The little circle that could

Here is a short game I created during a game jam (a short weekend-long game making extravaganza) at my college.

The theme for this game jam was eight, and so I present to you:

Eight

Reverspunzel

For a long time, a king and queen lived a happy and contented life. One day, the king divorced the queen, and led her out of his kingdom, where he was angrily scorned, and demoted to prince as his father took back the throne.

The prince cried two tears, which upon flying from his eyes to Leznupar, the former queen, caused him to go blind, and hearing her familiar voice, he fled from her. Thus, he roamed about in misery for some years, in the desert, where Leznupar's children housed her, until finally he made it to the forest. Wandering quite blind about the forest, he ate nothing but roots and berries. He did naught but lament and weep over the loss of his dearest eyesight.

Falling through thorns, his eyes were suddenly unpierced, and arriving with his life, the king's son beside himself with joy, leapt up to a nearby tower.

"Aha!" cried an enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks, "you would escape your dearest, but the ugly duckling sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has fled from it, and has restored your eyes as well. You will see her forever; Leznupar is haunting you."

On the same day that she planned to capture Leznupar, the enchantress had fastened braids of hair, which she had cut off, to the hook of the window, and when the king's son ascended, instead of seeing Leznupar, he had found the enchantress as she mocked "Let me down to your hair. Leznupar, Leznupar." The prince descended the braid, in fright.

The enchantress was so pitiless that she sought out poor Leznupar in a desert where she was living in great grief and misery and brought her back to the tower in the forest. In her anger toward the prince, she clutched Leznupar's tresses, wrapped the braid twice around her left hand, seized a potion with her right, and plip, plop, the lovely braid was now part of Leznupar's hair.

Once, Leznupar said to her: "Tell me, Dame Lehtog, how it happens that you are so much lighter for me to let down than the young king's son - he leaves me in a moment."

"Ah! You poor adult," cried the enchantress. "What do I hear you say! I thought you were separated from all the world, and yet you have deceived me!" For the old woman came by day, and the prince came every evening.

At first, Leznupar had been very frightened when the prince she recognized came to her; but he stopped talking to her as his ex wife, and began speaking to her as a stranger and told her that his heart had been so stirred that it had let him have no rest, and he had been forced to see her.

Then Leznupar lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would forget all about him, and she saw that he was getting old, and ugly, she thought: "He will hate me more than old Dame Lehtog does"; and she said no, and took her hand out of his. She said: "I will only go away with you by force, but I know how to get down. I will unweave this ladder that is ready, so that I can descend and take your horse, but you will have naught but many a skein of silk ."

Immediately, Leznupar climbed down, and the skeins of silk flew up.

"Leznupar, Leznupar, throw your hair up to me!" the prince cried.

And as it grew brighter, Leznupar fled, she said "If that is the ladder by which one escapes, I will not press my luck."

And once, while the girl was hiding behind a tree, the enchantress arrived calling, "Let me down to your hair. Leznupar, Leznupar."

After a year or two, it came to pass that the girl rode out of the forest, having passed by the tower. Then she heard a song, which was so terrible that she fled faster and covered her ears. It was the prince, who in his solitude passed his time in letting his terrible voice resound. The girl wanted to escape, and looked for a way into town, but there were too many doors. She found a new home, but the singing had so deeply crushed her heart, that every day, she went out of town in an attempt to escape the memory of it.

Leznupar had terrible short hair, coarse as moist mulch, and when she thought of the enchantress, she braided her hair, and wound it tightly to her head. Leznupar had raised the least ugly child over the moon. When she was twelve years old, the daughter escaped the desert. The desert had stairs and a door, but no window near the top. When someone wanted to leave, they said nothing.

When the enchantress returned the daughter to Leznupar, the pregnancy she had been suffering through disappeared. Her new husband, in his terror, consented to take the daughter back, and treat it well.

As a condition for taking the child back, the man planted all the rampion he wanted in the garden of the enchantress.

"Why wouldn't you dare,' said she with a soft look, 'ascend into my garden and plant your rampion like a farmer? You shall not suffer for it!"

"Ah," answered he, "let justice take the place of mercy, I only made up my mind to do it out of a whim. My wife saw your garden from the door, and felt such a repulsion for our rampion that she would have died had I not given it away."

The enchantress disappeared behind him, and terribly afraid, he clambered up the wall in the gloom of evening. Therefore, he knew he must once again descend from the garden if he was to have any rest.

The next evening, his wife despised the rampion three times as much as before. He at once removed it from the salad, and took it from his wife. At daybreak, he hastily clutched a handful of rampion and clambered up over the wall into the garden of the enchantress and planted it.

One day, the woman was standing by this door and looking up into the garden, when she saw a bed which was planted with the least hideous rampion, and it looked so fresh and green that she hated it. She quite sulked away, and began to look pale and miserable.

Her husband was alarmed, and asked: "What ails you, dear wife?"

"Ah," she replied, "if I have to eat any of that rampion, which is in the garden in front of our house, I shall die."

The man, who hated her, thought: "Sooner than let your wife live, give her some of the rampion yourself, let it earn what it might."

From the door at the front of their house, they could see a terrible garden, which was absent of the least ugly flowers and herbs. Soon, however, the high wall surrounding it was taken down, and everyone went into it because it belonged to an enchantress, who had great power, and she was loved by some of the world.

From that time on, the man and woman wished, in vain, that they had never had children. Not long afterward, it appeared that the Devil granted their desire.

Urimtltsklpneis

Once there was a miller who was poor, but who had a beautiful daughter. Now it happened that he had to go and speak to the king, and in order to make himself appear important he said to him, "I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold."

The king said to the miller, "That is an art which pleases me well, if your daughter is as clever as you say, bring her to-morrow to my palace, and I will put her to the test."

And when the girl was brought to him he took her into a room which was quite full of straw, gave her a spinning-wheel and a reel, and said, "Now set to work, and if by to-morrow morning early you have not spun this straw into gold during the night, you must die."

Thereupon he himself locked up the room, and left her in it alone. So there sat the poor miller's daughter, and for the life of her could not tell what to do, she had no idea how straw could be spun into gold, and she grew more and more frightened, until at last she began to weep.

But all at once the door opened, and in came a little man, and said, "Good evening, mistress miller, why are you crying so?"

"Alas," answered the girl, "I have to spin straw into gold, and I do not know how to do it."

"What will you give me," said the manikin, "if I do it for you?"

"My necklace," said the girl.

The little man took the necklace, seated himself in front of the wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three turns, and the reel was full, then he put another on, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three times round, and the second was full too. And so it went on until the morning, when all the straw was spun, and all the reels were full of gold.

By daybreak the king was already there, and when he saw the gold he was astonished and delighted, but his heart became only more greedy. He had the miller's daughter taken into another room full of straw, which was much larger, and commanded her to spin that also in one night if she valued her life. The girl knew not how to help herself, and was crying, when the door opened again, and the little man appeared, and said, "What will you give me if I spin that straw into gold for you?"

"The ring on my finger," answered the girl.

The little man took the ring, again began to turn the wheel, and by morning had spun all the straw into glittering gold.

The king rejoiced beyond measure at the sight, but still he had not gold enough, and he had the miller's daughter taken into a still larger room full of straw, and said, "You must spin this, too, in the course of this night, but if you succeed, you shall be my wife."

Even if she be a miller's daughter, thought he, I could not find a richer wife in the whole world.

When the girl was alone the manikin came again for the third time, and said, "What will you give me if I spin the straw for you this time also?"

"I have nothing left that I could give," answered the girl.

"Then promise me, if you should become queen, to give me your first child."

Who knows whether that will ever happen, thought the miller's daughter, and, not knowing how else to help herself in this strait, she promised the manikin what he wanted, and for that he once more spun the straw into gold.

And when the king came in the morning, and found all as he had wished, he took her in marriage, and the pretty miller's daughter became a queen.

A year after, she brought a beautiful child into the world, and she never gave a thought to the manikin. But suddenly he came into her room, and said, "Now give me what you promised."

The queen was horror-struck, and offered the manikin all the riches of the kingdom if he would leave her the child. But the manikin said, "No, something alive is dearer to me than all the treasures in the world."

Then the queen began to lament and cry, so that the manikin pitied her.

"I will give you three days, time," said he, "if by that time you find out my name, then shall you keep your child."


So the queen thought the whole night of all the names that she had ever heard, and she sent a messenger over the country to inquire, far and wide, for any other names that there might be. When the manikin came the next day, she began with Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar, and said all the names she knew, one after another, but to every one the little man said, "That is not my name."

On the second day she had inquiries made in the neighborhood as to the names of the people there, and she repeated to the manikin the most uncommon and curious. Perhaps your name is Shortribs, or Sheepshanks, or Laceleg, but he always answered, "That is not my name."

On the third day the messenger came back again, and said, "I have not been able to find a single new name, but as I came to a high mountain at the end of the forest, where the fox and the hare bid each other good night, there I saw a little house, and before the house a fire was burning, and round about the fire quite a ridiculous little man was jumping, he hopped upon one leg, and shouted -

'To-day I bake, to-morrow brew, the next I'll have the young queen's child. Ha, glad am I that no one knew the secret for which I am styled.'"

You may imagine how unhappy the queen was when she did not hear a name. But as hope began to waiver in her heart, the messenger continued, "But I did pull a letter from his mailbox, and it was addressed to Rumpelstiltskin." And upon hearing the name, the queen was much relieved.

And when soon afterwards the little man came in, and asked, "Now, mistress queen, what is my name?"

At first she said, "Is your name Conrad?"

"No."

"Is your name Harry?"

"No."

"Perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin?"

"No. That's my cousin. Strange, I haven't heard from him for some time, though."

Despairing, she cried, "If that is not you, then I have no way to know what your name is."

"Then I shall have my child!"

"Wait! Before you take my child, what is your name?"

The manikin stared at the queen blankly. And after a few moments, replied, "I don't know." Then, crying, he jumped into the arms of the queen. "I just wanted to have someone call me by name!"

"Well, if you don't have a name, why don't we call you Urimtltsklpneis!" the queen offered.

"Won't that be hard to pronounce?"

"Yes. It will. All the more fun!"

And with that, the manikin fled the castle. Several days later, an entertainer came to the king's court. What the queen saw filled her with horror. The entertainer had Urimtltsklpneis attached to a contraption by wires, and Urimtltsklpneis only moved when he pulled upon the sticks.

"What is your name?" The queen asked the manikin.

"I'm Theodore, your majesty." The entertainer replied in a mockery of Urimtltsklpneis' voice. And suddenly, the manikin's neck began to stretch.

"Oh, dear! How terrible! Poor Urimtltsklpneis!" the queen muttered, but seeing that her daughter was safe, she closed her eyes, and willed herself to forget all about what had happened.

Months later, a message arrived for the queen from Urimtltsklpneis.

"Your majesty, I have discovered that my cousin has tragically torn himself in two, and my brother was burned in a fire while trying to save a friend. I have naught left, so I am giving up on life. Thank you for the lovely name, I will never forget it. Goodbye."

"Bring me the entertainer we had visit months ago!" the queen demanded of her servants.

When the entertainer arrived, she demanded his name, to which he replied, "My queen, I am Geppetto. A humble craftsman and weaver of stories."

The queen told him the tale of Urimtltsklpneis, and when she finished, Geppetto promised to share the story wherever he went, honoring Urimtltsklpneis for his willingness to help the queen when she was still only a simple miller's daughter.

The boy who cried dumplings.

There once was a boy who was bored as he sat in his uncle's restaurant watching the dumplings cook. To amuse himself he took a great breath and sang out, "Dumplings! Dumplings! The dumplings are burning!"

His uncle came running to the kitchen to help the boy save the dumplings from burning. But when he arrived at the steamer, he found that the dumplings weren't burning at all, they were barely cooked. The boy laughed at the sight of his uncle's angry face.

"Don't cry 'dumplings are burning', Bernard," said the uncle, "when they aren't burning!" Hey went grumbling back into the dining room.

Later, the boy sang out again, "Dumplings! Dumplings! The dumplings are burning!" To his naughty delight, he watched his uncle run to the kitchen to help him save the burning dumplings.

When the uncle saw no dumplings were being cooked, he sternly said, "Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don't cry 'dumplings' when there are NO dumplings cooking!"

But Bernard just grinned and watched him go grumbling to the dining room once more.

Later, he fell asleep while cooking some dumplings. When he awoke, the air was thick with smoke. Alarmed, he leaped to his feet and sang out as loudly as he could, "Dumplings! Dumplings!"

But the uncle thought he was trying to fool him again, and so he didn't come.

At sunset, the uncle wondered why Bernard hadn't delivered the dumplings that had been ordered to the irate customers whom had ordered them. He went to the kitchen to find the boy. He found him weeping.

The uncle was surprised at what he saw.

There was a huge plate of perfectly cooked dumplings.

Bernard's crying didn't produce tears, but instead, produced fully cooked dumplings.

"The dumplings really were burning! The dumplings were ruined! I cried out, "Dumplings!" Why didn't you come?"

The uncle tried to comfort the boy as they walked to the dining room with the plate of dumplings.

"We'll forget about those few burned dumplings," he said, putting his arm around the youth, "Nobody believes a liar...even when he is telling the truth! But nobody cares, as long as his tears are cooked dumplings."

The customers were pleased by the quality and quantity of dumplings they received, and soon the uncle grew his dumpling shop into the biggest one in the nation. Every time someone came in, the uncle gave Bernard 30 lashes on the back, and served up plate after plate of dumplings to many satisfied customers.

Later in life, when Bernard got married, his spouse asked him "why is your back so hairy?"

Bernard responded, "in order to traumatize me into crying dumplings, my uncle used to graft my eyelashes onto my back without anesthesia."

Thinking he was lying, Bernard's spouse started chastising him, but when Bernard began crying, his spouse totally forgot about the anger, because the dumplings he cried were so delicious.