Until he saw the cloud.
The cloud came from the west, from somewhere over the ocean. It appeared at almost the same instant that the sun emerged over the opposite horizon. The first rays struck the edge of the cloud, gilding it. Beyond that, all was black and gray. The cloud was gigantic, of unimaginable size and mass, like the greatest storm ever known. As it swept over the land, rapidly approaching the growing beanstalk, it eclipsed the heavens and brought the dark of night back to the world beneath it.
There was a bond between the beanstalk and the cloud. One belonged to the other, of that Nick was sure.
At the foot of the beanstalk, the plant rustled and hissed as hundreds of branches and leaves and tendrils sprouted everywhere, filling the trunk with lush green growth. The quaking of the earth had subsided and the noise had dimmed, but he could still hear the slosh of water being pumped up to sustain the growth at the top.
High above him the beanstalk narrowed to a thread in the sky, then vanished altogether, too far away to see.
The cloud was drawing closer. It had a lazy spin as it approached. But that spinning motion came to a halt and even reversed itself a bit as one part of the cloud—a narrow peninsula that jutted out much farther than the rest—aligned itself with the beanstalk like the point of a compass.
Then the beanstalk lurched skyward, straining at the roots that must have been anchored a hundred feet below ground. It seemed to be trying to stretch itself just a few feet higher, reaching for something to latch onto at the top. At the same time, the cloud itself descended to meet the rising plant.
Nick felt like a fish watching a giant ship moor itself to its anchor line above him. A rumbling noise came down as the prow of the cloud and the plant touched. A shudder ran down the length of the beanstalk, top to bottom, resonating in the earth.
And a matching shiver ran down Nick’s spine.
Chapter 9
As Nick stood gawking at the beanstalk, a violent gust of wind swept over the crest of the ridge, down the slope, and across the valley, sending loose stones rolling and spiriting fallen leaves into the sky. This wave of air followed the strange cloud like the wake of a great seagoing vessel. As it washed over him, it made his clothes billow and snap, and he had to lean against the gale to stay on his feet. The leaves of the beanstalk rustled and whistled. Then the howling passed by, and Nick watched as the gust rolled across the rest of the valley and into the hills beyond, its strength ebbing now that the cloud had come to a stop.
Nick was a dozen yards away from the beanstalk. He approached it cautiously. As he took a step, he kicked something with his foot. It was a knife, dropped by one of the fleeing thugs. It was the kind with a blade that folded into its handle. Nick tucked it into his pocket.
Cautiously, he put his hands out and touched the trunk with both palms. There was that tingling again, though not to the degree that drove the insects out of the ground. It was an invigorating feeling, a power that could somehow be absorbed. To touch it was to feel energized.
He spread his arms wide and hugged the trunk, putting an ear to its surface. It sounded like there was a river surging deep inside.
Nick took another look at the earth beneath his feet, wondering if he would ever touch it again should he leave. He was afraid to begin the climb, but more afraid not to. Finch and his gang of cutthroats were driven off, but would they stay away for long?
Something else helped him overcome his fear: the thrilling, siren call of adventure. Above him, on top of that cloud, was a place where perhaps only one other human being had ever set foot—a magical place, with marvels to be discovered, and maybe treasures to be retrieved.
“Jack did it. So can you,” Nick said to himself.
Nick grabbed one branch and stepped onto another. Then he took a deep breath and started to climb.
He was surprised at how easy it was. Places for his hands and feet were everywhere. He never seemed to tire—in fact he felt stronger the higher he climbed—and he knew there was something unnatural about this endurance. It was the awesome life force that flowed inside the magic beanstalk, radiating through his body and fueling his muscles. His arms grabbed and pulled, his legs climbed and pushed, with endless speed and agility. Nick felt he could almost fly. Any doubt that he could reach that strange cloud overhead evaporated, like the morning mist that the rising sun was burning away.
Already the earth had shrunken away below him. I’m a thousand feet high, he thought, and a thrill shot from his head to his toes. He dared to let go of the beanstalk with one hand. Leaning over the void, he thrust his fist into the air and let out a long yell of sheer exhilaration.
He felt something close around his ankle. The shout of joy became a shriek of fear.
On the branch where his foot rested, a thin green tendril had sprouted and gently wrapped itself around his leg. With a little kick, Nick easily freed himself. He breathed a long sigh of relief. It didn’t seem like the tendril was dangerous; it was more likely a side effect of the beanstalk’s final stages of growth, as each of its stems reinforced itself by twining around the others.
Nick continued his journey upward. He paused only briefly along the way to take in the mind-boggling scenery below. He saw Jack’s house, now just a cube of sugar on a green carpet. He saw the mountains to the north. Everything shrank except the ocean, which grew bigger and bluer the higher he went.
Above him, a tiny black shape spiraled slowly down, circling the beanstalk. It was a crow. The bird looked at Nick with one glittering eye and let out a caw as it reached his level. Then it flew past on its corkscrew descent, never flapping its wings, just riding the currents of air.
The birds and me, Nick thought. The only ones who can cross between the two lands. He continued onward, upward. The beanstalk was half as wide as it was at its foot, and still tapering.
Now the cloud island was near. Nick looked at its vast underside, which ended somewhere beyond the horizon. With its boiling black underbelly, it resembled a massive storm cloud. Nick could even see flashes of lightning here and there. But there was a difference between this and any other great storm cloud, a difference anyone would notice if they observed it carefully. While true clouds constantly change in shape as the winds blow around them, this one held its basic form.
The peninsula where the beanstalk met the cloud island was just over Nick’s head now. The island was thin at this point, no more than a few yards deep, while it grew hundreds of feet thick at its interior. With his heart pounding, Nick climbed the last few yards.
At the top, the beanstalk had anchored itself to a boulder of incredible size. Tendrils gripped the stone like a many-fingered hand. Nick climbed onto the boulder. He reluctantly let go of the beanstalk; he was going to miss the energy it gave him. All about him, and apparently around the whole perimeter of this land, thick fog swept in and out like foaming ocean waves. Farther inland the fog faded until it disappeared completely after a hundred yards or so, revealing the solid ground underneath. Beyond that a rocky ridge that ran along the coast obscured the rest of the island from view.
A massive island in the sky, disguised as a cloud, held aloft by some unexplainable magic—there was no understanding it, or comprehending it, so Nick just accepted what his eyes told him.
Below his feet, under the huge boulder, he saw only fog. Nick wondered where cloud ended and land began. He slid inch by inch down the side of the boulder and let one foot drop into the mist. Finally, when the vapor was chest-high, he felt rock under his toes. He brought the other foot down next to it.
Nick shuffled toward dry land, afraid to lift his feet as he stepped, not trusting the ground he could not see. His caution paid off, as one probing foot discovered the edge of a hole that was cloaked by the mist. He reached down and found a rock, and dropped it into the opening. He never heard the rock hit bottom. The silence was chilling.
Nick dropped to his hands and knees and crawled around the wide gap, nearly twenty feet across. Then he made his way to the v
isible shore. As he went forward, the mist gradually cleared until it was gone completely.
He was surprised to find sand under his feet. With its sandy shore and foamy waves of vapor and rocky coast, this place resembled an earthly island in many ways.
Nick climbed the jumble of rocks, knowing he was about to get his first look at the land that Jack visited so many years before. When he reached the highest point, he was not surprised to see a gigantic castle in the distance. But he was amazed by the vast landscape spread before him.
“This isn’t an island,” he said.” It’s a world.”
He always pictured the castle as the solitary, dominant feature of the cloud island. But there was so much more: forests, hills, valleys, lakes, and streams. A desert sprawled beyond those, and after the desert, a craggy, foreboding mountain rose in the distance. Nick could not tell what lay beyond that. But he guessed there was at least as much on the other side of the mountain, if not more, than on the side he could see.
It had not occurred to Nick that there might be other choices, other places to explore. But he felt that the right thing to do was to follow Jack’s footsteps. Besides, it was the logical place for a thief to explore. The giant died long ago, and his wife must be gone by now as well. They must have left other treasures behind that Nick could claim for his own.
Now that he was on top of the cloud island, the sun was shining on him again, climbing high as mid-morning approached. The radiance felt good beating on his back. Then something blotted out the sun. Nick turned to see a thick white cloud drifting toward him. From a distance it looked like a solid mass of white. He knew it was just an ordinary cloud, vaporous and insubstantial, but he half-expected a loud crash when it met the cloud island.
It struck the narrow edge and divided, half engulfing the land above and half disappearing below. It poured over and around Nick, feeling cool and wet on his skin. He sat on a rock to wait for the fog to pass. A few minutes later the tail of the cloud swept by and Nick could see again. He watched it depart, driven by the light breeze, unveiling once again the features of the land before him.
A forest spanned the distance between Nick and the castle. A few swirls of vapor were snagged among the trees but soon evaporated. Nick climbed down from the rocks and went into the woods.
The trees were like the oaks and maples of earthly forests. But growing among them Nick saw long, thick vines that looked like smaller versions of the beanstalk, with the same strange milky green color. Some of them snarled together in clumps; others snaked up the trunks of the trees. They seemed to be native to this place.
Is that why the beanstalk grows? Nick wondered. Is it trying to get back where it belongs?
Nick went on, heading for the giant’s castle. The trees and undergrowth were full of chirping birds and rustling animals that he heard but never saw. Raucous crows were everywhere, flapping overhead, strutting across the forest floor, and staring from the high branches with glassy black eyes.
Nick came to a fallen tree that blocked his path. He ran at it and vaulted, landing neatly on his feet on the other side.
A loud snort came from his right. An animal that was bigger than four oxen strapped together was digging with its snout at the roots of the fallen tree, just a few yards away. Bristly black hair stood on end across the shoulders and down the back. A head that was almost as large as the rest of the body rose from the ground, and its eyes fixed on him. It was a monstrous wild boar. Twin yellow tusks, each as tall as Nick, curled along the sides of its mouth. The beast sneezed, and dirty snot spewed from the end of its long shovel nose.
Nick froze, hoping the creature would ignore him. A wild boar was an ornery thing when disturbed, and this one was many times bigger than any earthly variety. It regarded him for a long moment, turning its face sideways to stare with one bloodshot eye. Then it lowered its head, drew its lips back in a snarl, and charged with surprising speed.
Instead of turning to run, Nick leaped to one side and rolled to avoid the onrush. The boar snapped its head at him as it passed. The tusks whistled over Nick’s head.
Nick got up and ran as the boar skidded and turned to follow, its hooves churning up clumps of turf. He dashed by a stand of trees that grew in a row, creating a natural barrier. The boar followed on the opposite side, catching up in seconds. As it ran, it searched for a gap in the trees to break through and gore him. Nick looked ahead and saw with alarm that such a clearing was just ahead. He stopped himself short against the last tree in the row. His lungs were burning. The chase was exhausting him, and he longed for the energizing force that sustained his long climb up the beanstalk.
The boar came around the tree and lunged at him. Nick circled back, keeping the trunk between him and the beast. The boar reversed direction and came grunting around the other side, arching its neck to wrap around the trunk and reach its prey. It tried to crush him by slamming its tusks against the tree, slashing deep scars in the bark with every miss. Nick retreated farther around the tree and found himself dangerously close to the boar’s back hooves.
The boar began to run in a tight circle, scraping its head against the bark, drawing closer with each step. Nick would be dead in seconds if he stayed. He pushed off the tree and darted through some thick bushes nearby, scrambling over and under their tangled branches.
The boar came snorting behind, uprooting the bushes with its tusks as fast as Nick could climb through them. Nick came out the other side with the beast so close behind he felt its steamy breath on his neck.
Just ahead a thick cluster of trees grew, and Nick thought he might find safety in the middle. Before he could reach it, one of the swinging tusks brushed his back, knocking him off balance. He ran stumbling for a few steps, then hit the ground.
He tumbled to one side, just avoiding the impaling tusk as it drove into the ground beside him. He was looking right into that awful pink eye. He punched at it, but the leathery eyelid closed and blocked his fist. The boar pulled its tusk out of the ground and brought its gnawing teeth toward his face.
Nick heard a snapping sound, and then the beast squealed with pain and fear. Its foreleg was caught in the metal jaws of a trap that sprang from under a blanket of fallen leaves. The metal jaws suddenly twisted halfway around, and the leg bone broke with a violent crack.
From overhead, Nick heard the clatter and squeak of ropes and pulleys. A heavy spiked contraption was descending from the trees. Wailing like a frightened piglet, the boar tried to run, but its broken leg was held fast. Nick scrambled backward out of harm’s way. The deadly spikes came down hard and fast, piercing the boar through the back, the shoulder, the neck. It shrieked for the last time, then collapsed. The huge head fell toward Nick, and one of the tusks struck him hard on the skull.
Nick writhed on the ground, holding his head. The world tilted and spun in front of his eyes. His ears rang, but he was dimly aware of another squeak of moving ropes over his head. A red flag emerged from a hole in the ground and rose up the side of the tree—triggered, Nick realized, by the same clever contraption that killed the boar. He saw a stone counterweight coming down from the treetop as the flag went up, and then his vision blurred beyond perception.
That flag is a signal, he thought before everything faded away. Someone will be coming….
Chapter 10
Old Man Jack had not slept much. He stared out his window most of the night, wondering what would result from his impulsive decision to let Nick escape with the beans.
He felt groggy as he wandered downstairs, still in his sleeping robe. The little girl was alone in the dining hall, nibbling on a piece of toasted bread with honey. Whenever Jack saw her, the same thought crossed his mind: How sad that she’d lost her mother the year before, and how fortunate that she had a father as fine as gentle Henry.
“Miss your dad, Ann?” he asked, taking the chair opposite her. She nodded without looking.
“He should be home by tomorrow morning,” Jack said. “And think how happy those children will
be when they get those fine books.”
Jack’s servant Mary brought a plate of bread and a mug of ale to the table. It was the first thing she did for him every morning. He thanked her, and she returned to the kitchen.
Something else was on the little girl’s mind. “Master Jack, what happened to the boy you caught in your painting room last night?”
“Ah, the little thief. I sent him away.”
“Did you punish him first?”
“No.”
“But why not? Didn’t you want to teach him a lesson?”
The old man took a long sip from his mug. “Maybe it’s better if he learns it for himself.”
Ann scrunched her face, which she always did when she was confused. Then her expression brightened and she changed the subject.
“I thought about it, like you said!”
“Eh? Thought about what?”
“If it was all right for you to steal from the giant.”
“Oh, that. And what do you think?” Jack watched the girl’s face carefully.
“Well, the giant was awful and he didn’t deserve those treasures. But you’re a good man, so I think it was all right for you to take them.” She beamed at Jack.
The old man hung his head. Somehow, he had to make the girl understand.
She reached out and put her hand on his arm.” What’s wrong, Master Jack? Why are you sad all the time?”
Jack kept his head down. A chill swept through him, and he pushed the mug away and clasped his hands.
“Ann, imagine a little boy who lifts something very heavy and puts it on his shoulders. And for the rest of his life, wherever he goes, that burden is always with him. He grows to be a young man, then a grown man, then an old man, and all the while it’s there. And the older he gets, the wearier he becomes, until he can barely stand to carry it anymore.
“I’m sad because I have a burden like that, Ann. But it’s the kind of burden you can’t see. You just feel it.”
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