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the stove. By the time we tumbled into bed that night, I was so tired that I had no choice but to sleep soundly. Yet all through the night, I dreamed of beanstalks.
    On the second day, I worked in the kitchen vegetable garden, just as I did every autumn. Turning over the soil in the beds, trying to inspire the dry soil with my care so that better times might come. My mother stayed in the kitchen, making the little we had go as far as possible, working the only kind of magic she had ever been able to conjure up in the World Below.
    The shadows lengthened until at last it was too dark for me to stay outdoors any longer, until my mother had to light the lamps and cover the dishes of food she’d prepared, and still Jack had not come home. I washed my hands and we sat together in the kitchen, making a meal of cheese and bread and apples.
    How much longer?
I wondered. How long did it even take to reach the World Above?
    How long before Mama and I decided that Jack was in trouble? How long before one of us had to go up after him to find out what was wrong?
    After supper, I washed the dishes. By mutual yet silent consent, Mama and I remained in the kitchen. Mama brought out her sewing, while I prepared a goose quill pen and set to making a list of what I hoped to plant next spring—and the neighbors from whom I hoped to acquire the seed to do so. Then I added a third column: what I might be able to barter for the seed, as it seemed unlikely we’d be able to pay for it. The scratch of the sharpened quill against the paper was the only sound in the room.
    “What are you doing, Gen?” my mother asked finally.
    Her voice sounded rusty, as if she’d forgotten the use of it in just one day.
    “I’m making a list,” I answered, hoping to discourage further discussion. I was pretty sure my mother was hoping we wouldn’t still be here in the spring. She was hoping we’d be back where she thought we belonged—in the World Above.
    Mama sighed. “I can see that you’re making a list,” she said mildly. “I was hoping you’d care to share what kind.”
    I explained. My mother’s hands paused, her needle poised above the sewing. Then she plunged the sharp point into the fabric.
    “You’re planning pretty far ahead, aren’t you?”
    Somebody around here has to
, I thought.
Someone willing to admit we might all still be living here next spring
.
    “I have to, Mama,” I said instead. “It’s my nature.”
    Mama set her sewing down on the table and reached across its smooth, scrubbed surface to lay a hand on my arm.
    “I know it is, sweetheart. Your father was just the same.” She sighed again, and I thought it sounded sad this time. “Perhaps I should have told you before now.”
    I felt a strange tightness wrap itself around my chest.
    “You hardly ever talk about Papa at all,” I said. “Except in your bedtime stories.”
    “I know,” my mother said quickly. “And I’m sorry for it. I didn’t mean
not
to speak of him, it’s just—”
    But what she would have said next I never knew, for at precisely that moment, the kitchen door flew open. Jack stood on the threshold. In one hand he clutched an all but empty sack. Cradled in the nook of his other arm was the sorriest excuse for a goose I’d ever seen in my life. My mother stood up so quickly, her chair tipped over backward.
    “Jack!” she cried. “Thank goodness you’re home! What have you done?”
    “What Gen and I planned that I would do, if I had the chance,” Jack said simply, though I could see the way his chest heaved as if he’d been running. He set the sack on the table with a faint
chink
and extended the goose toward my mother even as his eyes met mine.
    “Gen,” my brother said, “I wonder if you’d be so good as to go and chop down the beanstalk.”
    “Take the lantern,” my mother said as she reached for the bedraggled goose. “It’s dark. There, sweetheart,” she went on, as she took the exhausted creature into her arms. “You know