After the king died and the queen died of grief, little Jack headed out of the castle and walked for a very long time toward the rolling green hills on the edge of the world. Past this point the universe disappeared entirely, and he was free now to journey to its edge and see the dragons and other things that may have lived there.
Rather than dragons, however, when Jack reached World’s End he saw an ordinary, though deserted, farmstead and a brown bucket. The brown bucket was full of even browner beans.
Jack decided to plant the beans. He looked around the farmstead and found a nice flat spot, and dug a small hole. Then the beans began talking to Jack.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
The beans were very angry with Jack.
“I’m planting you.”
“And just who gave you permission to do that?”
“Nobody gave me permission.” Jack said. “The king died and then the queen died.”
He poured the beans into the hole and they shouted insults at him.
“Criminal!”
“Blackguard!”
“Quiet, all!” One bean cried. “To face this…”
“What?” Jack asked. He held the spade loosely in his left hand. “What can’t I face?”
“The king died and then the queen died.”
“Yes, then I came here. So what?”
“Well, what’s that about? Didn’t you think over it?”
“What’s there to think about?”
“Why’d the queen die?”
Jack pondered for a moment. “I…don’t know.”
”The king died and then the queen died of grief.” The bean said. Jack frowned, for he was too young to know what grief was.
“It means there was a link between those two things.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because you’ve come to bury us.”
“Alive, too!”
“Murder!”
“Cold-blooded suffocation!”
“Quiet! The king and queen died, so you came here. But those have nothing to do with each other – at least, nobody knows if they do or not.”
Jack dropped the spade. “I’d know…wouldn’t I?”
“Speak it to life, then, and carefully.” The bean said. The other beans waited.
“They do have something to do with each other,” Jack said, and he faced truth again, “…The king and queen dying is related to me coming here…because I’m the prince.”
The beans murmured among themselves. There was nothing else he could have suggested, after all. “And?”
“And I came here to try to escape.” Jack said, his face crumpling into a miserable flushed mask. “I came here because I thought a story might happen. So I found some magic beans…”
“You came to bargain. You thought we’d grow you a beanstalk and let you forget…”
“And it won’t work, will it? There’ll be no beanstalk. No magic.”
“No.”
Jack wept. “What can I do?”
“There’s no farmhand here.” The beans observed.
“Nobody else could be here.”
“You’ll have to accept what’s happened eventually, Jack.”
“That’s right!”
“You can’t do this forever!”
Jack shook his head and returned to his castle. He’d return and plant the beans tomorrow.
verso folio 