The Thief and the Beanstalk (Further Tales Adventures) (2 page)

“Yes. That is the answer,” he said. “All we need is a little thief to do some climbing.” He smiled. With his hands to the stone, he could practically feel Jack’s treasure through the walls.

A few minutes later Finch’s men created another distraction. They stumbled out of the woods, arms across each other’s shoulders, singing loudly and badly like a drunken pair of peasants. High atop the walls, the sentry watched them, amused. Finch and Squint ran unseen back to the shadows of the forest, heading for the hidden lair of the band of thieves.

Finch dreamed about Jack’s gold all night. His greedy desires woke him early the next morning, before the forest was fully sunlit. He dressed in fine clothes, stolen from some noble victim waylaid long before. Then he packed food and blankets into a leather bag. He was prepared to spend several days if necessary to find the boy he needed. Finch roused the rest of the band from their crude tents, kicking the ones who woke too slowly. The men were drowsy and angry, but they feared Finch too much to complain. It was cool on that late summer morning. The eleven thieves gathered close around the campfire to hear what Finch would say. Squint stirred the hissing
coals and threw on new wood. Sparks flew up and died amid the rising smoke.

“We’ve discovered the way into Jack’s fortress,” said Finch, his face red in the fire’s glow. “So I’m off to recruit a new member of our gang. A temporary member, you might say.” Finch drew his favorite object in the world from the sheath at his hip: a large jagged knife, kept dangerously sharp. He ran his finger along the face of the blade as he spoke.

“Now listen carefully. There is to be no thieving, no robbing, no murdering, no nothing, until I get back here with a boy. We’re new to these woods, so nobody’s worried about us yet, and that’s just the way I want it. Does everyone understand that?”

There were groans of displeasure. One of the band spoke up—a hairy, bearish man with a tangled black beard, named Pewt.

“What’s this all about, Finch? Ever since we got here, you’ve gone on about this Jack and his treasure. There’s easy pickings in these woods. We’ve seen travelers with all kinds of goodies on the forest road, just waiting for us to nab them. What are we waiting for? Why don’t we …”

Pewt let his words trail off when he saw the stare Finch had fixed on him. Finch tilted his head forward and brought his eyebrows down to cast a shadow around his icy blue eyes. Pewt tried to return the look, but soon decided he would rather examine the dirt at his feet. The two gang members closest to him took a step
away, not wanting to gain a share of Finch’s wrath.

For a long uncomfortable moment, Finch kept his gaze fixed on Pewt. Then at last he looked up and spoke again.

“I said, does everyone understand that?”

This time there were grunts and murmurs of agreement.

“Toothless John, you’re in charge while I’m gone. See that my orders are obeyed. And deal with disobedience however you like.” Finch shot a final scowl at the red-faced Pewt, who regarded the ground below with renewed interest.

Toothless John stood at Finch’s side with his arms crossed. Of all of Finch’s brutish collection of thugs and cutthroats, he was the most vile. He stood a head taller than the rest and never met a man who could look him straight in the eye. Though the band stole many fine clothes from its victims over the years, Toothless preferred the rough and savage look of animal skins. Most of the hair on his head was gone, and his attempt to grow a beard produced only a few twisty yellow strands. He had not bathed in living memory, and foul odors wafted from every part of his body. With his broad back, muscled arms and savage temper, Toothless was the only one of the band who might survive a fight with Finch. But he was utterly loyal to his master and reveled in his stature as second in command.

Toothless smiled, pleased at this opportunity to do
Finch’s bidding. And when he smiled, he revealed his nickname to be less than accurate: a few black-green teeth still clung to his badly diseased gums. His mouth was a constant source of excruciating pain, which only added to his violent demeanor.

“I’ll be back soon enough,” said Finch. He shoved the jagged knife into its sheath, slung the leather pack over his shoulder, and left to search for the child he needed to complete his quest.

Finch was a thinker, a planner. As he tromped through the forest, toward a village south of Jack’s fortress, he thought again about Jack’s gold and how to make it his.

Like everyone else, he’d heard the story of Jack now and again over the years. It was popular among common folk who spent the dark nights sharing tales of heroes and magic and monsters. But Finch came to notice a difference with this story. He remembered especially one old white-bearded man. By the glow of a fire, the old man told of the boy cutting down the beanstalk and the giant crashing to his doom. Then he pointed to a distant place and spoke these words: “And they say Jack is yet alive, an old man now, and he lives in a great house, with wealth beyond imagination—a house that lies somewhere north and west of here….”

Of course Finch didn’t believe one word about magic beans and giants. But he began to think there was a seed of truth to the story after all—the bit about a rich old
man in a house full of gold. Because time and time again, a storyteller would end the tale of Jack in a similar way, even indicating the same direction:
north and west of here
.

Every so often it was necessary for Finch’s band to move on to a new hunting ground. After months of murder and thievery in one area, the band grew notorious, and the locals grew wary of traveling alone and unarmed. They might even join together to hunt down Finch and his gang. But Finch always knew instinctively when they had overstayed their welcome. Then the thieves would vanish into the night, travel for miles, and find a fertile new land of unsuspecting victims.

Wherever they went, Finch would seek out the storytellers—the people who spun tales in exchange for a meal and a place to bed down for the night. One ancient woman claimed she had met a traveler who saw the house of Jack many years before, in a place between the mountains and the sea.

Finch had no map to guide him. But from the stories, he imagined he could get a fix on where Jack’s house might be, if it truly existed. When the time came to move on, their words were his compass:
north and west of here
.

Many seasons had passed. Finch was certain he was drawing closer, because the storytellers added new elements to the end of the tale.
They say Jack and his mother built themselves a fortress, with great walls of handsome white stone
….
Jack’s mother passed away long ago, but Jack still lives
….
They say Jack is generous to the poor and
the hungry
….
Jack is old, and despite his wealth, is a sad man who never leaves his house
….

One day Finch learned that he was nearer to his goal than he had imagined possible. They met a minstrel who knew the tale. Although the man was unnerved by the rough appearance of the gang, Finch coaxed the story out of him with a silver coin. The minstrel had seen the white stone house with his own eyes, and it was only a week’s journey away. An old man named Jack still lived there with his servants. He was a sad and mysterious figure, but everyone agreed that he was rich, with an endless supply of gold—the source of which was said to be the magical hen that laid the golden eggs. “To find his house, just follow this road north to the mountains, then take the western path when you reach the crossroads. Avoid the eastern way, for a plague has taken a village there,” the nervous minstrel told them.

Finch’s dark heart thumped with glee. The only part of the story that mattered to him was true indeed. Jack’s wealth was real. And he knew where to find it.

As for the minstrel, that was the end of his song. One of the gang fancied his clothes, another wanted his instrument, and Finch took back his piece of silver.

One week after that encounter, late in the day, Finch’s gang stood on a ridge at the peak of the western road. To the north, the ridge grew taller and fatter until, some miles off, it could be called a mountain, the first peak in a craggy spine a hundred miles long. The western side
was illuminated with golden light, while the eastern slopes looked cool and dark. Finch could see the ocean disappear to the west. The sun was extinguishing itself on the watery horizon.

And below him, only a few miles away, was a great house of white stone. Glowing in the fading daylight, it was the brightest object on the landscape. Finch reached out, and with his thumb and forefinger, fancied that he was pinching the fortress. “Got you at last. The house of Jack.”

Finch noted with pleasure that a thick forest lay between the mountains and Jack’s house, creeping within an arrow’s flight of the walls. A perfect place to make camp. A perfect place to observe and learn. And for two weeks, that was what he and Squint did.

They caught fleeting glimpses of the old man who must be Jack when he went to one of the high windows. One afternoon, as storm clouds filled the sky, the old man was on the rooftop, staring at the thunderheads as they rumbled by.

Jack was not alone. A young girl, no more than six years old, lived there too. There were at least four servants: three young men and one woman. Two of the men were strapping specimens who looked like they could take care of themselves in a fight. Indeed, one might be a match for Toothless John. The other man was a little older and of more ordinary proportions.
Every fourth day or so, this one would emerge from the fortress in a one-horse cart and drive off along a path that cut through the forest. The cart was always laden with a trunk or two. What was inside, Finch could not guess. Two or three days later, the driver would return to Jack’s fortress.

Finch watched, waited, and planned. He was certain his twelve could overpower the old man’s four, especially at night while some slept. When the front door opened, he saw how one man could easily slide the huge but well-greased bolt that locked it from the inside. The only question was how to get in, and now he had the answer to that: Find a young climber to scale the vines.

Hold it, Finch,
he thought. He stopped in the middle of the forest.
You’re not thinking. Where are you going now? To the farmlands near Jack’s house? All you’ll find there are fat, happy farm boys who won’t come with you unless you snatch them. And then what? The whole county’s out looking for the missing boy. No, you’ve got to find a kid who’ll be glad to help you
—
a kid no one will miss, with no place else to go
.

Then Finch remembered something the doomed minstrel told him.
Avoid the eastern way, for a plague has taken a village there
.

“Where there’s a plague, there’s orphans,” he whispered to himself. “Now you’re thinking.” It was risky to approach a plague-stricken village, but his instincts told him this was the way to find what he was looking for.
Besides, experience taught him that such an illness runs its course and disappears.

Finch changed directions and headed east through the forest. He thought again of the gold that would soon be his. The more he thought about it, the faster he walked. Soon he was running.

Nick tilted his head toward the noise. Was it the leaves hushing and rustling in the breeze, or was it running water? He stepped forward and other sounds emerged: gurgling, trickling, and the crystal music of water dashing among stones. Spying a wide, shallow stream through a gap in the trees, he ran to the banks and dropped to his knees to drink from a bowl he formed with his hands.

When he finally looked up, he was surprised to see a small farm on the other side of the stream—the first hint of humanity in two days. His impulse was to hide among the trees so that he might creep back at night like a mouse for shelter and food. But a second glance revealed that the farm had been forsaken some time ago. The fence around the pasture was in disarray and no cows or horses were in the fields. The thatched roof of the one-room farmhouse was partly collapsed, and the walls of the round stone well were crumbling.

In front of the tiny house, a rusty ax was buried deep in the largest of several tree stumps. A few old pieces of wood were scattered around. Nick wondered if the farmer had simply given up on trying to draw life from this stony soil and walked away.
Or maybe,
he thought with a painful memory rising in his heart,
the sickness has come here, too. Perhaps the remains of the people who dwelt here could still be found in the house that became their tomb
.

Hopping from rock to rock, Nick crossed the stream. The farm stood in the shadow of the ridge that he’d seen from afar. Rocks were plentiful here. The farmer had used them to build low walls around his vegetable fields. But now weeds and saplings and shrubs were reclaiming the land.

A pang of hunger clawed at Nick’s gut. Nobody had tended that field for years, but some vegetables might be growing wild there yet. He raced over and was clawing through the weeds, uprooting anything that looked like a carrot, turnip or onion, when he heard something from the direction of the ridge: the high
clack-click-clack
of a stone striking other rocks.

He turned and saw a man standing halfway down the slope, perfectly still. The stranger’s eyes followed the tumbling stone until it came to rest at the bottom, settling among a pile of other pebbles and boulders that had rolled down over the years. A prickly chill swept over the back of Nick’s neck. This man might have been creeping stealthily toward him, until one loose stone had
given him away. Nick lowered himself until he was hidden among the weeds.

When he lifted his head again to peer out, he saw the stranger coming forward again. The man moved casually, with his hands thrust in his pockets. He kicked a few stones ahead of him as he descended, as if he didn’t care how much clamor he made now that his presence was revealed. He reached the bottom and sauntered toward the farm. The closer he came, the more nervous Nick felt. The man was large and strong, and despite his fine clothes and his offhand demeanor, he still seemed like a predator ready to spring. There was a sheath at the stranger’s waist with the handle of a knife jutting from the top. His smile didn’t belong on the same face as those cold blue eyes.