“I’m trying to keep us alive! All you care about is . . . well, I don’t know what you care about, but it certainly isn’t your sons!”
“There you go again, making it all about you! I’ll let you know that before you came along, I was my own person! I was beautiful and desired and—”
“Then you married Father! Yes, I know! But that was your decision! Then he died and—”
“And left me alone with this stinking farm and three boys. What do you expect of me?”
“To do your best!” Jack took a deep breath and ran his hand down his face. Fighting with his mother never did any good. “Look, I know I was never your favorite.”
“You’ve got that right at least.” She crossed her arms and refused to look at him, glaring out the window instead.
“But what I can’t understand is why you’re taking it out on the younger boys as well!”
“I take perfectly good care of your brothers.”
“You tried to trade the farm for a carriage!” Jack cried in frustration.
“Well, I own the blasted place, don’t I?”
Jack threw his hands in the air. “Where did you think we were going to live?”
She whirled around to face him. “It’s not like you could do any better.”
“You’ve never given me a chance!”
“Oh, poppycock. You quit every time things get hard. Just like your father. That’s why I called you Jack.”
Jack ignored her, but she went on.
“Remember the time you begged for a puppy? Wasn’t a week before you said he was too hard to take care of, and I had to send him back.”
“Mother, I was six.”
But now she was smiling, a sure sign that, in her mind at least, she’d already won. “And then there was that riding competition you wanted to win. You practiced every day for three months, but when you showed up and saw the size of your competitors, you pulled out.”
“I would have been the youngest by four years,” Jack protested, but she went on, tying on her apron with that flat-lipped smile that drove him crazy.
“You know what, just forget it.” Jack grabbed his hat and mashed it down on his head. He headed for the door but stopped on the threshold. “Just so you know, without those beans, I’ll never finish my task, and the fairy will be angry!” He fixed her with a glare. “And he might come after you.” He had the satisfaction of seeing her face pale slightly and her hands briefly pause before he slammed the door shut behind him.
“Doesn’t change a thing about you!” she called through the window. “You’re just like your father! He gave up on life, and you’re no different!”
Jack ignored her as he went to the pigpen and leaned against the posts. Just when he’d thought he had everything figured out, his mother had intervened. Again. And now he had to figure out what to do before the fairy learned he’d lost the beans.
Before he could ruminate for too long, however, strange squelching sounds caught his attention. He peered closer at the mud.
Nothing.
With a snort of disgust, Jack was about to turn away, when five green vines shot out of the mud. Flying up into the sky, they continued to thicken and grow until they’d reached a height more than five times his house. Jack watched in awe as they then leaned in and wrapped themselves around one another, forming one giant braid of green vine.
His awe turned to panic, however, when the massive braid began to tilt. At first it was slow, but the more it leaned to the side, the faster it went until the entire piece finally fell and landed on the ground with a crash so great it shook the house behind him. Jack was knocked onto his back, and pain shot through his muscles and joints, which were still sore from his illness.
For a moment, he couldn’t see what had become of the vine because he was too dizzy to get up. The headache that had plagued him during most of his convalescence returned, and he was rather sure his skin was on fire as well. Maybe, he thought to himself, the fairy wouldn’t find him until he was dead, though whether starvation or his illness would end him first, he wasn’t sure. Then his mother could decide what to do with the rabid cat.
Jack woke up sometime after dark, though he couldn’t tell what hour it was or how long he’d been unconscious. Though he was within sight of the kitchen window, it appeared that his mother either hadn’t noticed him or hadn’t deigned to come out and at least cover him with a blanket. Not that that surprised him.
With a groan, he dragged himself to his feet and looked down at his body. He would have some nice bruises from the fall, but nothing looked or felt permanently damaged, and his fever seemed to have gone down again. But what was he going to do about the vine? And dinner?
Jack turned and gasped. The vine had not only wound itself tightly into a braid, but it had flattened itself into a perfectly smooth . . .
Was that a path?
Jack approached it carefully before leaning down and examining the vine more closely. In the light of the nearly full moon, he could make out its waxy green fibers. Putting one foot tentatively upon it, he prepared himself to leap back. But when nothing happened, he put his other foot on as well until he was standing on it with his full weight. The vine itself was firm but comfortable, much smoother than any dirt walking path he’d ever seen, or even the cobblestone streets like those in Sulta.
But where did it lead? He strained his eyes until they hurt, trying to make out the direction of the winding path in the darkness. From what he could see, it led west toward the low, ridged mountains.
Part of him, the boyish part that was far too much like his mother for his taste, always dreaming of something new, longed to follow the path. He’d never been farther from his home than two towns to the south, and he’d always longed to see the mountains. And if he went now, he would also get to rescue Eva, just as he’d agreed. That had been the deal after all.
The other part of him, however, hated to leave his brothers. Though his mother had never seemed to dislike them as much as she did him, he wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t sell the food once she figured out that it actually existed, and try to get herself a coach ride to anywhere but Guthward. And he could only be half sure that she would remember to take the boys.
He stood there, frozen on the strange vine path, for a long time. But as he tarried, a sound of footsteps caught his attention.
“Jack?” Ray called softly.
“Over here,” Jack called, trying not to let his brother see just how weak he felt. “What are you doing up so late?”
“I came to bring you this.” Ray held up an oatcake. It smelled of honey and dried dates. “Mother said not to give you any, but since you were sick . . .” Then he looked around. “Are you leaving us?”
Jack sighed. “I thought I had found a way to get us out of here.” He looked longingly at the beanstalk road. “But I don’t want to leave you . . .”
“Would you leaving mean we’d get food again?”
Jack nodded. “If the fairy was telling the truth, you should have protection as well.”
Ray was silent for a long time. The sounds of bugs that were usually present were strangely missing, probably because of the lack of food. Finally, Ray looked back at his brother, his young face solemn.
“I think you should go.” Then he cracked a small smile. “I’ll handle Mother.”
Jack pulled his brother into a tight hug before heading for the barn, new vigor in his steps. The oatcake filled his belly, and a rebel determination roared in his heart. He mounted a horse and pointed him toward the beanstalk road.
5
You Need a What?
Jack peeked through the leaves at the manor before him. He’d not seen a house so grand in his entire life. The wealthiest people in his town had two levels to their houses, and usually the lower level was a shop of some sort.
This house had five.
The journey to the beanstalk’s end had taken him the entire night and a good part of the next morning. It probably would have been faste
r had he not been fighting the remnants of his illness and the continual stabs of hunger in his belly, as the oatcake hadn’t even sustained him for a full hour. Thankfully, his horse, which he’d managed to sneak out of the barn, had eaten enough of the leftover hay to make the journey without collapsing, as Jack had worried he would.
The initial part of the walk was uneventful. The beanstalk wasn’t on the road, but it followed along in the brush right next to it. His neighbors’ fields looked just as dead as his. Their poor beasts pawed at the ground, picking at whatever remnants of plants they could find. But everything was dead. Corn stalks, beans stalks, alfalfa and hay fields, melon patches, rye, cotton, pecan trees . . . even the weeds were dead, blackened and limp as a rags. Rolling plain after rolling plain of dead rot. The smell was enough to turn his stomach.
But after about eight hours, all that changed. It was difficult to see the transition at first, as the sun hadn’t yet risen, but after a while, he was sure he saw a bit of green in the light of the moon. Surely his eyes were tricking him. It must be a symptom of his hunger or lingering illness. After another hour, however, when his horse stopped to eat an apple that had fallen on the flattened beanstalk, Jack admitted that perhaps his eyes weren’t deceiving him after all. The trees and fields around him had really come to life! With this realization, he stopped his horse and gathered as many apples as his arms could hold before climbing back on to continue his journey, feeling more satisfied than he’d been in a long time.
After he’d gone on for long enough to give himself a stomachache from too many apples, but not long enough to see the rising of the sun, he spotted a light in the distance. At first he was sure it must be someone’s campfire, someone trying to flee the kingdom no doubt. But the closer he got, the more he could see there were clearly more than one light.
By the time he came near enough to see the manor for what it was, the sun was just moments from rising, and it dawned on him that he was completely exposed. The vine had wound through groups of trees and down to the bottom of hills, and between those, the dark had been enough to hide him. But not far from the house stood a clump of trees that surrounded a little pool of water. Jack quickly moved his horse beneath their shelter just in time to hear the most enchanting sound.
Music, eerie and beautiful, rolled over the fields, which, he discovered in the growing light, were filled with soybeans. The melody cascaded up and down and high and low and back around again as though it were dancing through the stalks themselves.
As the song continued and the light grew stronger, Jack couldn’t believe his eyes. Not only were the millions of stalks still alive, but they were the healthiest plants he’d ever seen, even compared to those on his own farm before the strange famine.
And they were swaying to the music.
Jack nearly fell over. He was halfway back on his horse and ready to send him flying to home, when the music stopped. Jack peeked through the branches again just in time to catch a movement. He lowered himself to the ground and crawled to the edge of the thicket where he would be less likely to be spotted. Then he waited for the movement again.
There, on one of the balconies, stood Eva. He hadn’t noticed her before, but now that the light was better, he could see her standing behind something large. It looked like a harp, but without the full light of the sun, he couldn’t be sure. He only managed to glimpse her, however, before she swished her skirts and moved back inside.
So the fairy had been right, and the beans had led him to Eva. Now he just had to get inside the manor, find the girl, and get out again. Then they would follow the beanstalk home, provided no one else noticed the giant green plant path that moved straight through private property and fields and even a few main roads.
Easy.
Jack tied his horse to a tree branch inside the thicket where he could reach apples from the branches and water from the pool, in case it took Jack a while to return. Then, staying in the shadows as much as possible, he darted across the immaculate front lot, trod lightly around the planted flowerbeds, avoided the little pools of floating lilies completely, and finally made it to the west corner of the big house. The sun broke over the horizon just as he threw himself into the house’s shadow, and he gave a sigh of relief when he was finally no longer out in the open.
Around him he could hear the sounds of life beginning to stir. Men of all ages and sizes moved into the soybean fields, and through an open window in the house, he could hear people beginning to greet one another and discuss the day’s chores. He crept along the wall to peer around to the back of the house, where he spotted not one barn, but three great storehouses out of which men and boys were already moving as they led oxen, donkeys, and horses, carried harvesting materials, and hauled empty sacks over their shoulders.
Jack snuck back to the window. Looking around, he pulled himself up and through. His balance, however, had been affected by his illness. His left arm gave way, and he crashed to the ground, just barely avoiding smacking the stone floor with his head. When he had finally righted himself, grateful no servants had walked by to witness his clumsiness, he slipped into the first open closet he spotted, where he could sit and plan the rescue.
Eva had been on the fifth floor. That meant he would need to find stairs. Peeking out from his hiding place, he spotted a staircase wide enough to fit four horses on it, side by side. The way it spiraled up into a huge hole in the ceiling reminded him of a snake making its way up a tree for an unsuspecting meal. He shuddered. Before he could imagine any other horrible comparisons for this strange big house, a scent caught his attention.
Well, it was more of a bundle of scents, really. After eating nothing but dry oats the day before, and far too many apples that morning, Jack’s stomach gurgled loudly. It wasn’t hard to spot the table just behind the staircase in what looked to be a dining room of sorts. The table was piled high with all the foods he had ever eaten and more.
Surely it wouldn’t be too wrong to sneak a few bites before he continued his rescue. He would need his strength if he was going to return home again with a girl in tow.
He waited until a bell had rung and the servants cleared the room, then he dashed over to the table and began stuffing as many of the pastries, meat pies, sweet bread rolls, and little fruit pies into his pockets as he could.
“Jack?”
Jack turned slowly at the sound of the woman’s voice. To his great relief, it was Eva.
Well, Eva, but draped in the most expensive materials and jewels Jack had ever seen. Her green gown shimmered in the light from a nearby window, and her golden hair was piled on top of her head and pinned there with dozens of shining green gems. It was a far cry from the simple country dress he’d last seen her wearing. While the color of the gown was somewhere between that of a bean pod and pond algae, it made her tall, slender figure look like she’d jumped right out of one of the fairy stories Jack’s father had told him as a child.
Though Jack considered himself a gentleman, it wasn’t without some effort that he was able to pull his eyes back up to her face and respond to her without sounding like a complete idiot.
“I . . .” Why was he here again? So much for not sounding like an idiot.
“You can’t be here!” She hurried down the winding staircase and grabbed his arm before dragging him toward the door. She was surprisingly strong. “If the duke finds you, you could get hurt.”
Before they reached the door, however, he was able to recover his senses. “I’m not here to run away!” He reached out and took her hand. The gesture felt strangely comfortable. “I came to rescue you!”
At first she seemed at a loss for words and looked almost like she might cry. But before Jack could soak up the unfamiliar feeling of pride in doing something right, she briefly closed her eyes and let out a sigh. “That’s . . . very kind of you, but you need to go. Now. I don’t want your family entangled in this mess, too.” She frowned and pursed her lips for a moment before her eyes lit up. “Get out of Guthward and go to
Astoria! My family lives in the capital. Take your family and find the wealthy woodcutters. Tell them where I am. Maybe they can contact the fairies—”
“Wait!” He stopped her. “The fairies already know!”
“They do?”
“Yes! One gave me the five beans that led me here.”
Instead of seeming relieved, as he’d expected her to, she stiffened. “Was this a . . . male fairy?”
He nodded. “Tall and thin with a scraggly beard, tiny girlie wings. And quite grumpy.”
“Oh no.” Eva put her hands on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“That was my fairy godfather, Mortimer.” She shook her head and threw up her arms helplessly. “I might as well start naming the children now. Duke One, Two, and Three.”
“Hold on,” he said, taking her by the shoulders. “What’s so wrong with the fairy? I mean, his beans did lead me straight to you.”
“Mortimer is a terrible godfather. He’s more interested in experimenting with his magic than he is in any of our mundane human lives, something he’s quite keen on reminding my family any time he’s near.”
“He seemed pretty interested in getting you home.”
“Because it’s his fault I’m here in the first place!”
Before he could respond, another voice sounded in the hall, and Eva paled. “Oh no,” she muttered. Footsteps and more voices became audible. She whirled around. “Just play along!”
“What?”
“Just do what I say!”
The duke walked in just as Eva faced the entryway once again. The little man was somehow even less impressive than he had been during their first meeting. Despite his age, the man’s pate was already beginning to shine in the direct light, and the waistcoat he wore was far too tight for the paunch that strained its buttons. He was sweating profusely, though his clothes looked too neat for him to have been laboring outside with the other men, but sweat ran down his face as though he’d been working in the fields for hours.
An Unnatural Beanstalk Page 6
