Basher grunted something that sounded like yes.
“Now,” said Gnasher, “how about a little treat before the trip, brother?” Nick watched as Gnasher reached into the pouch at his waist and pulled out the limp body of Finch. Basher came lumbering over, licking his lips, to get a closer look.
Still alive? Nick wondered. He was sure he didn’t want to see what was about to happen.
Gnasher held Finch by the foot and let him dangle upside down. “An army of these wont give us much trouble, will they, Basher?”
Finch began to moan softly.
“Well, our little friend is waking up,” said Gnasher. He gave Finch a shake. “Let’s see what he has to say for himself now.” Gnasher flipped Finch over into his other hand and waited for him to fully awaken.
Finch barely resembled the arrogant, handsome leader of thieves that Nick had known. His ruddy complexion was drained of color, except for the trickling red holes that the spider-heads left behind. His lips were pulled back, and his teeth were clenched together in a mad grin. There was a strange, dazed look in his eyes; perhaps the venom was still affecting his brain.
Finch’s head swiveled back and forth as he stared with dread at the gruesome monsters before him.
“Yes, wake up—it is time to accept your punishment,” Gnasher said. “You should not have tried to escape. You’ve made me enormously angry.”
“It was the boys idea! Not mine!” Finch’s words were slurred, and there was lunacy in his voice.
“Little liar,” said Gnasher. He reached out and pinched Finch’s head between his thumb and forefinger. He began to squeeze.
“No!” screamed Finch. He threw his arms around the fingers in a futile attempt to pry them apart. “The boy is the liar! He lied to you! I can help you! I can lead you to Jack—the man who killed your father!”
“What’s that you say?” Gnasher said. His eyebrows went up and his nose twitched. He released Finch’s head, and Basher began to bounce in place as he squatted.
Finch’s words chilled Nick to the core. The man would say anything now to save himself.
While the ogres were distracted, Nick saw his opportunity to climb down unnoticed. As he crawled on hands and knees to the back of the cart, he could still hear the conversation between Gnasher and Finch.
“Tell me about this Jack—and how you can help us,” Gnasher said.
“Yes! I can help! Let me guide you. I’ll show you where Jack lives, the one who stole from your father. And that’s not all—I’ll lead you to other places. I know other castles, full of treasures! And villages full of people—thousands of fat, juicy people! Just let me live, and I’ll be your guide!”
Nick clambered down the chain, as fast as he dared. When he was near the end he dropped to the ground, knee-deep in mist. He was halfway between panic and rage from listening to Finch, who would betray an entire world to preserve his own life. Moving as quickly as he could through the mist, and trying not to stumble over hidden stones, Nick headed for the beanstalk The ogres’ backs were still turned to him.
“Where will we find Jack?” Gnasher said.
“Old Man Jack! Living like a king on your father’s gold! In a fortress, a white fortress, not far from the beanstalk. I’ll take you there!”
“But the beanstalk has been destroyed.”
“No! Another of the boy’s lies! I told you, I’m the one you can trust!”
“The beanstalk is still here?” Gnasher said. He slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Of course it’s still here. Basher, I’ve been a fool!”
Gnasher lifted Finch to his face. “Tell me where it is. Now.”
“Oh, no,” Nick whispered to himself. He glanced back. Now that Gnasher had raised Finch high, Nick could see the man over the ogre’s shoulder. Finch was looking for the beanstalk and spotted him on the ground below.
Nick shook his head and put a finger to his lips, begging Finch not to betray his presence. Time seemed to hesitate for a long, silent moment. Then Finch’s hand came up and he pointed at Nick.
“There he is!” shrieked Finch. “The boy! Running to the beanstalk! He’s the one you want! Kill him and let me help you conquer the world below!”
“As if we need your help!” snapped Gnasher. “You’ve already told us how to find Jack.” He stuffed the kicking and hollering Finch back into the pouch at his waist. “Lets get that one, Basher!” Basher rose up and thundered toward Nick. Gnasher ran to the cart and reached into the pile of weapons.
Nick gave up caution and ran. He had a head start, but he did not think it was enough.
Finch had always been the hunter, not the prey. Now he was helpless in the clutches of something as evil-hearted as he was, but far more powerful—a monster that could snap every bone in his body with a squeeze of his fist.
In the darkness of the sack, he moaned as he was bounced against the ogre’s thigh. His head rang from the squeeze that Gnasher’s fingers had given it, and his thoughts spun out of control. What a terrible sensation, for his skull to feel so fragile in that monstrous pinch. The ogre could have cracked his head as easily, and with as little remorse, as Finch cracked a nut. And probably for the same reason, a voice in his head called out. Because he wants the meat inside! Finch began to laugh again, an eerie giggle he could not contain.
His thoughts twisted and spun. It was as if a mob was inside his head, shouting one another down. The worst of it was a part of him was still sane, and it knew he was slipping into madness.
Get the knife, the one sane voice urged him.
“I lost the knife!” Finch moaned.
The other knife, it whispered. And Finch remembered the smaller blade strapped to his ankle. He reached down and pulled it from the sheath. He stabbed at the bottom of the pouch, and the blade pierced the thick material, all the way to the haft. Finch grabbed the handle with both hands and began to pull the blade toward him. He sawed up and down with manic strength, cutting a slit for his escape.
As Basher ran past the cart in pursuit of Nick, his foot caught the chain that secured the cart and he tumbled onto the ground.
“Idiot!” yelled Gnasher. “Stay down and watch.” Nick risked a look back, expecting the ogres to be on top of him already. Instead he saw Gnasher raise a familiar-looking weapon. It was the crossbow; Nick had seen its design on the paper he retrieved from Gnasher’s room.
The ogre pulled the trigger, and a hundred arrows whistled through the air. Nick dropped to the ground and curled up, making himself as small as he could. An instant later he heard the arrows clattering all around. One bounced off the ground and fell harmlessly across his legs. Nick sprang up and ran for the beanstalk again.
Gnasher snarled in disgust and dropped the crossbow. He ran after Nick, and Basher got to his feet again and followed.
Nick heard heavy feet pounding the ground behind him. The impacts grew more intense as the ogres closed the distance. Nick turned for a glimpse. The ogres filled the sky behind him, Gnasher in front and Basher a few strides behind. When their feet came down, little stones bounced off the ground and up out of the mists.
“We’re right behind you, morsel!” yelled Gnasher.
Nick turned onto the narrow neck of land that led to the beanstalk. The huge boulder and the top of the beanstalk were just ahead. Nick’s legs were wobbly from the long hard dash. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of Gnasher’s feet come down right beside him. He couldn’t see the grasping hand with the long, pointy fingers coming toward him, but he knew it was there nevertheless. He heard Gnasher scream: “Got you now!”
Suddenly Nicks feet weren’t finding solid ground anymore. Too late, he remembered the gaping hole that he’d discovered when he first arrived on the cloud island. He screamed.
One moment, Nick was falling through the foggy shaft, expecting to smash into a rocky bottom. The next, he burst through the mist into the clear air below, and he saw the world far beneath him.
Then the beanstalk was coming at him in a ru
sh. Nick was running directly at it when he fell through the hole; now his momentum carried him the rest of the way. He put his hands and feet out to brace himself, turned his face to the side, and slammed into the dense mass of tendrils and leaves at a crushing speed.
Nick nearly bounced off and out into space again, but he seized a branch with one hand. The force of the impact left him woozy. His hands and arms were exhausted from trying to cut through the rope, and his lungs were on fire from the run. He began to slip.
Then he felt that strange tingling sensation again—the infectious life force of the beanstalk. It surged through the muscles of his arms and legs, and he gripped the branches with renewed strength.
Gnasher saw the boy suddenly drop from sight into the mist. He took two short steps to keep himself from following the boy down and felt his toes dangling over the edge of a hole. Basher, following close behind, did not anticipate his brother’s sudden stop, and ran into Gnasher’s back. Gnasher shouted, his arms flailed, and he toppled into the gap. Basher reached out and grabbed his brother’s legs before he slipped all the way through.
Clinging to the beanstalk, Nick looked up to see Gnasher emerge headfirst through the hole, dropping all the way to his waist. Then a startling thing occurred.
There was a pouch dangling at Gnasher’s side. A figure, with a knife in hand, popped feet-first through a slit in the bottom. It was Finch. He fell right past Nick, nearly close enough to touch. For the last time, their eyes met. Nick saw Finch’s expression change in an instant, from the joy of sudden freedom to a cold realization of inescapable death.
Finch opened his mouth as if to speak. But if he said anything, the wind carried the words away. Nick could do nothing but watch him go, shrinking away to a tiny black figure before vanishing altogether.
Nick looked over at Gnasher. The ogre was gaping at the world beneath him, a legendary world he had heard of but never seen.
“Wait—don’t pull me up yet! I see it, brother! The world of little people! It’s right there!” Gnasher let out a blood-chilling, jubilant howl.
Nick swung around to the other side of the beanstalk. If he could hide before Gnasher noticed him, the ogre might think he, too, had fallen to his doom.
“Oh, don’t think I didn’t see you, Nick!” Gnasher said. “I lost your unlucky friend, but we’ll catch up with you soon enough. You’re first on the menu. And then we’re going to see a little old man named Jack. Perhaps he’s a friend of yours. I’ve heard he lives not far from here!”
Nick leaned out to face the ogre. “If you come down, you’ll both end up as dead as your father!”
“We’ll see about that, morsel! Go on, hurry down the beanstalk! We’ll be with you shortly,” Gnasher jeered. He called to his brother. “What are you waiting for, idiot? Pull me up!”
Nick watched Gnasher rise. The ogre looked at him with his red-pink eyes flashing and a sinister grin on his face, waving with his fingers as he rose into the hole and disappeared from view.
Basher pulled his brother out of the gap and onto solid ground. He let Gnasher’s feet go and began to hop around excitedly, slapping at the ground. He ran around the hole to the tip of the peninsula and gestured at the beanstalk that rose out of the fog.
“Yes, I see it. Don’t follow him yet, Basher,” called Gnasher. “You can climb down soon enough. We must put on armor first and bring some weapons. The morsel may have friends down there. Just wait until they see us coming—what a day this will be for Gnasher and Basher!”
The two ogres loped back to the cart to prepare for their assault.
I’m free! was the first thing Finch thought as he slipped through the slit in the sack. I’m dead was the second. As Finch began to fall, he saw the traitor Nick clinging to the beanstalk. Finch tried to say “Help me,” but he couldn’t get the words out fast enough, and then the boy was gone.
The beanstalk was tantalizingly near. He reached for it, tried to swim through the air for it, but could not get close enough for even his fingertips to brush the leaves. Then the breeze caused him to drift away from the plant, and grabbing it was beyond hope. The wind whistled and roared, snapping through his garments and tearing the little knife out of his hand. The knife fell alongside him, doing a strange dance in the air as the wind turned it this way and that. Finch began to tumble. He saw the earth below him, the cloud island above, the earth below, the cloud island above. With each revolution, the earth rose closer and the cloud island flew higher.
It was near the end of day now, and the sun was dropping below the far edge of the cloud, which stretched nearly to the western horizon. The light made everything look like gold.
Gold, gold, gold …
Suddenly, mercifully, the last lone voice of sanity flickered and died, and the leader of the band of thieves laughed heartily the rest of the way down.
The instant Gnasher was out of sight, Nick began frantically to climb down the beanstalk. He thought that any second now the plant would begin to shake and he would know that one or both of the ogres was coming after him. And they would close in fast—because unlike Jack’s giant, there was no broken foot to slow them.
Nick descended in a rush, taking one reckless chance after another. When he came to a coiling tendril, he seized the tip of it with both hands and leaped out into the air, and the coil unwound and dropped him a dozen yards, springing him up and down when fully extended, and then he dropped onto the branch below to climb down some more. When he spotted a broad leaf directly underneath he simply plopped onto it in a seated position, and the leaf would tilt and he would slide to the branch or the tendril below. He didn’t look down at the earth or up at the cloud island. All his concentration was on the beanstalk, searching for the next handhold, the next foothold, the next limb or leaf or tendril. To think of anything else for an instant would surely lead to a fatal mistake. As he jumped and clambered and swung and sprang, he chanted aloud, “Got to get down, got to get down, got to get down …”
There was a sudden gust of wind, and it moved a leaf that he was about to grab. Nick fell, and the branch below struck him in the thighs. He spun head over heels, out of control. As he tumbled he saw a tendril below and he tried to seize the end as he went by. It slipped through his hands, but not before he slowed himself and controlled his spin. He fell like a cat, arms and feet pointing down, and the plunge ended abruptly as a broad horizontal branch slammed into his gut. Nick let loose a loud “Oof!” He crawled along the branch to the main trunk of the beanstalk and rested for a moment to let the pain subside. Nothing seemed to be broken.
Nick was elated to see that he was well beyond the halfway point in his climb. He leaned back and looked up, but there was no sign of either ogre overhead. And the beanstalk was not trembling, as Nick supposed it would under their heavy hands and feet. All that he felt was the pulse of churning, pumping water from deep inside the trunk.
He didn’t know what was taking them so long to pursue him, but he was grateful for it. Perhaps he could reach the bottom before the ogres after all—early enough, even, to do something about them.
Now the sun had dropped below the cloud island and would soon set behind the western horizon. For a moment Nick marveled over everything that happened to him in the course of a single day. Then, knowing that he had to act quickly if he wanted to see another sunrise, he resumed his descent.
Chapter 20
The band of thieves was uneasy, after keeping watch at the foot of the beanstalk all day. That morning, after the beanstalk sprouted, Finch had found them cowering in the forest and demanded that they return. Nobody wished to, but Finch and his jagged knife could be utterly convincing.
So they came back and watched Finch climb the beanstalk on a quest for treasure and revenge. “I’ll be back with the boy’s blood on my knife and the giant’s gold in my sack,” he told them. “You all stay here and keep the curious away. I don’t want anybody chopping this beastie down while I’m up there. Toothless, you make sure nobody gets any other idea
s.”
“Aye,” said Toothless John. The thug had packed cool mud on his face and arms to soothe the pain of the hundred stings he’d suffered when the wasps were driven mad by the erupting beanstalk.
Finch had climbed up a little way, then turned to call once more.
“So, Squint, the story was true after all. That really was the Jack who climbed the beanstalk. Who’d have believed it?” Squint just stared back at him, wondering if he would see his leader again, and half hoping that he wouldn’t.
Now the whole day had passed with no sign of Finch. The gang had waited for its leader before, but this was different in so many strange ways. There was the awesome plant, with its slithering roots, strange sounds coming from within, and the weird tingling one felt when he drew close. There was that cloud overhead, an oppressive mass that made the air feel thick and heavy, and cast a shadow across the land until just a few minutes ago when the sun finally sunk back into view above the western horizon. And finally there was the feeling that many in the band shared—that someone was watching them.
If it had not been for Toothless John, eyeing them all and wandering over to eavesdrop when the others would whisper among themselves, many of them would have deserted, even at the risk of incurring Finch’s wrath.
Toothless John glared as he saw Pewt standing by the campfire, muttering something to Squint and Marlowe. The trio came over to where Toothless John was sitting, applying fresh mud to his puffy wounds.
“Listen, Toothless,” said Pewt. “Just how long do we have to stay here? We’ve had all we can take of this place.”
Toothless stood and cracked his knuckles, towering a full head over the burly Pewt. But before either could speak, they heard something from the air above, like howling laughter. At first it was a distant sound, and then it was right on top of them, and there came a splintering crash in a tree nearby. Branches snapped and leaves fluttered in all directions.
And the body of a man was lodged in the remaining branches, twisted and broken.
The Thief and the Beanstalk (Further Tales Adventures) Page 17
