The Thief and the Beanstalk (Further Tales Adventures)

by P. W. Catanese

  Nick’s face grew pale at the thought of those man-eating monsters loose in the world below. How many would die under their feet and disappear down their throats? He had a horrible vision of the ogres rampaging through a village, tearing the roofs off of homes and snatching up the cowering people, devouring some on the spot and filling their sacks with the rest…. Nick shook his head, trying to clear the nightmarish image from his mind.

  “Gnasher told me, ‘You’re going to weave the rope for us, Mother. See, I’ve built a machine to make the work go faster.’ And he led me toward that infernal invention of his.

  “I refused. I told him he was mad. But they locked me here with no food and water, and at last I had no choice but to do what they asked if I wanted to stay alive.”

  Nick looked at the strange contraption along the wall. “How does it work?”

  “Like all of Gnasher’s machines, his rope-weaver is ingenious. I first had to comb the fibers out from the vines that Basher brought me. The fibers went into those little holes around the first set of wheels. Gnasher’s wind machine turned the wheels, and the fibers were spun into thread. The next wheels spun the threads together. The further down the line it went, the thicker the cord grew, until the final, largest wheels spun out the rope.

  “But at first, Gnasher wanted only a single thin strand. For a long, long time, through darkness and light, I went on weaving that strand for him. And when he thought it was long enough, he took it to the edge of our land and lowered it, with a hook and a bucket tied to the end to see what they might bring up. Six times he thought it was long enough to reach the world below, and six times he returned to order me to make it longer.

  “On the seventh try, he did it. When they reeled the rope in again, the bucket was full of strange water that tasted of salt. But all that mattered to Gnasher was that he succeeded. He knew his plan would work.

  “Then he ordered me to weave a great rope, made up of many strands, to deliver them to the world below. How I cried when he said that. I was imprisoned for so long already, and yet my work had hardly begun. But I had no choice. I could either do what Gnasher said or be left here to die.

  “As I finished the rope, Gnasher had me push it through that hole in the wall so he could measure it. He would inspect it as well, to be sure I did not purposefully weaken part of the rope. Believe me, if I could have gotten away with it, I would have.

  “And I tell you, Nick, that rope can do what he wants it to do. It couldn’t be stronger if it was spun from iron.”

  All this time the giantess had been toying with a piece of the beanstalk vine. She suddenly dashed it to the ground.

  “Now the job is done. Gnasher said they would free me when the rope was finished. But have they? No! Gnasher says he cannot trust me, that I might destroy the rope, because I take pity on the lowly creatures below us! They will leave me here to perish.” The giantess rolled over and buried her face in the pile to muffle her cries.

  Nick wanted to comfort her, but he did not know where to begin. He looked away and noticed the end of a slender piece of string sticking out from the heap of beanstalk shreds. It was a stray thread from the great rope. He pulled on it, and more emerged from under the pile. As Gullinda cried, he absentmindedly wound it up. By the time the other end appeared he had a fist-sized ball of string. He stuffed it into his pocket as Gullinda finally raised her face. Her gray eyes were red-rimmed. She looked at the prison door.

  “I tried to raise them well, to be better than their father,” she said. “But in the end, nothing I did made a difference. There was something corrupting them from the inside. And it was stronger than I was.”

  There was a painful silence. Nick thought about what the giantess said a few minutes earlier: The job is done.

  “Gullinda, did you mean that the rope is really finished? That they are going to use it?”

  “It is ready. They are making the final preparations for their invasion. That road you heard Gnasher speak of is the one that will bring the rope to the edge of our world.”

  “But it doesn’t seem possible,” Nick said. He tried to imagine the size of the finished rope. “A rope that long—wouldn’t it snap under its own weight?”

  “You do not understand,” said Gullinda. She looked at the floor and found a thick scrap of the rope lying nearby. She held it out over Nick. It was brown and green in color, seven feet long and a foot thick.

  “Catch it, and you will see,” the giantess said. She let it drop.

  Nick gave a cry of surprise as it plopped across his waiting arms. He expected the weight of an ordinary rope, but this thick piece was light as a feather. “It can’t be,” he said, looking at it closely, as if searching for the missing pounds.

  “There is something wondrous about these plants that grow here,” Gullinda said. “And the fiber that comes from them is as strong as it is light. The rope will not break. Soon my sons will use it to descend on your world. And I made it possible.”

  “What else could you have done?” said Nick.

  The giantess did not respond. She only sat there, a tormented look on her face.

  The imminence of the invasion was a stunning conclusion to Gullinda’s awful story. Nick felt like he could not breathe. He wanted badly to get out of that room, if even for a moment.

  “I want to see the rope,” Nick said hoarsely.

  “It’s on the other side of that hole,” said the giantess. She pointed to the gap, just above the floor, into which the finished rope had been fed. It was a small opening to her, but to Nick, it was big enough to duck through without touching the sides.

  Nick rose and stepped toward the hole. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Will you?” asked Gullinda. She was looking at him now. A single tear, big enough to fill a goblet, rolled off her cheek and splattered by Nick’s feet.

  He struggled to smile. “Yes—to help you get out.”

  Gullinda turned her face away.

  “You’ll see,” said Nick. He went through the hole.

  He had passed through the back wall of the castle, into a kind of courtyard. A wooden roof had been assembled high overhead, projecting from the castle wall to protect the rope from the elements. But it was not just the rope that astonished Nick. It was also the vehicle that would transport the rope to the edge of the cloud island, and the machinery that was designed to lower it.

  Like the strand Nick had examined, the great rope was brown and green, the color of a sapling. It was wound around a spool of staggering width and length. The spool was lying on its side atop a flat platform, which rode on four wheels that each looked as big as the moon. The end of the rope was threaded through a cog-and-wheel mechanism that jutted from the side of the platform. Other materials were piled behind the spool: spikes, chains, and hammers.

  In front of the wagon, a bar stuck out, with a crosspiece at the end. It was meant for the ogres to each grab a side of the crosspiece, and haul the platform and spool behind them.

  One look convinced Nick that the ogre’s diabolical plot could succeed, after all. Worse yet, everything looked ready to go. The invasion was about to begin.

  He felt helpless. All he had wanted from this strange place was something of value to steal, something to buy him a better existence than the bleak one he knew. So why did there have to be this terrible plot and that poor giantess to complicate everything? It made him angry to think about it—angry at Gullinda, just for existing.

  What can you do about all this? Nick thought. Nothing. You can’t do anything for Gullinda; she’ll end her days in that prison, whether you try to help her or not. And you can’t foil this invasion. In a few days the world below will never be the same. You might as well get that sack of treasure and run. And don’t stop running until you’re too far away for even the ogres to get you.

  Go on. You can’t make a difference here. Take the treasure first—you’ll need it to survive. Take it and go.

  Nick turned and whispered to the hole in the wall.

/>   “I’m sorry.”

  And then he ran.

  Chapter 15

  Nick ran away from the rope, away from Gull inda. He circled around the rear wall of the castle and came upon a back door. It was smaller than the front entrance. When he slithered beneath it, he emerged into a hallway. It looked to be the distant end of the corridor that led from the great hall to the prison and treasure rooms.

  Just inside the door, benches twenty feet high lined both walls. Nick saw handles and blades sticking out over the edge. Weapons for the invasion.

  Farther down, hanging from pegs on the wall, Nick saw two suits of cloth armor, tailored to fit the ogres. The material was woven from the same green-brown fiber that created the rope. Worn in battle, it would be as strong and hard to penetrate as metal, without weighing the ogres down as they wielded their weapons. Gnasher and Basher would be nearly invincible.

  Nick didn’t want to think about the havoc the ogres would wreak with those weapons and that armor. He ran past the tools of war, down the corridor, and soon came to the treasure room door. He slid through the tight space near the hinges and picked up the sack. He took another look around the room and marveled at the riches all around him, regretting that he could carry so little. There would be no second or third trip; one would have to do.

  As he turned to leave, he saw the figurine in the corner.

  It was still covered by the cloth, but Nick didn’t have to see it to remember the final shape that the object assumed. It was the way he looked right now, skulking away with a fortune on his back. In fact it was precisely the same pose.

  Nick wobbled where he stood, and the skin on his arms turned to goose flesh. He lost his grip on the sack of treasure. It slid off his back and hit the floor with a muffled clatter.

  What was this wicked object? All he’d felt when he touched it were the terrible urges he’d come to know too well. Greed. Violence. Vengeance. Regret. Despair.

  But there was more to him than that. Wasn’t there? There had to be.

  He ran to the figurine and tore the cloth away, flinging it into the air behind him where it fell like a dying ghost. “You don’t know me!” he yelled into the face. “This isn’t me!”

  But it was. It was what he’d become. A thief and nothing more. The dark magic of the figurine had revealed a truth to him. There were two kinds of thieves in the world: thieves like Jack, good people who succumbed to temptation, and whose conscience forever punished them for it; and thieves like Finch, predators who could murder and rob without a pang of regret. They were the haunted and the hunters. To one you gave your pity, to the other your contempt, and to neither your envy.

  He stared into the shameful face of his likeness.

  “What are you, really?” he asked aloud.

  What I’ve become? Or what I might become?

  “I’m back,” said Nick, rising to his feet inside the prison room door.

  When Gullinda turned and saw him, her face seemed to glow. “I would not have blamed you if you left.”

  “I’m here to help you escape,” said Nick. “Maybe we can ruin their plan.”

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “I would gladly help you do that, Nick, but there is no way for you to get me out of this room.”

  “But what about the lock? I could get the key,” said Nick.

  “I told you already. There is only one key. Gnasher wears that around his neck, with the keys to the treasure room and his own room, at all times.”

  “But when he falls—”

  “And he sleeps lightly,” Gullinda interrupted. “You could never remove it without him awakening. Never.”

  “Then I will stay, and bring you food and water.”

  “What a boy you are. Would you save one old woman instead of warning all your people? Go back down your beanstalk, Nick. Tell them the sons of Ramos are coming.”

  “I won’t leave you here!” Nick kicked the pile of beanstalks and cried out in frustration. Then he turned to Gullinda with a strange look on his face. He started nodding to himself.

  “He can read, can’t he,” said Nick. “You taught him to read.”

  “I did,” agreed the giantess.

  “Is there something to write with in this castle? And parchment, something to write on?” asked Nick, his voice quickening.

  “Gnasher keeps those things in his room, so he can draw his inventions.” The giantess wrinkled her brow, not understanding what the boy was getting at.

  “Tell me where his room is,” said Nick. “I know how to get you out of here!”

  Nick crept forward as quickly as he dared, picking his way over the junk that was strewn all over the floor of the great hall. As he passed the arching entrance to the kitchen, he looked inside. Basher was still asleep by the table. Nick paused briefly to take a closer look at the monster.

  Basher had dozed off at first with his head on the table. But now he leaned back in his chair, chin to chest, head lolled to one side. The ogre smelled like spoiled meat. His mouth hung open as he snored. A stream of pinkish drool oozed out of his mouth and snaked down his chest. A thousand flies swarmed over the bloody remains of the boar, and hundreds more flew around the ogre’s face. Every time Basher drew in a great breath, a few unlucky bugs were sucked down his throat and up his nose. They didn’t come out again.

  Looking at the ogre made Nick queasy. He moved on through the great hall, into the corridor on the other side, toward the room that the giantess described. He knew he was running out of time. Gnasher would return from his errands soon.

  The corridor twisted and turned like a creek. Along the way, Nick found a few dead rats on the floor. They were as flat as parchment, their bones crunched into dust, their legs splayed in odd directions. The ogres must have stepped on them with as little regard as Nick would have for an ant.

  A broken chair was lying on its side against one wall. As Nick approached it, he glimpsed another large spider web, like the one he encountered in the crevice outside the castle. The spokes and spirals of the web were sewn between the chair’s splintered legs. Behind that, a dark tunnel of silk curled back out of sight. Nick circled widely around the chair, hugging the opposite wall. He couldn’t resist a closer peek at the web as he passed. Then he wished he hadn’t looked.

  This spider-head was female, with the face and the tangled gray hair of a hag. She sat high in the web, holding four dangling threads that dropped nearly to the floor, as if operating some invisible marionette. When she saw Nick, her eyes twinkled and she mewled to him in a chilling singsong voice. She lifted one leg and gestured with a tiny finger to come closer.

  “No, thanks,” said Nick. He looked at the floor beneath the web. The parched body of a male spider-head lay on its back there. Its eyes were rotted away, and its legs were curled above it.

  A rat of ordinary size darted out from a crack in the wall in front of Nick. It was startled to see him and scampered to the other side of the corridor, too close to the dangling threads. The spider-head gave one thread a skillful snap, and it whipped into the rat and stuck fast. The rodent twisted and squealed as the drooling spider-head reeled it up to her perch. She nipped it on the back, and the rat went limp.

  Nick was filled with loathing. He found a little stone and flung it at the spider-head. It missed to one side and stuck in the silky funnel. The spider-head glared at him, then laughed shrilly. Then she turned and called into the dark recesses of the web.

  Within seconds, dozens of smaller forms crawled out of the shadows: baby spider-heads. They scuttled to their mother, and the first to arrive swarmed over the rat. The rest gathered around and bawled when they could not get their share. A few of them saw Nick standing on the other side of the hall. They cooed like infants and began to crawl down the web to the floor.

  Nick decided it was time to move on.

  Up ahead on the right, a second corridor branched off from the main passage.

  “Don’t go that way,” the giantess had warned him. “Bashe
r’s room is there. The smell alone would kill you.”

  The giantess was hardly exaggerating. Even though he’d grown used to the awful odor that permeated the castle, Nick was not prepared for the tidal wave of stench that surged from that corridor. He put the crook of his elbow across his nose and ran past it, his eyes stinging. As he went by, he heard a low hum: the sound of a million buzzing flies.

  Not far beyond that the corridor ended at the door to Gnasher’s room. A lock hung from it as Gullinda predicted. Gnasher allowed no one in his room, not even his brother. Nick slipped like a mouse through the crack under the door, into the awesome tower room that Gnasher claimed for his own.

  Standing there was like being inside a volcano. It was oppressively hot. Gnasher had built his forge here, where he hammered and molded the metal parts for his contraptions. A fire smoldered inside, casting red-black shadows that flickered on the walls. This was the source of the thin black smoke that Nick saw when he approached the castle. Giant hammers, tongs, and other smith’s tools leaned against the walls of the forge, and a great black anvil stood nearby.

  A wide staircase spiraled along the walls to the top of the tower. High overhead, Nick saw the inner workings of the wind machine. Through a window he could see the sails in motion outside, driven by the breeze. They turned a shaft that came into the tower through a hole in the wall and drove an assortment of meshing gears and rods. Ropes and chains were attached to the machinery in various places. Some disappeared into holes, on their way to power inventions throughout the castle. Others came straight down to drive ingenious devices inside the tower.

  The power of the wind machine worked the bellows that blew into the furnace. The bellows moved up and down like an accordion, filling the tower with a living sound like deep, rhythmic breathing.

  Elsewhere the power of the wind machine piped water up from a stone well in the center of the room. Inside the pipe, a screw turned, and water was drawn along its threads and trickled out of the top. The trickle fed a deep pool of water, where Gnasher could cool his newly forged metal creations.