Jack

by Liesl Shurtliff

  “Well, if it isn’t Tom Thumb!” said the giantess with delight. She held out her hand, and the boy climbed into her palm without hesitation. “I’m sorry, I forgot I put you in the sugar bowl for dinner, but now that you’re here, I have a surprise for you.” Martha set the boy down next to me. “A new brother! Oh dear, I never did choose a name for him, did I? He doesn’t seem to have one. What do you think his name should be, Tom?”

  Tom shrugged. “How about Tim?”

  Martha clapped her hands. “Oh perfect! Tim and Tom Thumb! We’re going to be such a happy little family! My own baby boy is all grown up and gone off in the world, and you little ones just fill the cracks in my heart!” A giant tear trickled down her cheek and made a puddle at our feet. She scooped us both up and pressed us against her chest so I could barely breathe. I suddenly wished for my own mother, even if she met me with a good tongue-lashing.

  Finally Martha let us down, and I fell to my knees, gasping for air.

  “We must celebrate,” said Martha. “With cheese! Cheese and children! My two favorite things!”

  Martha went to a cupboard and took out a large wooden block with a slab of cheese as big as a cow and a giant knife.

  I struggled to get out of the handkerchief and tipped over. Tom helped me up and unraveled me.

  “Thanks,” I said, but before I could say anything more, Martha placed the cheese right between us. She cut off a chunk and popped it into her mouth. The smell was sharp and acrid.

  “Mmm. Mm. Mm! I just love cheese.”

  Tom poked his head over the top of the cheese and climbed down the other side. He ripped off a chunk for me.

  “Here, Tim, have some cheese.” The smell was overwhelming, but I was dizzy with hunger, so I dug in. It tasted better than it smelled, and I instantly felt better.

  “My name is actually Jack,” I said.

  “Well why didn’t you say so? My name is actually Tom. Martha calls me Tom Thumb since I’m about as big as her thumb.”

  “I thought she was going to eat me.”

  Tom laughed. “Not Martha. We’re her pets, like a toad you keep in your pocket.”

  Tom’s clothes were rather odd. He wore a giant acorn shell on his head like a helmet, a vest and pants made of leaves and thistledown, and fur boots. He had bright-blue eyes, and a sprinkle of freckles over round cheeks and a button nose.

  “How long have you been here? Did Martha kidnap you?”

  “Of course not. She paid another giant an entire round of cheese for me, which is a lot for Martha. She loves cheese. She prefers it over any other food.”

  “Do the other giants prefer to eat children?”

  “I don’t think so, but giants are the least of your worries when it comes to getting eaten. Once I got eaten by a giant cow!”

  “How could you be alive if you were eaten by a cow?” I asked.

  “I got swallowed whole. I went straight down the throat like a big mud slide, traveled through all four stomachs, and came out the other end.”

  “You mean you came out in the cow’s…?”

  “Exactly!” said Tom, grinning with pride. “It was amazing!”

  I pictured this event in my mind and slowed down on the cheese. It too came out of a cow.

  Now that I had some food in my stomach, and I knew I wasn’t going to be eaten, exhaustion settled in. My limbs were sore and heavy, and the warmth of the candle made my eyelids droop.

  I shook myself awake. I couldn’t sleep now! Perhaps I was not in danger, but Papa might be.

  “Tom, have you seen other people like us? People who have been taken by giants?”

  “Oh sure. There are lots of elves in the castle.”

  “Elves?”

  “Yeah, elves like us.”

  “I’m not an elf. I’m a human boy.”

  “Not in this world. Do you think the giants call each other giants? Here in The Kingdom, they’re regular sized and we’re little, so we’re called elves. You’ll get used to it.”

  I felt a little dizzy. “Okay. Can you tell me where I might find more of these…elves? I’m looking for my papa.”

  Tom froze. He lowered his cheese and looked at me as though I’d just told him it was poisoned. “Your papa?”

  I nodded. “Giants took him. They took all our crops and animals, and they snatched my papa right out of the barn with our newborn calf.”

  Tom’s eyes lost focus. He looked as though he had gone somewhere very far away.

  “His name is Henry,” I said. “He looks like me, only taller. Have you seen him?”

  Tom snapped to attention. “Nope, haven’t seen anyone’s papa lately.” He took a huge bite out of his cheese.

  “Do you have any idea where he could have been taken?”

  “No idea.”

  “Would Martha know?” She was steadfastly feasting upon cheese with her eyes closed. The giant slab was now half gone.

  “She hardly ever leaves the kitchen,” said Tom. “I see a lot more than she does. I’ve been all over the place. Want to duel?” Tom picked up two giant toothpicks off the cheese board and held one out to me. Normally I would have jumped at the chance, but seeing the giant toothpick gave me horrible visions of things that might have happened to Papa.

  “Not now. I’m on a quest.” I walked along the edge of the table. Looking for a way down.

  Tom tossed the toothpicks aside. “A quest! I love a quest! I’ll join you. What is our quest? Treasure? Trolls?”

  “No. I’m on a quest to find my papa, of course.”

  Tom’s smiled faded. “Oh. Well that’s not as fun as treasure or trolls. You know, there’s lots of treasure in the castle. The giant king is extremely rich. He has mountains of gold—giant-sized mountains. And he makes it with magic. Mum Martha’s seen it before. Haven’t you, Martha?”

  I got a tingling feeling at the back of my neck. A giant king. Gold. Magic. It was like Grandpa Jack’s tales.

  Martha opened her eyes as though she’d been woken from a dream. “What? Oh, yes. The king has plenty of gold, but I daresay it would be better if he could grow some magic potatoes. Such a famine we’re in, we can’t grow a bean these days! Our cows don’t give milk, the hens don’t lay eggs, and if we didn’t have you little elves, we’d all be starved!”

  Martha’s words took me by surprise. “So that was why those giants took all our food? Because you’re in a famine?” Of course, I had noticed how brown and droopy all the plants were, but I hadn’t made the connection to famine.

  “It’s a curse,” said Tom. “An evil magician put a spell on the land.”

  “Tom, stop telling tales,” Martha chided. “I know it’s horribly beastly of us, but what can we do? We would have starved by now without you dear little elves.” Her eyes started to brim with tears.

  “Don’t cry, Martha,” said Tom, patting her big hand. “We know it’s not your fault and you’re very kind to us.”

  “But why do you take people, too?” I asked. “Why not just the food?”

  “Giants couldn’t very well handle our food on their own, could they?” said Tom defensively. “Can you imagine Martha trying to milk one of our cows with her giant hands? She’d crush it! I had to milk seventeen cows for that one slab of cheese, you know.”

  “Such a good, sweet boy, my Tom Thumb.” Martha patted him on the head so his knees buckled beneath him. “Now, that’s enough chatter for one night. It’s off to the sugar bowl with you boys.”

  Martha scooped us up and dropped us in.

  The sugar bowl was very comfortably lined with feathers and thistledown and other soft things. “Good night, sweet boys! Sleep tight, don’t let the cats bite!” Martha placed the lid over the top, and all became pitch-black.

  “Isn’t Martha great?” said Tom.

  “Sure,” I said. “Great.”

  “Just wait until tomorrow,” said Tom. “After we milk the cows, we can duel and joust and play tug-of-war. We can eat whatever we want, and I can even take you to the arm
ory, where there are helmets that make terrific forts and swords you can slide down and axes and spears you can climb like trees.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering if I would ever get my own axe back out of Martha’s pocket. At least I still had my sling, though I didn’t see how that would do me any good against the giants.

  I was so confused. Martha was not at all like the giants in Grandpa Jack’s tales, and apparently they had stolen from our world only because they were having a famine. That didn’t make it all right, but it was less monstrous than I’d assumed. Still, it didn’t make my quest any easier. Where was Papa? What giant was I supposed to conquer here? Clearly not Martha.

  Yawning, I nestled into the soft down. It had been a long, long day. Two days in one, really, and I was all out of ideas. I’d figure it out in the morning.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Spoon Shot and Pudding Pond

  I dreamed of Papa. He was standing in the middle of the wheat field before harvest, brushing his hands over the feathery tops, just like he always did.

  “Isn’t she beautiful, Jack? Just like gold.”

  As Papa brushed his hands over the wheat, a breeze rushed through and the wheat glimmered golden in the sun. Not just golden, but gold. The wheat had turned into real gold.

  I bounded through the fields. We were rich! I’d never be hungry again!

  The ground started to tremble. I stopped and looked up.

  Boom, Boom, BOOM!

  The sky tore open and a giant hand reached down. It ripped up the gold wheat in handfuls. It tore up the entire field, and then the giant snatched Papa.

  “Papa!” I shouted.

  “Jack! Take care of your mama and sister, Jack!”

  “Papa!”

  I woke up, but the earth was still shaking and I couldn’t see a thing. I slammed into a wall and then something that felt like a foot hit me in the gut. I went rolling all over again, until I slammed into another wall.

  “Mama!” I shouted. “The giants are coming!”

  “Don’t worry,” grumbled Tom sleepily. “It’s just Mum Martha.”

  I suddenly remembered. I was in a sugar bowl, in a giant kitchen, in a giant castle, in a giant world, where the giants really had taken Papa.

  “Wake up! Wake up!” came a warbly voice. “It’s a beautiful day for milking! A lovely day for making cheese!”

  Martha popped the top of the sugar bowl off, and I was blinded by light. She tipped the bowl, and Tom and I rolled out into her hand.

  “Good morning, children! Did you sleep well? Are you hungry? Eat up! Eat up! We must get some meat on those skinny little bones, and then it’s off to the milking pen!” Martha set us down on the table and gave us hot porridge with cream. Tom ate his porridge out of a thimble, and I slurped mine out of an empty acorn.

  It was early morning, just the first rays of sun trickling through the windows, but bright enough that I could see the whole giant kitchen now. It was an enormous, noisy, bustling place. There were giant maids stirring pots of porridge, kneading dough, washing dishes, scrubbing the floor, and stoking fires. In the giant fireplace was a big black kettle, and in the blazing ovens on either side were loaves of bread, or hills of bread, more like.

  Four giant tables stretched across the kitchen in two rows. Two of the tables were being used for preparation. Another table was covered with food. Not giant food. Food from my world, and more than I had ever seen all at once. There were great mounds of cabbages, hills of apples and pears, giant buckets of peas, carrots, beets, and radishes. Cascades of wheat and barley filled one whole end of the table, all neatly bundled and stacked. And on the fourth table—

  MoooooOOOOOOoooo.

  Baaaaaaaaa!

  Bok, bok!

  —there were all manner of farm animals. Cows and sheep and pigs and chickens.

  Above this table hung three shelves. They seemed to hold giant birdhouses, except the birdhouses were real houses from Below—log cabins, brick houses, and whitewashed cottages with thatched roofs and smoking chimneys.

  And people. There were people my size on the shelves!

  A woman swept the dirt out of her door and off the shelf. Another hung laundry to dry on a huge dish rack, and below her a man was bathing in a giant tankard, all of them going about their business as if it were a normal day in a normal world.

  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed any of this yesterday. But one does not expect to find cows in a kitchen or an entire village sitting on a shelf.

  “Good morning, my elves!” Martha sang cheerfully. “It’s a lovely day, isn’t it? And so much work to do. Dear me, I could never do it all without you sweet elves. We need to chop carrots and peel potatoes, gather eggs, pluck chickens, and milk cows! Of course, there will be plenty for all of you, so let us work hard, my elves. Many hands make light work!” Martha held out both her hands. Several people readily climbed onto her palm as though stepping into a carriage. “Hello, Sally, Mary, Thelma, Francis, George, Harold, and…oh I forgot your name!”

  “Maude,” said a woman.

  “A wise and sensible name. Thank you, Maude.”

  Martha delivered two handfuls of people to the animal table and a few more loads to the food table, calling each of them by name. I strained to hear her say “Henry.” Papa could be on one of those shelves. He could be in Martha’s hands right now.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” said Tom, slurping the dregs of porridge out of his thimble. “We can climb potato mountains and cheese walls and jump on the bread…it’ll be loads of fun!”

  “Tom, why didn’t you tell me all these people were here?”

  “I did! I told you I saw lots of elves every day.”

  “But…I told you that my papa was taken with all our wheat and our calf. Wouldn’t they have been brought here? I can see a calf over there right now!” I said, pointing to the table full of animals. I needed to find a way over there, but suddenly Martha was in front of us.

  “There you are!” she said. “It’s time for the milking.” She scooped me in one hand and Tom in the other.

  I wriggled and protested. “But I needed to—”

  “Now, Tim, you mustn’t allow your brother to do all the work. We reap what we sow—except in The Kingdom, where nothing seems to grow anymore…Dear me, I do wish I could at least grow a tomato. I sowed some seeds in the spring, and I gave them plenty of sun and water, but they didn’t even sprout!”

  Martha carried us to a barn with peeling red paint. It sat on the end of the table full of animals. At least she was taking me where I needed to go. She unlatched the doors with her giant fingers, and a whole herd of cows streamed out, mooing.

  “Now be good boys and milk the cows,” said Martha. “And, Tom, dear, do try not to squirt the milk at Harold or the chickens. You know how that upsets him, and it spooks the hens, and we need every tiny egg if we are to feed the king, not to mention every drop of milk. Goodness, it seems he never stops eating. If he could eat only gold, then I’d never have to cook again!” Martha left us to see to the king’s breakfast.

  “Come on,” said Tom. “Let’s do the milking and then we can duel!”

  “But my papa…” I reminded him, looking down the row of barns.

  Tom sighed. “Go ahead and look, but you still have to help with the milking. Martha gets terribly upset if it isn’t done, and I don’t like her to cry. There’s a real risk of drowning.”

  “I’ll be back!” I promised. Maybe with Papa, even!

  I ran down the center of the table, which was like a road through a strange village. Sheep and pigs were penned up in fences made of giant clothespins and yarn. Chickens nested in coops made of giant lanterns, teacups, and an upside-down hat stuffed with straw. The table was lined with a fence made of forks stuck in the wood for posts and wire stretched between them. A man was spreading the hay using a giant fork as a pitchfork.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said. “I’m looking for my papa. His name is Henry and he was taken by giants with our newborn ca
lf. Have you seen him?”

  “No,” said the man, and he continued spreading the hay, not at all concerned with my troubles.

  I moved on. I came to a barn made out of books. There were three books for walls, and a fourth split open across the top to make an A-shaped roof. There was even a man reading the open book on the ceiling as he milked a cow. The words were large and looped. It reminded me of Papa’s book full of giant tales.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said to the man. He looked down from his book on the ceiling but continued to milk the cow. “I’m looking for my papa. His name is Henry, and giants took him with our newborn calf. Have you seen him?”

  “There’s a newcomer in the bread-bin barn,” said the man. “Came here a week or two ago. Don’t quite recall if it was a calf or a pig he had.” A pinprick of hope flared in my chest.

  I raced down the table until I found the bread-bin. There was a man inside, but it wasn’t Papa. He was much too big, and he was holding a pig in his arms, feeding it an apple by hand. The man looked up.

  “Halloo! Come to throw a pail of slops on me, eh, Jack?”

  I squinted. “Horace?” He had grown a beard, but I recognized him and his pig, Cindy. I smiled. It wasn’t Papa, but seeing someone from home was like finding a clue or a sign on the trail, telling you you’re on the right track.

  “Is my papa here?” I asked.

  “Haven’t seen him, but I don’t see much beyond this bread bin. Just pigs. I tend most of the pigs here on this table, feed them their slops and such, until they all become giant bacon.”

  I grimaced.

  “I know,” said Horace. “But at least they didn’t turn us into bacon. And they let me keep my Cindy.”

  “Do you remember anything about the night the giants took you? Do you remember anything about my papa?”

  Horace scratched his head. “No. Not much. It was dark and loud and stuffy. Couldn’t hardly breathe. One of the giants kept picking up my pigs and saying he wanted to keep some for pets, but the other giant wouldn’t let him. I just held tight to my Cindy until it all passed.”

  The pig snorted in his arms, reminding Horace that he was supposed to feed her. He gave the pig the rest of the apple, and then he held a fresh one out to me.