I’m trying out a little game I thought up. The game is to retell a fairy tale or children’s story while omitting one of the major characters.

This is Jack and the Beanstalk, without the beanstalk (Part 4). Part 1.  Part 2. Part 3.

Jack the Giant

Since the time he had left the earth, Jack had not thought about what the master shipbuilder had said. But now the words would not leave him.

“It will cost you everything you have.”

They were bitter now; mocking words.

Jack sat in his castle. He counted his gold, and played his harp, and told his goose to lay eggs. The gold glittered and the music was beautiful and the eggs piled up to the ceiling.

And he wallowed in misery. It coursed through him; it poured out of him as he beat his fists against the walls, as he raged through the castle, as he screamed out his anguish and his sorrow. His cries echoed back to him and were torment in his own ears. They rang out across his vast empty, dead land, where they also died, for there was no one else there to hear them.

In his madness he sought out the store-room where he had once cowered. He brought out the pieces of the Giant’s sword and laid them on the table of his great hall.

Every night he looked upon the shattered sword. Each night he swore that whatever the cost, he would remake it. But then the harp would play for him, and he would become calm again. Each night he left the broken shards upon the table, unforged.

One night it was too much for him. Scarcely knowing what he was doing, he left. He loaded the gold, and the goose, and the harp, and sailed away in the cloud-ship.

There was no moon that night; no one below could see the lonely cloud, so like a ship, that pitched and rolled across the inky depths of the night sky.

Jack didn’t know where he was going. There was no place on earth where he could put down. And yet he sailed low, scraping the tips of trees, desperate for any contact with anything real, anything warm, anything human.

It was not for him, he knew. It could never be his. And yet he so desperately wanted – needed – to get close to it.

He stopped when he heard the wailing.

It sounded inhuman – so torn and raw. It knew no restraint, no solace – it was pure, unbounded anguish.

At first Jack thought it was his own, unbidden, voice – he’d sung that song himself so often – and so he clamped his jaw tight shut. But no! It was a woman’s voice, and, peering through the darkness, he could just make out the shape of the cottage from which it came.

Jack wasn’t thinking anymore. He wasn’t worrying about being discovered. His hand, unguided, seized the tiller and brought the ship to the cottage, nestling it gently upon the thatching of the roof.

And then… Jack reached for the harp and began to play. The music was heavenly; the sweet and tender notes hung in the air, swelling and fading, lingering and harmonizing with every chord of sorrow in the wail.

In the darkness, the woman wailed, and Jack, unseen, also wailed, and played a song of sorrow on the harp. But as he played, the music changed. It grew a softer melody, and then… the wailing also changed. It became human, it turned to weeping.

It grew into a voice, a crying out, “My son, My son, My son.”

All through the night he sat, and played, and played, and played. As dawn began to break, he put his hand once more upon the tiller. Silently, invisibly, the cloud-ship rose up into the sky, and bore him back to the castle.

At last Jack had found something that was real.

From that night on, Jack spent as little time in the castle as possible. He slept there, during the day. At night, he went sailing.

Whenever he saw a house that was poorer than the rest, Jack would bid his goose to lay. He would sneak down with the golden eggs and some gold, leaving it behind before ghosting back into the safety of the sky.
Whenever he heard mourning, or distress, or turmoil, he would dock his ship and play his harp.
Some nights he rested above taverns, drawing out the sting of anger and drunken stupor, making sure that all returned home safe to their families.
Some nights, as with the first night, there would be a death. He would play solace.
Each night, his song changed to match the story below.
Each night, he played the things he wished for.
It gave him a measure of joy, of relief, to give comfort to others.

But a Giant he remained.

In all this, there was something building inside Jack, and though he felt it, he did not know what it was; he could not put words to it. It was deep within him, pushing, burning, calling to him as he sailed across the night skies. Ever close to people, he was ever a world away.

And then one night, it came to him. He knew what it was. He must go back. He knew it, and though he told himself a thousand times that it could never be, that he could not,  the knowledge that he must was unyielding.

Worse still, he knew that he could not go back only to hide from people in some secluded cave. He had to face them. He had to stand before them as he was – as the Bandit King, as the Giant. The thought horrified him, terrified him. He swore he would never do it; he swore that he would die before he let anyone see his hideous form. But it was all a farce, a bluster to sooth his ragged nerves. He knew what he was going to do, because he knew what he must do. There was no other way.

He set down in a lonely field during the dead of night. He had the harp slung over his shoulder and the goose under his arm as he disembarked from the cloud-ship.

“I don’t think I’ll need you any more, my friend.” he said, turning back to look at his ship. He wasn’t sure how he was going to destroy it – he had brought matches, although now he was loath to light one. But it was as if the ship had heard his words, for, lo! It was breaking up into pieces on its own, disappearing before his eyes. He stood and watched as the ship slowly dissolved into mist, wafting softly away on the night breeze.

Jack turned around again and began to walk. He was taking his final journey.

It was noon when he reached the capital, but the guard at the gate was already drunk, otherwise he might never have gained entry. The guard took the cries outside the gate for a hubbub over a spilled cart or the like; by the time the Giant strode past him, it was too late for him to bar the doors or even draw his sword.

The streets emptied before him as Jack went through the city. Before long the tide of panic had swept far ahead of him; the streets he walked were completely empty. But he could see tiny cracks in window shutters, slivers of light in door-frames; he knew he was being watched. Far behind him he could hear the clatter of hooves: guards, following him at a distance.

He made his way to the city square. It was empty. He stopped by a fountain. The goose was grateful for a chance to have a drink and bathe its feet. He reached into his pocket and threw it some crumbs. His initial terror at being on the earth had faded to a numbness. People had reacted exactly as he had thought. He was every bit the monster he imagined himself to be.

“Well,” said Jack, “there’s nothing for it now, is there? I wonder when they’ll kill me. I don’t imagine it will be too long, now.”

He sat down to wait.

What Jack hadn’t counted on was bureaucracy. To a man, the guards were terrified.  They were willing to take every excuse not to confront him. The official channels channeled and notifications were sent, authorizations authorized and orders ordered. Around three o’clock, Jack heard a rumble in the distance. He squinted far down one of the alleys leading into the square – was that a catapult?

No, it was a ballista, but he was sure the bowmen that were busy trying to stay hidden on the roofs around the square were happy for the backup, nonetheless.

It was around six o’clock when the delegation approached. It had a trumpeter and a lot of soldiers, but none of them came very close. He was surrounded, they said. He should give up.

“Very well,” said Jack. “Take me to the magistrate.”

The Judge demanded to know why he had come to the city. Jack told him. Everything. He told the whole story, slowly and carefully. When he had finished, the judge didn’t say anything except, “Lock him up.”

They put him, and his goose, and his harp in a cell that was far too small. It was cold and it was damp. He took one look at the cot and knew that it would never take his weight, so he laid himself down on the stone floor. Even there he could not stretch out to full length. He listened to the whispers and the scurrying of the rats around him. He smiled. Rats! His old castle never had rats. He breathed deeply and took in the rich, deep scent of sewage. Real sewage.

He didn’t know what would happen to him now, but it didn’t matter anymore.

He was back.

That night, he slept better than he ever had in his life.

Jack woke to hear the jailor shouting  something incomprehensible. He was awake, but he felt… confused. Slow. It was as if someone had wrapped great swathes of gauze around his brain. Guards were rushing into his cell, shouting at him, yelling out demanding questions.
“Who are you?” they yelled.
“Hello.” he said. “I’m Jack. Don’t you remember me?”
“Where’s the giant?”

Jack looked down at his hands. They were big, but they were strapping-lad big, not monstrous.
“I think he’s gone.” he said. “At least… I hope he is.”

When the Judge was told the Giant wasn’t there, and they only had a peasant boy, he didn’t know what to do, and  said as much. Jack had tried to tell his story again, but he’d had a great many problems in doing so. For some reason, the pieces wouldn’t quite fit together. He was confused, uncertain, although he did his best to impress upon the Judge that he *was* the giant, or that… he had been. No, wait… He was the bandit, wasn’t he? Or was the bandit the giant?

The Judge was sure of only one thing. The boy in front of him was quite stupid.

“I’ve judged for many, many years.” said the Judge. “I’ve set some men free and I’ve sent others to their deaths. I daresay I wasn’t always right in my decisions, but I never shied from making them and I can live with that.”
“But I can’t judge this boy for the crimes of a giant and of a bandit king.”

The Judge looked at the Captain of the Guard.
“Could you execute this boy, knowing there was a Giant in the cell last night?” he asked.
The Captain of the Guard had a lean, hard face, but it was looking straight at his boots, avoiding the Judge’s gaze.

“We can’t let the crimes of a notorious brigand go unpunished,” said the Judge, “but ultimately it is the people who have been wronged, and I think they need to see this.”

They brought Jack into the city square – Jack, and the harp, and the goose. They took him to where a large platform had been erected. Jack was taken up on it, where he was told to stand just to one side of the judge’s chair.

There were many people gathered there. People from the city, people from the countryside. They had gathered at the news that the King of the Bandits (a giant, they had heard) had been taken. They had come to see justice, for there was not one among them who had not been wronged by his villainy.

An angry buzz went through them at the sight of Jack. They wanted a giant; many of them had seen one yesterday.

The judge called for silence; eventually, he got it. The crowd pressed close around the stand. They were kept back by the guards, who held a firm perimeter. The judge told the story that Jack had told him; he recounted the events of the night before and of that morning. Then he looked at Jack.

“Is there anything you want to say, lad?” he asked.

The large crowd frightened Jack. It was full of strange faces – angry faces – mean faces. They were staring right at him, and he started to panic. He looked around desperately for something that wasn’t hostile – and he saw the harp.

Jack grabbed it; he put his head down and closed his eyes and began to play. He wanted to run away; he wanted to hide, so he tried to hide in the music. He played and played. Music poured out of the harp – all the songs that Jack had played before. He played the story of his misery in the Giant’s castle. He played the songs of all his travels, and when he had played them all, he stopped.

He was calm now. He put the harp down, raised his head, opened his eyes. Every face was turned towards him, transfixed. They weren’t making any noise. No rustling, no whispering, no murmuring. Jack didn’t say anything. He just stood and looked at them.

“Does anyone have a grievance they wish to bring forward?” asked the magistrate.

A low murmur travelled through the crowd. There was a rustle, and a shift, and eventually a parting as a woman emerged from out of it.

“I heard that song the night my Jimmy died.” she said. She lifted her eyes up to meet Jack’s. “My little boy.” And then she walked out of the square.

A man came forward – a burly, swarthy man. “I was just about to put my blade right through Bob Swindall’s teeth – Hey, Bob? when that tune stayed my hand.” He gave a nod to Jack and left.

More came forward – one by one they left a story and went home. When the square was finally empty, night was already falling. The judge looked at the guards. They were leaning wearily on their spears. He looked at Jack.

“I guess you’d better go.” he said. “Do you need a place to stay tonight?”

Jack shook his head. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

The guards left Jack outside the city gates and wished him well, before returning inside the city. For a while Jack just stood there, breathing the night air, alone on the road with his goose and his harp.
The goose reached up expectantly and nibbled the tips of Jack’s fingers.
“Let’s go home.” said Jack.