The Wise Woman

You’ve heard the story of Rumpelstiltskin, I’m sure. This was the tricky little man who helped the miller’s daughter spin straw into gold, and when she became queen because the king so fancied this skill, she had to turn the tricking back on Rumpelstiltskin. 

Rumpelstiltskin came to a fatal end, he was so frustrated to have his plan stopped. Afterward, you might think the Queen forgot about or didn’t talk about her win against this wicked little man. But the very opposite was true. She told everyone the story. She told her daughter the princess and her husband the king. She told her ladies in waiting and their lads. She told the musicians and the poets. She told, in fact, all the people who she encountered, such as her dressmaker, the wise woman who mixed herbs for pains and sicknesses, the woodcarver and the tapestry weaver who made fine things to decorate her rooms in the castle and the jeweler who turned stones and ore into shining bracelets and rings.  

So even though Rumpelstiltskin was long gone, the artists at the castle and the villagers and the woods dwellers around the castle well knew that if someone promised you something that seemed too good to be true, there would always be a catch.

It was to be expected, for example, that if a little girl was walking in the garden and saw a unicorn, she would be look on in awe, of course, but she would also ask it what she would have to give if she petted it or offered it an apple or took a silken strand from its mane.

The wise woman who mixed herbs, the tapestry weaver and the jeweler all lived near one another in the forest. They lived in cottages much less elaborate than the manor houses of the lords, but much nicer than the straw huts of the farm workers or the swineherds. They taught others their trades, sold goods to those who came calling or even sometimes loaded their wares together onto carts for the spring shearing festivals or the fall apple and grape harvest fairs.

Some of their customers and pupils were regular folk, and others were magical folk – elves and dwarves, pixies and nymphs, wizards and wizardesses. There wasn’t much difference in what the regular folk and the magical folk bought – elves needed willow bark tea for their headaches and dwarves loved to have fine rings and jeweled belts – but the wise woman and the weaver and the jeweler always kept in mind the stories of the Queen about Rumpelstiltskin and made sure no trade was too good to be true.

One day, the wise woman was mixing herbs and a group of young pixies were in the cottage with her, watching her work and asking questions, fetching different jars and muslin bags for her as she worked. She had told them if they were helpful, she would make a special sweet honey, raspberry and hibiscus tea for them at the end of the afternoon.

As she was working, she heard a call from the next cottage, where the weaver lived and worked. “Wise woman,” she called, “I’ve tangled my warp and my weft again. Can you help me straighten them out on my loom.”

“I’ll come right away,” the wise woman called. She took her sharpest knife, slipped on her sandals but remembered at the last moment to talk to the pixies. “I’ll be RIGHT back. No tricks, no gymnastics while I’m gone. Just be patient.” 

The wise woman was gone for a few short moments and came back into the cottage to find one of the pixies standing in the middle of her herbs table, and the other four pixies getting up to their own mischief: One was trying to read her books upside down while holding a large magnifying glass. One was climbing the tall bedstead. Still another was shimmying under the rug like a burrowing mole. And the last one was blowing out the lantern and relighting it over and over again.

“Why are you standing on the table?” she asked the first pixie.

 “I am not,” the pixie said, still standing on the table.

“Why are you messing with my books?” she asked the second pixie.

“I am not,” the pixie said, followed by a loud “Ouch!” as the book fell on her feet.

“Why are you climbing the bedstead?” she asked the third pixie. 

“I am not,” the pixie said, as she fell from the post onto the feather mattress.

“Why are you under the rug?” she asked pixie four.

“Ym mfrhot nawt,” came the muffled reply.

“And why are you lighting the lantern and blowing it out again?” the wise woman asked pixie the last. 

“Pffftttt. I am not,” said that last pixie.

The wise woman stood there and took three deep breaths, and tried to decide what to do. She knew she must do something decisive or the pixies would believe they had won over her, and her authority in her own house.  

She decided to use their own trick against them. “I can see you are telling the truth and that is very admirable. I always lie. I never tell the truth.”

“You always lie?” asked the second pixie.

 “Always,” said the wise woman.

“Were you lying about the honey raspberry and hibiscus tea?” asked the third pixie, who had a sweet tooth.

“I never tell the truth,” said the wise woman.

“But that might be a lie,” said the last pixie. “If she never tells the truth, and we asked her if she was lying, and she said she did, then it might be that she really will make us the tea.”

“You’re right,” said the first pixie.

“So then we will have tea?” asked the second pixie.

“You might,” said the wise woman. “The water in the kitchen is so clean and sweet.”

“She is surely lying about that,” said the first pixie. “If we want tea, we should go and get fresh water ourselves.” So the five pixies ran out to the stream and got fresh water for the tea.

When they came back, the wise woman told them, “Wonderful, and the tea will go with the cakes that the jeweler made. He’s an even better baker than he is a jeweler.”

“He is a fine jeweler indeed,” said the third pixie. “So she must be lying that he is a good baker. I don’t want cakes that taste like straw and pebbles with my tea. Let’s make the pixie cake we love and also some sausages and roast apples.”

So the pixies heated the oven and set the sausages bubbling in an iron pan over the fire and they turned a half dozen apples over the spit. The wise woman slipped off her sandals, and propped her feet up on her footstool. Her cat hopped into her lap and purred and they both watched the pixies at work.

When the meal was done, the wise woman indeed made a pot of the honey raspberry and hibiscus tea, and sat down to eat with the pixies. She didn’t say a word but smiled quietly while she ate and the pixies watched.

“You don’t need to worry about cleaning up, my pixie friends,” said the wise woman.

And at that they jumped up, and cleared the table, took the dishes to the sink and washed them well.

Later that evening, the wise woman and the weaver and the jeweler were having their own evening teas together by the fire pit at the jeweler’s house. The wise woman told of her morning and midday with the pixies and all three of the craftspeople laughed when she got to the part about the cakes the jeweler baked.

“I am a fine baker!” he said indignantly.

“You are,” replied the wise woman. “And I am a fine liar.”  

“Indeed,” said the weaver. “Pixies will lie about anything, but they will never lie as well as you.”