I still kept my promise! I promised last or this weekend! It's this weekend!

...Let's try two for two. The last chapter will be posted by this or next weekend (or, y'know, maybe Valentine's Day, because dennor Valentine's Day ftw)

Mathias learned very quickly that taking care of two teenage boys was much more expensive than taking care of himself.

Mathias could manage himself on three bowls of porridge a day, and Emil and Leon weren't especially picky, with the added bonus that Emil could cook more dishes than could Mathias. But Emil was growing, and Leon was growing (which was apparently some sort of surprise to Leon, due to certain curse circumstances that Mathias had only half understood), and even if they weren't growing, they were two more people than Mathias was used to feeding.

Of course, Mathias never regretted taking them in. His mother had died when he was born, and his father had died only a year before he was due to finish school. And it had seemed such a waste to stop attending school, even after he'd finished grieving his father, so he'd had to take out a loan from one Aldrich the next village over—apparently he was the new moneylender, having made a huge profit in some unknown business—to pay for his last year of school. But he'd never been much of a businessman, even if he now had the math and literacy to manage a business, so he'd survived on farming. It had been a lonely existence, one where he'd keenly felt the absence of his father.

Emil and Leon made his days better. He woke up eager to race Emil to the kitchen to make breakfast, and when he inevitably lost, he was happy to make small talk until Leon scrambled out of bed and Mathias had to stop pressing Emil for questions about his (beautiful) brother lest Leon feel left out. Then Leon tended the animals—some strange delight to him, did they not have cows where he came from?—and Emil tended the garden and the fields alongside Mathias, and now Mathias had enough time to finish even more wood carvings, and if he happened to try selling at the next village over to see how Lukas was doing, so much the better, right?

In the evenings, though, Leon and Emil would go off to see Arthur or Arthur would come to see them, leaving Mathias alone to take stock of their financial situation and see that if they kept up like this for much longer, not only could he not afford school for either of the boys, they soon might not be able to afford more than seeds. One bad harvest and they'd…well, Mathias would hope that Emil's botany spells would be up to task by the time that ever happened.

No, the matter was that they simply needed more money. Mathias wasn't about to rely on his new younger brothers to provide, when he should be the one providing.

It was in this less-than-great mindset that a foreigner caught him.

"Allo?" the foreigner asked. "Excuse me?"

Mathias startled out of his thoughts. He'd been sitting in the main village square on a stool he'd carved himself, trying to advertise other things he'd carved. "Right, sorry," he said. He stood up and rubbed the back of his neck. "See anything you like?"

"It is all so…charming," said the foreigner with a quick glance at his wares, "but I was actually hoping to ask you, one merchant to another, for some information." His accent wasn't one that Mathias had heard before, but "one merchant to another" sounded trustworthy enough.

"Oh? Sure, I'll try to help. I've been around the area!"

"Good, that's very good. I'm looking for a sorcerer."

"A…um." Mathias wracked his brain. He'd heard that word before, and if it was related to the one he was thinking of, he wasn't sure he wanted to respond in the affirmative. "Could you tell me what a sorcerer does?"

"Is that what's been causing my trouble?" the merchant asked, his voice getting quieter by the minute. As he leaned closer to Mathias, some of his long blond hair fell out of its knot. "Perhaps you have a different word for it here. I am looking for someone who does magic."

Mathias inhaled sharply despite himself. He'd been thinking of the right word after all. "Right," he said with a nervous laugh. "Well, uh, here we call those people wizards, or witches. Or mages."

"Mages," said the foreigner, testing the word out under his breath. "Yes, well, I am looking for a specific one."

"Oh?" Mathias's voice rose an octave. If it were Lukas, if it were Emil…

"He has blond hair," said the foreigner, "rather short, and very thick eyebrows."

Mathias's shoulders dropped, and he snorted.

"So you know him? Arthur?"

Mathias blinked. "I, uh, guess it depends what you want with him."

"Nothing more than to talk," said the foreigner, leaning back to a more public volume. "I have not seen him for a long time, and I wish to make amends."

"I dunno, he leads a pretty private life. I don't think he'd want people handing out his location."

The foreigner raised an—admittedly well-groomed—eyebrow. "You drive a hard bargain. Alright, what do you want?"

"What do you sell?"

The foreigner blinked.

"You're a merchant, right? 'One merchant to another'?"

"Ah. Right, right," the foreigner said, and started feeling at his pockets. Mathias frowned. What exactly did this man sell?

The thought occurred to him that, for this foreigner to be looking for Arthur, let alone to know what Arthur was, he might also be a—

"Aha!" said the foreigner, triumphantly pulling something out of his pocket with a closed fist. He opened it with a magnanimous gesture to reveal—

"Beans?" Mathias asked. He frowned at the foreigner. "You really don't think much of me, do you?"

"These are not just beans," touted the foreigner, looking almost hurt. "They are of my own invention, of course. Grow them in your garden, and you will find what you seek!"

"What do I seek?" asked Mathias, still a little grumpy that the foreigner thought beans were a decent trade for information about one of his—well, Arthur wasn't exactly a friend, but he shared something like custody over Emil and Leon, so he was partway to family.

"Wealth! Fame!"

"Fame," Mathias snorted. But a small part of him did wonder if wealth and fame were enough to get Lukas to…to what? Lukas had clearly trusted him enough to send his own brother to live with him, so did it make Mathias a bad person that he wanted to be more than a trusted friend? They had been such good friends as kids, and when Lukas had stop coming to the woods, when Mathias had been faced with the possibility of a life without him—and then to see him in the rain just two years ago, in his village, downtrodden but more handsome than Mathias could ever have imagined—

"Or the means to get other things," said the foreigner, with a slow wink that made Mathias suspect the man wasn't a mage so much as a mind-reader.

"Fine," said Mathias, "one bean, and if it works, then—"

"Ah ah ah," said the foreigner, closing his fist before Mathias could reach for a bean. "Three beans or it won't work, and I need the information first."

Alright, maybe he was a businessman at heart. "Fine, deal," said Mathias. He held out his hand to shake.

The foreigner transferred the beans to his other hand before shaking.

"So I don't know exactly where he lives," Mathias began, and the foreigner groaned. Mathias pressed on in a hushed voice. "But I can tell you that every Friday evening he comes to the edge of the woods, the southwest end, to pick up my little brothers. He usually takes the path skirting along the southwest edge of town, so you could probably intersect him on the way. If that fails, he has a cottage about two hours' journey into the woods."

The foreigner blinked. "That was barely worth one bean, but I suppose I have to give you all three, or else I won't have held up my end of the bargain." He frowned and deposited the beans, one by one, into Mathias's open palm. "Plant them as the sun sets, and check on them in the morning. Bring a sack."

"What will I need the sack for?"

"Whatever you take."

Well that sounded ominous. This plant could grow fruit, gold, jewels, or dung by that description.

The foreigner seemed to consider that explanation sufficient, because he was stepping away to leave.

"Wait," Mathias asked, taking a step away from his cart. "Who do I tell Arthur is coming for him, if he asks?"

The foreigner paused, as if considering whether to give him a false name. "Francis," he concluded. Whether that was his real name or not, Mathias couldn't say.

"You guys will never guess what I got today," said Mathias as he parked his cart of wares at their front door.

From the doorway, Leon eyed how untouched his merchandise was. "Not much?" he ventured. At now sixteen years old, he was becoming more sarcastic than he'd ever been. Beside him, fourteen-year-old Emil elbowed him to be polite.

"Not money," said Mathias. He'd been building up the idea of the beans in his mind, imagining the things that a mage friend of Arthur's might possibly do to them to make them worth as much he claimed. As a result, when he presented the beans proudly to his brothers, he wasn't expecting their faces to fall.

"…I guess there's one for each of us," Leon drawled after a moment.

"What did you trade for them?" Emil asked, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

"Uh…"

"Was it at least something small?"

"Well…it seemed small to me."

"One of the figurines?"

"Someone asked me where Arthur was."

"What?" Emil yelped.

"How do you know they were mage-friendly?" Leon asked.

"I think he was a mage. Probably. Otherwise why would he tell me these beans are worth money and fame?"

Leon and Emil looked at each other. Mathias got a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"I'm not stupid," he said defensively. "I'm pretty sure he was a mage! Or he said he wanted to make amends with Arthur, so isn't he at least an old friend?"

"Well I really hope so," said Emil, "because if something bad happens to him, there goes my only teacher."

"Is this about how I can't send you to school?" Mathias asked. Emil's tone hurt him more than he liked to admit. "Because you know I'm working on it, that's why I'm always in town trying to sell—"

"No, it's not about that," said Emil, but the weakness of his reply makes Mathias doubt him. "It's about how you just don't—understand how important being a mage is to me! It's one of the only things that connects me to Lukas, now that I know Aldrich is looking for me and I can't go visit him. And now you want to endanger the only other mage I know?"

"And what if I didn't?" Mathias retorted. "What if this really was Arthur's friend and he's safe to tell, and what if these are really magic beans? The mage promised me riches from these, you know." He gave the beans a rattle. "Maybe riches will help us save Lukas if magic can't."

"Who says magic can't?"

"Whoa, whoa," interrupted Leon. "When did we ever talk about saving Lukas?"

Mathias and Emil looked at each other. The idea had been so deeply ingrained in their minds, but neither of them had vocalized it before. Mathias for fear that he would seem too invested in a man he'd seen only once since childhood, and Emil—both of them, most likely—for fear that whatever scheme they concocted to get Lukas out of Aldrich's hands wouldn't be enough.

When neither of them spoke, Leon faked a yawn. "Right, well, I'm tired. Maybe we can talk about this in the morning."

"I'm going to plant the beans first," said Mathias.

"Is that smart?" asked Emil, crossing his arms.

"If I'm right, we have a chance at at least having enough," said Mathias, already strutting to a clear patch in the garden. Then, more quietly: "If I'm wrong…they're just beans."

He stepped gingerly over vines and leaves until he found a spot that Emil hadn't yet charmed for growth. Mathias wanted to know if these really were magic beans, if that foreigner really was a mage.

He made a cup-sized hole in the ground, dropped the beans in, and covered them in dirt with both hands. Should he water them? The foreigner hadn't said anything about watering them. He'd barely said anything about planting them.

Mathias stood up and wiped his hands on his trousers, feeling like he should say a prayer or a spell or something. Ultimately, the only word he could think of was: "Please."

He turned to go back inside.

Mathias woke the next day feeling as if he'd slept for a week—not in the well-rested way, but in the way when he'd drank too much wine and had a headache and bleary vision to show for it.

He didn't quite feel like racing Emil to the kitchen again, but lying in bed and feeling sorry for himself would only make things worse for him in the long run, so he stumbled out of bed, ignored the brief bout of vertigo, and stumbled to the kitchen.

Emil was leaning out of the open kitchen window.

"Thought you didn't wanna let flies in here?" Mathias asked, rubbing his eyes.

Emil didn't respond.

It would take just as much jostling for Mathias to push his head out beside Emil's as it would for him to go outside and stare for himself, so he did just that. He forgot to put on his shoes, and stepped extra carefully through the garden and around the side of the house to see—

A wall of green, as wide and thick as a silo.

The beanstalk absolutely ruined the tiny fence surrounding the garden, and pushed into the plough fields and even the house. It was vast and almost impossible to take in without taking a few steps back, which Mathias did as he craned his neck up to the sky.

He couldn't see where the vine stopped.

Emil turned his neck to face Mathias. "What did you do?"

Mathias's face slowly lit up. "I think I made us rich."

They pulled Leon out of bed and ate breakfast outside, barely noticing the flavor of the cheese in their bread or the coarseness of the dirt in the field as they stared at the girth of the beanstalk.

"So it's magic, then," said Leon, almost belatedly.

"The beans were," said Emil. "I don't know if the stalk is."

"Well you're the moss guy," said Leon, citing an inside joke that Mathias didn't get. "Go up and talk to it or something."

"You know I can do other magic now, right?"

"Even Mathias can do magic now, you know."

"Must be hard, being the only normal one after all this time."

"A couple centuries was enough for me, thanks."

"Can we just focus," said Mathias, "on the fact that I was right?"

"I'm still not sure this was worth giving information about Arthur," said Emil, but he was less angry about it than last night. "And we still have to know what's up there."

"The foreigner—Francis, he said his name was Francis—"

Leon snorted.

"What?" Mathias asked.

"You told Francis where Arthur is?"

"…Yeah? Is that good or bad?"

"A bit of both. They'll be busy for a while, I think."

"…Right…" said Mathias. "Well, anyway, Francis said to bring a sack for 'whatever I take'. But I don't see fruit or anything."

"Maybe you have to take the leaves?" Emil asked, taking a bite of bread and cheese. "They could have pretty good healing properties."

"Which would mean Lukas wouldn't have to work anymore…"

"I think the more important question," said Leon, "is how you're supposed to fit those leaves into a sack."

"Maybe he meant a potato sack?" asked Mathias. "One of the really big ones."

"At that point is it even a sack, though, or just a blanket?"

"You can't hold things in a blanket like you can in a sack."

"With leaves that size? A blanket would definitely be better."

"Guys?" Emil said cautiously.

"But you'd have to fold the corners over, and wouldn't that be as bad for the leaf as cramming it in a—"

"Guys," Emil pressed, and pointed Mathias and Leon to the fence surrounding their land.

Villagers had arrived.

"This has mage work all over it," murmured Emil.

"Get inside," Mathias said. A cold dose of reality had washed over him, and now his first instinct was protection. "Leon, you're with me."

Emil quickly scooped up the rest of their breakfast and walked as calmly as he could back inside, while Mathias and Leon sauntered to the villagers. One of Mathias's school friends, Lars, was the first to greet him.

"That's quite a crop, Mathias," said Lars with an abnormally skeptical expression.

"Yeah, can you believe it? I got these beans from a total stranger, and—"

"A wizard?" asked Lars.

"I mean, I'm not sure. But he said they were good beans, so I thought—"

"There aren't any wizards in our village," said Lars a little too evenly. "And I haven't heard of any passing through. Have you?"

"Like I said," said Mathias, his smile straining, "I got the beans from a stranger."

Lars and the other onlookers examined him and Leon. "Make sure that's something we don't have to worry about," said Lars finally. "The next village over has a wizard."

"And they're doing fine, aren't they?" said Leon from over Mathias's shoulder. Mathias frowned at him.

Lars looked at Leon. "I haven't seen you around before."

"Distant cousin," Leon said breezily. "Mathias wrote saying he needed help with the farm."

Lars examined Leon and then turned to Mathias, with a flickered glance at the beanstalk that dominated the skyline. "Look into that," he repeated, "and let us know." He left, although many of the other townspeople lingered to gawk or glare.

Mathias nodded and quickly escorted Leon back to the house, where Emil was waiting inside.

"I think I'm going to have to climb it," said Mathias without preamble.

"Are you sure?" asked Emil. "It's kind of…high."

"Maybe so, but if I don't do it and live to tell the tale, we're going to get more onlookers than we want here." Mathias paused. "And maybe intruders."

"Still sure these beans were a good idea?" Emil asked.

Mathias turned to the back of the door, where his empty seed sack lay hanging. He draped it over his shoulder. "I can only think of one way to find out."

The climb was hard.

Mathias had assumed it would be, given that it was an enormous beanstalk and climbing was not part of his daily exercise regimen, but beyond his aching arms, he grew more mentally tired with every foot of height he gained.

"I wish I'd finished breakfast," he grumbled, although food was really the least of his worries. At least, if he were brave enough to eat what he assumed were enormous versions of the magic beans, which he encountered as he climbed. Mathias was not that brave.

No, the real worry was falling. Vines were slippery things, although coarser when they were enlarged, and Mathias had to be aware of his grip and his footing at all times. After only a few minutes, he'd had to train himself not to look down. Only up, where a suspiciously thick layer of clouds blocked his view.

Mathias half wondered as he climbed if the villagers had been right, more so than the mages, and beyond the sky was really heaven. Maybe when the most powerful of the mages controlled the weather, they really only controlled the underside of God's floor.

Mathias had to entertain himself somehow.

The sun had nearly disappeared behind the layer of clouds up ahead when Mathias, aching and panting, finally reached the point where he could see no further above. When he looked forward he saw only the beanstalk, and when he looked around that, he saw horizon. The forest ended after a point, it appeared. He'd always thought it went on forever. He wondered which village was Lukas's.

Then he realized just how far he was seeing, and therefore how high he was, and had to take several puffing breaths before he pushed himself through the layer of clouds.

The clouds became thicker, thicker still, and discolored as he wiggled his body through them, until finally he emerged in—

Dirt.

The beanstalk ended in a tiny beansprout, in an enormous field of dirt, nearly exactly like the one he'd left at home. Except that now, compared to his surroundings, Mathias was the height of his boots on his feet—that is to say, much smaller than normal.

"Oh COME ON!" he shouted.

He silenced himself when he saw the house. It seemed as big as a mountain, although if it had been back home it would barely have been larger than Mathias's one-floor home. It looked nicely kept, which suggested…

Someone lived there?

Sure enough, when Mathias looked around, he saw shoeprints in the dirt. Most likely recent ones.

Subconsciously, he reached for the sack Francis had told him to bring. Where was the money supposed to come from? The dirt? The giant crops underground?

Was he supposed to become a burglar?

Well, best to find out. Mathias pulled himself away from the beansprout, patting it almost sentimentally. He righted himself and brushed the dirt off his clothes, and started walking in the direction of the farmhouse. His arms and shoulders throbbed in gratitude for the break, though Mathias knew there would most likely be more climbing ahead. He already dreaded it, but at least he wouldn't get vertigo this time. Hopefully.

After what felt like a mile but was no doubt less, Mathias arrived at the porch and hoisted himself up a step half his height. He wished he'd thought to bring some rope, and made a mental note to tell Francis if he ever saw him again. Mages probably didn't have to think of that sort of thing—they could probably levitate or something. God help him if Emil ever figured that one out, he thought with a wry chuckle to keep his spirits up.

Mathias sized up the front door. He supposed any knocking he tried would be too quiet for the inhabitants. He hoped they were generous, for all that Francis had promised.

At home, he always left the door unlocked. He pressed the door experimentally.

Unlocked.

Mathias slipped inside and closed the door behind him, and nearly stumbled at the whoosh of air from that simple action. Getting around was going to be tough. He looked around the entry area and saw two pairs of boots—so at least one person lived here, and maybe two or three. The entry opened into a sitting room with a plush-looking sofa, and a chair with a—

"What are you doing here?"

Mathias jumped.

The white lump on the chair shook itself and sat up, and revealed itself to be a chicken. The chicken extended its neck and perked its head.

"What is it? Is it the blond one again?" asked a different voice.

"It's a blond one," said…the chicken. Mathias thought it was the chicken. It was certainly opening its mouth like it was talking. But it sounded like a young boy, not the squawking lady tones he'd always imagined of a chicken. He couldn't see the origin of the other voice.

"Turn me around—let me see!" said the other voice.

With a flurry of feathers, the chicken leaped to the coffee table—easily twice as tall as Mathias, though he could see what stood on it because he stood so far away from it—and used its beak to roughly nudge a handheld harp in a half circle, until Mathias could see the statue of a young boy built into the harp's handle. The boy's face had a scar across it, which Mathias focused on until the face scowled at him.

"Well you're not the blond, I suppose," the harp snapped.

"I'm…sorry?" Mathias wasn't sure whether an apology was even being asked for.

"If you were the blond, I'd want a rematch. Look what he did to my face!" The harp-boy lifted one hand from his crossed chest to point at the scar across his nose and cheek.

"Oh, shush, Mama Tino said it makes you look cool," said the chicken, and now Mathias was sure that the chicken was talking. In another ruffle of feathers, the chicken tossed itself to the ground and approached Mathias. It was only just taller than Mathias, maybe his height and a half, but Mathias had never been so afraid of a chicken in his life.

"You didn't come with a weapon, did you?" the chicken asked. He sounded almost eager to hear a "yes". "The other blond did. That's how Erik got the scar."

"I…uh, didn't think I would need one," said Mathias as he finally found his voice. "I honestly came up here not knowing what to expect."

"It's a house," snorted the harp—Erik, most likely. "What is there to expect?"

"Well I wasn't expecting a house," Mathias snarked back.

"What did the blond man tell you?" asked the chicken, turning its head to one side in a way that Mathias might have called "cocking" if he were cheeky enough to go through with it.

"He just told me I'd find…er, wealth and fame."

"Wealth and fame," Erik scoffed.

"It sounded better when he said it."

"Well, the blond man did take an awful lot of gold coins, if that's what you mean," said the chicken.

"…Excuse me?"

"Gold coins," said Erik with a scoff, "Peter, he doesn't know what gold coins are, are they even worth giving to him?"

"Giving?" Mathias's pitch was raising by the second.

"That's what the blond man took," the chicken—Peter—explained. "They're not worth much to us here, just enough to afford cheese and jam and bread for Mama Tino and Papa Berwald, but the blond man said they're worth a lot where he's from." He tilted his head in the other direction. "Wanna see?"

"Could I?" Mathias was working very hard to keep his heart rate under control. This was what Francis meant by wealth and fame—he meant as much money as Mathias could carry, in the form of the largest coins he'd ever seen.

With one enormous leap that ruffled Mathias's hair more than it ever had been, Peter leaped onto a table to Mathias's right that Mathias hadn't noticed before, in what appeared to be a small kitchen. With his beak, Peter nudged open the metal top of a tin and emerged with a single coin, which he placed gently on its side and balanced under one scraggly foot, like a ball. Mathias could see the glint of gold from his spot on the ground.

"The blond man took one on his first visit, and then two on the second," said Peter.

"And the third visit he got nothing, because he scarred me and Papa Berwald heard," said Erik in such a fierce voice that Mathias understands it's meant to be a warning.

"Papa doesn't like us to dig into the savings, but Mama thinks it's a small expense," said Peter. "So how many do you want?"

"I can…" Mathias stammered. "I can just have some?"

"I mean, as long as you don't take anything else of ours."

Mathias turned toward Erik. He might have been pushing his luck, but he had to know if there's a catch. "Why did Fran—the blond man scar you?"

Erik and Peter shared a look.

"We'll give you two coins to take back the question," said Erik.

"Fine by me."

Peter kicked the first coin, the one he'd been displaying, off the table. It landed and rolled towards Mathias with a thundering noise.

Wait, he realized when the coin collapsed a few feet away from him. The thundering noise hadn't come from the coin.

Down a distant hallway that connected to the kitchen, Mathias heard footsteps. Peter looked over his shoulder—wing?—and immediately retracted his neck into his chest in a show of guilt. Mathias half thought to hide, but before he could find a good spot, the largest human Mathias had ever seen stepped into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes and blinking unimpressedly down at Peter.

"Sorry, Mama," said Peter bashfully. He hopped down from the table and fluttered to join the harp in the sitting area.

"Mama" scanned the floor until he spotted Mathias. Mathias stood frozen in his place. If he were anything less than scared for his life, he might have wondered if he should bow in the presence of such an enormous, threatening creature.

"Mama's" face broke into a soft smile. He sighed. "I suppose Francis has sent one of his friends, huh?" he said, not unkindly but at such a volume that Mathias still winced.

"I didn't realize I would be intruding," Mathias said, and when "Mama" held a hand up to his ear to signify he couldn't hear Mathias's tiny voice, Mathias had to shout: "He didn't tell me what I would find up here."

"Yes, that does sound like Francis," said "Mama" in a quieter voice. "Always about the dramatic flair." He took the few steps necessary before he kneeled down before Mathias. "I suppose introductions are in order," he said in his softest voice yet, at a volume that only barely hurt Mathias's ears. "I'm Tino." "Mama" Tino extended a finger. "What's your name?"

Mathias realized after a second that he ought to shake the finger. His hand only barely fit around Tino's fingertip. "I'm Mathias," he said, reminding himself to be loud, "and I'm sorry for intruding."

"It's fine," said Tino in a calm but quietly displeased way that said it was not fine, but he wasn't going to push it. "I know that you people Below have it rough, although, again, Francis and his dramatic flair."

"He said people were starving," piped up Peter from beside Erik. "Is that true?"

"For some people," said Mathias. "It's gotten better now."

"And what are you planning to do with this money?" asked Tino, looking genuinely curious to hear the answer. "Francis never mentioned his own plans."

"He didn't to me, either," said Mathias sincerely. "The more I think about it, the more I think he used it to travel. He was looking for someone, you know."

"How sweet," said Tino. "And you?"

Mathias felt rude to think about it right there, but he had to. Of course, he had his immediate concerns: feed Emil and Leon, pay for their education, maybe improve his business, and definitely pay off his debts to Aldrich. But even a fraction of one of these coins would do all that and more.

"After the necessities," Mathias said, "I have a friend. He was probably my best friend growing up, but he's…in a tough spot. His stepfather is using him to make money, and I know he just wants to be with his brother. I think maybe I can…buy him off? And let him come home."

"Let me guess," Erik drawled from the coffee table, "it sounded better when someone else said it."

"Just because you're happy with your music, young man, doesn't mean other people have everything they want," scolded Tino. He turned to Mathias with a smile. "Well, that sounds like a worthy investment to me. Do you think three should do it?"

"Coins?" Mathias squawked.

"I could probably manage four," said Tino, "but my husband might notice. He's trying to save up for a new chair."

"He could just build me a chair," huffed Erik.

"Oh, you know how he likes furniture shopping," said Tino absentmindedly as he rifled through the coin tin, "but I think we can make a—"

He suddenly paused. Mathias turned to Erik and Peter to find them frozen too, listening.

After a few seconds, Mathias heard it too: silence, and then the unmistakable sound of sheets being rustled in another room.

Tino's eyes widened. "I think he woke up from his nap," he whispered. "Erik, play something?"

The strings of Erik's harp began plucking, as if by an invisible hand. Erik himself was still staring almost anxiously at the gap leading into the hallway.

"That sack of yours won't be nearly big enough," said Tino, "but all I have is a napkin…" He picked up a square napkin as large as a tarp and wrapped three coins in it, tying the corners of the napkin together before coming over to Mathias and delicately situating the knot's holes through his arms and the knot against his test. It was far from comfortable, but the coins would have broken the sides of Mathias's seed bag.

"It's not perfect," said Tino, "but it'll do. And please, next time, could you tell Francis to give his beans to another town? I know there are so many of your villages under our land, but all of the beansprouts arrive here, and—"

"And tell him not to even think of taking Peter's golden eggs again!" Erik shouted. Peter immediately hushed him, eying the hallway frantically.

"T'no? Erik?"

"Go!" Tino hissed, opening the door and pushing Mathias outside to the point where he landed on his knees on the porch. Out of the corner of his eye, Mathias could see Peter's feathers flutter to the window, and he resolved to run. Peter staring out the window was a dead giveaway to this Berwald that Mathias was outside, but unless he wanted to burrow himself into the immediate dirt, he had no choice but to run to the beanstalk.

As he ran, the coins jangled against his back and the napkin knot pressing against his chest. He could hear a deeper voice than any he'd heard before, getting closer and closer despite how fast Mathias was running.

He was halfway to the green tip of the beansprout when he heard the door swing open, and a discontent growl echoed across the land.

Despite his best judgment, Mathias turned around to see a man that would have been tall even by the standards of his own village, dressed almost comically in dark blue pajamas and a green nightcap. He was either glowering or squinting, and Mathias didn't care to come close enough to find out. He sprinted faster across the lumps of the field, wishing desperately that the napkin Tino had given him hadn't been white and therefore marked him so clearly in the brown soil.

Thundering footsteps resounded behind him. He was three quarters of the way to the beansprout, but Berwald was coming.

Mathias reached the beansprout and nearly tripped over it in his effort to find the small hole he'd left when he arrived. Praying the napkin knot would hold, he pressed himself against the beansprout and began to kick his way through the dirt.

Just as Berwald landed on his knees beside the beansprout.

Mathias looked up to a horrifying sight: enormous sea green eyes trained on him in a deadly squint, and giant fingers reaching to pluck him out.

"BERWALD!" Tino shouted across the field. "You get back here!"

Berwald gave another growl—more of a huff this time, not that Mathias was paying attention to anything other than his hold on the stalk. Slowly, miraculously, as Mathias scrambled into the dirt, he could see Berwald rise.

The last thing he heard of the giant world was a rumbling voice saying:

"Tell yer kind to stop."

Mathias's feet popped through the clouds, and immediately he clung to the beanstalk and tried not to look down.

It had been so much easier when he was going up. Slipperiness had been an obstacle, but not a downright danger. And now that the dirt of the giant world wasn't keeping him pressed against the beanstalk, it was up to his arms—his poor, tired arms, now supporting even more weight after having had only twenty minutes of rest—to guide him without rest or else face a fatal fall.

But if he could get down, Mathias would have all he needed for the rest of his life. A better life. He could buy businesses, villages, land—

He could make a better life for his brothers.

He just had to climb, and hold on for dear life.

He must have become sentimental, because somewhere between his various breaks and checks of the napkin knot, he slipped one of the enormous beans into his empty seed sack. It made climbing difficult, especially for the knee whose reach was obstructed by the new load, but it was nice to have some proof that he had indeed made it up and back down a beanstalk unlike any other.

He wondered if God lived somewhere above the giants. He wondered if tinier people than him lived below his soil. He wondered what Lukas would have to say about today's adventure.

When he gathered the courage to look down for the fourth time since he broke through the soil, he could make out people on the ground.

The two figures closest to the stalk, fair-haired and dark-haired, were most likely Emil and Leon. He wished Emil weren't out, because the smattering of villagers at the edge of his property, on the other side of the beanstalk from his perspective, had grown into a crowd. But he could buy Emil's safety, probably, possibly. He hoped.

He realized that Tino's white napkin served to signal his arrival, so he made sure to keep his back to Emil and Leon so they could watch his progress.

When he finally made it to the ground, soaked in sweat and arms trembling, Emil and Leon caught him in tandem. The beanstalk blocked the villagers' view of them.

"Well? What was it like?" Leon asked. "Everyone's been asking me, and I had to tell them you weren't back yet."

Emil just looked at Mathias, his expression unreadable.

Keeping his eyes trained on Emil, Mathias untied the knot on his chest and let the napkin full of coins fall to the ground with a loud "ching".

Half of Emil's lips quirked up.

"Take it in, and make sure they don't see it," Mathias instructed hoarsely and dropped his seed sack and the enormous seed to the ground. Emil immediately lifted the coins—easily as large as his chest—as quietly as he could, while Leon lifted the seed sack from Mathias's shoulder and folded the napkin.

"Blanket-sized," said Leon. "What'd I tell you?"

Mathias smiled wearily. He still had to distract the audience on the other side of the beanstalk.

He rounded the beanstalk, trusting Emil and Leon to figure something out, and approached the crowd, whose murmuring was audible even from a distance. Mathias felt tired and sweaty, not much like a hero. He probably looked worse for wear, too.

Time to play that to his advantage.

"It's dangerous up there," said Mathias in as loud a voice as he could manage. "Enormous giants. Bloodthirsty. They want to eat us!"

The crowd gasped as if on cue.

"I only barely escaped," said Mathias tiredly, "but I can't guarantee they won't come after me once they find I'm gone. Please," he said with an exhausted wheeze, "we have to cut it down."

The villagers murmured with each other. A few weren't convinced. "What did the giants have?" one asked. His eyes gleamed with hope for riches.

Mathias looked at them levelly. "A chicken twice my height with a beak as sharp as a sword. And a human trapped in a harp by a wizard."

Mathias had no idea if it was true, but the word "wizard" did it. Within half an hour, the entire village had arrived with their axes.

The fallen beanstalk bisected the forest. Mathias felt horrible about it, and he hoped Arthur's house—well, everyone's house—was okay, but he'd done what he could to protect Tino and Berwald and their odd family.

And, frankly, to protect his own loot.

"So…what are we going to do with these?" asked Emil. He'd hidden one under each of their mattresses, and now they had assembled them in one bedroom (shutters closed, of course) to examine the foreign faces carved into the gold. The enormous bean sat beside the coins.

"We'll need to find Francis," said Mathias. "He'll probably have an idea of how to sell them."

"And after that?" asked Leon. "When we're rich?"

Emil and Mathias shared a look, and then both turned to Leon.

"I'm pretty sure," said Emil, "there are some changes that need to be made."