The next morning I awoke to Martha in a frenzy. She was covered in mud which must have meant she was weeding the garden. I thought she would have woken me up to help, and at first I was annoyed.
"Scarlette!" she practically bellowed at me when I came into the kitchen. George was at work, and she was in a panic; and I was now deaf.
"Calm yourself Martha!" I said, louder than necessary. I didn't want her to shout at me again, or the deafness might be permanent.
"I'm sorry." She slumped into a chair in defeat and told me. "It's only that I have just ruined everything!" She started to panic, and I had to calm her down again.
"Please Martha," I said once she was breathing normally. "You need to tell me as calm as you can what's happened."
"I was weeding," she explained. "I knew that you would want to help, but you looked so restful that I couldn't help but leave you to your dreams. I was doing okay until the mice came." Giant mice were a bit of a problem. They were smaller than me, but the biggest were about the size of a Great Dane. They had big yellow teeth and little beady eyes that were sometimes red in color; nasty things. Some of them had learned to speak with the giants.
"Well, they were having a nice conversation. They were traveling, trying to see the giant world from end to end. I was eavesdropping and I stopped paying attention to the beans I was working around. I… I," she couldn't continue, bursting into another round of hysterics.
It turned out that she had cut off one of the bean pods.
"Before I could catch it, it slipped through a little hole in the clouds. They get thin in places, sometimes. As long as we're careful, nothing terrible happens," she said. "I've only heard the stories, legends of what happens when our kind mixes with your kind." She was crying again. "I'll go to jail I'll be executed… I'll ruin George's name. Who is going to care for him?"
"You won't go to jail Martha." I told her, stern enough that she stopped mid-sob. "I bet nothing will even happen. I mean, how big can beans get, right?" This was the wrong thing to say.
"I take very careful measures in my garden," she wailed. "A bean stalk that's left untended can grow exponentially!"
"It has to die sooner or later." I said, "Besides, what is a really tall stalk to anyone down there anyway, they won't care.
"I just know something awful will happen," she sounded half convinced.
"More like they will thank the gods for ending world hunger with a huge beanstalk and enough beans to feed the whole kingdom. You'll be a hero in their world!"
I would have passed her my handkerchief, but it wouldn't have been much good. Instead, I grabbed one of the blanket sixed napkins that her and George used during dinner and drug it over to where she was. She thanked me. Ducking down and covering my ears, she blew. It sounded like an orchestra that wasn't in tune, with the tubas all sitting out in the front. She blew twice more, then sniffed experimentally.
"You are right." She dotted her eyes and set the napkin down. "Well, I guess I had better go finish weeding the garden. I think there are some ripe tomatoes on the vine as well."
"Did you want my help?" I asked.
"Actually, one of the stones fell out of the wedding ring that George proposed to me with. I was wondering if you would take a look? You're so much smaller than me." She placed the ring on the table.
"Sure, I'll do what I can." I said as she picked up a ruby the size of my thumbnail. The ring itself was the size that a necklace would have been on me. "Could you bring me the repair kit?"
I was referring to George's eyeglass repair kit. It had several small screwdrivers inside it, as well as a me-sized mallet that I had added the first time they asked me to do a job that fit my size. This was the third stone that had come loose. I kept telling Martha that she should see a professional jeweler, but she informed me that I was twice as good for half the price (if you considered room and board half the price).
I set to work and she went back outside, bringing back in a basket full of vegetables in one hand and a few ripe tomatoes in the other. The she went back outside. I focused on the ring, first bending the holding pieces, then fitting the stone back in place. I was halfway through wondering where giants got their jewels. They obviously couldn't mine the clouds, and aside from living with George and Martha, I had never seen a gem of the size and quality that they owned; even among the family's jewels. The biggest gem was the one in mother's crown, and that was maybe a fourth the size of this one.
When Martha came back in, I gave her the ring and she exclaimed, and said that she might recommend me to work at the jewelers soon. Then she decided that she would be too lonely here at home without me and changed her mind. We started making lunch.
Jack whistled as he took the cow into town to sell. His mother was at home, tearing apart the house in one of her raves, looking for the gold china for the prince who had come to pay her a visit. Jack laughed to himself. Mom's disease was getting worse, and the doctor refused to come because Jack didn't have any money to pay him. Jack thought the whole situation was hilarious. Paying money for a doctor to tell him something he already knew – his mother was losing her marbles.
He decided to sell the cow anyway, because the cabinets were empty, and both he and his mom needed to eat. Not that she would eat anything ordinary. She tended to mix everything Jack prepared into one large pile of mush.
"Hello there lady," said the man passing Jack. He wasn't old, but he looked very odd. His teeth were crooked (the ones that were left anyway) and he had a few mismatched articles of clothing on his loose frame. "You taking Bessie there to market?" Jack couldn't place the accent.
"Yes," Jack answered warily. The man had that odd air about him that warlocks and fairies had when they disguised themselves in the mortal realm.
"May I save you some steps?" The man asked.
"What do you mean by that?" Jack asked back.
Out of his pockets, the man pulled three over-sized bean seeds. They were of ordinary shape and color, but each was about four times as large as a normal seed.
"What are those?" Jack asked.
"Magic beans," said the man without any more explanation than that.
"How much?" asked Jack.
"I'll trade ya' for Bessie," said the man.
Jack thought for a second, than handed Bessie's lead rope over to the man, taking the beans and shoving them into his pocket. The man grinned his weird smile and walked back the way he had come. Jack turned and did the same, thinking all the way. If bean seeds this size grew huge plants, he wouldn't have to pay for food ever again. If not, he could go to market again tomorrow with his mother's ancient wedding dress and a few of the silver spoons they had left; they wouldn't fetch as much as the cow, but surely he could rope some innocent girl into paying more than the dress was worth.
When he got home, his mother was talking animatedly to Aphrodite, and warned her son that growing giant beanstalks was a dangerous pastime. Jack ignored it. His mother was full of bizarre and coincidental information. He went straight to the tiny garden that was full of wilted stalks and planted the seeds, giving them some water before going back inside to attempt to get his mother into bed.