In the Kingdom, names determine people’s destinies. Rump remembers his mother whispering his full name into his ear, but her voice was too weak for his grandmother to hear anything but the first syllable. Rump cannot recall his full name, and his undignified, truncated moniker makes the boy the laughingstock of his small community on the Mountain. Although Rump is 12 years old, he stopped growing when he was eight. He believes his incomplete name is the cause of his short height.

The Village relies on the Mountain’s dwindling gold deposits to secure food from King Bartholomew Archibald Reginald Fife. On Rump’s 12th birthday, the miller’s sons, Frederick and Bruno, bully him while he is panning for gold. They call him names and throw excrement at him. A girl named Red, who is the closest thing Rump has to a friend, scares the bullies away by brandishing her shovel at them. Just as people underestimate and mock Rump for his name, they fear Red because “Red is not a name. It’s a color, an evil color” (5). Although Rump works until sundown, his search is fruitless. Pixies, tiny, winged creatures with the ability to sense gold, still flutter about the mines even though many years have passed since the Mountain yielded a significant amount of precious metal.