The Golden Egg: The Golden Key
A Grimm Novella — part 4 of 4
[Author’s Note:
The illustrations I borrowed for these episodes are by John Hurford, whose work has always struck me as being on the Grimm side. Please explore his website.
If you haven’t yet read the rest of the story:
Part 1, The Poor Maiden, is here}
Part 2, Sesame Mountain, is here}
Part 3, The Blue Light, is here]
The evening was dark beyond the unclosed curtains of the flat. Jakob was asleep, drooling unattractively on the sofa. Sarah glanced at him and smiled, then concentrated again on the screen. Four thousand words, split into individual letters and weighted according to how well they matched Steven’s typing, boiled down to five possibles. Autodestruction, or rather Autodest*uc*i*n, was the least unlikely. We’re missing something, she thought. What are we not seeing?
“Sorry,” Jakob said from behind her, “I dropped off.” He came to stand at her shoulder. Sarah could feel his warmth, comforting her. “How are we doing?”
She tapped the screen. “Singlepropellor or temperamentally? Unlikely that he’d put a number for one of the double Ls. And I’ve never seen this one before today. I bet he’s never heard of it.”
“Rummlegumptions?” Jakob read. “What does it mean?”
“Rummlegumption is common sense,” Sarah told him. “Scottish, apparently.” She stretched her arms out, flex and relax. “Rumblegumption will be a variant.”
“Rumpelstiltskin,” Jakob suggested. He started counting on his fingers.
“What’s that?” Sarah asked, looking up to the ceiling as she tried to visualise the word that had made her shiver.
“Another fairytale,” Jakob said, distracted. “It’s where SSIG comes from. You didn’t know?” He restarted the finger count. Before he had reached his thumb, he shook his head. “No, the E’s in the wrong place. Sorry.”
“Is it?” Sarah asked, frustrated. “How?” For a moment she had been convinced that the answer was in her grasp.
“It’s E-L, not L-E. That’s why we don’t see it in the list.” He brightened up. “But Steven might not know that!”
Sarah found herself arguing frantically against her own will to agree. “If we have to allow misspellings, we’re back to three-to-the-fifteenth,” she said. “We might as well give up now.” She bit her lip, wondering. “Who’s this Rumpelstiltskin anyway?”
“He’s an evil goblin,” Jakob murmured, peering again at the screen, “with a fondness for gold and firstborn babies.”
Inside, Sarah lurched. I will not tell you. Her face was impassive as her heart hammered. Maybe one day, but not today.
“Think about this,” Jakob continued, oblivious to Sarah’s mental turmoil. “He starts with his own name, the way anyone does until they’re told to stop. Maybe with numbers for letters, R-U-M-B-zero-L-D, or S-T-E-V-three-N.”
“Why start there?” Sarah asked. “Fourteen characters minimum, isn’t it?”
“It is now,” Jakob confirmed, “but it used not to be. The rules were lax, barely more than recommendations. Six characters, and you could re-use an old password if you wanted. People would remember two and just swap between them. When the new rules came in, they’d add the two together, if they could. Everybody did it.” He frowned. “RumboldSteven’s still not long enough, and the Es are completely wrong. But Rumpelstiltskin…”
“That’s it.” Sarah had never known so much certainty. “That’s the word. With just a bit of tweaking. Can you put those recordings on the speakers, please?” she asked. “I want to listen and think.”
“Four is definitely a P,” Sarah said. “I should have spotted that before.” She looked up at him. “What are you smirking about?”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I know a P when I hear one.”
Jakob bowed low, doffing an imaginary cap. “Your servant, my lady.” To Sarah’s mystified expression he added, “It means you’re a princess — oh, never mind.”
“That’s what my father calls me, his princess.”
“He’s right,” Jakob said. “Look, we’re getting back down to only a thousand possibles,” he said. “Let’s see about those numerics.”
“We’ll only get three attempts,” Sarah warned. “After that we’ll be locked out, and Steven will know something is up.” She reached into her backpack, pulled out her earbud headphones. “His shoulder goes — ” She reached out her right arm and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to inhabit Steven’s space. “Play it again while I get into the zone.”
“That’s the best I can do,” Sarah said at last. “One and five and not sure.” She stifled a yawn. “It could be any of the third column; three, or six, or nine. They make no sound at all.”
“Then those are our three chances.” Jakob stood, held out a hand to help her up. “Good enough for me. Come on, we’re going to the office.”
“But it’s nearly midnight!”
“Yes, so there will be nobody there. Don’t worry, you won’t turn into a pumpkin.”
Sarah was already at her desk when Steven arrived on Monday morning and tried to log in to his account. Carefully not looking his way, she pretended to work until the noise of his increasing disquiet reached the level where heads were turning all around the office. She knew he was seeing Not Authorised messages in response to everything he tried.
He picked up the phone and pressed four keys. IT Support, Sarah guessed. Behind him she could see Thornbush, the head of Security, approaching in a businesslike fashion, along with two burly men she did not know. Jakob trailed them by a few yards. Sarah could still hear the ringing tone from the speaker as Thornbush’s hand fell heavy on Steven’s shoulder. Goodbye, Rumplest1lt5k9n, Sarah said silently. And good riddance.
Jakob waited until the men were out of sight before he came round to Sarah’s side of the desk and dropped the gift-wrapped parcel in front of her. “Present for you.”
Sarah smiled up at him. “What is it?” It was the size and shape of a thick book.
“A little reward for helping me unmask our mysterious embezzler.” Steven’s secret special edition of the Transfer code had been manipulating the exchange rates on every foreign trade by a minuscule amount, and sending the tiny calculated differences to an offshore account. In their millions, they added up to a hoard whose exact size Jakob’s department was still trying to compute. “You’ll be getting something from ForEdge” — Sarah already knew she was in for a hefty bonus — “but this is just from me. Go on, open it up.”
Sarah undid the ribbon and paper. “Brothers Grimm. Fairytales?” She tried to find a polite way of masking her mild disappointment. “It’s not the sort of thing I’d normally read.” She opened the book, skimming the unfamiliar titles on the Contents page.
“I know.” Jakob was grinning now, clearly enjoying her reaction. “Think of it as background information.” He leaned closer, dropping his voice. “Um, Sarah…?”
“Hmm?” She turned from the book to his face. It was about a foot from hers. Don’t stop there, she thought. You can get as close as you want.
“Would you like to try living happily ever after?”
[As I said at the beginning: enormous gratitude goes to Lizella Prescott and Zachariah Wahrer for indispensable editorial advice, and for the idea of The Grimm Reaper.]
