the house. Only a few rooms had windows, and the duchess would certainly end up in one of them.

When the shutters flew up on an upper part of the house, I figured that was my target. I waited until night fell. I was soaked and chilled, but I gritted my teeth and climbed. As before, I slipped through the gap between the walls and the roof, dropping into a spacious chamber. Embers glowed in the fireplace. In the dim light, I could see Trudy and her infant asleep on the bed. I shook her gently to wake her.

She sat up in alarm upon recognizing my face. “You! Rumpel —”

“Shhh,” I cautioned, pointing at the babe. In a whisper, I said, “I’ve come to collect what I’m owed.”

Confusion and then distress painted Trudy’s face. She whispered back, “Please, have mercy! He’s only a month old. I can’t part with him so soon.”

“It won’t get easier with time.”

“I didn’t know then what I do now. I can’t give him up. Ask me for something else — anything! Please! I’ll find a way to get it. The duke is so happy to have a son, he won’t deny me.” Her voice rose with her distress.

I didn’t know if I could make a trade like that, and if it failed, I’d be ruined. I didn’t have enough saved for passage all the way back to Kanyakumari.

“I must have him and nothing else,” I said. “There’s no other way. I’m sorry.” I didn’t owe her any apology, but her pain softened my heart. “If you don’t fulfill your side of the bargain, the golden thread we made on the third night will turn to ash.”

“I don’t care about the gold!” she cried. “I only want my child.”

“And I only want to go home,” I spat. “I saved your life. You became a duchess. Now I need your help, and instead you want to condemn me to a miserable life. I should have expected this. You can’t even say my name. Why would you think of my welfare?”

“Trudy?” said a sleepy voice from the floor beyond the bed.

We both froze as a head rose into view: Ilsebill. I’m not sure which of our expressions was more shocked, hers or mine.

“Ram?” Ilse said. She shook herself as if she might be dreaming.

Trudy glanced wildly back and forth between us. “Ilse, help me! He’s trying to take Eberhard away!”

“Hush, Trudy, or you’ll wake him.” Ilsebill stood and came around the bed. “What’s going on, Ram? Why are you here?”

I was at a loss to tell her anything but the truth, so I confessed the terrible bargain I’d struck a year earlier.

“Why would you do such a thing?” The aghast expression on Ilse’s face didn’t surprise me, but my heart sank anyway.

“For you,” I whispered. “So that Konrad would treat you better. I planned to leave the baby at your doorstep as a gift.”

Ilsebill drew a sharp breath. She closed her eyes for a breath. When she reopened them, I saw fury and despair.

“Ilse?” Trudy said plaintively from across the room.

“I said hush!” Ilsebill hissed.

“I have to take the baby,” I said desperately. “You know what will happen if I don’t. Ilse — please!”

“Of all the foolish things to do, Ram — you should’ve spoken to me first.”

“I couldn’t! I was busy saving Trudy’s life.” I raised my gloved hands, palms outward. “With these, the only skill I have. Would you take them from me?”

“You should never have made such a demand! A child isn’t something to be traded. And Konrad would never accept someone’s cast-off infant as his own. Don’t you understand anything about him? You should have thought this through instead of acting like a foolish boy.”

Her anger mirrored my mother’s, all those years earlier, when I’d spoken up to Walter. Flames danced in my mind.

“You have no one to blame but yourself,” Ilse said. “And unlike my sister, I do know your name, and I’ll say it once more.” She raised a trembling arm and pointed at the window. “Padmanabhan Rampalalakshmicharan, you cannot complete this trade. Leave the infant and go!”

I was tempted to snatch the child and make my escape. If Ilse didn’t want him, I could leave him at some other doorstep. As if reading my mind, she stepped between me and the bed, her face as stony as the walls around us.

“Go,” she repeated, “or I will raise the alarm.”

“You would let the duke kill me?” I asked, the words bitter in my throat.

“I don’t want to. I would never want to hurt you. But I won’t let you take my nephew.”

We were at an impasse, one that I knew I couldn’t win. I wouldn’t strike Ilsebill or Trudy. That kind of violence wasn’t in me, not even to save my blessed, cursed hands. And Ilse, like the duke, kept her promises.

Without another word, I fled through the window, leaping to the ground as soon as I’d dared. The fall wrenched my leg, and I limped toward the trees. Twice, I slipped on roots and fell to my knees. The second time, I didn’t get up. The earth was cold and muddy. Heavy mist turned the night air liquid, and a bone-deep ache saturated my limbs. I wanted to be sick. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear myself into a thousand pieces and hurl them into the starry void.

Instead, I slipped off the glove on my left hand, unwrapped the index finger, and touched a leaf at my feet. Nothing. I tore off the linen and shed the cloth-of-gold. With a maniacal recklessness, I pressed my hand to the tree root. It remained as wood. I hurled the rags into the night and buried my face in my hands. What could I do? Betrayed by the only person in the world I loved, bereft of the only valuable skill in my life. I considered walking to the ice cave near Hallein and ending my life in front my gods. Nobody would notice or care.

“Ram.”

Ilse loomed beside me, a lanky void in the fog. She knelt and took my bare hand in hers. I flinched, but she held it fast, and I felt the warmth of a human touch on my palm for the first time in my memory.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You should be.”

She sighed. “Maybe it’s for the best. You’re free now. You can go anywhere, settle down, have a proper life.”

“And what would I do with that life? Become a Bavarian peasant? Turn into a good Christian man? I belong nowhere and own nothing. I’m short. My limbs are misshapen. Who would have me for a husband?”

A gust of wind swirled around us and a heavy raindrop landed on the back of my hand.

“I would,” she said. Ilse’s eyes were dark pools as she looked into mine.

“It’s too late for that now.” I pulled my hand away. “I know — that’s my fault, too.”

She sat back on her heels and lifted her chin in the same unyielding way she had since we were children. “Then make it right. Take me for your wife.”

It took a minute for the import of her words to sink in.

“You’d leave Konrad and live in sin with me?”

“Would your gods consider it sinful?”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. I knew only what my parents had taught me, and whether a woman can leave one man for another wasn’t something they’d discussed.

“I’ll pledge myself to your gods. I’ll go with you to your family and make a home there. If you could spend all these years in Bavaria, then I can do the same in Kanyakumari.”

“What about Trudy? Your father?”

“My sister is a duchess.” As she spoke, she took my other hand and pulled off the glove. She began to untie the cloth. “Trudy is young, but she’s not stupid. She’ll be all right. As for my father’s fate, it no longer concerns me.” She took both of my bare hands in hers. “Will you have me?”

I did not make the same mistake twice. “Yes.” Wind gusted through the trees and showered us with heavy drops. “We need to get to shelter.”

“Where should we go?”

“I’ve been staying in a cave in those hills. It’s not a comfortable place.”

She stood and pulled me up. “Lead the way.”

---

Our journey lasted two full years. The first stop was the cave in Hallein, where we pledged our lives to each other in front of my gods. We had no heavenly witnesses except the stars as we consummated our marriage. Then we headed east. We kept to wilderness trails, but Ilse wasn’t used to all the walking so we took our time. We stopped at villages to work for food and shelter.

After we left Bavaria, we dared to catch rides when it seemed safe, but we didn’t risk it often. When we left the places I knew, our progress slowed even further. The further east we traveled, the more people resembled me rather than Ilsebill. She never wavered in her resolve. One evening in Constantinople, she traded her old wedding ring for two wooden bands and asked me to place one upon her finger. Then she slipped the other over mine.

It took me weeks to get used to touching things with my bare hands, months before I could wake without panicking at my exposed skin. The joy of holding Ilse’s face in my palms helped to make up for it.

By the time we reached my father’s village, Ilsebill was round with child. Konrad had been the barren one, not her. We made the last part of our journey in haste so that she wouldn’t have to give birth among strangers as my mother had.

The burden of fear that had weighed down my shoulders for as long as I could remember finally lifted when I greeted my family. My grandparents still lived. They recognized my parents’ features in my own. They wept when I told them of my parents’ fates and smiled when I introduced my wife. They had seen the traders from far away lands at the port in Kanyakumari, and they found her strange but not unacceptable. She towered over us all by almost a handspan. Until then, I’d thought that my stature was due to my broken bones, but it turned out that my people are naturally smaller.

On a balmy morning, Ilsebill and I carried our daughter to the temple where three seas converged. We prayed to Devi Kanya Kumari for our child to have a good life, but we asked for no blessings. One length of gold cloth had traveled home in my pack. I laid it at the feet of the goddess and left it behind.

 

 

---

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Hopefully you picked up, as I’ve mentioned it twice already, that this is the third and final part of this story. If you’ve not listened to the first two parts, what’s about to happen may make sense but will have none of the emotional impact and resonance it ought to have, and you are only cheating yourself. Go back and listen to 868 and 869, then pop back here as I recap how we got here…

We first met Rampalalakshmicharan as a babe, who was gifted by the gods to turn things to gold with a touch. Such gifts are as often a curse, of course, which his parents well knew, and so in order to keep him safe they travelled, and they had a wise woman grant him this curse: If Rampalalakshmicharan turns an object into gold for another person, they must give him whatever he demands in return. If they don’t, the golden object will turn to ash and he will lose his ability forever.

As they headed to Bavaria, Ram’s father died of a fever, and Ram and his mother were stranded in the small village of Talgove. There Ram befriended Ilsebill, eldest daughter of the miller, though she was the only one in the village who accepted them. After Ram made some small gold nuggets for his mother to trade at Salzburg market, word reached its way back to the village and a few of the village’s young men began threatening Ram and his mother for the gold they believed them to have. But the words of Ram’s curse prevent him from giving it freely–it must be given in trade, or the gift will be lost forever. Eventually, Walter’s patience ran out, and he came back, deeply drunk, and crippled Ram by stamping on all four of his limbs, then murdered Ram’s mother and burned their hut down.

Ram, now alone of his family, was rescued by Ilse, and nursed back to health in the local church. He stayed here a while till another needy villager displaced him, and he was packed off to Salzburg Abbey. This was a poor fit for Ram, though, who would not surrender his parents’ gods, and so he began sleeping in woods as he made his way back to Talgove to retrieve his parents’ bronze trunk, still with his golden fox, father’s clothes and a spare bolt of his mother’s golden cloth inside. Once back, he was overcome with a need to see Ilse–who spotted him in the woods, and with a whistle of a snowfinch to act as a call between them, they met again by their climbing tree.

Here, Ram at last told Ilse the truth of his hands. Between them they contrived a plan for Ram to “discover” gold in local caves, and to meet Ilse every fortnight for a package of food.

This continued for years, until Ilse delivered the news that she had been promised in marriage to Konrad stewards-son, one of Ram’s chief antagonists in the village and part of the group that had threatened his mother. Ilse implored Ram to marry her instead, offering gold as a dowry–and though Ram realised he was in love with Ilse, had always been in love with Ilse, he could not overcome the terror that what had happened to his mother might happen to Ilse, too. He tells himself, and her, that she would be better off with Konrad, and when she implores him to surrender his gift by consciously breaking the terms of his curse so that they could be together, he refuses, fearing he would be nothing without that one talent. Ilse leaves, vowing never to meet Ram again.

After a brutal winter, Ram returns to Talgove one last time to see if Ilse is happy, before he leaves forever to go home to his wider family. But Ilse is not happy–Ilse is bruised and beaten by her husband Konrad Stewards-son, for she has not yet fallen pregnant. Ram considers what he might do, for gold cannot solve this problem–unless he turn Konrad to gold, using his gift for murder though his mother always warned him most stridently against such an act.

And now pay attention, for our tale is about to conclude, and the stakes are high and the path is narrow…

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On Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold, Divya told us: I was reading the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin” to my child when I started to wonder about the motivations of the titular character. The reasons I came up with eventually intersected with the fact that I was an immigrant kid with a difficult to pronounce last name, and from that, this story was born.

Thank you, Divya, for the story and that background. This was a wonderful, characterful story; Rumpelstiltskin is so often a grotesque figure, shunned, rejected and feared in the traditional tellings despite his gifts, but this rendition shows so much warmth and humanity and love. And of course, that is generally what people are, aren’t they? I know the world is dark right now–as I record this it’s not yet a month since a certain election, there are arrest warrants out for Israeli leaders after the genocide in Gaza, and the war in Ukraine is escalating alarmingly–but I still honestly and genuinely believe that most people are, at heart, decent.

Led astray and manipulated by a world rapidly resembling robber baronry again, sure: I often think of the Discworld novel Jingo, and the genius of Sir Pterry in having Sergeant Colon–heretofore a solid, relatable, everyman sort of character–be the one to regurgitate such standard, trite nonsense about the foreigner being so lazy, though of course he doesn’t mean Goriff round the corner who works all hours at his curry shop, no, them other foreigners, the unseen and insidious types he’s warned about by the powers that be. And that’s the rub of it, right? On an individual level, most people aren’t hateful and consciously prejudiced, they try and treat everyone as best they can, albeit often still with levels of unexamined prejudice baked in from society: by and large though it’s the world that’s racist, the system we’re in, that offers different levels of opportunity and support to folks on the basis of their name, their skin, their partner. But somehow, the common understanding of racism is that it’s something an individual does rather than a systemic issue, essentially just name-calling, and most individuals know they wouldn’t do that, and so as far as they’re concerned racism doesn’t exist anymore, right?

As it’s summed up later in the novel by Commander Sam Vimes:

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us.

If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me?

After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them.

We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.

And so Walter blames Ram’s mother, “the witch”, because he is poor and starving and has no future to look forward to; but instead of blaming the feudal hierarchy above him it is easier to look to the foreigner, and be envious of what he imagines they have rather than of the castle he knows his lord to sit in.

I trust I don’t have to belabour the parallels to contemporary billionaires and their drive to own both traditional and social media in full to shepherd their message of division and hate.

It is naïve of me to think that the world can be fixed if only people can talk to each other and recognise the common humanity, but, well–we were getting there with Twitter before a certain apartheid-profiting family member bought it out. I also want to be clear that the emotional burden of reaching out to make this connection should absolutely not fall on the already exhausted folk at the intersection of all this discrimination. There is, funnily enough, not a simple answer to racism awaiting you at the end of this podcast outro, sorry. But I do know that talking to each other, and more importantly listening to each other, is definitely part of whatever the answer is, and that it will surely turn out–as it so often does–that the real gold was the friends we made along the way.