There was once a king and queen who ruled over a small kingdom. One day, the queen gave birth to a daughter, born with thick, golden hair. The king took his kingdom’s most valuable possessions, three pieces of fallen stars, and traded them to three faeries in exchange for three Blessings for the newborn babe.

For the first Blessing, the Queen requested her daughter be Blessed with immeasurable beauty, for few princes would take an ugly princess as a bride. For the second, the king requested she be Blessed with boundless creativity, for a leader must be intelligent and quick-witted sometimes in order to protect their throne. When the third of the Faeries asked what the final Blessing should be, the king and queen explained that their kingdom was poor, and asked that the final Blessing be something which could bring endless wealth to their kingdom.

So for the final Blessing, the last faerie said, “May you be able to spin all the bounties of the worlds from straw”.

And so it was that the princess, Rimarra, grew to possess immense beauty and boundless creativity. And on a day when she was at last old enough to spin, her father took her to the spinning wheel, and asked her to spin some straw into gold. And she did. Then, the next day, he asked her to do the same. And the next. And the next. Each day, the king grew greedier, seeing how rich the kingdom was becoming, and forcing Rimarra to make more and more gold.

For a long time, the queen saw what her husband was becoming, and shielded her daughter the best she could. But even she could only do so much. One day, while the queen was away, the king worked Rimarra particularly hard.

Finally, Rimarra said “I am tired father. May I please have a rest? I don’t think I can spin much more”.

The king punched Rimarra in the face, knocking her to the floor. He knew that any marks he left on her face would vanish within the hour, due to his daughter’s Blessing of beauty. He then made her remove her shirt, and delivered her twenty lashings as she wept.

When it was over, he asked, “Do you understand why I did this?” When she didn’t answer, he smacked her across the face.

“No father,” Rimarra managed through her sobs.

“Because you have a gift, Rimarra. A gift not seen for well over five generations. And our people, your people, are starving in the streets. One day, you will be queen. A queen cannot rest. A queen cannot take breaks. You have a duty, Rimarra. A duty to our kingdom.”

The princess didn’t argue, and began to spin once more. The King walked away, believing the matter settled. And, for many years, he was right.

As the princess matured, suitors began to come to their palace from all across the land, seeking the princess’ hand in marriage, for all who saw her agreed that she was the most beautiful princess they had ever seen. Yet the king had grown so greedy at this point, that he hated the idea of anyone ever taking his daughter away. So whenever a suitor came to the palace seeking his daughter’s hand, he sent them away.

For a long time, this worked, and the king believed it would continue working until his daughter was so old that no prince would take her as a bride.

One autumn day, when Rimarra was in bed ready to go to sleep, she heard a knock at her window. When she looked outside, there was a man who had scaled the castle wall. “Would you please let me in?” He asked, “It’s freezing out here.”

And she did. In the room, the man explained that he was a prince from another kingdom. The two of them sat and talked for hours, and then, as he was about to leave, he asked her to marry him. Rimarra refused. “I barely even know you,” she said.

“Very well,” the prince replied, “then I shall simply return again, once every seven days, and propose to you again, until you feel you know me well enough to accept.” With that, the prince left and climbed back down the palace wall.

Rimarra considered the marriage proposal over the next few days, and came to a decision. When next he came, she would accept, so that she would never again be forced to use a spinning wheel. But before that happened, the queen fell ill, and the healers said that she would soon die.

At the end of the seven days, the suitor returned and knocked at Rimarra’s window. And once again, Rimarra let him in. Once again, they talked late into the night. And once again, he proposed.

“I want to. I really do. But my mother… She’s sick and… And…” The princess began to a cry, and the prince held her. Finally, he told her that he would be back in seven days to propose again.

Over the next few days, with the queen sick, the king made Rimarra work harder than ever before, until the fifth day. On the fifth day, the queen passed, and Rimarra was allowed a day to grieve. However, for the next two days, Rimarra was forced to work even harder to make up for the day that she missed.

Finally, at the end of the seventh day, the princess heard a knock on her window. Rimarra opened the window and let him in. Before he could say anything, Rimarra said, “Yes! I want to marry you. Just please, take me away from here, so that I never have to come back.”

Rimarra already had a bag packed, and the two left that night. The journey to the prince’s kingdom was long and hard, but she preferred the road far more than than the spinning wheel. At last, they came to a dark wood. A place where no light ever shone, every tree was dead and all manner of strange beasts walked the earth.

“Are you certain we should go this way?” Rimarra asked, “I have heard stories of places like these. They say that dark creatures, like ‘wolves and trolls, make their homes in these woods.”

“You shouldn’t believe every silly superstition you hear, Rimarra. My kingdom’s on the other side of this wood. If you don’t want to come, you can turn around right now and go back to your father’s castle.” But the prince knew that she would never return there, and so they went into the wood.

Deep within, they came across a small cabin. Rimarra and the prince had walked for hours, and the sun was fading behind distant mountains.

“We should rest in this cabin, then set off in the morning,” the prince suggested.

The cabin was an old, creepy looking place, and Rimarra dreaded the idea of staying the night here. But still, she said nothing. The prince held the door open for Rimarra, and she entered the cabin.

All around, the room was decorated with clocks of all types, from cuckoo clocks to huge grandfather clocks. In the center of the room was a spinning wheel, and a middle-aged man with a pocket watch.

“Tick tock, tick tock, the clock strikes eight.” The man sang. “Tick tock, tick tock, you’re run-ning late.” The man shot an accusatory glance behind Rimarra, and the door shut behind her.

“I’m sorry, Clockmaster,” said the prince, who was in fact, not really a prince, “the poison I gave the queen was slower-acting than expected.”

Rimarra turned to leave, but the prince pulled his sword on her.

Rimarra fell to her knees and began to cry. “Why are you doing this?” she asked the not-prince.

The Clockmaster was the one who answered this, “you are a very special girl, princess. A very special girl with a very special gift. All you need to do is to take this straw, and spin it into nothing. Do that, and I’ll set you free.”

Rimarra knew he would never let her free, but saw no other choice, so she began to spin the straw. As she spun, the straw disappeared.

“Not like that!” The Clockmaster snapped. “Don’t just make it absent. Make it into Absence!”

And so she tried again. This time, she spun strands that were black as pitch.

“Not simply blackness! Nothingness!”

“I have never seen Nothing,” Rimarra said. “How am I supposed to know what it looks like?”

The Clockmaster sighed. “Imagine it.”

And so she did. With her Blessing of boundless creativity, she was able to imagine something that would drive a normal human mad to simply glimpse, and as Rimarra spun the very concept of Nonexistence itself into existence, she ceased to exist.

- - - - -

“... And then I woke up here,” Rimarra finished her story.

Jareth just stared at the girl for several long seconds, then let out a hardy laugh and shook his head. “Blessing of creativity, indeed,” Jareth said, smiling, “I’ve had at least a hundred runaways and outlaws come in my inn, and try to feed me some load of **** about how they got here.” Rimarra’s head dropped at this. “But not a single one of them ever spun me a tale as beautiful as that.”

“So… I can stay?” Rimarra asked hopefully.

Jareth gave another hardy laugh. “As long as you can pay for it, doll, I don’t give a crap where you come from, or what stories you want to tell. Only thing I care about is whether or not you got the coin.”

“Oh…” Rimarra said, looking down again.

“You do have the coin, right?” Jareth asked, already anticipating the answer.

The girl shook her head slightly in response, and dropped it even lower. He continued to stare, and heard a brief sob. Was she crying?

While he didn’t buy her story, he could tell that she had definitely been through some horrible ordeal. before getting here.

Jareth heard a glass tap against the bar, and moved to refill it. She really was a beautiful girl, if a little filthy and disheveled. He sighed. Beauty didn’t pay the bills. Jareth filled the man’s cup, and moved back to the girl. He really hated to see her like this, and hated even more the idea of throwing her back on the streets.

“You wouldn’t happen to have anything worth trading for a night here, would you?” He asked the question, fully expecting her to say no, or to pull out some junk item. It was one reason he had a policy against taking objects as payment for services. A policy which he was fully aware he was now breaking.

What he didn’t expect was for the girl to look up and start beaming. “Can you use this?” Jareth’s jaw dropped as he watched the girl pull out a single strand of pure gold. It was so thin that he had to hold it and examine it closely to even be sure of what it was.

“Yes. I believe that would be acceptable.” Jareth said, pulling his mouth shut. “BERT, d’ya mind finding this little lady a room!”

As his apprentice came in and led the girl away, Jareth realized that despite how filthy and ragged the girl’s clothes were, she didn’t have a mark on her. He shook his head and cast the thought from his mind. It was just a silly story…

Wasn’t it?