Jack Read online

  The queen stared at him in horror. The king laughed and stuffed some bread into his mouth.

  “Fee, fee, foe!” The baby was up on the table now. He dug his hands into a bowl of potatoes and stuffed them into his mouth, smearing potato all over his face and belly. “Fum!” he said, smiling and clapping his hands so the potatoes sprayed everywhere. Then he looked right at me.

  Snakes and toads, I’d been spotted.

  “Fee, fee, fum!” The baby crawled so fast, I hardly had time to think. I slipped back into the soup. Maybe if he didn’t see me, he would go away.

  “No, Archie!” the queen shouted just as the baby pounded his fists on the edge of the tureen. I went gushing out of the bowl on a wave of gooey green beans. I splattered onto the baby’s belly and slid down into the doughy folds of his legs.

  “Fie, fo!” The baby poked and prodded and tried to pick me up, but we were both too slimy and slippery with soup, and luckily his chubby hands could not grasp me.

  “Get that slimy creature off the table!” shouted the king.

  The queen picked up the baby as I crawled onto a butter dish. She held the prince out at arm’s length. He was covered with soup, and he wriggled in the queen’s arms and splattered green slime on her face and blue gown.

  “How disgusting!” said the king. “He looks like a prince of frogs!”

  “Ooh! Ooh! I can turn him into a frog!” said the magician, clapping his hands so excitedly one of his carrot fingers snapped right off. “Oh, let me! Let me! Please, please, please!”

  “Don’t you touch him!” said the queen. “Haven’t you done enough harm?”

  “But I think he’d be charming as a frog, don’t you, Your Goldness?”

  “Could you make him lay golden frog eggs?” asked the king.

  “You’re horrid!” shouted the queen. “Don’t you think of anything besides gold?”

  “What else is there to think of?”

  “Food,” said the queen. “And family.”

  “Pfft! We have plenty of food. And of course I’ve thought about family. As I said, your brothers are preparing for another raid on the elves. Tomorrow they’ll feed The Kingdom.” The king petted the hen and she clucked. “And I shall have my gold, too. Now lay!”

  The hen obeyed.

  “Lay! Lay! Lay!”

  The hen shuddered violently but released three more eggs.

  “See?” he challenged the queen. “Gold is my destiny.” And with that, he marched out of the room, cradling the hen in his arms. The magician followed like a faithful pup, trotting at his heels.

  “A curse, more like,” grumbled the queen. “All gold comes with a curse.”

  “Fee, fie, fo, fum!” said the baby. He put a slimy hand on the queen’s face, splotching her with green.

  “As for you, Prince Frog, time for a swim, and may you prove to be a better king than your father.” The queen carried the giant baby away, leaving me alone on the butter. Now that lunch was over, I needed to go to the armory to find the giants who had taken Papa.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Bruno, the Cowardly Giant

  “I th-thought you had b-been eaten!” Martha cried when she found me in the butter.

  “I was,” I said. “But I’m all right. The king spat me out.”

  Martha burst into tears and made puddles at my feet.

  “Did he bite you at all?” Tom asked. “Did you see down his throat? How high in the air did you fly?”

  “Higher than when I flew off the spoon,” I said, smiling, for while it had been terrifying at the time, telling the tale made it seem like it had been a great adventure.

  “Amazing!” said Tom. “I wish it had been me!”

  Martha blew her nose so loud, it sounded like the blast of a horn. “Hush, Tom. There will be no more falling into puddings and getting eaten by kings or cows or anyone else. Tim is very lucky to be alive, and if he had been caught by the king…well, let’s just say His Majesty is not one to be merciful.”

  I shivered. I hoped Papa had not gone to the king. At least I was fairly certain he’d been taken by the queen’s brothers. And now I had to find them, but first Martha insisted I wash for supper.

  I growled as she plopped me into the washbasin. I never had to bathe two days in a row at home!

  “You’re so filthy, a servant might mistake you for a potato, and then you really will get eaten,” she clucked at me.

  After I was washed and dry, Martha pulled out some bread and cheese. I was famished, even though I had just come from a giant feast. Tom and I gobbled up great big chunks of it.

  “Want to catapult off the spoons again?” said Tom.

  “Not now,” I said.

  “How about a duel?”

  “Maybe later.” I glanced at Martha. I would need someone’s help in finding the queen’s brothers, but I was afraid if Martha knew my plans, she would lock me in the sugar bowl.

  “Tom,” I whispered. “I know who came down and took my papa. It was the queen’s brothers, Frederick and Bruno.”

  “That’s great,” he said in a bored tone.

  “I need to find them.” I urged.

  “Oh, sure,” said Tom. I wasn’t sure he was listening.

  “The king said they were in the armory, preparing for another raid.”

  “The armory?” Tom was interested now.

  I nodded. I was beginning to realize that the only way to get Tom to help me was to make it seem like an adventure. “Maybe, if you want to come with me, we could have a battle.”

  Tom dropped his bread. “Yes! With giant swords and axes and spike balls. I haven’t slid down a sword in ages. And I have the best way to get there! All we need is a little bit of cheese.”

  “Cheese?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” said Tom, already stuffing chunks of cheese in both his pockets. “Quick, before Martha puts us in the sugar bowl!”

  Tom slid down from the table on a length of Martha’s yarn. I followed, being careful to make sure Rufus wasn’t in sight, and then we hopped over the cracks and crevices and giant nails and crawled through a hole in the corner of the kitchen. We were greeted by cobwebs and some ants.

  Ants had always been something I could squash beneath my feet without a second thought, but giant ants…they had misshapen square heads and sharp pincers, but much like the spider, they paid me no mind at all. They were intent on their work, picking up crumbs and marching toward their hole like dutiful soldiers.

  “Now pull out just a small handful of cheese,” said Tom. I did, and we both held the cheese out.

  “What are we waiting for?” I asked.

  “A ride,” said Tom. I looked at him like he was crazy, but Tom stood still and patiently held out his handful of cheese.

  Soon, squeaks could be heard getting louder and louder, and then a few mice came scurrying down the wooden beams toward us.

  A brown mouse approached Tom, twitched its whiskers, and squeaked as though greeting him. “This one’s mine! You take the next!” Tom hopped onto the mouse’s back and lobbed the cheese so the mouse scurried after it.

  Brilliant! They were like horse-mice! A mouse came to me and sniffed at my pockets. Its long whiskers tickled my arms as I pulled out a chunk of cheese and dropped it to the ground. The mouse snatched it up. Hesitantly I grabbed onto the mouse’s fur and swung myself over its back. The mouse squeaked in protest, but then I flung the cheese forward and off we went. Riding a mouse reminded me of when I was little and Papa used to let me ride the sheep, a sort of lumpy trot with lots of side-to-side movement. The mouse scurried to the cheese and gnawed away at it. After it finished, I took another chunk out of my pocket and threw that one even farther so I could catch up to Tom and his mount.

  “Isn’t this incredible?” Tom shouted back at me.

  “Incredible!” I shouted back, because it was.

  “Turn here!” said Tom, and we threw our chunks of cheese to the left and scurried down that way until we came to a dead end.

>   “Now what?” I asked.

  “We have to go up,” said Tom. Up was about a hundred feet to the next rafter, with lots of spiderwebs and giant nails poking out of the beams. “Aim the cheese for the rafters. The first one up will lure the second mouse to follow.” Tom threw his cheese, but it didn’t catch on the upper beam, and when it came down, the mouse devoured it. Tom tried again with the same result.

  “Let me try.” I took out my sling, put a chunk of cheese in the middle, and flung it up so it landed perfectly on an upper beam.

  “Terrific!” said Tom.

  My mouse scurried up the wall and Tom’s followed. Once we got to the top of that rafter, we turned down a short passage and dismounted.

  “Just through here,” said Tom, and we crawled on our hands and knees through a small crevice. When we came out on the other side, we were between two metal pillars. I looked up. We were underneath a giant suit of armor.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” said Tom.

  The armory was like a metal forest. A very sharp one. There were giant swords as tall as towers stacked in neat rows, spears fanned in a circle on the wall, spiked metal balls and chains the size of boulders, crossbows and quivers of arrows, suits of armor like mountainous cliffs, and axes with shining blades crossed all along the walls. It was amazing, but I didn’t see or hear anyone.

  “Come on! Let’s duel!” said Tom, and he pulled out two needles from the back of his shirt and handed one to me. Before I could even protest, he attacked, stabbing the needle at my chest, so I jumped back behind the foot of armor.

  “En garde!” said Tom, and he waved his needle-sword around. It was either fight or be stabbed, so I made a cut at Tom, and we clashed our needle-swords back and forth in a fierce duel.

  “Ha! I’ll slice you in half!” said Tom.

  “Nay, thou pompous wretch! I, Jack the Great, shall chop off thy head and slice thee to bits!”

  We sparred back and forth, and I was having such a great time I almost forgot what I was doing until a horse whinnied.

  I stopped and looked around. “Are there horses in the armory?”

  Tom shrugged. “Probably just outside.” He tried to engage me again, but then came the sound of clashing swords not our own, and most definitely within the armory. I ran from leg to leg of the suits of armor until I reached a corner.

  I peered around to see a giant boy, perhaps a little older than me, sitting cross-legged on the floor, a sword by his side. He was playing with what looked to be a toy knight and horse, except they were not toys at all. The horse, which was actually a mule, bellowed and brayed, and the knight’s rusty armor creaked and clattered as he swiped his sword through the air at the giant boy.

  “Thou pompous wretch! I, Sir Bluberys the Chivalrous, shall chop off thy head and slice thee to bits!”

  That blubberhead stole my line!

  Sir Bluberys charged at the giant, but just as he reached his foot, the mule bucked wildly. Sir Bluberys fell to the ground with a terrific clatter and crunch of armor.

  “Are you hurt?” The giant boy scooped up the knight and, in doing so, stabbed his thumb on Sir Bluberys’s lance. “Ouch!”

  “Hurt?!” said Sir Bluberys. “A noble knight is never injured. Repeat, young squire!”

  “A noble knight is never injured,” said the giant boy, his chin quivering.

  “Louder, lad! With conviction!”

  “A noble knight is never injured!” And then a drop of blood appeared on the boy’s thumb and his eyes brimmed with tears. He sniffled.

  “Soldiers don’t cry! Get ahold of yourself.” Sir Bluberys tried to slap the giant, but I doubt he felt more than a tingle.

  “I’m s-sorry,” sobbed the giant boy. “It’s just…it reminds me of the pixies, you know, when they attacked me. What if it happens again? What if they eat me alive?”

  “Nonsense! Don’t be ridiculous!” said Sir Bluberys. “Look how large you are. A strapping lad like you has nothing to fear. How could anything so small ever hurt a big brute like you?”

  “Pixies can. They attacked me and bit me everywhere with their poisonous fangs, and it hurt like a thousand needles sticking in me.” The giant boy’s sniffling turned to sobs. He stuck his bleeding thumb into his mouth.

  “Is that true?” I whispered to Tom, who had just peeked his head out from the other side of the leg of armor.

  “Yes, pixies are the worst. They’re no bigger than us, but they’re awful. If they bite you, you’ll explode.”

  “Explode? How?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  I pictured myself exploding. “I hope I never meet a pixie.”

  “If you do, just throw dirt at it,” said Tom. “Pixies hate dirt.”

  “Right,” I said. “Pixies. Explode. Dirt.”

  “Fear not, lad!” said Sir Bluberys. “We can battle again tomorrow, and with some help from me, soon you’ll be a brave and strong warrior. In the meantime, do you have any grub? Pie? A turkey leg, perhaps?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Sir Bluberys. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re the only elf I’ve never been afraid of.”

  “Nonsense, Bruno, lad!” said the knight.

  Bruno! The queen’s brother!

  “That’s him,” I whispered to Tom. “That’s the giant who took my papa.”

  “Well then, what are you waiting for?” whispered Tom. “Charge the villain! Chop off his fingers one by one!”

  Yes, that was the thing to do. Charge. Chop. Conquer the giant. I gripped the needle so hard, my hands shook. I’d jump on his head and poke his eyeballs!

  Bruno lifted Sir Bluberys and his mule and placed them gently on a table, where an elf’s feast was laid out: roast turkey, bread, potatoes, cheese, and even some straw for the mule. Sir Bluberys tore off a turkey leg and ate greedily, and Bruno watched him with his chin cupped in his hands, smiling as though watching a puppet show.

  Footsteps echoed from the doorway across the room. “Bruno!” shouted a voice.

  “It’s Frederick!” Bruno panicked. His eyes darted around the room, then narrowed on the suit of armor where Tom and I were hiding. I shrunk back behind the foot. Bruno grabbed the helmet off of the top and placed it over Sir Bluberys and his mule. “Don’t make a sound!”

  Another giant entered the armory—Frederick. He looked much like Bruno, except he was taller, with such a hulking build, it made his arms stick out from his sides. He had bushy eyebrows and lips that curled up in a snarl. He was the kind of ogre Grandpa Jack would have chopped to bits.

  “What are you doing in here?” said Frederick. “Playing dolls?”

  Bruno looked from side to side. He leaned against the table, blocking his brother’s view of the helmet. “No. I was j-just—”

  “Hey, guess what,” Frederick interrupted. “I brought you a present.” His hands were cupped around something.

  Bruno flinched a little. “W-what is it?”

  “A pixie!” Frederick flicked out his hands, which turned out to be empty, but Bruno screamed and jumped back. He bumped into the table and made the helmet shift.

  “Frederick! Don’t do that!”

  Frederick cackled. “You’re such a sissy, Bruno!”

  I hated to admit it, but I’d played that exact trick on Annabella before. Did I look as mean and awful as Frederick when I did it?

  Bruno didn’t run away, crying like Annabella. He growled and rushed at his brother and crashed into him, knocking him into our suit of armor. Tom and I jumped back against the wall as the armor toppled over and made such a terrific crash, I had to cover my ears. The boys pushed and shoved, knocking over giant swords and shields and armor. It sounded like all the metal pots and pans in the world were crashing together at once. They wrestled each other to the floor, rolling and grunting and punching. The whole room seemed to shake and tilt as they fought. Tom and I cowered behind the fallen armor until Frederick had Bruno pinned.

  “Get off me!” Bruno struggled to get free. They stood and ba
cked away from each other, breathing hard and sweating.

  Tom watched the giant brawl with rapt attention. “That was amazing!” he whispered. “I’ve never seen a giant fight before.”

  Frederick dusted himself off. “Get your things ready. You know the king’s orders.”

  “I don’t want to,” said Bruno. “I don’t like going down there.”

  “Why not? Are you afraid the elves will bite you?” Frederick gave Bruno a poke.

  “Stop! I just don’t like it, is all. It’s…it’s mean. It isn’t fair to the elves.”

  “Fair? Who said anything about fair? If things were supposed to be fair, then we wouldn’t be so much bigger and stronger, would we?” Frederick walked toward Bruno, and Bruno continued to back up toward the table. “If things were supposed to be fair, then I wouldn’t be able to lick you in a fight. If things were supposed to be fair, then we wouldn’t have a king to tell us what to do. Are you going to disobey the king?” Frederick was inches from Bruno’s face now.

  “N-no. It’s just—”

  Sir Bluberys’s mule bellowed a long and low neigh that echoed inside the helmet.

  “What was that?” Frederick asked.

  “Nothing,” said Bruno, shifting again to block Frederick’s view of the table, but the mule bellowed again.

  “What’s under that helmet?” Frederick lunged for the table, but Bruno blocked him, shifting this way and that, until finally Frederick grabbed Bruno and shoved him aside. He picked up the helmet.

  “Well, what do we have here?”

  Sir Bluberys was now mounted on the mule with his sword drawn and raised. “Stand back, villainous giant! I shall vanquish thee!” He waved his sword in random twists and flourishes. I rolled my eyes. I’d better stop saying things like “vanquish” and “villainous” if I sounded like this blubberhead.

  Frederick laughed and pinched the mule around its midsection. “You really were playing dolls!”

  “Put him down, Frederick! He’s mine!” Bruno rushed forward, but Frederick simply lifted Sir Bluberys higher.

  “Yours? You know very well that all elves are property of the king. Is this the elf that should have gone to the cobbler with the last batch? You told me he got away, you little liar.”