by Drew Hayes
“Oh dear, what happened?” Flora spoke as though she hadn’t just sent the stew to the floor.
“An accident, Mother, just an accident.” Gingerly, Jack took her by the shoulder and led her over to where Goldie and Benjamin sat. “I’ll clean it up, and we’ll go fetch dinner from the market. Why don’t you let Goldie play for you until then?”
Flora’s eyes fluttered, her expression oddly serene. “That does sound lovely, but I don’t want to be rude to our guests.”
“We’ll all visit over dinner,” Jack assured her. “Until then, you just relax.”
Rising from the table, Benjamin hefted up the harp as it continued to play, leading Flora out of the kitchen. Once they were gone, Jack grabbed a rag from a nearby cupboard and set about trying to wipe up an entire pot’s worth of stew. After a few seconds, Frank made his way over to the cupboard and removed more rags, offering one to Marie.
“Thanks, but you two needn’t bother. I can handle this,” Jack said, smile unwavering. “It’s my fault. I knew the news might upset her and I didn’t properly ready myself.”
“At least let me run to the market for dinner,” Marie suggested. “We will need to eat.”
After a brief consideration, Jack nodded his agreement. Marie didn’t give him a chance to change his mind, heading out the door before he started insisting that he do that as well. For his part, Frank did what he often did when Jack said things he didn’t care for: Frank ignored the words entirely. He stooped down, dipping a rag into the brown mess and herding it back toward the pot.
They worked in silence for several minutes, wringing their rags out into a bucket frequently. The only sound besides the shifting of liquid was the occasional strains of harp music drifting in from across the house.
“It’s not her fault.” Jack’s words came suddenly, yet Frank wasn’t surprised. He’d been waiting for some form of conversation to start since the cleanup began. So he said nothing in reply, merely continuing to work and allowing Jack to speak at his own pace. “I mean it. She wasn’t always like this. From the tales I’ve heard, she used to go on adventures, take on tasks of danger and excitement. Apparently some of it runs in the blood.”
Jack paused to wring out his rag, casting more brown goop into the bucket. “And then her reach exceeded her grasp. She took on a fairy. Not her first, but this one was smarter or stronger than what she’d faced before. This was one of the five fairies of the colors, although I haven’t been able to find out which one. Mother barely escaped, but not without paying a price for her ambition. Her mind was addled, cursed and warped, so that it was hard for her to stay focused or controlled. Brilliant tactic, really. Cut off a hand and the owner can replace it with a hook, remove a foot and a peg leg will still work, but if you scar the mind…there’s no salve or replacement for that. Those wounds are eternal.”
“Unless another, equally powerful fairy were to reverse it.” Deep down, Frank had always wondered about Jack. He was off, clearly, and saw the world in a way that was strange to those around him. Yet he’d never seemed unhappy about his lot in life. If anything, Jack seemed to prefer his own mindset to what everyone else had. Here, seeing this display, Frank finally understood why his friend had been so willing to go along with the search for a powerful fairy. “You were never looking to cure yourself, were you? This has always been about her.”
“Why would I want to cure myself? A little inherited madness has provided me with a far more interesting life than I could have ever achieved on my own.” Bringing his rag back over, Jack rejoined the cleanup. “Hers is more terrible by far, and it only gets worse with each passing year. When I was young, she could still manage much of the time. Now the only thing that keeps her calm and centered is Goldie’s music. Before we had her help… Suffice it to say there’s a reason I was so willing to climb a beanstalk and explore an unknown land. Between home life with her and my father’s promise of—”
The words cut off sharply, and for the barest of moments Frank could swear he saw Jack’s grin falter, nearly vanishing entirely. They locked eyes, both keenly aware that something deeply personal had just slipped out by accident. Whether it was the effects of Goldie’s song or the emotions of being home, Jack had mentioned his father for the first time in their entire friendship. Several long seconds slipped by, during which Frank wondered if Jack was about to flee or earnestly try to kill him, before Jack let out a short, sputtering laugh.
“Damn this place. And damn its effects on me. The sooner we’re on the road, the better I’ll feel. The damage is done though, and I suppose if it had to happen I’d rather you be the one to know. May as well see it through.” Jack leaned in closer to Frank, his tone dropping below a whisper. “I’ll tell you a secret, Frank, one I’ve never shared with another soul living or dead. I’ve always claimed that I got those beans by trading our cow away to a wandering merchant who told me they were magic. That’s a lie. Even as a boy, I was never quite that foolish. The truth is that was just a cover story concocted by the man who actually gave me those beans. You see, on the road that day I met my father.”
Frank had always assumed Jack’s father had passed, since he never spoke of the man. This was stranger, yet somehow more fitting for the odd man that was Jack Spriggins.
“He told me that the beans were magic, and that they would lead me to riches untold. More than that, my father said they would lead me to my true inheritance. That giant was a collector of magical relics, as you may have guessed from the harp and the goose. He had another piece in his collection though, a relic that had once belonged to my father. Finding that was the real reason I climbed that beanstalk. Everything else was just a lovely bonus. And I think that’s all I’d like to say on the matter tonight.”
“Such is certainly your right,” Frank concurred. “I won’t pretend I’m not curious; however, we have lasted this long by respecting one another’s boundaries. If you’ll permit me a lone question though: that peculiar talent you have, is the relic part of it?”
“The biggest part,” Jack confirmed. “Which is why I speak of it so rarely. The better a magic is understood, the easier it is to undo.”
Tempting as it was to press on, Frank truly did respect Jack’s privacy. It didn’t ultimately matter what lay in his past, or what strange relics he’d owned over the years. Jack was one of only two people in the world Frank could trust without hesitation, and that was a far more relevant fact than any tidbits from the past.
Marie returned just as they were finishing wiping down the floor, clutching enough food to feed their number several times over. Evidently the shop keepers had refused to send a friend of Jack’s back with anything less than a feast. Together, they all sat down at the table, joined soon by Benjamin, a soothed Flora, and a still softly strumming Goldie. It was a nicer meal than any had expected at the start of the evening, and one they allowed themselves to relish deeply.
* * *
The Bastard Champions rose well before sunrise. This was not a day for cheers and waving. They had a task set before them once again and haste was their ally. Although it would be impossible to slip past so many farms unnoticed, the hope was that they would at least be able to avoid turning their exit into another parade. Breakfast was a quick, quiet affair composed of leftovers from the night prior. Once they’d eaten, Marie and Frank headed out to saddle the horses, leaving Jack alone in his childhood home.
Jack stepped out from the main building, walking around to the small hovel that Marie and Frank had mistaken for a shed. In truth, this was the shack where Jack and his mother had lived before the beanstalk. She had been struggling to keep it together, and he was a mere boy who didn’t yet understand the world or his place in it. When he’d financed the new house, with all its luxury and comforts, there had been a temptation to rip this place down. Burn it, and all the dark memories that lived here, into ash. Yet Jack, never one for sentimentality, had resisted the urge. He wanted this shack to endure, for days like these when he passed through. It was
an important piece of where he came from, and what he wanted for himself.
Stepping in, Jack brushed off a dusty stool and took a seat. A deep breath of the musty air filled his lungs as he let himself be transported to days long since lost. It wasn’t the poverty that was the worst of it, although that certainly hadn’t made things better. Nor was it his mother’s fraying grip on the world. No, what Jack hated most about this place and the time tied to it was the uncertainty. He hadn’t known what to do to help her, or himself, or their situation as a whole. Jack had been lost, aimless, fractured in a way he could recognize yet wasn’t able to articulate. As he sat, alone in that dark dusty pittance of a home, Jack did something he’d have never allowed to happen in public.
Jack stopped smiling.
There had been nothing to grin about here. Only desperation, fear, and tenuous strands of hope that snapped the minute he tried to grab them. The world he’d lived in then, the person he’d been, they were things he never wanted to go back to. But if you ran without looking back, it was easy to forget what you were running from. That was why Jack kept this building, why he stepped into it during every visit. Whenever fear or worry tried to rear their heads, Jack needed to cast his mind back to this hovel, to remember where those sorts of feelings led. Pain, mutilation, even true death were better options to him than ever going back to feeling this way.
Slowly, he rose from his stool and walked to the window, staring out in the direction of the giant’s grave. So long ago, yet he could still remember that day. The pain of the beanstalk on his hands after hours of climbing, the beating of his heart as the giant searched for him, the sweat of his brow as he frantically chopped the beanstalk with all he had. In many ways, it was an awful experience. However, for Jack it would always be a positive moment in his life. That was the day he stopped being uncertain. Stopped being afraid. That was the day he finally understood what he was, and gained a glimmer of what he was meant for.
That was the day that Jack had found his smile. And as he stood at the window it crept across his face once more, taking its rightful position as guardian and keeper of all of Jack’s secrets, be they bits of kindness or dark, terrible urges. Grin fixed in place once more, he walked out of the shack from the past and headed into the lovely home. Moving quietly, Jack made his way into his mother’s room, where Goldie rested in the corner, soft sounds humming from her strings.
“She’s resting,” Goldie whispered.
“Good. I wasn’t quite in the mood for a long goodbye.” Jack stepped closer to his mother’s bed, leaned down, and planted a single kiss atop her forehead. “Thank you, Goldie, for staying with her.”
“You saved me from the giant. Waiting out the span of a single mortal life is a debt I can pay, even if I’d rather be out seeing the world. But you could come visit more often. She misses you. The entire town misses you.”
“No, they don’t.” Jack moved away from his mother, back toward the door. “They miss a memory. A shadow. An idea of a man who never truly existed. If I stayed here, if they saw what I really am, it would tarnish that memory. I prefer that they, that she, at least have one version of me they can think upon pleasantly. I can’t imagine she has many happy memories left.”
“They slip slowly thanks to my song, yet they are still slipping,” Goldie confirmed.
“Then let’s not replace happy illusions with wicked truths. Watch over her for me, Goldie. Her, and the rest of Summerly. There are few towns like this in the lands, and I should know, I’ve been all over them. Places like this are special. They need to be protected, and nurtured. Kept safe from the darker truths of the world. From things like me.”
He was out the door before she had a chance to reply, closing it soundlessly behind him. Jack lingered there for a moment, listening to the gentle sounds of the harp strings.
Before walking out the front door, Jack took a pouch of gold from his belt and set it on the kitchen table. Benjamin would be up soon, and the man deserved a bonus for all the work he did taking care of the place. With that done, Jack finally walked out the front door toward the stables, where Marie and Frank would be waiting for him.
Reconnecting with the past was well and good, but Jack’s eyes naturally inclined toward the future. And on that horizon, he hoped there was still much adventure to see.
The Tale of the Silver-Tongued King
There were many ways to infiltrate a castle. One of Jack’s favorites was dressing as a humble servant and slipping in with a crowd of actual workers. There was something delicious about using the nobles’ tendency to not see the faces of their servants against them. Frank, on the other hand, liked to tuck himself into a barrel ostensibly filled with mead or supplies and allow others to haul him inside, a more achievable goal given his difficulty at blending in. Sometimes the entrances weren’t quite as peaceful, involving lots of fighting or floating over a wall of thorns. But for all the strange methods they’d used to enter castles over their career, Marie had proposed one that was totally new for this occasion. It was a gambit so mad even Jack would have turned it down, were he not all too aware of Marie’s true nature.
As the morning sun rose over the castle that sat in the heart of Villeneuve, three figures rode right up to the front gate. It was too early for merchants or deliveries to be calling upon the nobles, so the guards were already waiting as they drew closer. These were tense, serious men who, one could tell at a glance, were comfortable with drawing blood. Their armor was clean and polished, each displaying the kingdom’s crest on his chest plate: a single red rose. Before the three riders were fully upon the gate, a loud voice rang out from the oldest of the guards.
“Halt, strangers! You are approaching the king’s castle, and no trespassers are permitted past this point. Show us your hands so that we see you do not have bows or daggers to strike with, and then you may state your business.”
Although there was some chuckling from one of the figures, the one with a visible grin on his face, all three complied. It was noted by a few of the guards that the rider further back was wearing dark leather gloves that ran down onto his forearms, into the robe that obscured most of his skin, but since those gloves weren’t wrapped around a weapon it seemed of little consequence. Satisfied, the guard in charge motioned for them to approach closer.
“Your compliance is noted and appreciated. Now, quickly and concisely, state your business. There is much going on at the castle, and I warn you that we have little tolerance for wasting time. What brings you here?”
They were close enough now, time for Marie’s plan to be put into action. Slowly reaching up, she took the sides of her hood and pulled it down, revealing her face for the first time since they’d ridden into these lands. Keeping her hidden hadn’t been an easy task, yet it was one they all understood to be necessary. Had she been exposed, their approach would have been far more difficult. Throngs of screaming and cheering peasants didn’t do much to aid speedy travel.
“What brings me to the castle? I wish to have a good meal and spend the night in my own bed. I have returned from my diplomatic training across the kingdoms, and would like to properly greet my parents.”
There was a moment of dumbfounded silence as the guards all stared at her, lasting only until the head guard began to smack those nearest to him. Taking the hint quickly, they fell to their knees in succession, until all were kneeling with bowed heads before her. Only then did the guard speak once more. “Forgive me, princess. We knew you were approaching, but did not expect you to come in such humble attire. Had we realized it was you, we would have never spoken in such a manner.”
“Rise, my guards. I will not chide you for treating suspicious characters appropriately. This garb was a necessity so that I could make my way home undisturbed.” Marie paused for a moment as the guards got back to their feet, taking in what had been said. “Tell me, how did you know I was approaching? I sent no word ahead lest it be intercepted.”
“I know not from whence the information came,” t
he guard replied. “Only that a handful of days ago I was told to keep an eye out for the return of our princess, and that she might have strange men in tow with her.” His eyes looked at Jack and Frank for the first time since Marie’s hood had been pulled back. “Are they causing you any trouble, my princess?”
A flicker of a smirk flashed across Marie’s face before vanishing. “Nothing of the sort. These men are mercenaries I found in my travels, swords for hire who ensured I stayed safe.”
“I see.” The guard bowed deeply, first to Frank, then to Jack. “We of Villeneuve thank you both deeply for your service in keeping our princess well. Your task is done; we of the royal guard will see her on from here.”
“No.” Marie nodded to both of them. “There are still accounts to settle, and I am uncertain whether this will be a short return or a permanent stay. I was sent away to learn, and if the king decides my education is not yet complete then it is my duty to travel once more. These men will stay with me until such time as I am sure they are no longer needed. Any who have issue with that may bring their problems to me directly.”
There was a bit of shuffling among the guards; obviously this idea wasn’t a popular one but they knew better than to question the judgment of a royal. After a few moments, the head guard glared the others into quiet submission before turning to Marie. “Very well, Your Highness. Would you permit me at least to lead you and your mercenaries past these gates and over the moat? I fear the king will be cross if you enter his lands without the oversight of a single royal guard.”
“Saddle up quickly, we shall wait for you on the other side of the gate.” Marie didn’t pause for any more talk; she began riding forward at once. The guards sprinted into action, furiously shoving the gate open lest she be forced to break her horse’s stride. Jack and Frank followed closely, stopping only when she did after the gate was past.
