The World Above (6 page)

Jack was gone all that day, and the next one as well. Mama and I did our best to keep ourselves busy. On the first day, we cleaned the house from top to bottom. Sheets washed, bedding aired, floors swept and scrubbed, windows polished until they sparkled. Mama even tied her biggest apron around her oldest dress and blacked the stove. By the time we tumbled into bed that night, I was so tired that I had no choice but to sleep soundly. Yet all through the night, I dreamed of beanstalks.

On the second day, I worked in the kitchen vegetable garden, just as I did every autumn. Turning over the soil in the beds, trying to inspire the dry soil with my care so that better times might come. My mother stayed in the kitchen, making the little we had go as far as possible, working the only kind of magic she had ever been able to conjure up in the World Below.

The shadows lengthened until at last it was too dark for me to stay outdoors any longer, until my mother had to light the lamps and cover the dishes of food she’d prepared, and still Jack had not come home. I washed my hands and we sat together in the kitchen, making a meal of cheese and bread and apples.

How much longer?
I wondered. How long did it even take to reach the World Above?

How long before Mama and I decided that Jack was in trouble? How long before one of us had to go up after him to find out what was wrong?

After supper, I washed the dishes. By mutual yet silent consent, Mama and I remained in the kitchen. Mama brought out her sewing, while I prepared a goose quill pen and set to making a list of what I hoped to plant next spring—and the neighbors from whom I hoped to acquire the seed to do so. Then I added a third column: what I might be able to barter for the seed, as it seemed unlikely we’d be able to pay for it. The scratch of the sharpened quill against the paper was the only sound in the room.

“What are you doing, Gen?” my mother asked finally.

Her voice sounded rusty, as if she’d forgotten the use of it in just one day.

“I’m making a list,” I answered, hoping to discourage further discussion. I was pretty sure my mother was hoping we wouldn’t still be here in the spring. She was hoping we’d be back where she thought we belonged—in the World Above.

Mama sighed. “I can see that you’re making a list,” she said mildly. “I was hoping you’d care to share what kind.”

I explained. My mother’s hands paused, her needle poised above the sewing. Then she plunged the sharp point into the fabric.

“You’re planning pretty far ahead, aren’t you?”

Somebody around here has to
, I thought.
Someone willing to admit we might all still be living here next spring
.

“I have to, Mama,” I said instead. “It’s my nature.”

Mama set her sewing down on the table and reached across its smooth, scrubbed surface to lay a hand on my arm.

“I know it is, sweetheart. Your father was just the same.” She sighed again, and I thought it sounded sad this time. “Perhaps I should have told you before now.”

I felt a strange tightness wrap itself around my chest.

“You hardly ever talk about Papa at all,” I said. “Except in your bedtime stories.”

“I know,” my mother said quickly. “And I’m sorry for it. I didn’t mean
not
to speak of him, it’s just—”

But what she would have said next I never knew, for at precisely that moment, the kitchen door flew open. Jack stood on the threshold. In one hand he clutched an all but empty sack. Cradled in the nook of his other arm was the sorriest excuse for a goose I’d ever seen in my life. My mother stood up so quickly, her chair tipped over backward.

“Jack!” she cried. “Thank goodness you’re home! What have you done?”

“What Gen and I planned that I would do, if I had the chance,” Jack said simply, though I could see the way his chest heaved as if he’d been running. He set the sack on the table with a faint
chink
and extended the goose toward my mother even as his eyes met mine.

“Gen,” my brother said, “I wonder if you’d be so good as to go and chop down the beanstalk.”

“Take the lantern,” my mother said as she reached for the bedraggled goose. “It’s dark. There, sweetheart,” she went on, as she took the exhausted creature into her arms. “You know me, don’t you? There now. It’s going to be all right.”

“There’s some food on the sideboard,” I said to Jack. Snatching up the axe, I went out into the night and closed the door behind me.

When I came back, Jack and Mama were seated across from each other at the table. The loaf of bread Mama had baked was half eaten. The cheese was gone. The goose was wrapped in a blanket and tucked into an old apple picking basket beside my mother’s feet. It seemed to hold its head up a little more strongly, I thought.

“Gen,” Jack said as I came in. I returned the axe to its place near the stove. Chopping down the beanstalk had been easier than I expected. Now that Jack was once more safe in the World Below, it was almost as if the beanstalk had
wanted
to be chopped down.

“Mama made pie! If you want a piece, you’d better come and cut it now. The only time I can remember being as hungry as this was after I climbed
up
the beanstalk.”

“Is everything all right?” my mother asked. It was a general enough question, but I knew what she meant. There’d been nobody on the beanstalk when I chopped it down. No one trying to follow Jack back to the World Below.

“Fine,” I replied. I approached the table, and Mama cut me a slice of pie.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Jack said, as if he’d suddenly realized something. “I thought there wasn’t any sugar. How can there be pie?”

“A mother has to have some secrets,” Mama said with a smile.

“Jack,” I said, pulling the plate with my slice of pie on it toward me. It was a large piece, I was happy to note. “Shut up and eat. Or if you have to talk, tell us about the World Above. I know the plan was to try and reclaim the wizard’s gifts, but I never dreamed you would do it so quickly. How did you manage it?”

“I didn’t, not really,” Jack confessed. He took an enormous bite of pie, chewing slowly as he savored the taste. It was apple, his favorite and mine. “It was Shannon and Sean.”

“Shannon and Sean?” my mother asked sharply. “Who are they?”

Jack dished up another forkful of pie. “Sean is a giant, and Shannon is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, Mama. They’re brother and sister, though you’d never know it to look at them. Shannon’s not much taller than Gen is, while Sean towers over me. They live in the castle that used to be Duke Roland’s. It’s kind of a long story.”

I took a bite of pie. It was perfect, simple as it was. And all of a sudden I found myself afraid. What if there was nothing as wonderful yet simple as this in the World Above? Mama wanted us to return to the World Above to reclaim all our family had lost, not least of which was a kingdom and a crown.

But would returning to the World Above take things away as well? Things we wouldn’t even know were valuable until after they were gone? Like the ability to sit together in the kitchen, enjoying a well-made piece of pie.

“Tell us your story, Jack,” my mother said.

And so Jack began to tell of his journey up the beanstalk into the World Above.

“I climbed almost all day,” Jack said. “Or at least I think I did. It was almost dark by the time I reached the World Above. And the funny thing was that I ended up in a cornfield, just like where I’d started out. I even had one moment where I thought I’d gone terribly wrong somehow and had ended up back in the World Below.

“Then I saw Sean. After that, I was pretty sure I was in the right place.”

“But why would Guy de Trabant go to all the trouble to steal our father’s castle only to abandon it to a family of giants?” I inquired.

“I asked Sean that very question,” Jack answered, as he took another bite of pie. “He couldn’t say, for certain. He was just a baby when his family first moved in. Sean and Shannon’s father, Clarence, was the giant Guy de Trabant chose.”

“Perhaps de Trabant couldn’t live with himself,” I surmised. “He couldn’t bear to live in the castle he’d killed for. He didn’t need to. He had one of his own. One he could inhabit without guilt. And it’s not as if he gave up Duke Roland’s lands. He still kept those.”

“I think you’re right on all counts, Gen,” my mother put in quietly. “Not only that, the de Trabant castle is built like a fortress. I saw it once, as a child. It’s situated at the crest of a hill, if I remember correctly. No one can approach without being seen. Guy de Trabant would have felt, and been, well protected there.”

“And in the meantime,” I filled in thoughtfully, “to make sure no other ambitious man would try to steal from him, he installed a giant in Duke Roland’s castle.”

“I think that must be it,” Jack agreed.

“But where did he find a giant in the first place?” I wondered. “Where did Clarence come from?”

“I asked Sean and Shannon about that,” Jack said. “And they said their father never spoke about his origins. It was one of two topics that they were forbidden to mention. The other was their mother, who died when they were born. They didn’t come right out and say this, but I gathered things were kind of grim when Shannon and Sean were growing up. This only fed the stories about a ferocious giant living in the castle.”

“Stories that Guy de Trabant had no doubt started himself, to discourage other potential usurpers,” I said.

Jack nodded. “But something happened to Clarence as time went by,” he went on. “Shannon said she thought her father fell in love. Not with another person, but with many. He fell in love with Duke Roland’s former subjects. He saw the way they struggled to make ends meet, yet still kept their spirits strong. He discovered that he wanted to be more than just a tool to frighten others. He wanted to belong. He wanted his children to feel as if they had a true home.

“So, slowly but surely, Clarence set to work to rebuild the land that Guy de Trabant had first stolen and then abandoned to neglect. As they grew old enough, Sean and Shannon helped him. Father and son traveled from village to village, helping with the harvest, or mending a broken roof or fence, whatever needed to be done. Shannon stayed on in the castle, where she tended an enormous vegetable garden.”

Jack smiled at me. “You’d like that about her, Gen. In fact, I think you’d just plain like
her
. Shannon reminded me of you, right off. She’s no-nonsense, practical, and straightforward.”

“Don’t forget the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen,” I teased.

Jack colored.

“Is Clarence still alive?” my mother asked.

Jack shook his head. “No. He died about a year ago. All Duke Roland’s former subjects mourned him. Since then, Sean and Shannon have stayed on in the castle, carrying on in their father’s footsteps.”

“It’s a lovely story,” I said. “Filled with hope. But why would total strangers tell you their life story, Jack? Why would they think you wanted to know it?”

Jack winced, as if he’d known this question was coming. “You’re not going to like this,” he said. “They told me their story because I told them mine.”

I sat bolt upright in horror.
“What?
The whole idea was to keep your identity a secret!”

“I know,” Jack replied in a pleading tone. “But if you’d been there, you’d have done the same, Gen. I just know it. There was just something about them . . . it’s as if they already knew me somehow. And then, when I saw the goose and recognized her as one of the wizard’s gifts, that sort of settled things. I told them my story, and they told me theirs. Afterward they brought out the sack of coins. Guy de Trabant had left it behind too.”

“It seems strange that he would leave the wizard’s gifts,” I said more calmly. “I wonder why.”

“Perhaps they reminded him of the wrongs he had committed, the ones he is still committing,” my mother suggested in a hard voice. She gestured toward the goose in its basket at her feet. It was sleeping now, its head tucked beneath one wing. It looked peaceful, but exhausted. The sack of coins lay flat on the table beside the empty pie plate. To look at the sack, you would have thought that it was empty as well.

“All you have to do is look at either of these things to know that something is terribly wrong with the way our former kingdom is being governed. Or, more accurately, not governed,” my mother went on. “My guess is that Guy de Trabant didn’t want these reminders of his failure.”

“What about the lyre?” I asked. “Did he leave that as well?”

Jack shook his head. “No. That’s the one thing Guy de Trabant took with him. Rumor has it that he almost never lets it out of his sight, and that he uses the lyre to help govern his own people, rather than using his own judgment.”

Jack ate the last forkful of pie, then pushed his plate away as if his hunger had finally been satisfied.

“Winning back the lyre is going to be a challenge.”

“One you think you know how to meet,” I said. The look on Jack’s face told me he’d been doing something out of character. He’d been developing a plan of his own.