"Surely can," replied the old woman.
Jill squinted her eyes uncertainly.
"And you, dearie," the old woman smiled at her. "How about we make you into the most beautiful girl in the kingdom? Would that please you?"
Jill caught her breath.
"Her? Beautiful? Not possible," said Jack. Jill hit him.
The old woman chuckled. The darkness was becoming heavier, but her pale eyes shone all the more brightly.
Jill looked from Jack to the old woman. At last, the little girl said, "You can"t really . . ."
"But I can, my dear. If you wish it. Do you?"
Jill stole another glance at Jack, and then she nodded fiercely. Even after the silk, and the procession, she wished for this. More than anything.
"Good," said the old woman. "You won"t be sorry. Now, before we grant you these gifts, before we change your very lives, you"ve got to agree to do something for us in return. Nothing too onerous. A small favor. Just so we"re even."
At this moment, under the spell of the old woman"s words, Jack and Jill would have agreed to anything.
"We just need you to run and fetch us a gla.s.s."
"A gla.s.s?" asked Jill.
"That"s easy," replied Jack. "Where is it?"
"Well," said the old woman. "It"s lost. It"s been lost for a little while now. But if you can find it, Jack, we will make you admired, and Jill, we will make you the beauty of the kingdom."
"You swear?" Jack asked.
The old woman"s grin stretched across her wide, smooth face. "I swear on my very life," she said. "Now will you swear on your very lives to get us this gla.s.s?"
"Okay," said Jack.
The old woman looked at Jill. "And you?"
"Don"t do it!" the frog hissed from deep inside the blanket.
Jill hesitated.
The old woman, in a voice as low as the wind, said, "If you swear to get that gla.s.s, I will swear to make you as beautiful as you have ever dreamed of being."
And then Jill said, "Okay."
The woman turned her pale, glowing eyes on Jack. "Now, my boy, will you give me that bean?"
"How did you know about . . . ?" Jack stammered.
The woman smiled and held out her hand. Jack, watching her carefully, placed the bean in her wrinkled palm. The bean glowed in the bone-white light of the moon.
"Give me your thumbs," said the old woman. Jack and Jill stuck out their thumbs. The old woman plucked one of her thin, silvery hairs from her head. Then she took the end of her hair and poked Jill"s thumb with it. Jill winced. A bead of blood appeared. The old woman did the same to Jack. Then to herself.
Then she scooped a handful of earth from the ground with long, hard fingernails, and placed the white bean, still shimmering by the light of the moon, in the earth. She held her thumb over the bean. She motioned for the two children to do the same. They did.
"I swear on my life," she said.
"I swear on my life," said Jack.
"I swear on my life," said Jill.
Three drops of blood spattered the white bean. Then the old woman covered the bean again with black soil.
"As soon as I"m gone," she said, "this beanstalk will grow to the sky."
"What?" said Jack.
"And when it does," the old woman smiled, "you must climb it."
"Why?" Jill objected.
"To find the gla.s.s!"
"Your cup is in the sky?" said Jack.
"It"s not a cup," the old woman corrected him. "It"s a gla.s.s. A looking gla.s.s. A mirror. In fact, it is called the Seeing Gla.s.s, and it is very old, and very important. In fact, it might be the most important and the most powerful looking gla.s.s in the history of the world."
Jack and Jill stared at the old lady like maybe she was a little bit insane.
Then Jill asked, "And it"s in the sky?"
The old woman, to the children"s great surprise, laughed. "I don"t know! It has been lost for a thousand years!"
"What?" cried Jack. "So what if we can"t find it?"
"You swore on your life," said the old woman. "If you can"t find it, you die."
"What?" cried Jack again.
"What?" cried Jill.
"What?" cried the frog from inside Jill"s blanket.
"What do you think swearing on your life means?" the old woman exclaimed. "Silly gooses." She smiled at them sweetly. "Get the Seeing Gla.s.s, or you will die. And now, good-bye!"
And without another word, the old woman made a movement toward the trees-and was gone.
The frog poked his head out of Jill"s blanket and looked up at the children.
"That," he said, "was stupid."
CHAPTER FOUR.
The Giant Killer Once upon a time, there was a beanstalk.
It started as a tiny shoot, peering up from the black soil where the bean had been planted, tender and green in the bright moonlight. Next it was a plant, small but st.u.r.dy. Then it was the size of a young tree.
All in a matter of seconds.
Soon, the beanstalk was as thick and as tall as an oak. And still it grew and grew and grew. Thick branches began to shoot out from its trunk, one every few feet, twisting upward around the great green stalk.
A little boy named Jack looked at a little girl named Jill.
"Don"t do it," warned a three-legged frog named Frog. "Don"t even think about it."
Jack took hold of a thick branch in his hands. He pulled himself onto the stalk. The branch held his weight easily. Above their heads, the beanstalk climbed and climbed and climbed, far out of sight.
"Come on," Jack said. "Let"s go find that crazy old lady"s gla.s.s."
"Care-ful . . . care-ful . . . careful . . . careful . . . careful, careful . . . careful careful . . . carefulcarefulcarefulcareful . . . WATCH OUT!"
Jill grabbed hold of the sprout just above her head and pulled herself up. The frog clutched desperately at the brown blanket with his toes, staring down at the tiny dot that used to look like Jack"s house. The sun was just rising, slanting its yellow rays over the misty landscape below. Jill reached out her hand for the next sprout.
"Care-ful . . . care-ful . . . careful . . . careful . . . careful, careful . . . careful careful . . . carefulcarefulcarefulcareful . . . WATCH OUT!"
Jill pulled them up to the next sprout and turned to the frog. Her words were very clipped when she said, "If you don"t shut up, I will drop you."
"Right," said the frog. "Sorry," said the frog. "Okay," said the frog. He tried breathing.
"Why don"t you look up?" Jill suggested. "Instead of down?"
"Up? Up! Yes," said the frog. "Look up." He looked up. Then he glanced back down at the green fields, the little house, the tiny specks of cattle in the distance. "Care-ful . . . care-ful . . ." Jill gritted her teeth and concentrated on not hurling the frog to his death.
Jack was sweating, though the air was much colder up here than it had been on the ground. He looked down at Jill, and then way, way below her, to the buildings of his village. They looked tiny. So tiny. He swept his eyes out across the miniature landscape. The castle was off in the distance, tiny turrets rising like a gingerbread fort. There were swaths of mottled woods shrouded in mist, with shining rivers winding through them. He took a deep breath.
He had been right. The bean was magic. The boys had been wrong to laugh. Marie had been wrong. Jack turned and gazed into the belly of white clouds overhead.
"Where does this end?" Jill called from below.
"Are you tired?" Jack called back.
"Tired of this frog having a heart attack every time I reach for the next branch."
"Carefulcarefulcarefulcareful . . ."
Jack pointed at the clouds. "I don"t know. Up there?" Jill nodded.
The thick cloud cover seemed to grow bigger and bigger above them as they climbed. Jack approached the belly of the sky, and wisps of water blanketed his face, leaving trails of dew on his cheeks and neck.
Water vapor began to clog their lungs. Jack felt like he was choking. Jill took heaving breaths. A few more feet, and they could see nothing. Gray, gray all around them, as if this part of the world had no color at all, and only a faint wetness and a cutting coldness and a swaying back and forth, back and forth.
"I can"t see!" the frog cried. "I can"t see and it"s cold and it"s wet and I can"t see! I can"t see and I don"t want to DIE!"
Jill"s teeth were chattering. "Frog," she said, "be quiet. Please."
"We"re going to die, we"re going to die, weregoingtodieweregoingto . . ." the frog began repeating.
The gray around them was becoming less gray and more white. The cold was not so cold, the wet not so wet. Up, and up, and suddenly Jack felt an unexpected warmth on his face, as if he were getting close to the stove in his kitchen. The gray was now all white, and the white was becoming wispier and wispier.
And then Jack"s head emerged from the clouds.
He gasped.
Jack did not blink as he climbed up to the next branch, nor as he reached his arm out onto the blanket of clouds that surrounded him, nor even as he found that the clouds held him up. He did not blink once. He just stared.
Behind him, Jill pulled herself upwards, her arms shaking with strain, the sweat pouring down her face. She gave one last heave, and then she was above the cloud level.
She saw Jack, standing on the clouds. And then she saw what he was staring at.
"Oh . . ." she said.
Stretching out far, far into the distance was a line of towering white cliffs, undulating in and out before an endless expanse of the purest, deepest blue she could ever have imagined. The white cliffs, a thousand feet high if they were an inch, were topped with green tufts of high gra.s.s. Below the cliffs, between them and the pure blue sky, ran a long, smooth cloud beach, against which the blue of the sky gently broke like waves.
Jill gazed down the perfect white sky beach. She felt dizzy. It went on, quite literally, forever.
Jack, Jill, and the frog knelt among the clouds. They had walked for an hour down the strand of sky, marveling at the strangeness of it. But now they had stopped, for they had come upon something even stranger.
Just ahead, enormous men were punching each other, repeatedly, in the face.
"What are they doing?" Jill whispered.
A great, fat, bearded man clenched his fist, wound up, and knocked the teeth out of another great, fat, bearded man"s mouth.