Jack

  Jack laughed at him. The giant roared, but he could not get out of the moat to take his revenge. Jack wrapped the giant’s two heads with rope and chopped them clean off with his sword. The end.”

  The story was supposed to make me feel better, but it didn’t. I felt hollow and frustrated.

  “Papa?”

  “Hmmmm?”

  “Why did everything come so easy for him?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Grandpa Jack. Everything just…came to him, like when he escaped the tower room out the window with the rope, or tricked the giant with a lie, and when he chopped off the giants’ heads with a swoop of his sword.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t as easy as it sounds in the stories,” said Papa. “Action takes more effort than words.”

  “But we’ve seen the giants now. We know how big they are. Do you really think he cut off a giant’s head? A two-headed giant? Even cutting off a nose seems impossible.” I thought of how Martha had plucked my axe right out of my hands.

  Papa looked thoughtful. “It was a long time ago,” he said. “I heard the stories from my papa, and he heard them from his, and he from his, and so on and so on. It’s hard to know where things got exaggerated or details got left out.”

  “Like how the giants live in the sky?”

  “Yes, that,” said Papa.

  “And how much effort it takes to travel from one place to the next when you are as small as a mouse?” He nodded. “And about giant snakes and toads and spiders, and how maybe not all giants are terrible?”

  “Yes, all those things, but the important parts are there. Jack really had to fight the giants, and he really beat them. And there was nothing so great about Jack, not more than anyone else. He wasn’t a knight or a soldier. He was a common man, a poor farm boy, just like you. But the thing that made Jack different was that he saw the small things, the things other people didn’t notice. Maybe the way he beat the giants seems easy in the stories, but if it was so easy, how come no one else did what Jack did? How come no one else could beat all those giants?”

  I thought about it long into the night. It gnawed at my brain. I was supposed to be like my seven-greats-grandpa Jack. I was supposed to know what to do, but I didn’t know anything, and I couldn’t shed the feeling that I had overlooked something, but I didn’t know what it could be.

  There had to be something that could defeat King Barf, something that could get us out of this dungeon, if only it would show itself to me. Where was my rope? My sword of sharpness? Where was my magic?

  I could really use some right now.

  I woke to a strange sound, like a moaning wind, but there was no wind in the dungeon. Someone was crying. I looked around. Papa was fast asleep, snoring lightly. Everyone else was sleeping, too. Perhaps I had imagined it. I lay back down.

  Then I heard it again. A soft moaning, barely more than a sniffle. I sat up and followed the noise until I came upon someone curled up in the half shell of an egg.

  “Tom?” I whispered.

  He stopped crying right away.

  “Tom, are you all right?”

  Nothing.

  “Tom, I’m really sorry that I got us trapped here. It’s awful and miserable and you’d rather be with Martha, where there’s more fun and food.”

  Tom turned over and wiped his sleeve across his face. “You think I’m crying over cheese?”

  “Well, Martha would, wouldn’t she?” I tried to laugh a little, to help lighten the mood.

  “You don’t know anything.” Tom sat up, and in the dim light I could just see the glisten of tears on his cheeks and the shadow of his scowl. “Did you know I used to have a papa, too? I did.” In fact, I had wondered about this. “The same giant took us together, but my papa got thrown from the giant’s pocket. I grabbed onto his hand, but I couldn’t hold on, and he…he fell. He fell a really long way, and I wasn’t big enough or strong enough to save him.” Tom’s chin quivered, and tears created little rivers through the soot caked on his face.

  This was the thing inside Tom I didn’t understand. Tom had lost his papa, too. All this time I had been searching for my papa, and I thought Tom just didn’t care. I thought he only wanted to have fun and eat, but really he was trying to ease the pain that could not be mended. He knew his papa was gone and could not be found.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “It was the giant.”

  “Maybe,” said Tom. “Maybe it’s not your fault we’re here in this dungeon.”

  We were silent for a time and I decided I was tired of the dungeon. I was tired of being tossed and bossed around by a giant. I wanted to do something. I didn’t know what, but I was resolved.

  “Tom,” I said. “Let’s defeat the giants. Let’s conquer King Barf.”

  In the morning I took Tom over to Papa, who was dividing what was left of our food into two small piles.

  “Papa, this is Tom,” I said. “He helped me search for you.”

  Papa shook Tom’s hand. “Thank you for looking for me, Tom. I’m glad I was found.”

  Tom smiled and looked down at his feet, just a little uncertain.

  “Let’s have breakfast!” said Papa, and he divided the food to make a third portion for Tom. None of us had much to eat, but I didn’t mind because I was so glad to have Tom talking to me again.

  Work was even better with Papa and Tom. We raced back and forth from the gold to the ovens, and then we gave each other rides in the carts. Once I lost control and crashed Tom and the cart into an egg, which shifted and upset the whole mountain of eggs.

  “Egg-quake!” I shouted, and everyone ran for cover. Tom and I hid beneath one of the carts as the eggs tumbled and spun. When everything settled, an old man yelled at us, “You hooligans can’t just run all over the place and crash into things!”

  “Sorry, sir,” I said. “We just lost control of the cart.” Tom clamped his hand over his mouth to hold in a laugh.

  “You think it’s funny, do you? You could have knocked me into a fire! You could have killed me!”

  The smile faded right off Tom’s face.

  “Hey, it wasn’t his fault,” I said. “We were just trying to have some fun.”

  “This is no place for fun,” grumbled the man.

  “Come on, boys,” said Papa. “Back to work.”

  We picked up our carts and started gathering gold. I picked up a few more of the yolks, and that gave me an idea.

  “Tom,” I whispered, “want to try some target practice?” I pulled my sling out of my pocket.

  “What are we going to throw?” he asked.

  “These.” I placed one of the yolks in my sling.

  Tom brightened right up. “Terrific!”

  We ran to a far side of the dungeon, which served as a kind of graveyard for broken carts and barrels. Tom had never used a sling before, so I decided we’d start by throwing yolks at the wall to get a feel for it; then we could move on to simple targets like carts and eggs. I took out my sling and showed Tom how to put the stone in the center. I swung it around and around, gathering speed.

  “The faster you get it going, the harder it will fly.” I released the yolk and let it fly hard and fast into the dirt wall, where it stuck.

  “Amazing!” said Tom. “Let me try.”

  Tom took the sling from me and loaded it. He was just starting to swing it around when suddenly—snap! thwack! froosh!—something burst through the wall.

  “Snake!” Tom shouted, diving for cover among the broken carts.

  Right where I had thrown the yolk, a giant green snake was shooting through the wall. It curled and slithered toward us.

  “I’ll shoot it!” said Tom. Frantically, he shot and missed by several feet. The snake kept uncoiling out of the wall, growing bigger and bigger, as though it had no beginning or end. A moment later—crack! shwip! fwip!—another snake burst out of the wall. They started to twist around each other and rise up.

  “Tom…,” I said, realization dawning. “Those aren’t sn
akes….”

  “What are they then?”

  Little buds swelled on the ends, and then they lengthened and branched out and more buds formed. Leaves unfurled and spread.

  “They’re…plants!” I said.

  The green vines were growing out of the wall, faster than any plant I’d ever seen. Faster than the beanstalk even. It was some kind of magic.

  The plants swelled and split and twisted. They rose right up to the dungeon grate, where they finally slowed to a stop.

  Tom and I gaped at each other. I pulled another yolk out of my pocket and examined it closely. How would I view this stone if it were much smaller? It was a seed.

  I looked back toward the pile of golden eggs. More seeds were strewn about in the dirt. There was one as big as my head, white and almond shaped, probably a pumpkin or a squash. A man walked by and chucked it into the fire, which smoked and sputtered. I winced. How could we have missed it? It seemed so obvious to me now. The magic to make the gold was drawing power from growing things. The hen sucked up that growing power to make golden eggs, and inside each egg, some power remained in the form of a seed. A seed that sprouted and grew with incredible speed once planted.

  “Do it again,” said Tom.

  My hands trembled as I loaded another seed into my sling. I swung it around and around and let it fly. The seed buried itself in the dirt wall, and almost immediately a green stem burst out and swelled and split and spread. This one didn’t grow up, it grew out. It grew around our feet and crawled up and over the carts and toward the pile of golden eggs and everyone else.

  People stopped what they were doing and shouted and backed away as the vines reached them. Giant leaves unfurled, and green globes swelled to the size of my head, and then bigger and bigger until they weighed heavy on the vine. The green globes were now as tall as me and as wide as I was tall. They began to blush and redden.

  “They’re giant tomatoes!” said Tom.

  Everyone crawled over the vines and leaves to look at the giant tomatoes. Someone bit into one. “Food!” he shouted, and suddenly everyone started to devour the tomatoes.

  “Jack!” called Papa, running toward me. When he saw me next to the giant tomato, he dropped his pickaxe. “Jack, are you all right? What happened?”

  “Papa!” I shouted. “The yolks in the eggs! They’re seeds, Papa! They’re seeds!”

  “What?!”

  I ran around until I found another seed, a bean-shaped one as large as my hand. It was smaller than Jaber’s beans and a little richer in color. Perhaps the magic made them a little different, but still, I should have known or at least suspected.

  “Watch!” I told Papa. I slipped the bean into my pocket and started to climb the egg mountain as high as I could get. Everyone was still devouring the tomatoes, eating them right off the vine. They didn’t know yet that there was more. So much more.

  I put the bean into my sling. I swung it around and around, faster and faster, and then I threw it down to the ground.

  Papa yelped and jumped back as the bean sprouted and shot up like a green fountain. It swelled and twisted and grew up against the wall of the dungeon, higher and higher. It pushed through the grate and grew out of the dungeon.

  I hopped down from the pile of eggs to Papa, and we both stared up at the giant beanstalk.

  Papa wiped his brow and just kept staring up. “Well, son, I think you found what we’ve all been overlooking.”

  I wrapped my arms around Papa. “We’re going home.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Escape Plan[t]s

  It was decided that we would leave that very night, before King Barf could discover the plants and ruin our best chance of escape. But first we had to grow more seeds.

  Everyone went to work, gathering what seeds were strewn around that hadn’t been burned, and cracking open eggs to get more. We worked harder than we ever had, knowing that this was our chance at escape, and since we now had plenty of food, the work was easier.

  Once we had gathered as many seeds as possible, we sorted them into piles and tried to determine what was what.

  “That’s tomato,” I said, since I’d just grown one.

  “And that’s a wheat kernel,” said Papa. “Why didn’t I see it before?”

  “You’re not used to seeing giant ones,” I said. “And I think these ones are a little different. They have magic in them. That’s why they grow so fast.”

  “Those are onion seeds,” said Baker Baker, pointing to some pointy black ones. “And those look to be carrots.”

  “Save those,” said Papa. “They won’t help us get out of here, but they can feed us well later.”

  “Wouldn’t I love a giant carrot!” said Baker Baker. “I could make a carroty carrot cake. Oh! And that’s a cherry pit.” He pointed to a seed the size of a melon. “I could make cherry pies, cherry tarts, cherry puffs…”

  “We can’t grow a cherry tree here,” said Papa. “It would take over the entire dungeon and give us away.”

  Baker Baker sighed. “Well, one can dream,” he said, and he placed the giant cherry pit into his pocket.

  We identified at least thirty different varieties of seeds, and looking at them all in their piles, I felt as though we’d discovered a great treasure. We would plant the ones that grew tall, and leave behind the ones that grew like roots, or into trees.

  “What do we do once we escape the dungeon?” someone asked. “How do we get out of the castle?”

  “Does anyone know where we are?” I asked. “I didn’t see anything except the fireplace when the king brought us here.”

  “Same for me,” said Baker Baker.

  “Me too.”

  “Have no fear, lads!” said Sir Bluberys. “I know exactly where we are!” He pushed through the crowd on his mule, kicking and scattering seeds. A few people groaned, but they leaned in to hear his answer anyway.

  “I saw gold when I was brought here,” said Sir Bluberys. “Therefore we are in the treasury!”

  Tom slapped his forehead. “Sir Bluberys, practically the entire palace is made of gold! We could be anywhere! We could be in the stables, for all we know, or the bathroom.”

  “No, I am quite sure,” said Sir Bluberys. “I have traveled the giant world extensively. We are in the royal treasury.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “No matter where we are, we should be able to slip out beneath doors or through the cracks of the wall. The hard part is getting out of the dungeon.”

  We left it at that and got to work sowing seeds. At first I threw the seeds into the dirt. The force of my sling made the plants burst and grow almost instantly, but the roots didn’t take a deep hold in the ground that way. Since we needed the plants to be sturdy for climbing, we decided it was best to dig holes for planting.

  So we dug into the hard earthen floor of the dungeon, pounding out holes with chisels and hammers and axes, and placing the seeds inside. We replaced the dirt, watered the ground, and waited. They didn’t grow as quickly that way, but the roots grew deep and strong, and the leaves and vines crept steadily upward.

  Just for fun, I shot more seeds with my sling, and Tom took a few turns, too. It was as if the force of the seeds hitting the earth made the magic within them explode. The plants had been imprisoned, and once they were set free, they shot out and stretched and grew, reveling in their freedom.

  We grew them up along the walls, creating webs of flowers and grass, cornstalks and beanstalks, tomatoes and berries. They spread over the floor and crawled up the walls, transforming our sooty dungeon into a sea of green. They crawled up and over the edge of the dungeon. We grew a blackberry bush, and none of us could help ourselves: we pulled down the giant berries and devoured them, letting the juice drip down our faces and fingers down to our chins and chests.

  “You look like you ate a person,” said Tom, wiping the juice off his mouth.

  “You too,” I said, and we both smiled, showing our blackberry-stained teeth.

  So
mething else interesting happened as we grew the seeds. The gold disappeared. It shimmered and dispersed like clouds after a storm, leaving behind a subtle metallic vapor. I guessed gold that’s made by magic couldn’t remain gold once the magic is reversed. I imagined the look on King Barf’s face when he came here and discovered all his gold had been replaced by tomatoes and onions and berries. He ought to be pleased, but more likely he’d explode.

  When all the eggs had been split open, and the dungeon was webbed with vines and branches, we prepared to go.

  Papa turned to me. “Jack, you discovered the seeds. You found our escape. You should go first.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement, including Tom, who pushed me toward the wall of green webs. “You’ll come up right after me?” I asked.

  “Right behind you,” said Papa.

  I nodded, then I grabbed ahold of a cornstalk and began to climb.

  When I reached the top, I stayed hidden in the corn leaves and peered into the dark space before me. The chamber beyond the grate was larger than the dungeon and filled with shadowy objects as big as mountains. Only a sliver of moonlight shone through the curtains and spilled onto the floor like a frozen river.

  Something growled. I shrank back into the leaves. The growling continued, a steady rumble occasionally broken by a harsh snort. There must be some dog or beast set to guard us. Slowly, I rose from hiding and looked out in the direction of the noise. I saw no movement. The sound seemed to be coming from a huge rectangular structure set at the center of the chamber. Then there came an altogether different sound.

  Bok, bok. Bok, bok. A chicken?

  “Quiet, Treasure…,” a sleepy voice mumbled.

  Bergeek!

  Treasure! We were in the royal bedchamber. The king and his golden hen were in bed. This was way worse than a dog. If we woke the king, it would all be over.

  The plants rustled behind me, and Papa and Tom emerged over the edge, breathing loud and hard. I placed my hands to my lips and nodded toward the king. “King Barf…,” I whispered. “We’re in his bedchamber.”