Not that I want to kill the guy. First off, I’ve never actually killed anything before. Secondly, killing him seems wrong, not so much because he’s an animal, human or whatever, but because we’re the same age and so, somehow, we should be on the same team. Thirdly, he knows stuff and I can ask him questions, which was the whole point of me tossing down the magick beans in the first place.
But I do need to set precedence. “You’re addressing the Princess of the Northern Hemisphere. Don’t deign to think you know what I know . . . about . . . what you are meaning.” Lines like this sound so perfect on TV, but Jack looks more doubtful than respectful, confirming my suspicion that I flubbed it. I move on. “Are you sure the Golden Goose is gone?”
Jack hesitates. I bet he’s wondering if his walking out alive is contingent on telling me what I want to hear. “I know how to get it back, if that’s what you want.”
“You bring her back,” I say, “and I’ll give you something else in return.”
Jack’s eyebrows furrow; he’s gotten suspicious. Give folks easy and they think you’ve just slipped something by them. This happened to our cook last week, when Sally Groper brought over a fresh arrival of oldies but goodies from below, about thirty or so senior citizens who got nabbed from Atlantic City or somewhere. The cook haggled with Sally, who was fine with it because everyone knows humans get tougher and less tasty the older they get—I don’t know firsthand but I’ve attended enough barbecues to hear the talk—but then the cook made the mistake of smiling too soon. Next thing you know, old Sally raises the price by 50 percent.
I can see how being so close to a giantess whose parents eat humans for lunch and dinner and brunch on occasion would, you know, unsettle Jack a little. So I put on my best earnest look and I say, “Just turn around and climb back up those little boxes and crawl out that window and get down your magick beanstalk and bring me back the goose, and I promise I’ll give you something really good.”
He takes a few steps backward. “For instance? And how do I know you won’t kill me when I bring it back?”
And eat me, I know he wants to add. It’s a good question, I admit.
I say, “There’s no guarantee you’ll find the goose and come back with it, if you even plan on coming back at all. If I wanted to kill you, I could’ve done it already. You’re here, I’m here, fire’s blazing.” I shrug.
He keeps walking backward until his heel hits one of the boxes. “You said you were a vegetarian.”
“I am. Mom’s another story, and she’s an early riser.”
That does it. Jack whirls around and pushes himself up the first box and scrabbles up the second and the third and all the rest and he’s out the window, and I imagine he’s running through the fog to the beanstalk.
I turn back to my wood chair and run my hands over it, checking for splinters, because nobody likes a pain in the ass.
Jack doesn’t come back for another two weeks. It’s around midnight and I’m sitting in the basement, sanding the seat of the wood chair even though I’m going to put a cushion and leather over it anyway.
The window’s latch clicks, and there’s a rustle of feathers and a low honk. Goldie the Golden Goose ruffles her feathers and finds a corner to hunker down in, glaring at Jack and shaking herself as if to get off all of his human stink.
Not that Jack stinks one bit. In fact, he smells a little different than he did the first time. I can’t quite place it . . . water, sharp mint maybe . . . He smells the way I imagine a glacier waterfall might. Jack sits at the roaring hearth with his muscular arms propped on his knees. The fireplace is so large he could do a few cartwheels in there without grazing its stone walls, but he doesn’t look scared at all. I mean, one nudge of my foot and he’d be in, headfirst. His dark hair is thick and would fill every nook and cranny of this basement with that gross burnt hair smell. The fire’s big and Jack’s brave.
“So,” he says, “what do you have for me?”
“First, tell me about life down there. But you have to answer honestly, Jack.”
He’s yet to correct me when I call him Jack, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe it’s his name. Or maybe he thinks he’s safer with an alias.
“Be descriptive,” I say. “Let me see it in my mind’s eye.”
Jack smiles.
It really is a nice smile.
“How about you answer a question for me?” he says. “I passed a fenced-off area and there were thousands of sheep grazing on something that looked like clouds, but that can’t be right. Is it some kind of grass?”
“Something like that.”
“But they’re real sheep from below, aren’t they?”
“Just because something isn’t from down there doesn’t make it any less real.”
“Agreed,” Jack says. He looks away from the fire and gazes around the room. His slack expression says Nonchalance but his eyes scream Greed.
I say, “We don’t keep treasure in the basement.”
Jack turns to me. “What did I do?”
“It’s more the gleam in your eye.”
“I’m too small for you to catch any gleam.”
“You have a dog?”
“My uncle has a cat.”
“You ever catch it slinking around, looking suspicious?”
Jack doesn’t answer.
“Exactly. And it’s smaller to you than you are to me. But still you see.” I lean back, satisfied. “So don’t think I don’t see you, Jack.”
Jack stares back at me for a few moments. “You don’t sound like a princess.” He starts to glance around the basement again but catches himself. “This castle is a bit . . . empty, isn’t it? I thought royals had staff everywhere.”
I don’t dignify any of this with an answer. It’s not like it was in the old days, when there were plenty of gold bars and jeweled treasures to hoard. There are banks now and high-tech security, and all the valuable stuff isn’t tangible, just information and 1s and 0s. What did he expect?
“I, uh . . . I passed . . . a pen . . . There were . . . people inside. Human beings.”
“So?”
“I don’t mean to sound judgmental—”
“Then don’t.”
I sigh. Wood and leather don’t talk back. People, on the other hand, are exasperating.
I sit in silence, questioning the efficacy of the magical beans’ law of attraction, and Jack says, “So how do giants get below the clouds? Do you climb down beanstalks? What if you run out of beans?”
“We go down with the rain, and when it gets really hot, we rise back up with the vapor.”
He looks at me like he doesn’t know whether to believe me. “And if it’s too cold . . . if there isn’t enough water going up?”
“We’re screwed.”