The Thief and the Beanstalk Page 2

  Like everyone else, he’d heard the story of Jack now and again over the years. It was popular among common folk who spent the dark nights sharing tales of heroes and magic and monsters. But Finch came to notice a difference with this story. He remembered especially one old white-bearded man. By the glow of a fire, the old man told of the boy cutting down the beanstalk and the giant crashing to his doom. Then he pointed to a distant place and spoke these words: “And they say Jack is yet alive, an old man now, and he lives in a great house, with wealth beyond imagination—a house that lies somewhere north and west of here….”

  Of course Finch didn’t believe one word about magic beans and giants. But he began to think there was a seed of truth to the story after all—the bit about a rich old man in a house full of gold. Because time and time again, a storyteller would end the tale of Jack in a similar way, even indicating the same direction: north and west of here.

  Every so often it was necessary for Finch’s band to move on to a new hunting ground. After months of murder and thievery in one area, the band grew notorious, and the locals grew wary of traveling alone and unarmed. They might even join together to hunt down Finch and his gang. But Finch always knew instinctively when they had overstayed their welcome. Then the thieves would vanish into the night, travel for miles, and find a fertile new land of unsuspecting victims.

  Wherever they went, Finch would seek out the storytellers—the people who spun tales in exchange for a meal and a place to bed down for the night. One ancient woman claimed she had met a traveler who saw the house of Jack many years before, in a place between the mountains and the sea.

  Finch had no map to guide him. But from the stories, he imagined he could get a fix on where Jack’s house might be, if it truly existed. When the time came to move on, their words were his compass: north and west of here.

  Many seasons had passed. Finch was certain he was drawing closer, because the storytellers added new elements to the end of the tale. They say Jack and his mother built themselves a fortress, with great walls of handsome white stone…. Jack’s mother passed away long ago, but Jack still lives…. They say Jack is generous to the poor and the hungry…. Jack is old, and despite his wealth, is a sad man who never leaves his house….

  One day Finch learned that he was nearer to his goal than he had imagined possible. They met a minstrel who knew the tale. Although the man was unnerved by the rough appearance of the gang, Finch coaxed the story out of him with a silver coin. The minstrel had seen the white stone house with his own eyes, and it was only a week’s journey away. An old man named Jack still lived there with his servants. He was a sad and mysterious figure, but everyone agreed that he was rich, with an endless supply of gold—the source of which was said to be the magical hen that laid the golden eggs. “To find his house, just follow this road north to the mountains, then take the western path when you reach the crossroads. Avoid the eastern way, for a plague has taken a village there,” the nervous minstrel told them.

  Finch’s dark heart thumped with glee. The only part of the story that mattered to him was true indeed. Jack’s wealth was real. And he knew where to find it.

  As for the minstrel, that was the end of his song. One of the gang fancied his clothes, another wanted his instrument, and Finch took back his piece of silver.

  One week after that encounter, late in the day, Finch’s gang stood on a ridge at the peak of the western road. To the north, the ridge grew taller and fatter until, some miles off, it could be called a mountain, the first peak in a craggy spine a hundred miles long. The western side was illuminated with golden light, while the eastern slopes looked cool and dark. Finch could see the ocean disappear to the west. The sun was extinguishing itself on the watery horizon.

  And below him, only a few miles away, was a great house of white stone. Glowing in the fading daylight, it was the brightest object on the landscape. Finch reached out, and with his thumb and forefinger, fancied that he was pinching the fortress. “Got you at last. The house of Jack.”

  Finch noted with pleasure that a thick forest lay between the mountains and Jack’s house, creeping within an arrow’s flight of the walls. A perfect place to make camp. A perfect place to observe and learn. And for two weeks, that was what he and Squint did.

  They caught fleeting glimpses of the old man who must be Jack when he went to one of the high windows. One afternoon, as storm clouds filled the sky, the old man was on the rooftop, staring at the thunderheads as they rumbled by.

  Jack was not alone. A young girl, no more than six years old, lived there too. There were at least four servants: three young men and one woman. Two of the men were strapping specimens who looked like they could take care of themselves in a fight. Indeed, one might be a match for Toothless John. The other man was a little older and of more ordinary proportions. Every fourth day or so, this one would emerge from the fortress in a one-horse cart and drive off along a path that cut through the forest. The cart was always laden with a trunk or two. What was inside, Finch could not guess. Two or three days later, the driver would return to Jack’s fortress.

  Finch watched, waited, and planned. He was certain his twelve could overpower the old man’s four, especially at night while some slept. When the front door opened, he saw how one man could easily slide the huge but well-greased bolt that locked it from the inside. The only question was how to get in, and now he had the answer to that: Find a young climber to scale the vines.

  Hold it, Finch, he thought. He stopped in the middle of the forest. You’re not thinking. Where are you going now? To the farmlands near Jack’s house? All you’ll find there are fat, happy farm boys who won’t come with you unless you snatch them. And then what? The whole county’s out looking for the missing boy. No, you’ve got to find a kid who’ll be glad to help you—a kid no one will miss, with no place else to go.

  Then Finch remembered something the doomed minstrel told him. Avoid the eastern way, for a plague has taken a village there.

  “Where there’s a plague, there’s orphans,” he whispered to himself. “Now you’re thinking.” It was risky to approach a plague-stricken village, but his instincts told him this was the way to find what he was looking for. Besides, experience taught him that such an illness runs its course and disappears.

  Finch changed directions and headed east through the forest. He thought again of the gold that would soon be his. The more he thought about it, the faster he walked. Soon he was running.

  Chapter 3

  Nick tilted his head toward the noise. Was it the leaves hushing and rustling in the breeze, or was it running water? He stepped forward and other sounds emerged: gurgling, trickling, and the crystal music of water dashing among stones. Spying a wide, shallow stream through a gap in the trees, he ran to the banks and dropped to his knees to drink from a bowl he formed with his hands.

  When he finally looked up, he was surprised to see a small farm on the other side of the stream—the first hint of humanity in two days. His impulse was to hide among the trees so that he might creep back at night like a mouse for shelter and food. But a second glance revealed that the farm had been forsaken some time ago. The fence around the pasture was in disarray and no cows or horses were in the fields. The thatched roof of the one-room farmhouse was partly collapsed, and the walls of the round stone well were crumbling.

  In front of the tiny house, a rusty ax was buried deep in the largest of several tree stumps. A few old pieces of wood were scattered around. Nick wondered if the farmer had simply given up on trying to draw life from this stony soil and walked away. Or maybe, he thought with a painful memory rising in his heart, the sickness has come here, too. Perhaps the remains of the people who dwelt here could still be found in the house that became their tomb.

  Hopping from rock to rock, Nick crossed the stream. The farm stood in the shadow of the ridge that he’d seen from afar. Rocks were plentiful here. The farmer had used them to build low walls around his vegetable fields. But now weeds and saplings and shrubs were reclaiming the land.

  A pang of hunger clawed at Nick’s gut. Nobody had tended that field for years, but some vegetables might be growing wild there yet. He raced over and was clawing through the weeds, uprooting anything that looked like a carrot, turnip or onion, when he heard something from the direction of the ridge: the high clack-click-clack of a stone striking other rocks.

  He turned and saw a man standing halfway down the slope, perfectly still. The stranger’s eyes followed the tumbling stone until it came to rest at the bottom, settling among a pile of other pebbles and boulders that had rolled down over the years. A prickly chill swept over the back of Nick’s neck. This man might have been creeping stealthily toward him, until one loose stone had given him away. Nick lowered himself until he was hidden among the weeds.

  When he lifted his head again to peer out, he saw the stranger coming forward again. The man moved casually, with his hands thrust in his pockets. He kicked a few stones ahead of him as he descended, as if he didn’t care how much clamor he made now that his presence was revealed. He reached the bottom and sauntered toward the farm. The closer he came, the more nervous Nick felt. The man was large and strong, and despite his fine clothes and his offhand demeanor, he still seemed like a predator ready to spring. There was a sheath at the stranger’s waist with the handle of a knife jutting from the top. His smile didn’t belong on the same face as those cold blue eyes.

  Has he seen me? Nick wondered, sinking lower into the weeds. The stranger’s gaze fixed on the ax in the tree stump, and he ambled toward it, whistling. He let the pack that was slung across his shoulder slip to the ground, and he gripped the handle. He gave it a little tug, then a stronger yank, but the ax would not budge. The wood had swollen since the day long ago when, with a
final swing, the farmer sank his blade deep.

  “Like Excalibur in its stone,” the stranger said, but not to himself. He spoke loudly, projecting his voice toward the garden. It was an intelligent voice—but not a friendly voice. Nick flattened himself on the ground, wishing he’d run at the first sight of the intruder.

  “Come on out, boy. I saw you from up there, you know. Besides, you’re not as good at hiding as you think. I can see the path you made through the weeds.”

  Nick had seen rabbits freeze in place, hoping to go unnoticed when someone approached; now he felt as they must. He knew he should bolt, because this stranger radiated danger the way a bonfire threw off heat. But he thought about it a moment too long. He heard a single footstep coming toward him, and the stranger was suddenly hurtling over the wall. Nick jumped to his feet and turned to run, but powerful hands seized him from behind—one on his arm and the other grabbing a handful of hair.

  “Hold on now, pup. Mister Finch won’t hurt you. Unless you try to run away.” He accentuated his words by twisting Nick’s hair, so fiercely that it felt like the back of his head had caught fire. Nick stopped struggling.

  “I will let go of you now,” said the man. “And I want you to turn around and look at me. If you run, I’ll just snatch you up again, so there’s no point to it, is there? Do you understand me?” Nick nodded, and the man released his grip. Nick turned to face the stranger who called himself Finch.

  Finch looked Nick over from head to toe, and he seemed to approve of what he saw. “Oh, you’ll do, won’t you? Can’t weigh more than four stone, can you? Got twigs for arms—is there any strength in them?”

  “What … what do you want from me?” Nick said, panting. He rubbed the arm that Finch had seized. Five bruises, one for each finger, had blossomed there.

  Finch painted a broad, friendly smile on his face. “Just a little favor, that’s all. Tell me your name.”

  “Nick.”

  “Nick. A fine name. Is this your farm? Is this where you live?”

  Nick shook his head.

  “So what are you doing here, then? Are your mother and father around?”

  Again, Nick shook his head.

  “What about friends? Any friends around here?”

  Another shake.

  “That’s a shame. But you know what, Nick? I could be your friend. My name’s Finch. I’ve been looking for a kid just like you. And here you are, in the first place I looked. That makes me think it was meant to be. You see, I need a favor that only a little fellow like you can do. A big fellow wouldn’t do for this job.”

  Finch flashed his smile again, but Nick’s fear grew nonetheless. Finch seemed to sense that his charm wasn’t working, and his eyes narrowed.

  “Think about it, Nick. You need me, too. I know you do. See, I understand everything about you, though I never met you before this moment.

  “You lost your family somehow. Did they abandon you? No, it was the plague, wasn’t it?” Nick felt his entire body go rigid and wished he’d been able to control himself better, because Finch’s eyes narrowed further and his smile spread a little wider.

  “Thought so,” Finch said. “The villagers probably burned down your house, without bothering to bury the dead. Then you were on your own, and there was nobody to take care of you. Maybe you asked passersby if they could give you a place to sleep, a place to come home to. But nobody ever did. Who needs a lost child like you in times like these, and a plague orphan at that? They had their own problems, their own mouths to feed. So they turned you away. The best they would do was toss you a scrap of bread. And you’d watch as the family hurried away, not looking back. And you were jealous of those children, with their full bellies and their clean faces and their little toys.”

  Nick clenched his teeth and pressed his lips together. I won’t let you see my face, he thought, and he turned his back on Finch. But Finch stepped closer and whispered over his shoulder. “So you went on begging for food, wandering around, searching for a place to call home. Did a little stealing, too, didn’t you? Anything to survive. And now look at you, scavenging in an old vegetable garden like an animal. But think about it, Nick: Winter will follow. And what will you do when there’s no food to scrounge—you, with your cheeks sunken in and all your ribs showing already? How do you keep warm when the nights are cold enough to freeze spit, and you’ve got no coat to wear, no blanket to wrap around you, no fire to cozy up to?”

  Nick’s head bent low. His knobby shoulders were trembling.

  “Nick, I was that way once too. Shunned. Hungry. Hunted. I figured I had a choice to make. And I chose to fight back, survive any way I could. You understand? I’ve done some wrong along the way. But the world did me a load of wrong first, and maybe I’m just paying the world back in kind.”

  Nick wiped his cheeks with his sleeve, and turned to look Finch angrily in the eye. Finch leaned over a little, putting his face closer to Nick’s.

  “Come with me, lad. I’ve got friends who were all just like you once. We live in a forest over that ridge. You can join us. We’ll be your family. You can stay warm by our fire. And we’ll feed you right—meat, biscuits, soup, you name it. How would a nice hot bowl of venison stew go down right now, Nick?”

  At the suggestion of food, real meat, Nick’s mouth suddenly flooded with saliva. He swallowed it before it could spill out over his lips.

  “There’s something you have to understand first, though, Nick. You see, we’re a band of thieves. That’s the plain truth. If you come with me, you’ll be a thief too. Pretty soon I’ll have a little job for you to do. Nothing you can’t handle. But you have to do it, and you have to do it my way. And in our band, my way is the only way. You understand? Have we a bargain, little thief?”

  Finch stuck out his hand. With his eyes narrowed into slits, he stared down, and waited to see if Nick would shake it.

  Chapter 4

  “Men, meet Nick. Our littlest thief,” said Finch. Nick stood wide-eyed in the forest clearing as Finch’s band gathered around and looked him over. This was the grimmest, fiercest collection of people he’d ever seen.

  Some came out of their tents. One got up from a whetstone where he sharpened a deadly looking blade. A few just seemed to materialize from behind the trees. The big one with almost no teeth, giggling like a crazy man, seemed barely human; he looked like the embodiment of the evil that Nick only sensed under Finch’s handsome veneer. He was considering whether he could possibly escape by sprinting into the forest when the smell hit him.

  It was the smell of hot food. A thick man with a black beard was standing by the fire, stirring something inside a kettle. As the cook stared back at Nick, he brought the long-handled spoon to his nose and gave it a deep, wet snort. The spoon overflowed with steaming, meaty brown stew, dotted with yellow chunks of carrot. A few drips went off the spoon into his beard, joining the other debris that clung to the black whiskers.

  Nick winced as hunger pains knifed through his mid-section. His legs shook. He felt dizzy, as if he might faint.

  “Smells good, Pewt,” said Finch to the cook. “Make a bowl for our guest, won’t you?” The man named Pewt managed to nod and scowl at the same time. Nick watched, transfixed, as the big spoon went into the kettle three, four, five times, filling a wooden bowl to the rim with the thick stew. Pewt put the bowl on a crooked wooden table, where a fallen log served as a bench, then stepped back and folded his arms. Nick took one step toward the table, but Finch’s strong hand had him by the collar.

  “Hold on there, lad, that stew’s so hot you’ll burn your tongue.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Nick. He strained against Finch’s grip, never taking his eyes off the bowl.

  “I won’t hear of it! Tell you what, Nick. Do a little favor for me, then you can eat all you want. Show us if you can climb this tree over here” Finch pointed to one of the tallest trees in the forest, the ancient oak that marked the thieves’ lair. Surely magnificent in its prime, the tree was now a knotty, rotten behemoth. Parasitic vines swarmed over its dying limbs, and black ants spat sawdust from the holes in its trunk.

  Nick knew what the cruel man meant: If he didn’t climb the tree, there would be no meal. Finch released him and stood up, putting his hands on his hips. He dared Nick with his eyes to decline the challenge.