The Thief and the Beanstalk (Further Tales Adventures) (22 page)

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 rush. 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.

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 ideas.”

“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.

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.