Storytelling for Week 11: What's in a Name?

"It feels like these walls are going to close in on me," Isabella thought to herself. She wasn't sure how long she had been trapped in this room. It could be days or it could be weeks. There was no way to tell in here. Either way, it felt like forever. She found that she started to talk to the walls. She had heard about people doing that and it always seemed crazy... until now. The creature only came in every couple of days or so. She had no one to talk to in between. She realized that she needed to hear her own voice but she wasn't sure what to say.

"I guess I'll just start from how I ended up here," she said to the empty space. She realized that she had replayed how it all happened over and over again in her head and she still was in disbelief that this is where she ended up. Everything was going so well.

"Through a misunderstanding, a king decided he wanted to marry me. He believed that I was able to spin five skeins a day and I was not going to tell him that this was untrue so I went with it. I agreed to marry him under certain conditions. He would treat me like royalty for 11 months out of the year, and he followed through with this condition. It was a magical 11 months. The downside was that for the last month of the year, I was to spin five skeins a day or he would kill me." she laughed to herself

It sounds quite violent now that she has had time to think about it. She wasn't sure why she agreed in the first place. He seemed like such a nice guy but the threat of death always hovered over her.

"When it came time for me to spin, I was terrified. I didn't know how I was going to be able to pull this off. I had no experience with spinning fabric. Suddenly, a creature appeared out of the window. He agreed that he would spin the skeins for me everyday but there was one catch... I had to guess his name by the end of the month or I would belong to him forever," she explained to the darkness.

She had been sure that she would have plenty of time. Everything was going so well until it came to the last day of the month and she still had not figured out his name. That was when the creature grabbed her and forced her to this dark room and this is where she is destined to stay for the rest of her life.

"This isn't exactly the happily ever after that I was promised," she cried as she continued to stare at the wall.

Spinning wheel. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Author's note: My story is based off of the story Tom Tit Tot. The original story is about a girl who eats all her mother's pies. Her mother starts singing about how her daughter has eaten five pies and a king approaches her to ask what she is singing. Embarrassed, she says that she is singing about how her daughter can spin five skeins. The king is amazed by this and offers a deal. He wanted to marry her daughter and he would treat her extremely well every year if during the last month of the year, she spins five skeins a day every day. If she does not do this, he will have her killed. When the girl is put into the room to begin, a creature, only referred to as 'that' agrees to help her and spin the skeins for her. The only catch is that she has three chances a day to guess his name, if she does not guess his name then she will become his. On the last day, she is able to guess his name and he flies off never to be seen again. In my version, I wanted to write about what would happen if she was not able to guess his name. The main details in the story I kept, only eliminating the first half of the story. I didn't feel that my version required the background as much as the original story had.
Bibliography: This story is part of the English Fairy Tales (1) unit. Story source: English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten (1890).