The Thief and the Beanstalk (Further Tales Adventures) (11 page)

“I know who you are, anyway,” said Nick. “You’re the fellow who swapped the beans for Jack’s cow—the one that started all this. Why did you do it?”

The stranger just raised an eyebrow and waited some more, declining to respond.

“Well … what is this place, this island? Can you tell me that?” Nick asked.

“Hmmm. That I can tell, but how to say it in a way you can understand?” The stranger thought for a moment, scratching his chin with the tip of his little finger. “You’ve heard the tale of Noah and his ark, no doubt?”

“I have.”

“Then consider this island in the clouds a kind of ark, for the creatures and treasures of myth and magic that, belonging on earth no more, were sent away.”

“Sent away by whom? And why?”

The stranger waved off the question with one hand. “Too long an answer for too short a visit.”

Nick glanced at the hourglass. Nearly half the sand had flown up, but he had so many more questions. “Tell me then, why did my beanstalk come to the same place as Jack’s beanstalk, right near the castle? Was that just by chance?”

“Is it only happenstance when the robin returns in spring, and chooses the same tree to build its nest? Or when the master abandons the dog and the dog finds the master?”

Nick sighed. The stranger’s cryptic answers were
maddening. He knew plenty, that was certain, but Nick doubted he could extract information of any value at all. Not even the fellow’s name.
Well,
Nick thought,
I’ll just give you a name: Greeneyes
. It was probably a name the stranger had been called before.

The green-eyed man leaned forward on his stool, gazing sharply. “Now, Nick, I have a question. Answer me true. Why have you come? What do you want here?”

Nick thought for a while. What did he want? Food in his belly every night. A place to sleep. A refuge from wicked men. Maybe up here, he could find the wealth he needed to afford these things.

“I want the giant’s gold,” he replied at last.

Greeneyes smiled. “And why not? Look at you, with your skin stretched tight over those bones. Can’t blame you for wanting to escape your misery. But are you the only one here who seeks escape? Perhaps not, little thief.”

Enough riddles,
Nick thought angrily. “What do you mean?”

“I mean it is curious you chose to arrive at this moment—this dangerous moment. But don’t worry about that—it need not affect you. Go to the castle, Nick. There are treasures in abundance! You’ll know the room when you see it. The door is locked, but that is no use against a mouse like you. Although,” Greeneyes said, with one eye narrowed and the other sparkling bright, “there will be other doors, won’t there?
Other doors, other choices, other dangers …”

Nick’s anger boiled up inside. “Why all these hints? Why the mysteries? Just tell me what you mean. What do you want from me?”

The plants on either side of the clearing rustled, and the vines crept back toward the center, like curtains closing on the act of a play. Nick stepped back, out of their way. The stranger lifted his hourglass, where the last of the sand was about to rise through the narrow center.

“Time’s almost up,” Greeneyes said, grinning at his joke. “Remember, lad, boys like you come up to make mischief—but the real trouble’s what might come
down
.”

His voice grew fainter as he talked, and the vines met and intertwined before the place he’d stood, surrounding and concealing Greeneyes and the cow. The last thing Nick saw was those glittering eyes before the swarming vines covered the man completely. All at once, the crows renewed their raucous chorus in the branches and sky overhead.

Greeneyes was gone, and it was hard to believe he had ever been there at all.

Nick’s headache was cured, but his brain was spinning from the conversation. He wondered who Greeneyes was, how he got here, why he appeared, why he vanished. For that matter, why did he give Jack those beans so many years ago?

At least the stranger revealed one thing: There were
things of great value somewhere in the castle. If Nick could find them and get out alive, he could grow up as rich as Jack.

Nick took a step in the direction of the castle, but he stopped when he heard the voice shouting out from behind him, from such a distance he could barely be heard.

“Mind your step, Nick! Would you walk into the same trap as those who have gone before you?”

Nick looked at his feet. He was so flustered by the encounter that he’d forgotten the ogre’s trap and nearly walked right through the spot where the boar was killed. The ground was still muddy with the blood of the beast. Nick stepped gingerly back from danger, unsure where the trigger lay. He turned back to look for Greeneyes, but the vines remained closed around that spot.

“Careful, Nick,” he said to himself. “Let’s not get ourselves killed.”

Walking a wide circle around the trap, Nick headed for the castle. He found the path that the ogre took, where the undergrowth was trampled flat and branches twenty-five feet up on both sides had been snapped off. Nick followed that trail until it met a larger path. This was a wide swath that drove in a straight line through the forest. Everything here had been pulled up or hacked away. The stumps of the largest trees were chopped to within a foot of the ground. Some rocks had been tossed to the side; others were smashed to pieces, and their fragments were scattered all about. Deep wheel-worn
grooves ran parallel down the center of the road.

Turning one way would take him back toward the beanstalk. Nick went the other way, toward the castle. He walked as quietly as possible. He kept his head turning always, looking to each side for boars or other unknown threats, and watching ahead in case the ogre came back down the path.

Soon the road emerged from the forest into a meadow of tall grass. Glimpsing beyond it, Nick got his first close look at the giant’s castle.

It was a gloomy, foreboding place of awesome dimensions. To build it, the giant must have used an entire mountain’s worth of stones. Or perhaps a mountain once stood on this spot and the giant simply tore it apart and reassembled it as this monstrosity.

An entire village could have fit inside its outer walls. Ten of Jack’s houses, stacked like children’s blocks, would not have reached as high. Unlike the straight lines and tidy angles of Jack’s creation, this place sprawled recklessly, its walls bulging in places, meandering out and around and coming together as if by chance on the other side.

A tower erupted at one corner of the castle and a strange device was in motion at its apex. Radiating out and spinning slowly were three broad triangular sails, each stretched between a pair of wooden poles. Nick wondered what made them go. Then a stiff breeze arose, and he noticed that the sails spun faster.
It’s the wind,
he realized.

Thin black smoke leaked out at the tower’s peak. The whirling sails of the wind machine swept it away.

The castle was built high on a craggy ledge and hemmed by a hellish jumble of rocks, perhaps the debris from its ancient construction. To approach, Nick would have to take the dirt road that went past the main door, or climb across the mess of rocks to either side. He didn’t like the looks of the shadowy places among those boulders, but at least they offered a place to hide if the ogre emerged.

Keeping low in the tall grass, Nick ran across the meadow and began to pick his way across the rocks. Crows had been plentiful enough in the forest, but they absolutely infested the castle grounds. As Nick drew closer to the castle, he saw what attracted them here. All around the castle were the gnawed bones of animals. Some were bleached under the sun. Others were fresh, and the crows cawed and sparred over the bits of flesh that still clung to them. Among the bones, Nick saw skulls of animals that looked totally unfamiliar to him, heads that sprouted exotic horns and antlers. The bones were strewn in such a random manner that Nick assumed they were merely tossed over the wall when the ogre finished his meal. A foul stench of rot filled the air, and he pulled the neckline of his shirt over his nose to ward it off.

Nick came under the shadows of the walls at one side of the front door. Below the door was a gap that he could easily squeeze through.

A few of the crows nearby suddenly took flight. Nick hunched low, alert to danger. Over the screech of the birds, he heard a growing, rhythmic creaking. It reminded him of the sound of the wagon that he robbed in the forest, but its volume was far greater.

He didn’t see anything coming along the road he’d followed. But that same path disappeared around the far side of the castle. Something on wheels was approaching from that direction, and any moment now it would come into view.

Nearby, two tall slabs of discarded stone leaned against each other, with a deep crevice between them. Nick darted into it.

He instantly regretted this choice of hiding places. A gluey spider web, its gray threads as thick as rope, spanned the width of the crevice just inside the opening. Stuck all over the web, instead of flies, were the mummified bodies of crows. The web blocked the way into the safe recesses of the crevice, so Nick was left with precious little room to conceal himself from the approaching danger. He looked behind the web. A yawning funnel of spun silk vanished into the darkness. As his eyes began to adapt to the gloom, Nick thought he could make out a pair of glinting eyes deep inside.

There was no time to find another place to hide. A second ogre was coming into view on the road, pulling a noisy cart behind him. Nick flattened himself against the rock, barely out of the daylight, doing his best to
remain out of sight. He hoped his black garments would once again help him merge into the shadows.

This ogre was larger and more brutish than the one Nick encountered in the forest, distinct in appearance but no less horrible. He was almost as wide as he was tall, with a thick chest, a fat belly, and colossal muscles on his arms and legs. His skin was gray, hairless, and covered with warty lumps. His eyes were bulging and enormous, his slobbering mouth went nearly ear to ear, and his nose was nothing more than a long pair of runny holes. If the first ogre seemed to have the essence of rat in his recipe, this one had a dash of toad. But then again, no toad Nick had ever seen had a mouth filled with awful yellow teeth.

Like the first ogre, this one wore animal hides. But his clothes were more bedraggled, just a tattered vest and pants that were ripped to shreds below the knees. No hideous jewelry decorated this monster.

The toad-ogre had over his shoulders a harness, which he used to pull a great two-wheeled cart behind him. Nick recognized what was being hauled: It was a gigantic heap of the vines that resembled the beanstalk.

The ogre shrugged off the harness and let the front of the cart tilt to rest on the ground. He arched his back and stretched his arms. Then, like the ogre in the forest had done, he looked at the ground with a puzzled expression. Nick dared to stick his head out another inch to see what the monster was looking at. He
appeared to be staring at the shadow of the cart.

Then, again like the first ogre, this one stared at the sun. He scratched his head. Nick could not understand what was confusing the ogres. Something about the shadows?

Nick reminded himself to keep an eye on the web behind him. He turned around and nearly cried out when he saw the abhorrent creature that had crept out of the dark funnel and mounted the opposite side of the web.

It had the hairy jointed legs of a spider. But where a spider’s body should have been was the head of a human being. The skin was dry and shriveled like a raisin, with black and purple veins pulsing just underneath. Behind the head was a mushy sack of flesh that ended in a point, with a strand of thread oozing from the tip.

The head tilted to one side, and the creature looked at Nick with curious red-rimmed eyes. Then, to Nick’s horror, it smiled at him. There were no teeth in that mouth, just a tiny black tongue and a pair of fangs that pinched and opened like tongs. Nick saw a trembling drop of venom at the tip of one fang. The spider-head put a leg between the strands of the web and reached for him. The crusty leg ended in a cluster of soft, wiggling human fingers.

Nick reached into his pocket for the knife. He unfolded the blade and held the point out toward the foul thing. “Get away from me,” he said quietly but sharply, with his teeth clamped together.

The spider-head seemed to understand the threat. Its smile curved downward into a frown. It opened and closed its mouth as if it was trying to speak, but it could only mewl like a kitten. Then it crawled down the web and shuffled backward into the darkness, staring at him with longing eyes.

Nick watched it go. The ogres were fearsome, but this creature inspired a mixture of loathing and pity. He wondered what hideous forces could have conspired to create such an abomination.

A commotion drew Nick’s attention, and he looked back toward the ogre. The monster was banging with powerful fists on the castle door, and hollering in a thunderous voice. Nick could almost understand what the ogre was saying—even pick out some fragments of words here and there—but most of it was gibberish.

The castle door swung open, and the rat-ogre was there. He took one look at the harvest in the cart and began to scream. But this time Nick understood every word.

“Idiot! Is this where you’ve been all day? I told you a hundred times,” the rat-ogre roared, now emphasizing every word by slapping the top of the toad-ogre’s head, “We! Don’t! Need! Any! More!”

The rat-ogre chased the other inside, kicking him in the rear, still screaming. “Basher the fool! Basher the halfwit!” The door slammed shut behind them. The screaming died away as they went into the depths of the castle.

Despite the danger, Nick found himself a little
amused by the scene he’d witnessed. He’d also learned a great deal. The evil-tempered rat-ogre was the clever one, probably the one that built the trap in the forest. The rat-ogre was able to talk, while “Basher” could make only crude attempts at speech. And the rat-ogre was clearly in charge, even though the other was larger and stronger.