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 grass. 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.
The great, fat, bearded man who had had his teeth punched out staggered around for a few moments, wiped the blood from his face, clenched his fist, wound up, and returned the favor.
This continued for a good many minutes. The children watched in horror.
“They look huge . . .” Jack whispered in awe.
“Giant . . .” Jill agreed.
“Not giant,” whispered the frog. “Giants. Those are giants.”
Neither child asked how the frog knew this, for as soon as he had said it, they knew it was true.
“I’ll go talk to them,” whispered Jack.
“WHAT?” cried the frog.
“What?” hissed Jill, not quite as loudly.
“Maybe they want to be my friend,” Jack murmured.
Jill and the frog looked at Jack like he was crazy. They were just about to tell him so, in fact, when he stood up and started for the giants.
“Jack!” Jill spat. “Stop!”
“Come back!” cried the frog.
But Jack was already walking toward the giants as if in a trance.
He had not gotten more than a few paces closer, though, when the giants suddenly wiped their bloody faces on their sleeves, turned, and trooped up a tall, thin, white staircase that led directly into a hole in the face of the cliffs. In a matter of moments, they were gone.
Jack hurried forward. Jill, reluctantly, picked up the frog and followed him.
Little Jack found himself at the base of the tall, narrow staircase that led into the cliff. He could see, at the top, a round door. Above the door ran gold lettering which read, THE CAVE OF HEROES. Before the door stood a tall, thin giant with a gaunt face and a long beard and a shining shirt of mail.
Jack gazed up at him. “Hello?” he called.
The tall, thin giant did not stir.
“Can I come up?” Jack called again.
Jill arrived at his side. “Jack!” she hissed. “What are you doing?”
But Jack was staring, fixedly, up the narrow staircase.
Jack stepped onto the first stair. The sky suddenly shook with the booming voice of the gaunt giant.
To enter here ye must be brave,
and do what no man dare:
Enter into our killing cave
And face to face encounter fear.
Little Jack nodded his head. “I’m brave!” he called up to the giant.
Jill said, “Jack! Be quiet!”
But Jack took another step up the stairs.
In response, the giant guard boomed out:
A band for heroes only—
But join us, brave one! Try!
Many before have tried to, too,
And one by one each one has died.
“I can do it,” answered Jack.
“ARE YOU CRAZY?” the frog shouted. He looked to Jill. “Does your cousin have a problem or something?”
Jack took another step up the stairs.
Again, the guard bellowed to the sky:
Who shall submit his life to us?
Who shall sever his life’s left hand?
Who shall place his final trust
In our unbreakable band?
“I will!” cried Jack.
“What are you doing?” Jill exclaimed, grabbing him by the sleeve. But Jack jerked his arm away and took another step up the stairs. And then another. And then another. Up, and up, and up, until he was standing directly in front of the giant. Jack came up to the middle of his thigh.
“What is he thinking?” whispered the frog, staring in abject terror.
Jill could only shake her head.
* * *
Do you have any idea what Jack is thinking right now?
No?
Me neither.
But of course, when I was Jack’s age and saw people I took for giants, I never understood half the things I did either.
* * *
Suddenly, the gaunt giant guard seemed to notice Jack. He bellowed, “Who volunteers to taste fear and feel death?”
“I do,” Jack replied, in his bravest voice. “Me. Jack.”
Jill and the frog could only watch in horror.
“Jack, will you subject yourself to fear?”
Jack swallowed hard. “Yes,” he said.
“Will you enter the band and never flee, even to the point of death?”
Jack inhaled swiftly. Jill stared.
Jack gazed at the giant’s long face, his gray beard, his dead eyes.
Please, Jill thought. Don’t.
“I will,” said Jack.
“Then enter,” said the guard. And he turned and led Jack into the towering white cliff.
* * *
Jack stood in a great hall. It stank of the sweat of enormous men. The walls were hung with tapestries that showed giants slaying dragons and giants destroying cities and giants making off with damsels in distress. In the center of the hall stood a huge round table. Seated at the table were two dozen giants.
“Well, what have we here?” one of the giants bellowed, rising to his feet. He wore a thin golden crown on his enormous, shaggy head. He had a long brown beard, tiny teeth in blue gums (some of which, Jack could tell, had recently been knocked out), and small, blinking eyes. He, and all the other giants seated around the table, peered curiously at little Jack.
“The boy, Jack the Small, has asked to join the band,” announced the gaunt giant guard.
“Wonderful!” bellowed the one who wore the crown. “And that one?” he asked, and he waved fingers as thick as sausages at the door. Jack spun around. Standing at the top of the stairs, panting and staring, was Jill.
“It followed Jack the Small up the stairs,” said the guard.
“That’s Jill,” said Jack. “My cousin.” He smiled at her.
Jill thought, I’m going to kill him.
“Wonderful!” the crowned giant bellowed ecstatically. (Giants are always bellowing; sometimes they do it ecstatically and other times darkly and other times imperiously; it’s just very hard not to bellow when you’re a giant. You understand.) All the other giants beat the wooden table with their powerful fists. “Be welcome! I am King Aitheantas. And these are the giants of the Cave of Heroes.” Then he pointed his huge sausage fingers at each one and named them. Jack didn’t catch many of the names. The guard was called Meas. There was an enormously fat one called Brod, whose stomach tumbled out over his belt in giggling lobes. And there was a
skinny, young-looking one with big front teeth, whom King Aitheantas called Bucky. Bucky smiled at Jack. Jack returned the smile.
“Now,” bellowed King Aitheantas, “you wonder what giants such as we might want with such a pygmy as thee?”
In fact, Jack had not wondered. But Jill said, “Yes.”
The king announced, “We do not judge courage by size, do we?”
“No!” bellowed the giants. Jack grinned. Bucky flashed him a thumbs-up.
* * *
Yes, “thumbs-up” existed Once upon a time. Nowadays it means, “Good job,” or, “You’re okay with me.” Back then, it generally meant, “My friends aren’t going to kill you.”
“But we must know,” continued King Aitheantas, “if you are brave. You must pass harrowing tests if we are to let you join the band.”
Jack said, “I will pass them.”
“What happens if he doesn’t?” Jill demanded.
King Aitheantas raised his eyebrows at Meas, the guard. Meas bellowed imperiously, “He dies. And so do you. The secrets of the band shall not be revealed to the world!”
Inside Jill’s blanket, the frog fainted.
“First test, boulder throwing!” bellowed King Aitheantas.
“Huzzah!” bellowed the rest of the giants.
Meas left the hall to get the boulders.
The giants stood up from the great table and came and crowded around Jack, greeting him warmly. They shook his hand and slapped him on the back and welcomed him to the band.
“He’s not a member yet!” Aitheantas reminded them.
“A formality! A formality!” one of them bellowed with a smile, pounding Jack on the back until he fell over.
The giants’ hair was long and tangled, and some wore beards or great mustaches, while others were clean shaven. All had big rough noses and lips, and small, squinty eyes. They blinked a lot, as if their eyesight were poor.
Brod, the fat one, shouted, “Show us a muscle!” Jack obliged and Brod laughed and slapped him on the back, knocking him over again. Bucky took on a conspiratorial whisper and told Jack a joke and they both laughed, even though Jack didn’t get the joke at all. Bucky shot Jack a grin and pointed at him with his finger. Jack grinned and pointed right back.
Soon, all the giants were grinning at him. “Oh, you’ll be fine!” they bellowed. “Fine! Quite an impressive pygmy after all!”
And, all of a sudden, Jack didn’t feel so much like a pygmy anymore. He felt, in fact, like he had always hoped to feel among Marie and the boys, and never had.
He turned and flashed a smile at Jill.
But little Jill had her arms crossed and was watching the scene from under furrowed brows. Jack thought he could see the frog, hiding under the blanket, trembling.
Then all the giants moved off to one side, and Jack saw that Meas had placed three boulders in the center of the hall. Not just any boulders. Enormous boulders. Humongous boulders. Boulders roughly the size of Jack’s house, sitting there in the middle of the great hall. Jack’s eyes bulged from his head.
“Not so bad, eh?” bellowed Bucky.
Jack glanced at Jill. She shook her head as if to say, “I told you.”
A giant with thick, muscular arms walked up to the first boulder, bent at the knees, wedged his huge, meaty hands under the great stone, and heaved. The boulder leaped into the air, rose thirty feet above the giant’s head, and then fell back to the floor with a deafening crash.
The giants roared in approval.
Another giant walked up to the second boulder. He wedged his great thick hands beneath the boulder, bent his knees, and heaved. The boulder shot forty feet into the air and then slammed back to the floor, shaking the entire hall.
The giants erupted with bellows of glee.
Jack stared at the boulders. He looked around at the giants’ faces. They were grinning at him. He swallowed hard and approached the third boulder.
He bent his knees.
He pushed his hands under it as far as they would go.
He lifted.
He lifted some more.
He lifted even more than that.
The boulder, of course, did not budge. At all.
His arms and back and hands aching, Jack stepped away from the great rock and looked around.
The giants were not smiling any longer.
“Go ahead,” said King Aitheantas. “Throw it in the air.”
Jack’s throat felt dry. “I can’t,” he said.
“You’d better,” bellowed Aitheantas, “or your life is forfeit.”
Jack winced and tried to wipe away the sweat that was pouring into his eyes. “What does ‘forfeit’ mean again?” he asked.
“It means you die!” cried Bucky. “Now lift it!”
Jack hurriedly stuck his hands underneath the boulder. He bent his knees. He heaved.
And heaved.
And heaved.
Nothing.
When he staggered away from the stone this time, the giants were staring at him balefully. “You said you were brave!” bellowed Aitheantas.
“I am!” cried Jack, his voice wilting in his throat. “I’m just not strong enough!”
“Courage is strength! Strength is courage! Boy, your life is ours!” Aitheantas cried.
“Wait!” shouted Jack. “Wait! Let me try again! Let me try another test!”
Aitheantas had started moving toward Jack. But the little boy’s pleading cries made him pause. Slowly, he said, “Shall we let him try another test?”
The hall was deathly still. At last, Brod said, “Let him break sticks!”
“Huzzah!” bellowed the other giants.
Aitheantas nodded. “Then break sticks he shall. Meas, fetch the sticks.”
Jack exhaled. They saved me, he thought. I can break a few sticks. And he looked at Jill as if to say, “See? They’re my friends after all.”
Jill glowered at him and slowly shook her head from side to side.
When Jack saw the sticks, he nearly fell over. They were tree trunks. Three tree trunks. Bound together with thick, heavy rope. Meas deposited them in the middle of the chamber. Then he rolled the boulders away.
“Go ahead, boy!” bellowed Aitheantas. “Break ’em!”
Jack walked reluctantly up to the tree trunks. He gazed at them. He whispered, “Do I have to?”
“Oh, yes,” said Aitheantas.
In a very small voice, Jack asked, “Can I just give up now and leave?” He sounded like he might cry.
“Oh, no,” said Aitheantas. The hall was totally silent now. The giants’ tiny eyes followed Jack closely.
Jack reached out his arms and tried to wrap them around the tree trunks. They barely reached halfway around. He tried to sit on the trunks. That did nothing. He got up and jumped on them. They didn’t even creak.
Jack’s hair was soaked with sweat, and his lips were trembling. The giants’ faces were dark and terrible.
“Well,” said Aitheantas, “you know the rules.”
“No!” Jack whispered. “Let me live! Please!”
“Oh, we’ll let you live,” said Aitheantas.
“You will?”
“Yes. Until after dinner. Then we’ll kill you and eat you for dessert.”
“HUZZAH!” bellowed the giants.
* * *
Jack sat huddled in a corner, crying quietly. Jill’s arm was around his small shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered.
“What were you thinking?” the frog hissed through Jill’s blanket.
Jack buried his head deeper in his arms.
But Jill was watching the giants. Her eyes traveled to the door. It was locked and barred. She looked back at the giants, with their huge
bellies, their thick faces, and their tiny, watery eyes.
They sat around their enormous table. Heaped upon it was a feast of fowls: geese and hawks, kites and eagles, merlins and jays; roasted, panfried, boiled in blood, chopped up, blackened. The smells of roasted flesh and dripping fat wafted through the hall.
The giants were just about to tuck in when Bucky said, “I am about as hungry as any giant has ever been, I reckon.”
At this, Brod, the very fat giant, pushed back from the table and chuckled. “Well, Bucky, that sounds like a challenge to Brod.”
And, because no giant-hero can turn down a challenge when offered, Bucky replied, “If it’s a test you want, it’s a test you’ll have. Can you eat more than me?”
Brod laughed and grabbed his huge stomach.
“Your belly’s big,” replied Bucky, “but that just means I have more room to grow!”
The other giants huzzahed the brave words and banged on the table. But King Aitheantas said, “Bucky, you’re a whelp, and Brod, you’re a coward to challenge such a whelp. If you can outeat me, then I’ll be impressed.”
“Or me!” shouted another giant.
“Or me!” bellowed another. Soon all the hall was a cacophony of giant voices, all crying to participate in the challenge. Meas went off to get something called the Bowl of Never Ending, for the tableful of fowl would have been no more than an appetizer to a challenge such as this.
Jill gazed at the giants howling for the commencement of the challenge. Then she took the frog out of her pocket and handed him to Jack.
“Give me your belt,” she said.
“What?”
“Now.”
He looked at her like she was crazy. But Jill was still staring at the giants. As he took off his belt, Jill wrapped her ratty brown blanket all the way around her, and then she took Jack’s belt and cinched it so tight she could barely breathe. Jack watched her, befuddled. Jill stuck out her chin and walked to the giants’ table.