Jack

by Liesl Shurtliff

  “But might we have some food, Your Goldness? To tide us over in these difficult times?”

  The king gave a long-suffering sigh. “Very well. Magician, the food.”

  The magician brought forth a sack and swung it around his head a few times before he dumped it at the man’s feet. A good amount of food spilled out of the sack, but not giant food. The man bent down and picked up a handful of tiny potatoes. He stared at them.

  “Th-thank you, Your Majesty,” said the man as his servants scooped every bit of spilled food back into the sack.

  “Next!” bellowed the king.

  Another giant stepped forward, this one dressed in breeches that were cinched at the waist with rope, as though he’d recently lost weight. He bowed low and placed a golden urn at the king’s feet. “Your Goldness, I have just come from my fields—”

  “You mean my fields,” said the king. “Unless of course, they’re green.”

  “Of course, Your Goldness. Your fields. In the spring I planted wheat and barley, as I do every year. The grass sprouted and grew tall and turned golden.”

  “Oh good, very good. Go on,” said the king.

  “When I went to harvest the wheat, I noticed the strangest thing. There were no seeds, no wheat kernels at all!”

  “You must have a pest problem,” said the king. “Pixies, probably.”

  “But I haven’t seen any pixies in ages,” said the giant. “They’ve all come here, where the real gold is.”

  “Yes, the pests!” growled the king. “I shall purge my kingdom of them all.” He found a pixie fluttering near his hand and flicked it toward the giant, who dodged it as the pixie went sailing past.

  “It seems,” said the farmer, “as though my wheat somehow…disappeared.”

  “Ooh! Magic!” said the magician. “I can make things disappear! Once I disappeared my own head!” He took a bite of his pinky carrot finger.

  “How did you get it back?” asked the farmer.

  “I didn’t! It’s lost! Hehehehahahahaaaa!”

  “Next!” said the king, sending the farmer on his way with a sack of food.

  Person after person came to the king, each with an offering of gold and all with similar problems. Their crops had failed, or even disappeared. One farmer said he sowed seed for melons and they never sprouted, and when he dug in the dirt, the seeds were gone.

  The king did not seem very concerned. He simply advised each of his subjects to eliminate pixies and green things of all kinds. Frederick and Bruno would then give them a basket of food, which contained a whole winter’s worth of food for me but very little for the giants. One man picked up a good-sized pumpkin between his thumb and forefinger and squeezed it so it squirted in his eye.

  Finally a woman approached carrying not an offering of gold but a simple earthen pot, and in the pot was a young sapling, tender and green. She bowed low before the king and held out the plant with trembling hands.

  “What is that?” said the king with a sneer.

  “Your Goldness, I have guarded and cared for this young sapling in the hope that it might one day bear fruit to feed my family, but we have no other food. I beg of you to take this young tree, and give me food in return so that I may eat and not die.”

  “Who let her in?” the king demanded of his guards. “How dare you bring me such an offering!” The king knocked the plant out of the woman’s arms so it crashed to the floor. The woman stared at it in horror.

  “Out! Out!” shouted the king. “Leave me in peace! All of you!”

  The guards immediately herded the people toward the exit, pointing spears at them to force them out, then slammed the doors.

  The king let out an enormous sigh. “That was awful. I need something to refresh me. Let’s make more gold! Treasure, lay!”

  Bergeek!

  The hen froze up for several seconds and finally released an egg. The king slipped it into his pocket. “Lay! Lay! Lay!”

  The hen laid three more eggs, though it seemed to cause her great pain.

  “Jack, look!” said Annabella. She pointed down at the king’s feet, where the sapling lay. The tender green leaves were browning and shriveling before our very eyes. Finally it was nothing more than a dried-up stalk in a heap of dirt.

  “Lay!” the king commanded, and with a pitiful cluck the hen gave one final egg and then flopped unconscious in his lap. “What is wrong with this creature?” spat the king. “She used to give much more gold.”

  “Oh, we just need to feed her some magic,” said Kessler. “Magic makes the gold!”

  “Then feed her,” said the king. “I want to turn this entire palace into gold, Magician! The entire kingdom! If I am to be the Golden King, then I need a Golden Kingdom to rule, and therefore I must have more gold!”

  “Jack, do you think…,” whispered Annabella. “Do you think all the king’s gold has something to do with the famine?”

  “How could it?” said Tom. “It’s just gold. Not poison.”

  “But didn’t you just see that plant shrivel up and die?” said Annabella. “And right while the king was making the hen lay eggs.”

  “Coincidence,” said Tom.

  “Or not,” I said. As much as I didn’t like to admit it, Annabella could be onto something. But what was I supposed to do—kill the king’s pet chicken? Somehow I didn’t think that would induce him to tell us where Papa was.

  “I think the queen has forgotten us again.” I rapped on her head to get her attention. She started and then said to the king, “I heard that you found an elf in your stocking drawer. That must have upset you.”

  “Yes, the little thief was trying to steal my gold. I took care of him.”

  “In what way?” said the queen.

  I held my breath.

  “Why I threw him in the— STOP him!” The king was pointing at Archie. “He’s eating my gold!” The baby prince was crawling around in the pile of gold offerings, sucking on a coin like a pacifier.

  “No, Archie!” cried the queen. She bent down, which made her crown slide forward precariously.

  “Treason!” shouted the king. “Hang the thief!”

  “You can’t hang your own son!” exclaimed the queen. “He’s just a baby!” The prince started to crawl away, and the queen scrambled after him, as did several servants.

  “I think we’d better go now,” said Tom as we bounced around in the crown.

  “But he didn’t say what he did with Papa!” I shouted.

  “If the king sees us, we’ll be smashed like pixies!”

  Suddenly the queen stumbled. We lurched violently, and then the crown flew off her head. I clung to the gold filigree as it spun in the air.

  “Oh, my crown!” The air rushed in my ears and all I could see was a gold blur. I crashed on a heap of coins and slid down in an avalanche of gold. I came to a stop at the golden urn, directly under the king’s feet.

  “Pixie!” shouted the king. He lifted his foot and tried to stomp on me. I rolled and ran. “Pixies! Kill the pixies!”

  There was a flurry of movement and the sounds of crashing gold.

  A paddle swung down at me. I rolled and narrowly missed getting smashed.

  “Kill the little monsters! Snatch them by the wings! Don’t let the thieves get away!” shouted the king.

  I ran, tripping over gold coins and chains.

  “Jack!” Annabella called.

  “Run, Bells! Find a hole! Hide where they can’t get you!”

  “We can’t hide when they’ve already seen us!” shouted Tom. “We have to get away.”

  I ran as fast as I could, dodging feet and swatters and giant hands. I crawled under a table and someone tipped it over. I ran behind the curtains and they were torn from the wall. A hole, where was a mousehole? I just needed a crack, someplace where I could get away.

  “Stop!” shouted the queen. “Oh, stop! They aren’t pixies! They’re just elves!”

  “They’re stealing my gold!” said the king. “Slice them in two!
Crush their bones!”

  The magician took a golden axe off the wall and swung it wildly. It cracked down on the golden floor, and sparks flew.

  Annabella, where was Annabella? Had she managed to dodge the axe? I looked behind me.

  “Annabella? Annabella!”

  There she was, dashing toward the door, but the servants were gaining. At the last possible moment, a couple of real pixies, orange and red, flew in the faces of the servants. The giants were distracted just long enough for Annabella to get out of the way, until another pixie swooped down and carried her out of harm’s way.

  “Kill the blasted pixies!” shouted the king. “Don’t let them get away!”

  The pixies spiraled upward around the chandelier before disappearing in a crevice.

  I gaped upward. I had stopped moving without realizing it, completely forgetting where I was. A moment later a giant gold swatter knocked me flat on my back. My head cracked against the floor, and the whole room turned white.

  “No wings,” said a voice very close to me. “It’s an elf.”

  “So is this one!” said another voice.

  “Give them here,” said the king. The servant brought me to the king. The other brought Tom, and the king wrapped his beefy hands around us so only our heads and feet poked out. I kicked and struggled, but the king tightened his grip. I could hardly breathe.

  King Barf brought us to his red, puffy face and sneered. “Thieves! Villains! No one steals my gold and gets away with it!”

  “But they’re only children!” pleaded the queen. “Don’t hurt them! Give them to me. I’ll…I’ll give them to Archie for toys.”

  Prince Archie bounced in the queen’s arms and reached toward us. “Fee, fee!”

  “No,” said the king in a cold voice. “There is only one thing I do with elves who dare to steal my gold.”

  “We don’t want your gold,” I managed to say. “I just want my papa back!”

  The king scoffed. “Excuses will not soften your punishment.”

  He dropped us inside a box and shut the lid. I couldn’t see anything, not even my hand in front of my face, but I could tell we were moving. The king was taking us somewhere, and I was sure it was nowhere good. Tom whimpered and cried for Martha. There was nothing I could say to comfort him. I had no comfort for myself.

  I felt the jolts and bumps of moving up stairs. Then I heard the clings and clicks of a door unlocking—or a dungeon. Finally, the lid of the box was raised.

  I couldn’t see much except the ceiling, which was gold. There was a gold fireplace, too, and the king lifted us out of the box and walked toward it.

  “Oh no,” said Tom. “Oh no, oh no, oh no!”

  Tendrils of smoke rose from the grate, as though a fire was just getting started. All it needed was some kindling to coax out the flames.

  We were the kindling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Into the Fireplace

  The king turned a crank, and the grate of the fireplace split apart to reveal a dark, smoking cavern.

  “No!” cried Tom. “Don’t put me in there! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I won’t touch your gold ever again. Just take me back to the kitchen! Martha needs me to milk the cows!”

  “Oh, but if you like gold, you’ll love it down here.” The king pulled a golden egg out of his robes and dropped it into the hole. There was a thud and a crack and something that sounded like the echo of voices.

  “Now it’s your turn,” said King Barf. The king set us on a platform suspended above the cavern with ropes on both sides. He turned a crank and down we went. Daylight was replaced by the glow of fire and it grew warmer as we went down.

  “Oh no,” said Tom. “Oh no, oh no, oh no! He’s going to roast us! He’s eating us!”

  When we were just feet from the bottom, the king took hold of the rope and shook it violently. Tom and I were both flung off the platform.

  I shook away the dizziness and then felt scorching heat. Red-hot flames blazed right next to my head. “Ooh, hee, haaaa…HOT!” I scrambled away, but there were more flames. Fire everywhere. Tom was huddled down with his head between his knees, rocking back and forth.

  “Careful there now,” said a voice. I looked up and saw a man, not a giant. He had a grizzly beard, and his face was covered in soot and ash. He grabbed our collars and pulled Tom and me away from the flames. “You don’t want to melt, now do you?”

  Tom ran back to the platform and tried to climb one of the ropes, but yelped as soon as he took hold of it. The ropes were heavily barbed.

  “There’s no climbing out of here, boy,” said the man. “There’s no way out at all.”

  We were in a cavernous dungeon as big as the castle kitchen. When the shock wore off I realized that the fires we had landed near were actually inside ovens. Another man was now removing a pot from one of them. He poured a shimmering soup into a wide, shallow tray, then lowered the pot into a water barrel. A puff of white steam billowed up, causing him to disappear for a moment.

  In the center of the dungeon was a mountain of golden eggs. People were climbing all over it like ants on a sugar hill. They had axes and chisels, and they pounded on the eggs like miners. Surrounding the pile of eggs were shanties, hastily thrown together with broken boards and branches and dirty rags. It was a dismal sight.

  “Is Martha here?” Tom asked. He must have thought we were in some back room of the kitchen. He was looking around as though any moment Martha would swoop down and feed him some cheese like a little mouse.

  “Can’t say that I know,” said the man. “Not too many women down here.”

  “What about Henry?” I said. “That’s my papa. He could have come here today, even just a few hours ago.”

  “I’m not much for names. And there’re lots of us here.”

  I looked at the men working. “What are they doing?” I asked.

  “We elves of the dungeon must make the giant king’s gold into coin,” said the man. “That’s the punishment for stealing. He’ll make you repay him a hundred times what you would have taken.”

  “Did you steal the king’s gold?” I asked.

  “I sure tried,” said the man. “I thought it would be easy, seeing as the king has mountains of the stuff, but that ogre can smell a thief from a mile away. I don’t need to tell you. You’re here. I guess we all got what we wanted in the end. More gold than we could ever hope to steal.” He laughed bitterly and went back to his work.

  I looked up to where King Barf had lowered us through the hole. There were just a few shafts of light coming through the grate of the fireplace, but otherwise the cavern was dim and depressing. The walls were hard dirt, high and smooth, not at all good for climbing. We were well and truly trapped.

  I searched for Papa all over. It was not an easy thing. Firstly, the dungeons were a dangerous place to navigate, between the fiery ovens and hot vats of gold, and hammers, chisels, and pickaxes crashing down everywhere. Secondly, everyone looked the same—sooty and weary and miserable. But hope kept me going. He had to be here.

  “I want to go back to Martha,” said Tom, collapsing against an egg.

  “We’ll find a way out,” I said. “I’ve been in worse fixes.”

  “Really? You think we’ll just climb out of here?” Tom’s voice was thick with bitterness. “You think all these people stay here because they want to?”

  “Well, it might take some time, but when I find Papa—”

  Tom scoffed. “Your papa. Searching for your papa is what got us here in the first place! If you had just listened to me, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “Tom, you don’t understa—”

  “No, you don’t understand. We were fine in the kitchen with Martha. We had all the food and fun we wanted.”

  I felt my face getting hot. “I didn’t make you come with me! You thought this would be one of your grand adventures, like getting eaten by a cow.”

  “That was a cow,” said Tom. “This is a dungeon. This is King Barf. You think you
can beat a giant? You can’t. You’re too small. You’re never going to find your papa, and we’re never going to get out of here.” His eyes were wet and shining.

  I didn’t know if I wanted to hit him or start crying myself, but I didn’t get the chance to do either one, because a man stepped forward, axe in hand.

  “You boys need to get to work if you want to eat,” he said. “Get a cart now and start gathering gold. Take it to the fires.”

  Tom turned his back on me and did as the man said. He grabbed a cart and started hurling chunks of gold into it like he wanted to shatter them into a million pieces.

  I stared after him. I felt a hardness in my throat, almost choking me.

  You can’t beat giants.

  You’re never going to find Papa.

  You’re never going to get out.

  “Better get to work, boy,” warned the man. “No one takes kindly to shirkers here. We don’t get food until the king gets his gold.”

  I picked up one of the rickety old carts and mindlessly gathered chunks of gold, but really I just kept looking for Papa. I thought I saw him on the egg mountain, and then by an oven, and then pushing a cart like me. He was everywhere, and nowhere.

  It was so hot. Before long I was soaked in sweat and my throat felt like coals, hot and dry. The only water to drink was the same water used to cool off the gold, so not only was it warm, it had a metallic taste that clung to my mouth. It didn’t refresh me very much, and I was so hungry. When would we get food?

  If only these eggs were real. Well, they were real in a way. They came out of a real hen. They were just really gold. But lots of food is golden. Wheat. Bread. Pies. Pears. Peaches. Gold can be good food for eating. King Barf eats it.

  I lifted a piece. It was smooth and shiny like a glazed bun. Delicious. I opened my mouth to take a bite.

  “Tut, tut, sonny. I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a man. I dropped the gold and whipped around.

  “I didn’t…I wasn’t…,” I stammered.

  The man laughed. “Don’t worry. We’ve all tried to eat it at one point or another, but you’ll wind up with a broken tooth, or at least a bad, bad stomachache.”