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very very very very very very very smelly.”
    She cocked her head at him, thinking.
    “Also,” he added, “there are salamanders.”
    “Salamanders?”
    “They’re terrible. Trust me.”
    Little Jill couldn’t help but grin at the frog. She noticed that he had only three legs. The trees in the wind sounded like waves above their heads. At last, she said, “Okay.”
    “Okay!” cried the frog. “Where to?”
    Jill thought for a minute. And then she said, “To my cousin’s house.”
    “Excellent,” said the frog. And then he said, “But do you think you should put some clothes on first?”

CHAPTER THREE
    Jack and Jill and the Beanstalk

    M
arie had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb.
    Marie had a little lamb whose fleece was black as coal.
    “Stop following me!” shouted Marie.
    Everywhere that Marie went, Marie went, Marie went,
    Everywhere that Marie went the lamb was sure to go.
    “Get away from me!”
    It made the children laugh and play, laugh and play, laugh and play,
    It made the children laugh and play to see the lamb follow.
    “Nobody wants you here!”
    In a little village on the outskirts of the kingdom of Märchen, the boys had invented this song. They sang it every time they saw the little lamb. And every time they sang it, everyone would laugh.
    Everyone, that is, except a little boy named Jack.
    Jack, you see, was the lamb.
    ----
    Once upon a time, many years before, a prince left the Castle Märchen, left his kind father the king and his bratty little sister the princess, and went out to live among the poor folk.
    He did not want to live a soft life, with servants and bedspreads and tiny spoons for tea. He wanted to live a vigorous life, a hard life: to milk his own cows, chop his own wood, buy and sell like a peasant-man does. And so he did. And he lived like that for many years, until his hands grew hard as his life.
    He married a fine woman, and she had a child—with big dark eyes and curly hair as black as coal. But then the woman passed away, and the man was left all alone with the little boy. He tried to raise that boy with all the vigor and hardship that a peasant’s life required.
    He tried, and tried, and tried, but it didn’t quite work.
    The boy, you see, was a dreamer.
    “Where are the chickens?” his father bellowed one day. “Where are all the chickens?”
    “I wanted to see them fly, Papa!” the little boy said. “But they don’t fly too good. And then a fox ate them, ’cause he was hungry.” The boy smiled up at his big, strong father. His father felt little veins popping all over his forehead.
    Another time, the boy put on his father’s finest clothes and went swimming in the lake. Without knowing how to swim. The boy, luckily, was saved. The clothes, on the other hand, were not.
    Yet another time, the boy invented a song. It went, “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick.” Because the boy’s name was Jack. Then he actually tried to jump over a candlestick. He knocked it over. The house burned down. Completely.
    As the years went by, Jack remained a dreamer. But he became something else, too. He became a follower.
    A few years after the candlestick incident, the little boy walked into his (new) house weeping. “Jack!” his father cried, “Jack! What’s happened?” Jack’s eyes were red and swollen, and his cheeks and arms and neck and ears were all red and bumpy and swollen, too. Jack, still crying, told his father that the boys from the village had given him a plant that would make him strong as an ox and brave as a lion. All he had to do was rub it all over himself. So he did. But it hurt and itched and he didn’t want to be strong as an ox and brave as a lion if it hurt this much. Jack’s father put Jack in a tub of ice water. “Before you rub a plant all over yourself, boy,” his father told him, “make sure it isn’t poison ivy.”
    It was after this incident that the famous song was invented:
    Marie had a little