There was only one thing they could do.
They locked Little Red in the closet, then they went out in the backyard and had a picnic.
FIVE
Excuses
Where did the children of Hamlin go,
following the piper's song,
across the patterned fields
and through the woods
and into a crack in the mountain
that wasn't there before
and will never be there again?
If he truly meant them ill,
he might have drowned them with the rats.
But if he truly meant them well,
he might have forgiven their families.
And did he have a family of his own,
demanding explanations for
a townful of children trailing along behind?
And what does a magical piper say
in such a case:
"Look what followed me home—
can I keep them?"
SIX
Jack
Once upon a time, after the invention of teenagers but before there were shopping malls for teenagers to hang around in, there lived a young man named Jack.
Jack was a lazy boy. When his mother asked him to help around the house, he always said, "I'm too tired," and when his mother asked him when he was going to get a job, he always said, "Tomorrow." Until, one day, Jack's mother told him that—unless he started looking for a job—the next time he left the house to visit his friends, she was going to change the locks on the doors so he couldn't get back in.
Jack decided this would be a good time to go to the village to see what sorts of jobs there were. But being the lazy boy he was, he didn't want to walk. And being the lazy boy he was, he hadn't earned any money to buy a horse. So Jack rode his mother's cow into the village.
"That's a fine cow," the tavern keeper said when he saw Jack ride up the street. "I was just telling my wife that we should get a cow of our own since we have so many children."
"A cow is a very nice thing to have," said Jack. This looking-for-a-job was not as hard as he had thought it would be, he decided. He could get a job in the cow-selling business. "How much would you give me for this cow?" he asked.
"Ah, well," said the tavern keeper. "Times are tight. I don't have any spare cash. But I could give you a free meal and all the beer you can drink. There's a party going on in the tavern right now. Feel free to join in."
So Jack handed the tavern keeper the rope that was tied to the cow's halter. As far as Jack was concerned, he didn't have much choice: What other job was he likely to find besides cow salesman? And where else was he going to find someone who wanted to buy a cow?
In the tavern, the tavern keeper's wife thanked Jack for the cow and brought him a bowl of bean soup and a mug of beer. Beer after beer Jack drank. The people in the tavern talked and laughed and sang, and the afternoon became evening, and the evening became night, and the night became earliest morning.
"It's time for the tavern to close," the tavern keeper said to Jack, who was spread facedown on the bean-soup-and-beer-splattered table.
Jack just snored.
"Everybody else has gone home," the tavern keeper's wife said. "It's time for you to go home, too."
Jack just snored.
They tipped Jack off the table, but still he did not wake up.
The tavern keeper's oldest son, who was not a lazy boy, rolled Jack out into the street and closed the door behind him.
At the sound of the thump so close to his head, Jack woke up. All the other shops in the village had closed hours earlier, so there were no lights flickering in windows. Jack was lying flat on his back in a totally dark street, looking up at the stars.
"Oh," he said, because he was very, very drunk from all that beer, "I must be in the sky. I must be in a city in the sky."
As exciting as this thought was, Jack went back to sleep.
Now at about this same time, Effie, the potter's daughter, was coming home from a church dance. Her father had told her she could stay till midnight, and here it was just about dawn, so she was hurrying along the street trying to think of good excuses. When you're six hours late and you've already been warned once and you don't have any excuse—much less a good one—it's hard to think of much else.
Effie wasn't watching where she was going and she tripped over Jack.
Which woke Jack up yet again.
"Oh my," Effie said. "Are you all right? I hope you're all right. You are, aren't you?" She took a few more steps, but Jack didn't get up. Since Effie would never lie down in the middle of the street—dark hours of the morning or not— she assumed there was something wrong with Jack; and since she held just tripped over him, she was afraid she was the cause of whatever was wrong with him. She walked back and leaned over him. "Please say you're all right," she said. "I really have to be getting home or my father will kill me."
Jack focused his eyes on Effie leaning over him. "Whoa!" he said. "You're a tall one, aren't you?"
Effie, who wasn't tall but was in a rush said, "Yes. Fine. Whatever you say. Are you all right?"
Jack said, "Are all the people who live in the city in the sky so tall?"
Which didn't sound at all to Effie as though he were all right. "Oh dear," she said, "what am I going to do with you?"
"Good night," Jack said, and went back to sleep yet again.
Well, Effie told herself, if he was going to be like that, there really wasn't much she could do.
Home was just a few houses away, and once again she started walking.
But then she stopped again.
It really isn't any of my business, she told herself. She took another step.
It's not like I even know him, she told herself. She took yet another step.
It makes no difference to me if the next person to come by trips over him, she told herself. And she took three more steps, one after the other.
But the next person to come by might be in a horse-drawn cart, which would prove disastrous for anyone lying in the street talking about cities in the sky.
What are you going to do? Effie asked herself. He's obviously in no condition to walk, and you certainly can't carry him.
By this time Effie had reached the gate to her yard. She couldn't see any candlelight leaking out from around the shutters, which probably meant that her father had gone to bed rather than waiting up for her. Good news for her, bad news for Jack.
Maybe she could find a rope, Effie thought. She could tie it to Jack's legs and drag him out of harm's way. Not that bouncing his head along the cobblestones was likely to improve his thinking.
But then, even better than a rope, Effie spotted her father's wheelbarrow in the garden. She had been weeding before stopping to get ready for the dance, and now here it was: still half full of weeds, but at least not locked up in the shed.
Effie tipped the wheelbarrow up on its one big wheel and pushed it, jostling and bumping against the cobblestones, back to where Jack lay. She nudged Jack with her foot. "Get up," she said. "I've come to rescue you from early-morning milk deliveries and from Wilbur Stillmanson bringing his pigs to market."
Jack opened his eyes and looked all that distance up to Effie's face. "Oh," he said. "It's the lady giant again."
"Yes," Effie said, to get him moving. "Come on. Get up. Get in here."
Shakily, Jack managed to get to his feet.
For about two seconds.
He stumbled and fell facedown into the wheelbarrow, which wobbled but did not tip over.
With Jack's legs hanging over the edge, Effie started pushing the wheelbarrow back to her house.
Jack's nose was being tickled by the mattress of vines and leaves he was lying on. He didn't like to complain about the bumpy ride, since the lady giant was helping him, but he asked, "Do I need rescuing?"
"Yes," Effie said. "Keep your voice down. If you wake up my father, we'll both need rescuing."
Ah, Jack told himself. The lady gi
ant's father is an ogre. He passed out again.
Effie considered leaving Jack in the wheelbarrow out in the garden. But it was already getting light out, and if her father came outside, he'd be sure to see him Which would leave her with a lot of questions to answer. So she decided it would be better to wheel Jack around to the workshop door and bring him into the house the back way.
After pushing him all the way up the hill and over the door jamb, when she realized Jack was asleep again, she tipped him out onto the floor.
"Ow," Jack said, shaking twigs and leaves out of his hair. "Where are we, lady giant?"
"Shh," Effie warned.
But it was too late.
"Effie?" her father's voice called from his bedroom, down the hall. "Effie, is that you?"
Effie motioned for Jack to keep still. "Yes, Father," she answered in her sweetest, most innocent voice.
Which, of course, made her father suspicious. "Are you just now getting back home?" he asked.
"No, I've been home for hours," Effie answered. "I've been to bed and now I'm up getting breakfast."
But she could hear the door to her father's room open and she realized he was coming to check.
"If he finds us here together, he's going to kill both of us!" she whispered frantically to Jack. But where could she hide him? She had a suspicion Jack couldn't make it the five whole steps to the door. She cast a hurried look around her father's workshop. Under the table that held the potter's wheel? Too open. Behind the drying racks? Only if Jack could stand still and not tip over. She couldn't count on that. Effie touched the side of the kiln to see if it was hot. It wasn't. "Quick!" she whispered to Jack. "Get in the oven. Father won't be using it today."
Jack, who thought he was in a kitchen, staggered back, overwhelmed by the size of the kiln. "That's one big oven, lady giant," he said.
"Yes," Effie said. This "lady giant" business was becoming annoying. She shoved him in and slammed the door.
But she didn't latch it, so that he could breathe. From the crack along the edge, Jack watched as Effie's father walked into the room.
"Are you just getting back?" her father asked again.
"No," Effie said, hastily tying on an apron to cover her party dress. "I came in here for wood to get the kitchen fire going for breakfast."
Her father sniffed the air. "What's that I smell?" he asked. But he knew what he smelled—he smelled beer; he just wanted to know where the smell was coming from. "Is that you?" he demanded.
"No, Father," Effie said.
He sniffed her, but the beer smell didn't seem to be coming from her. "It better not be you," he warned.
Meanwhile Jack, in the oven, thought, Oh, no! He can smell me! He must be a man-eating giant. Jack began to work out his last will and testament.
Effie picked up two pieces of split log and left, bringing them into the kitchen to start the breakfast fire.
Her father stayed in the workshop, rechecking the glaze on the cups and bowls and jugs that had come out of the kiln the day before.
Jack realized that he didn't own anything worth leaving to anybody.
There was a loud crash from the kitchen. Jack heard Effie cry out, then there was the sound of glass breaking and the frantic squawking of a chicken. "You get back here," Effie shouted.
"Effie?" her father called.
Jack saw Effie come back into the workshop, holding by the legs a flapping, squawking, feather-shedding hen. "She did it again," Effie said, shaking the hen. "The miserable little beast. I took off my gold bracelet before I started working and this ... this ... THING ... ate it."
Her father pried open the hen's beak. "I can't see it, Effie," he said. He took the hen from his daughter and plunked her down on the table. "Lay," he commanded.
The hen protested some more.
"Lay!" he shouted.
And then, to Jack's amazement, the hen laid a golden egg.
"You wretched thing," Effie told the hen. "I liked my bracelet better." And to her father she said, "We should have her for breakfast and be done with."
"Now, now," her father said. "She was a gift from my brother." He let go of the hen, who ruffled her feathers and half flew, half ran to the shelf along the back of the table.
Leaning forward to see through the crack where the door didn't meet the oven, Jack saw the hen brush against a cloth-draped object that stood about as tall as Jack's arm was long. From this mysterious-looking object there came a sound somewhere between human voice and musical notes, as though the hen had jostled ... what? Something magical, Jack was sure.
Just while Jack was wondering why someone would keep a magical musical anything bundled up in the kitchen, Effie said, "And that singing harp! A gift from your sister. We need to get a better class of relatives."
A gold-egg-laying hen! Jack thought. A dinging harp! He thought of how, minutes ago, he had come to the realization that he didn't own anything worthwhile. Wouldn't his mother stop complaining that he didn't have a job if he owned a gold-egg-laying hen? Wouldn't his friends be impressed by a singing harp?
"Now, now, Effie," Effie's father said again. "We can't just throw them away. Come Christmas I'll wrap them up in pretty paper and give them away as door prizes at the Potters' Guild Christmas party."
"That's four months away," Effie protested.
"So long as we keep the harp covered," her father said, "and we're careful not to leave gold lying around—"
But Effie wasn't finished. "And what about that magic cauldron-of-plenty your aunt gave us that never runs out of food," she demanded, "except the only food it has is pickled liver? I'm always tripping over that thing."
"Well, you don't need to keep it in the kitchen," her father said. "Here, I'll help you move it...."
Jack watched as the two of them moved out of the room, then he turned his attention to the wonderful hen. It was settling down on the shelf, looking ready—in Jack's estimation—to lay another egg. It wasn't fair, he thought, for the giants to have so much good fortune when he had none. He leaned against the oven door for a better look, and the door swung open and Jack fell out.
The hen began to cluck nervously.
"Shh," Jack said.
But this only made the hen think he was a snake, and she squawked even louder.
Jack came closer, still going "Shh," intending nothing more than to try to hush the hen, but now the singing harp became nervous, too. From beneath its cloth draping it asked in a silvery, musical voice, "What's happening?"
"Shh," Jack said again. "I'm not supposed to be here. You'll get me in trouble."
And then the harp, being a clever harp, knew what that meant. "THIEF!" the harp cried. "THIEF! THIEF! THIEF!"
From down the hall Effie's father echoed, "Thief?" and Jack thought, Well. Why not? So he grabbed the hen with one hand and the singing harp, cover and all, with the other and jumped out the window, landing in the garden.
Jack took one step, tripped over an ivy vine, and went sprawling. He tucked the hen and the harp in close to him under his jacket so they wouldn't get injured and rolled down, down the hill until he came to rest with his face pressed against the bars of the gate by the street.
He got to his feet, dizzy and bruised but still holding on to both hen and harp. He looked over his shoulder and there was Effie's father running toward him, holding a huge black cooking pot and calling, "The cauldron, the cauldron, too!"
Sure that if he wasn't fast enough he was going to get eaten, Jack squeezed through the bars of the gate and took off down the street.
After a while he couldn't hear the sound of pursuing footsteps anymore, and when he looked over his shoulder there was no sign that he was being followed. But just in case, he never slowed down. He ran and ran, all the way home, bursting through the kitchen door just as his mother was sitting down to breakfast.
"Jack!" she said, seeing him covered with twigs and dirt. "What's happened?"
Jack flung himself into a chair, panting loudly.
"I th
ought you went to town to look for a job," ‹his mother said.
"I did," Jack gasped between wheezing breaths. "And I found one, too. I'm a cow salesman."
"Cow salesman!" his mother cried. "What kind of job is that when we only have one cow?"
"Oh," Jack said. "Good point."
His mother rested her head in her hands. "I hope you at least got a good price for her."
"Ahm..." Jack said reaching into his pocket. He came out with a handful of lumpy, beer-encrusted beans.
"That's disgusting." His mother pulled on his sleeve until his arm was hanging out the window and shook the mess off his hand. "You were gone a whole day and night, and all you come home with is a handful of beans?" she shouted.
Jack wished his mother wouldn't be so loud; his head felt as though it was about to burst like a dropped egg. Which reminded him ... He reached under his jacket and pulled out the hen, which he set on the table.
His mother looked at him skeptically. "You traded our cow for a chicken?" she demanded.
Jack shook his head, which he shouldn't have done, not with his headache, then he said, "No. The beans must have been magical beans. They grew into this incredible ... well, I guess it must have been a beanstalk ... which reached up, up, up ... to a city in the sky."
"A city in the sky," his mother repeated.
"Giants lived there," Jack continued. "The lady giant tried to help me. She hid me in the oven. But the man giant could smell people. He was going to eat me."
"She put you in the oven," Jack's mother said, "But he was the one you were afraid of?"
"And they had this hen that lays golden eggs and this harp"—Jack pulled the cloth-draped harp out from under his jacket^ "that sings. I barely escaped with my life. The giant was chasing after me with a cooking pot."
"You stole these things?" Jack's mother cried in horror. "Did I raise my son to steal things?"
"They didn't want them," Jack protested.
"A hen that lays golden eggs and a harp that sings—and they didn't want them?"