Jack and the Beanstalk

Jack and his mother had nothing left. The cupboards were bare, the firewood was gone, and the only thing of any value was Daisy the cow, who stood in the field looking apologetic about the whole situation. 'Take her to market,' said Jack's mother, pressing her hand to her forehead. 'Sell her for the best price you can get.' So Jack set off down the lane with Daisy plodding beside him, her bell clinking softly in the morning air.

He hadn't gone far when he met an old woman sitting on a stone wall. She had bright eyes and dirt under her fingernails, and she was holding a small leather pouch. 'That's a fine cow,' she said. 'I'll trade you something better than coins.' She opened the pouch and poured five beans into her palm. They were strange beans - dark and smooth, with a faint shimmer, like something alive was sleeping inside them. 'Plant these before midnight,' she said, 'and by morning you'll understand.'

Jack's mother was not impressed. She threw the beans out the window and sent Jack to bed without supper, which was easy because there was no supper to be had. Jack lay in the dark, stomach rumbling, wondering if he'd made the worst trade in history.

But when the first light crept through his curtains, something was different. The light was green. Jack ran to the window and gasped. Where the beans had fallen, an enormous beanstalk had grown - as thick as an oak, twisting and climbing so high that its top disappeared into the clouds. Leaves the size of dinner plates rustled in the wind, and the whole thing swayed gently, as if breathing.

Jack didn't think about it. He climbed.

The stalk was easy to grip, with footholds everywhere. He climbed past the rooftop, past the church steeple, past the birds, and into the clouds themselves - cold and wet and tasting of rain. And then, above the clouds, he found a road. A wide, white road, stretching across the sky toward an enormous castle.

The castle door was as tall as a house. Jack squeezed underneath it and found himself in a kitchen the size of a cathedral. A table the length of a cricket pitch held plates as big as cartwheels. And on the table sat a hen - a plump, golden hen, sitting calmly on a velvet cushion. As Jack watched, the hen ruffled her feathers and laid an egg. A golden egg, heavy and warm, gleaming in the light from the giant windows.

Jack had just tucked the hen under his arm when the floor began to shake. Boom. Boom. Boom. Footsteps. Giant footsteps, getting closer. A voice like thunder rolled through the hall: 'Fee-fi-fo-fum!'

Jack ran. He ran across the kitchen, under the door, down the white road, and onto the beanstalk. He climbed down faster than he'd ever moved in his life, the hen clucking furiously under his arm, the whole stalk shaking as something enormous began to follow him down.

He hit the ground, grabbed the axe from the woodpile, and swung. Once, twice, three times. The beanstalk groaned, tilted, and crashed down across the fields in a shower of leaves and cloud-mist. The giant was gone. The sky was quiet.

Jack's mother stood in the doorway, her mouth open. The golden hen sat in the grass at Jack's feet and laid another egg, right there on the spot.

They were never hungry again. And Jack learned something that stayed with him for the rest of his life: sometimes the things that look worthless - five strange beans, a wild idea, a leap into the unknown - turn out to be worth more than anything.