What was he to do?
She guessed his name,
the Devil he blamed,
there was no other way she knew.
If truth be told,
his youth was stolen
and his height divided by three,
by a witch in a dell
who had cast her spell
when he trespassed her property.
She kept him then
in a wooden pen,
his leg held by a golden chain.
Until one day he chewed
the chain straight through
and escaped the witch's domain.
But little did he dream,
as he sat by a stream,
that the gold was now in his blood.
He was a hideous runt
that no woman would want,
all he had was his golden touch.
And so his life was altered
when the Miller's daughter
became stuck in a horrible bind.
He spun straw into gold
to save her soul,
once, twice, three times.
On the third
he took her word,
a promise of her first born child.
But when he came to collect it,
she cried and objected,
so he gave her one more trial.
Guess my name
and I'll remove my claim,
he offered the young Queen mother.
When she guessed it right
it broke him inside,
so badly he couldn't recover.
His heart made of gold,
his bones brittle and old,
there was nothing left to do.
He stomped hard with his foot,
the King's castle shook,
and he tore himself in two.
Kurt Newton says, "My poetry has appeared in Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Star*Line, Dreams and Nightmares, and Space and Time. I hail from the tiny mythical state of Connecticut."
