Ann’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Did I give the wrong answer?”
Jack sighed. “It’s complicated. Let’s talk about that.”
Another voice interrupted them. “Master Jack!” It was Henry, standing at the kitchen entrance.
“Father!” Ann ran over to Henry, and he scooped her up and hugged her tightly. He held his daughter for a while, rocking from side to side, before putting her down and brushing his hand through her hair, tucking it behind her ear on one side.
“Run along now, Annie,” Henry said, trying to sound cheery but failing. “Father has to talk to Master Jack. I’ll find you in a moment.”
Jack waited for Ann to leave before speaking. “Henry, what happened? You’re as pale as the moon. Why are you back so quickly?”
Henry could scarcely get the words out as emotion overcame him. “Thieves … on the forest road … thought they were going to murder me … lost the books … afraid to come back that way … rode all the way around the forest to get back and warn you….”
“Calm down, Henry. Sit at the table,” Jack said. He called to the kitchen. “Mary, fetch an ale for Henry!”
Jack coaxed the story from his servant. He was sure the boy in the forest whose intervention had saved Henry’s life must be Nick. Was that child really a member of the cutthroat gang Henry described? Then what was he up to last night? Had he entered the fortress to let the others in?
“Daddy?” Ann was at the door again.
“Darling, I told you I have to talk to Master Jack. You mustn’t interrupt.”
“But you have to come see the big cloud.”
“Ann—” Henry stood to reprimand the child, but stopped when he saw Jack bolt out of his chair and stride to the girl.
“What sort of cloud?” asked Jack. His knees cracked as he knelt to hold the girl by her shoulders.
“A big black scary one. Come to the roof and I’ll show you.”
Moments later they stood on the roof. The oppressive cloud hung like a dark ceiling over most of the visible world. Rivers of lightning crackled across its belly.
“You haven’t changed,” Jack whispered.
Ann was bouncing on her toes. “See how big and dark it is? There’s going to be a storm! I know it! Father, can we stay and watch?”
“What on earth …” Henry said. He was looking east, where the cloud ended.
“What? Tell me what you see, right now!” Jack demanded with sudden urgency, grabbing Henry’s arm. “My sight is not as keen as yours!”
“Beyond the forest, over the ridge … it looks like … it can’t be … it’s a thin green line, reaching from the ground to the cloud. But what is that thing? It’s almost like the beanstalk from your st—” Henry looked at Jack. “From your story.”
Jack looked back at his servant, nodding. “Tell Bill and Roland to load the cart and prepare fresh horses. I want you to come with us as well, if you’re up to it. And all of you should be armed,” he said, thinking about the ruffians who had intercepted Henry.
Henry’s eyebrows arched high. He was twenty-six years old, the son of a servant, and he had lived with Jack his entire life. Never once had he seen the old man venture outside the fortress walls.
“Master Jack, what’s happening?” Ann asked. She stood with her hands on the top of the wall, a gentle breeze rippling through her white robe and her black hair. She gazed dreamily at the magical thread of green in the distance.
Jack thought for a while before answering. “A long time ago a boy climbed a beanstalk, and he came down a thief. Now a thief is climbing a beanstalk. And who knows what will come down?”
Chapter 11
Nick woke slowly, dimly aware of growing tremors. He felt them in the ground before he heard them. At first he couldn’t distinguish it from the ache that pounded inside his head, but the sound grew stronger and louder. It was the steady thump of weighty footsteps. Then he remembered the flag, the signal to whoever built the trap that killed the boar. He looked over at the dead beast. A pair of crows stood on its bristly back, pecking at the ragged wounds. They heard the footsteps too and hopped into flight.
He sat up and it made him so dizzy he almost passed out again.
Through the trees, he caught a glimpse of the thing that was rapidly approaching. Low branches hid its upper body from sight, but Nick saw two great striding legs and massive feet coming down with impacts that made the leaves shake on the trees. The dead boar beside him was by far the biggest living creature Nick had ever seen, but now even that was dwarfed by the approaching monster.
Nick looked for the closest place to hide. A dense bush grew a few yards away. There was no time to stand and run. Nick skittered on hands and knees into the bush, rolling the last yard into the shadows of its branches. He stopped, facing back toward the dead boar, just as the thing entered the forest clearing. It was a giant. No—ogre was a better word for this ugly thing. Nick’s eyes closed involuntary the first time he saw the face.
The ogre stood over the dead boar and prodded it with one foot. He chuckled loudly, an evil sound that made the bones in Nick’s chest vibrate like a tuning fork. The ogre reached into the branches of the tree and, taking hold of a rope, hoisted the spiked contraption. The boar slid free of the bloody spikes with a squishy noise that made Nick’s stomach turn. The ogre pried open the metal jaws that held the boar’s leg and busied himself resetting the trap. Nick marveled at the ingenious system of metal parts and ropes and pulleys that seized the prey, brought down the killing spikes, and sent the signal flag aloft in the trees. It was more cleverly constructed than anything Nick had seen in the world below.
From his hiding place just a few feet away, Nick got a long look at the gruesome being. He was so massive that a tall man like Finch wouldn’t reach his knees. For the most part, he looked like a person enlarged to gargantuan size, but the proportions were somehow distorted. The arms hung too low, past the knees. The fingers were too long. They were bony and big at the knuckles, and swollen again at the tips, with nails that tapered off into pointy talons, gray and hard as shovels.
And that face. It was three parts human—but one part something else. The elongated snout with a twitching nose at the end; the fine, sharp, yellow teeth that jutted this way and that; the nasty colored skin, a splotchy marble of pink and gray; the long tangles of hair that might have been white except for the filth, hanging sloppily over his sloped shoulders … it all reminded Nick of some earthly animal. A rat?
But it was more than mere ugliness that struck fear deep into Nick’s soul. It was the sneer on his face and the way he dressed. The ogre wore a vest and pants made from the skins of strange animals. It was a patchwork of tans, grays, and blacks, crudely stitched together, and there were mummified heads still in place among the pelts.
Hideous jewelry decorated the ogre. Around his throat was a necklace made of the skulls of his prey, with a chain threaded through the empty eye sockets. A set of keys hung on the chain as well. From one ear, an earring dangled; it was made from another skull, with the elongated jaws of some reptilian beast clamped onto the lobe in a mock death bite. The longer Nick looked, the more loathsome the ogre seemed.
The monster was nearly done with his chore. He covered the leg trap with armfuls of fallen leaves. Then he lifted the corpse as easily as Nick could lift a dead cat and stuffed it into a sack. He slung it merrily over his shoulder and walked off the way he had come.
Abruptly, the ogre stopped and turned back toward the clearing. His gaze dropped toward the undergrowth where Nick was hiding. Through the unkempt strands of hair that fell across his forehead, the ogre’s eyes scanned the ground. They were terrible pink eyes with blood-red irises at the center. Nick kept perfectly still, except for the trembling hands he could not control. For a terrible moment, he thought the ogre was sniffing the air, and he remembered Jack’s giant, smelling the blood….
But then the ogre looked to the sky, shielding his face from the sun with one hand. All the while, his raw
pink nose was twitching furiously. Something was puzzling the monster, but Nick could not tell what it was.
At last the ogre turned back toward the castle. His thumping footsteps died away like a receding drum, and then he was gone.
Nick flopped onto his back and filled his chest with a deep draft of air. His thoughts were a muddle, and the awful headache that the boar’s tusk had given him was making it hard to think. He put his hands to his temples and grabbed fistfuls of his own hair. He shook his head back and forth, barely able to believe what he had just seen: an ogre, bigger than a house, close enough to touch.
This adventure had taken a malignant turn. Maybe it would be best to get back down the beanstalk as fast as he could.
Nick crawled out from under the bush. Here are your choices, he thought, standing up. Climb down right now, as poor as you started. And then what? More begging, more stealing? Live in fear of meeting Finch and his gang again?
“I’d rather get eaten alive by that ogre,” he said aloud.
So that means you stay up here for now. And you either go to the giant’s castle, or explore somewhere else. The castle, as the story goes, is where the treasure lies. It also must be the home of that awful ogre. But where else would you go? Toward that far-off mountain? That’s a long way to walk—will the beanstalk still be here when you get back? And is the way filled with dangers like that boar, or worse?
The more he thought, the clearer the choice became. It was a simple plan, really. All he had to do was go to the castle, wait for the ogre to leave, steal the treasures within, and climb down the beanstalk a wealthy boy. If Jack could do that so many years ago, then Nick could do it today.
He was about to move on when a sound caught his ear. It was a familiar sound in the world Nick came from: the ringing of a cowbell. At first it seemed distant, but as it tolled every few seconds, each clang was closer than the one before. Nick would have hidden again, but he could not tell where the sound was coming from. At last it rang out loud and strong, directly behind a thick clump of the beanstalk vines. Whatever it was, it was out of sight behind that wall of green. Then the vines rustled, and they came alive like a mass of snakes and parted at the middle, rolling back in curls. In the space between were a man and a cow of ordinary size.
The forest fell silent. The black birds that flew and called ceaselessly overhead alighted on branches and cocked their heads to look down.
The man sat on a stool beside the cow, and the cow craned its neck out to munch on a leaf of the beanstalk plant. In the man’s hand was a metal cup with a slender handle. He brought it to his lips and drank. It was a long, loud sip.
“My, that’s good. Fresh and warm, as I like it.” He turned to look at Nick with an impish expression. “You know, lad, to a hungry man, a good cow is worth more than all the gold in the world. Can’t drink gold, now, can you? Come and have some. You look a little hungry yourself. It might even do that aching head of yours some good,” the man said, tapping his temple with one finger.
Nick hesitated, watching the beanstalk vines that had parted like curtains. They were still disturbingly alive, waving about on either side.
“Don’t fret about them, lad. You’ve got bigger worries up here, don’t you.” The man held out the cup. Nick took it with both hands and guzzled the milk. It was warm, almost steaming, creamy and sweet. Nick held the cup upside-down to let every last drop fall into his open mouth, then handed it back to the grinning man.
“Thank you,” said Nick. “Guess I was thirsty.” His stomach felt wonderfully warm and nourished. And not only that, but his throbbing headache had faded away.
Nick took a closer look at the man before him, who simply gazed back and smiled. There didn’t seem to be anything unusual about the fellow at first glance. But the closer Nick looked, the odder he seemed. Was he young or old? It was hard to tell. He was bald on top and his face was clean-shaven, but the hair on the sides and back of his head hung past his shoulders and was braided into three long tails. The hair was silvery white—but no, when Nick looked closer, it seemed as if all the colors in the world flashed in those locks. The clothes the man wore had the same effect. The material looked like ordinary wool, but finer threads were woven in that reflected the colors of everything around them.
Nick had met a few foreigners in his short life, but he could not imagine from where this fellow had come. His complexion was coppery and smooth, his features sharply angled. And his eyes were too big, too bright, too green, too full of light.
Staring into those emerald eyes, Nick was embarrassed to realize that he’d been gaping for an uncomfortably long time. The man laughed heartily as he saw Nick blush.
“As long as your mouth is hanging open, have you something to ask me? Come now, Nick, I can’t stay for long” The stranger gestured with long, slim fingers toward an hourglass at his feet. Nick gave it a passing glance—and then looked again, because something was happening that jarred his senses: The sparkling sand inside the green-tinted glass was flowing up instead of down, from the bottom of the hourglass to the top.
That wasn’t the only startling thing that just happened. The stranger had called Nick by his name. It was unnerving enough when both Finch and Jack had been able to guess his thoughts, but this was worse. Nick wondered if it truly was the first time they met, because there was something familiar about that face. It even seemed that he’d seen this cow—this particular cow—somewhere before.
Nick searched his mind and found the answer. He had only glanced at that painting in Jack’s gallery briefly, yet he was sure this was the mysterious stranger that traded his magic beans for Jack’s cow. But sixty years or more had passed since that day, and Nick’s thoughts grew dizzy as he tried to reconcile the decades that had elapsed with the sight of the man and beast before him.
“Who are you, sir?” he asked at last.
“Ha!” roared the mysterious stranger. “That’s a fine question, coming from one who is not even sure who he is! I won’t answer that until the day you can do the same.” He leaned back against the cow and folded his arms, apparently awaiting the next question.
“I know who you are, anyway,” said Nick. “You’re the fellow who swapped the beans for Jack’s cow—the one that started all this. Why did you do it?”
The stranger just raised an eyebrow and waited some more, declining to respond.
“Well … what is this place, this island? Can you tell me that?” Nick asked.
“Hmmm. That I can tell, but how to say it in a way you can understand?” The stranger thought for a moment, scratching his chin with the tip of his little finger. “You’ve heard the tale of Noah and his ark, no doubt?”
“I have.”
“Then consider this island in the clouds a kind of ark, for the creatures and treasures of myth and magic that, belonging on earth no more, were sent away.”
“Sent away by whom? And why?”
The stranger waved off the question with one hand. “Too long an answer for too short a visit.”
Nick glanced at the hourglass. Nearly half the sand had flown up, but he had so many more questions. “Tell me then, why did my beanstalk come to the same place as Jack’s beanstalk, right near the castle? Was that just by chance?”
“Is it only happenstance when the robin returns in spring, and chooses the same tree to build its nest? Or when the master abandons the dog and the dog finds the master?”
Nick sighed. The stranger’s cryptic answers were maddening. He knew plenty, that was certain, but Nick doubted he could extract information of any value at all. Not even the fellow’s name. Well, Nick thought, I’ll just give you a name: Greeneyes. It was probably a name the stranger had been called before.
The green-eyed man leaned forward on his stool, gazing sharply. “Now, Nick, I have a question. Answer me true. Why have you come? What do you want here?”
Nick thought for a while. What did he want? Food in his belly every night. A place to sleep. A refuge from wicked men. Maybe up here,
he could find the wealth he needed to afford these things.
“I want the giant’s gold,” he replied at last.
Greeneyes smiled. “And why not? Look at you, with your skin stretched tight over those bones. Can’t blame you for wanting to escape your misery. But are you the only one here who seeks escape? Perhaps not, little thief.”
Enough riddles, Nick thought angrily. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it is curious you chose to arrive at this moment—this dangerous moment. But don’t worry about that—it need not affect you. Go to the castle, Nick. There are treasures in abundance! You’ll know the room when you see it. The door is locked, but that is no use against a mouse like you. Although,” Greeneyes said, with one eye narrowed and the other sparkling bright, “there will be other doors, won’t there? Other doors, other choices, other dangers …”
Nick’s anger boiled up inside. “Why all these hints? Why the mysteries? Just tell me what you mean. What do you want from me?”
The plants on either side of the clearing rustled, and the vines crept back toward the center, like curtains closing on the act of a play. Nick stepped back, out of their way. The stranger lifted his hourglass, where the last of the sand was about to rise through the narrow center.
“Time’s almost up,” Greeneyes said, grinning at his joke. “Remember, lad, boys like you come up to make mischief—but the real trouble’s what might come down.”
His voice grew fainter as he talked, and the vines met and intertwined before the place he’d stood, surrounding and concealing Greeneyes and the cow. The last thing Nick saw was those glittering eyes before the swarming vines covered the man completely. All at once, the crows renewed their raucous chorus in the branches and sky overhead.
Greeneyes was gone, and it was hard to believe he had ever been there at all.
Nick’s headache was cured, but his brain was spinning from the conversation. He wondered who Greeneyes was, how he got here, why he appeared, why he vanished. For that matter, why did he give Jack those beans so many years ago?
The Thief and the Beanstalk (Further Tales Adventures) Page 8