Because You Love to Hate Me(8)

Yes, the beans were expensive, and yes, my parents would probably blow two gaskets if they knew, but what else could I do? Take another walk around the castle and observe the practically nonexistent change of season? Visit the market and maybe catch a urine-soaked whiff of a new shipment of humans rolling by? Perhaps watch a jetliner roar past in the distance?

Safe. Boring. And no one around to complain to.

Not much came of the first bag of beans, so I admit I had high expectations for the second. Those beans were supposed to bring up a friend, an ear, a confidante. Someone to tell me about the world below, since I was too scared to see it for myself. You know how people in those old movies share their lives with one another? I guess I was expecting that. I was not expecting a beanstalk-riding thief. Especially one who thought it was a cool idea to shoot up the magick beanstalk and steal the Golden Goose Dad had won in the PowerGlobe raffle, which we sorely needed because even if you’re royalty, do you know how much it costs to magick a five-mile cloud in place?

And taking the Golden Goose and a bag of gold? That was just plain greedy. For folks like that, nothing’s ever enough.

Which is why, as I run sandpaper for the hundredth time across this bare wood frame that I’m going to transform into a child-sized leather chair and I hear the window latch, I know that it’s Jack.

He’s come back.





The basement windows near the ceiling have old latches, which I’m assuming is how he slipped in last time. I hear his tiny feet hit the stone floor, and he takes a few steps but then freezes.

I turn. This is only the second time I’ve been this close to a human before—I mean, one who is here of his own free will and not dirty and scared and confused.

In my best grim voice (because that works on TV), I say, “Jack.”

I don’t even know if that’s his name. Probably it isn’t. I just call him Jack because after he stole the bag of gold and the Golden Goose, all week long Dad couldn’t stop yammering about that little Jack shit who broke in. Mom actually ran after Jack during his getaway and saw him climb down the beanstalk and rub it three times, after which it shrank down to the earth below and out of reach.

“Don’t tell me the goose has stopped laying those twenty-four-karat eggs.”

“She’s gone,” Jack says. “I swear it.”

Jack has a BBC accent. British news, not Oliver Twist. Don’t know what he’s doing on the coast of Massachusetts.

“You took a big risk coming back up here. My mom said she’d skin you alive if you showed up again. You get caught and you’ll end up on someone’s plate by morning.”

“So—so it’s true, the stories. That you . . .”

“Eat people? I’m a vegetarian. Never ate a face and never will.”

“But the other giants . . . do they really eat babies?”

“Yeah, baby chickens, baby sheep, baby cows, baby whales—”

“You know what I mean,” he says. His gaze darts all over the basement, over the wicker baskets and the stone floors and damp walls, like I’ve got a bag of babies tucked away somewhere like a bunch of onions.

The thing is, giants do have a thing for babies, including baby humans. It’s something about the meat. Succulence.

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?”