Toothless let out a moan and ran to the body. He lifted the head to look into the face and screamed. Weeping, he fell to his knees. The rest of the gang looked on nervously. Pewt and Marlowe nodded to each other, and slunk toward the woods. A few of the others started to creep off as well.
Toothless looked up and saw them leaving. “Traitors! Get back here! All of you!”
No one answered him. Instead they broke into a dash, across the dry streambed and into the trees. Only Squint was left, and even he was beginning to back away. Toothless pulled his knife out and raised it over his shoulder, holding it by the blade, poised to throw. “Not another step, Squint—unless you can run with a knife in your back.” He pointed up the beanstalk. “That boy, that runt must have done this. You stay right here and tell me when you see him coming.”
Squint sat on the ground looking up at the beanstalk. He puffed his cheeks and let the air whistle slowly out between his lips. “I hope that boy is all that’s coming down.”
When Nick was only a few hundred feet off the ground, he slowed to a less frenzied pace. No sense falling to his death now, so close to earth.
He thought he felt a slight tremble coming down through the beanstalk. Or maybe he was just imagining it.
But there it was again.
Below him was the forsaken farm. The details began to resolve themselves as he came down—the little house with the roof partly caved in, the stone well with the beanstalk roots filling the shaft and rupturing the walls. There, too, were the stump and the ax. It was the ax that Nick wanted most of all right now.
He saw a breeze sweep across the fields below. Clouds of dust swirled in the wind. It looked as if the valley was in the throes of a seven-year drought.
Nick felt a stronger tremor in the beanstalk, and there was no doubt now: At least one of the ogres was coming. He finished the climb and dropped to the ground, glad to feel the sturdy earth under his feet. He ran toward the ax in the stump. His eyes stung a little from the dust, and from the smoke of the smoldering campfire.
Campfire? Nick wondered who had been camped out at the farmhouse when something hit him from behind. He crumpled onto the parched dirt, raising a cloud of dust. Toothless John stood overhead, with a club in one hand and a knife in the other, and Squint stood behind him.
Toothless looked like a wild man. His shirt was off, and his whole body was caked with mud. Where the mud had cracked and fallen, Nick saw whitish welts. The skin around Toothless’s eyes was puffed, and his eyes were nearly shut.
Toothless lifted his boot and brought it down on Nick’s neck. “See what you’ve done? Care to explain what happened to Finch?” With his foot, Toothless pushed Nick’s head to one side, and he saw Finch’s dead form tangled in the tree’s branches.
“Cut it down!” Nick could barely choke the words out. “We have to cut the beanstalk down!”
Toothless John scowled. The boot pressed harder. “Don’t try to scare me, you little pup. I’ll teach you to—”
Something large and green fell with a plop next to Nick’s head. It was a torn leaf from the beanstalk. Then a rustling noise caught Toothless John’s attention. The beanstalk was beginning to shake. From high above, a roaring sound came rolling down. It was like the first distant thunder of a storm.
“What’s that?” asked Squint. He craned his neck upward.
Nick knew. “Still time! Chop it down!” he croaked.
Nothing could be seen yet. But the sound was growing. Up there something was howling with anger. Now every leaf on the beanstalk was trembling. Another broken leaf fluttered down from on high.
“Squint?” said Toothless, keeping his foot pressed against Nick’s neck. “You see anything?” Squint shielded his eyes with a trembling hand and looked up. For a moment he just stood there. Then he let out a gasp. With his eyes bulging, Squint simply turned and ran, kicking up dust behind him. Only Toothless was left. He looked down at Nick, back up the beanstalk, and over at Finch’s body in the tree.
“Please, John,” pleaded Nick in a rasping voice. “Help me cut it down. Before he gets here—before both of them get here. So many people will die if we don’t stop them. We’re the only ones who can do this.”
Toothless John took his foot away and stepped back. “I … I can’t,” he stammered. And he ran off.
“No!” cried Nick. “You’ve got to help me!” He got up, clutching his bruised and aching throat, and ran to the ax. He pulled furiously on the handle, but it slipped out of his hand, filling his palms with splinters, and he fell into the dust again. The beanstalk was rocking harder now. More pieces rained onto the ground. Now Nick could see an ogre, still high above, but coming fast, bellowing horribly.
Nick ran back to the stump and gripped the handle anew. The splinters drove deeper into his palms, but he ignored the stinging. He jerked on the ax handle again, and it wouldn’t budge. Three more times he yanked, grunting loudly. Did it move a little on the last try? He wasn’t sure, but he grabbed the handle again, put his legs on the stump beside the buried blade, and with all the power he could muster, he pulled and screamed, “Come … on … OUT!” and it did come out, and he flew backward with the ax handle in his hands, rolling as he hit the dusty ground.
With a triumphant shout, Nick picked up the ax handle—and realized with a shock that all he had was the handle. It had separated from the head of the ax. The blade was still buried in the stump.
There was the ogre, just a few hundred feet from the ground. In minutes he would be down. And Basher knew it. He paused to celebrate with a roar.
Nick threw the useless handle away. It raised another cloud of dust in the dry dead ground.
The dry dead ground. The dry dead grass. The fire, thought Nick.
Racing to the campfire the thugs had built, he grabbed the unburned end of a flaming log and lobbed it at the base of the beanstalk. The grass ignited in an instant. But it would burn out quickly. Nick looked around for more fuel.
Dead bushes were all around. With their roots shriveled and the soil sucked dry by the monstrous thirst of the beanstalk, they pulled out easily, and Nick tossed three into the fire. They burst into flame.
“Smart lad!” called a voice from far away. Nick turned and saw Old Man Jack and three of his men coming down the hillside in a horse-drawn wagon. The slope was steep and the wagon hurtled along at a perilous speed. The four passengers were nearly bounced out. One of the younger men had a grip on Jack’s shoulder for safekeeping.
The cart was out of control. It hit one stone hard and tilted dangerously, riding on only two wheels for a perilous moment before slamming down on all four again. By some miracle they reached the bottom of the hill without either horse breaking a leg.
Now that they were close, Nick recognized two of Jack’s men: One was Roland, the guard from the gallery, the other was Henry, the driver in the forest.
“Roland! Henry! Bill! Help feed the flames,” called Jack.
With the loudest roar yet, Basher resumed his climb down. The horses reared up in fright, and the wagon lurched backward, sending Jack’s men tumbling to the ground as they tried to get off. Unhurt, they leaped to their feet, and began heaving everything they could find onto the growing fire: a dozen more bushes, the fence posts from the pasture, the broken rain barrel, boards from the ramshackle farmhouse.
Now the flames leaped twenty feet high, and the fire spread into the brush all around the trunk. As the men kept fueling the flames, Nick stood back to watch. Then an ear-shattering roar exploded in the air just over their heads.
Basher is here. He stopped just above the fire, not thirty feet from the ground, and hissed at the little people below.
Basher wore the lightweight armor that was woven from the beanstalk plants, and a studded metal helmet on his head. Across his back he wore that awful scythe with a blade so long it could slice through an army with one broad sweep. But Basher’s first enemy in the world below was a roaring fire.
The flames licked at his feet, an
d he howled. The smoke stung his eyes, and he closed them. The smoke filled his lungs, and he choked and spat. He moved a little up the beanstalk. The blaze went higher, and he climbed some more. The fire spread in an ever-widening circle, driving everyone back.
The flames seared the foot of the beanstalk, and the skin of the intertwined stalks blistered as the waters inside began to boil. The roots pulled out of the ground, writhing and twisting as if in pain.
Shudders reverberated up the mighty plant. Just above the flames, the leaves began to curl and wither, and the entire beanstalk crisped and burned at the bottom. Steam hissed out of tiny fissures all around it. The stalks began to swell outward in all directions, as a fierce pressure built from inside.
“Turn away!” called Jack as the first bulge erupted, triggering a cluster of explosions. Painfully hot, gleaming green waters shot everywhere. Nick spun around and pulled the cowl over his head, but the scorching droplets stung the skin on his back as they soaked through his clothes. When the waters stopped raining down, he pulled back the cowl and turned around to look.
“Good heavens,” whispered Jack.
The beanstalk had blown itself apart at the trunk. It hung in the air, swaying back and forth like a slow pendulum. The ogre dangled just above the fire, hugging the severed beanstalk and bellowing as the flames scorched his legs.
Then the beanstalk suddenly dropped like a spike, driving deep into the loose dusty earth, and a plume of dust and smoke billowed up. The fire dwindled, choked by the dust.
When the breeze cleared the dust away, Nick saw Basher buried to his knees in the ground, struggling to free himself, blinded by the smoke. The ogre raised one thick leg out of the dust. As he fought to free the other, the beanstalk began to fall limp all around him in gigantic loops. It started slowly and picked up speed, laying overlapping coils. Basher drew out the other leg, freeing himself entirely, but a length of the beanstalk fell across his shoulders, driving him to his knees.
“It’s coming down—the whole thing’s coming down! Get away!” Nick shouted, grabbing Jack by the sleeve.
He and the others ran toward the hillside to escape the falling coils. From a safer distance, they turned to watch. There was a high whistling in the heavens. Far above, Nick saw the top of the beanstalk outracing the rest as it plunged earthward with a giant arc of green behind it. At the tip of the falling plant, Nick saw something large and gray, gathering speed, and shrieking ominously as it tore through the air.
Nick recognized the great boulder on which the beanstalk had been anchored. The weight of the severed beanstalk had wrenched it from its perch at the island’s edge. With the tendrils still around it, it looked as if a great hand was bringing the stone down to smite the monster. Basher saw it coming and threw his hands up as if he could ward it off.
When the boulder landed, it was moving almost too fast for Nick to see. First Basher was there, wild-eyed and howling and smoldering from the fire. Then he was gone, and another, far greater cloud of dust and rock shot into the sky. Jack’s hand clamped onto his shoulder and pulled him to the ground. Nick clasped his hands behind his head as the dust cloud engulfed the group. Rocks pelted all around him, some of them dangerously large. From nearby, he heard a grunt of pain.
For a minute afterward he could hear the remains of the beanstalk falling to the earth. Then finally everything was quiet. Nick rolled onto his back. The air was still clogged with dust, but the gentle breeze from the east was beginning to clear it, and he could breathe and see a little.
Where Basher stood, only a shallow crater was left. Even the great boulder was gone, driven deep into the ground. Pieces of the beanstalk were looped everywhere, half covered with dirt and soil. The roots that had pulled themselves out of the earth twitched pitifully, like the legs of a crushed insect, the last traces of life ebbing away.
The fire had been snuffed out by the dust and the impact. In the stream nearby, the waters began to flow again, no longer intercepted by the wormy roots of the dead beanstalk. They gurgled over the mud in the streambed, filling the cracks, and soon the stream was reborn.
Nick heard Jack’s men coughing. They were getting to their feet, brushing off the inch of fine dirt that coated everything. Henry was looking about urgently. He waved at the dust, trying to clear it. “Master Jack?” he called out.
Nick knew the old man had been right beside him. He looked over and saw Jack on the ground, unmoving, with his face in the ground. A fist-sized rock was on the ground beside him. Blood was soaking through the dust on the back of his head.
“Jack!” screamed Nick. He crawled over to the inert body. “Are you all right?”
Jack’s men were there in a second. Henry gently rolled the old man over. “Master Jack, can you hear me? Talk to me, Jack. Please, sir, open your eyes!” Bill and Roland looked at each other, heartsick.
Nick put his mouth close to Jack’s ear. “Jack, you can’t leave me now. I came back with a message. Gullinda asked me to tell you something. You have to hear it!”
Jack’s eyebrows twitched. A little smile came to the old man’s face. The eyelids fluttered open, and he looked over at Nick. He coughed a little, and started to say something, but suddenly the smile vanished and his eyes focused on a distant point.
“A … a … another one!” he said hoarsely. Nick looked around. Henry gasped, and Roland swore.
To the west, Gnasher was dropping out of the sky. Like his brother, he was helmeted and dressed in the green-brown woven armor. A sword and knife hung from his belt. He stood on a mesh sack that was suspended underneath the rope and bristled with pointy weapons.
The rope came down in increments, dropping a foot at a time and pausing with clockwork regularity. Nick could picture the spool turning slowly on the cart high above and the saw-toothed gears of the machine controlling the descent.
Gnasher would soon touch down near the bottom of the hillside, not a hundred yards from the smoldering remains of the beanstalk and the little group of people. From his airborne perch, strapped tightly into a harness that was secured to the rope, he had seen his brother’s spectacular death. He shook his fist at the people below and screamed from on high.
“I saw what you did! Oh, you will suffer! Starting with you, morsel!” Then Gnasher let loose an unearthly cry, something between a hiss and a howl, that echoed against the hillside. Jack’s horses pawed at the air in fright.
Jack sat up. He put a hand to the bloody patch on the back of his head. “Bill. Roland. Get me one of your longbows, then get out of here. Take Henry and the boy with you.”
“We’re all getting out of here,” corrected Roland. He helped the old man up. “Master Jack, we can’t take that monster on, just the four of us. We’ll be lucky just to outrun him.”
“Listen—this is my lot, Roland,” Jack said in a steely voice. “I nearly caused disaster the last time I let a beanstalk grow. I’ve done it for real this time. Somehow, this is all my fault. This thing is here now because I went up to that cloud so many years ago. Isn’t it, Nick?”
Nick did not want to say yes, and he did not want to lie. He turned away.
“You see? It is true,” said Jack. “It is my fault alone, so I’m staying here to fight alone. And if I die, all the better. I cannot live knowing that this beast was unleashed because of my foolishness.”
“We won’t let you do it,” said Bill.
“I’ve killed a giant before!” yelled Jack.
“No, you haven’t,” said Nick, but nobody paid attention.
Gnasher took a knife and cut the mesh sack loose from the rope. It crashed to the ground below him and rolled a little down the slope. As he dropped the last few feet, he turned to call to the little group. “How kind of you to wait for me! I’m famished after such a long journey!” The ogre stretched his legs and touched the ground with his toes. The rope began to coil on the ground behind him, still ratcheting down. “Gnasher is here, world of men! Gnasher the clever! Gnasher the conqueror!”
“Come on!” Roland gave Nick and Jack a shove toward the wagon. Nick climbed on, but Jack snatched up a bow and a quiver full of arrows and ran as fast as his old legs could carry him toward Gnasher. Roland cursed and ran after him. “Come back here, Jack! You’ll get all of us killed!”
“Did you say Jack? Yes, come to me, Jack! I was planning to visit you—and here you are to welcome me!” Gnasher laughed. He’d begun to unfasten the first of five buckles that secured him in the harness, but paused to draw his sword.
Roland and Bill caught up to Jack and wrapped their arms around the old man. Jack tried to wriggle free, but his men were stronger by far, and they dragged Jack back toward the wagon. Gnasher grinned, putting the sword on the ground and returning to the buckles. And that was when Nick saw something happening behind the ogre.
The rope had begun to uncoil and slide up the hill. But why, Nick wondered, and the breeze at his back reminded him. The beanstalk isn’t there anymore—the cloud island can move again!
“Jack’s right,” he shouted to Henry. “We have to attack!” He climbed into the back of the wagon and pulled out a pair of spears.
“Have you lost your wits as well?” said Henry.
“We just have to distract him for a moment—look at the rope!” Nick hopped down, handed one spear to Henry, and ran at the ogre. Henry understood at last and followed. Jack and Roland and Bill were so startled to see them go by, holding their spears high and screaming, that they forgot their struggle.
“We’re coming to kill you, Gnasher!” Nick shouted.
“Are we the only ones who don’t want to die?” Bill asked Roland.
Gnasher had unfastened the second buckle, and he looked up when he heard Nick’s voice. His grin grew wider. “Oh, this is even better. Yes, come to me, little Nick. You and your friend, come to me”
The ogre bent to pick up his sword, but the rope tugged at him from behind, and the weapon was somehow out of reach. “What?” he muttered, and then he was pulled over onto his back. The rope began to drag him, slowly but irresistibly, up the slope.
The Thief and the Beanstalk (Further Tales Adventures) Page 18
