Read The World Above for Free Online Page B

me, don’t you? There now. It’s going to be all right.”
    “There’s some food on the sideboard,” I said to Jack. Snatching up the axe, I went out into the night and closed the door behind me.
    When I came back, Jack and Mama were seated across from each other at the table. The loaf of bread Mama had baked was half eaten. The cheese was gone. The goose was wrapped in a blanket and tucked into an old apple picking basket beside my mother’s feet. It seemed to hold its head up a little more strongly, I thought.
    “Gen,” Jack said as I came in. I returned the axe to its place near the stove. Chopping down the beanstalk had been easier than I expected. Now that Jack was once more safe in the World Below, it was almost as if the beanstalk had
wanted
to be chopped down.
    “Mama made pie! If you want a piece, you’d better come and cut it now. The only time I can remember being as hungry as this was after I climbed
up
the beanstalk.”
    “Is everything all right?” my mother asked. It was a general enough question, but I knew what she meant. There’d been nobody on the beanstalk when I chopped it down. No one trying to follow Jack back to the World Below.
    “Fine,” I replied. I approached the table, and Mama cut me a slice of pie.
    “Hey, wait a minute,” Jack said, as if he’d suddenly realized something. “I thought there wasn’t any sugar. How can there be pie?”
    “A mother has to have some secrets,” Mama said with a smile.
    “Jack,” I said, pulling the plate with my slice of pie on it toward me. It was a large piece, I was happy to note. “Shut up and eat. Or if you have to talk, tell us about the World Above. I know the plan was to try and reclaim the wizard’s gifts, but I never dreamed you would do it so quickly. How did you manage it?”
    “I didn’t, not really,” Jack confessed. He took an enormous bite of pie, chewing slowly as he savored the taste. It was apple, his favorite and mine. “It was Shannon and Sean.”
    “Shannon and Sean?” my mother asked sharply. “Who are they?”
    Jack dished up another forkful of pie. “Sean is a giant, and Shannon is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, Mama. They’re brother and sister, though you’d never know it to look at them. Shannon’s not much taller than Gen is, while Sean towers over me. They live in the castle that used to be Duke Roland’s. It’s kind of a long story.”
    I took a bite of pie. It was perfect, simple as it was. And all of a sudden I found myself afraid. What if there was nothing as wonderful yet simple as this in the World Above? Mama wanted us to return to the World Above to reclaim all our family had lost, not least of which was a kingdom and a crown.
    But would returning to the World Above take things away as well? Things we wouldn’t even know were valuable until after they were gone? Like the ability to sit together in the kitchen, enjoying a well-made piece of pie.
    “Tell us your story, Jack,” my mother said.
    And so Jack began to tell of his journey up the beanstalk into the World Above.

 

S EVEN
     
    “I climbed almost all day,” Jack said. “Or at least I think I did. It was almost dark by the time I reached the World Above. And the funny thing was that I ended up in a cornfield, just like where I’d started out. I even had one moment where I thought I’d gone terribly wrong somehow and had ended up back in the World Below.
    “Then I saw Sean. After that, I was pretty sure I was in the right place.”
    “But why would Guy de Trabant go to all the trouble to steal our father’s castle only to abandon it to a family of giants?” I inquired.
    “I asked Sean that very question,” Jack answered, as he took another bite of pie. “He couldn’t say, for certain. He was just a baby when his family first moved in. Sean and Shannon’s father, Clarence, was the giant Guy de Trabant chose.”
    “Perhaps de Trabant couldn’t live with himself,” I surmised. “He couldn’t bear to live