As Agatha and I ate breakfast on the morning after the funeral, I found myself lost in thought. At that time, I had come to a conclusion that was two days in the making.

I concluded that if there’s a story, then there’s an author and that if my life is a story, then there’s someone else in control of it.

It was a thought that sprinkled a little existential dread over my leftover meat pie, but one that gave framing to how I should be thinking about my situation. After all, if there’s an author, then there’s a purpose to my story and if the author is any good, they wouldn’t bring unimportant things to their audience’s attention.

Following that train of thought, it meant that the two versions of Jack and the Beanstalk resting in my story’s description had to be important. I wouldn’t have been given the ability to summon them if they weren’t important.

Now as for why they were important… Well, I hadn’t gotten that far yet.

“Jack?’ Agatha said.

“Huh?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong.”

“Then you should stop making that face like something is.”

“Sorry, I was just thinking.”

“You shouldn’t build a habit of making faces while you’re thinking. It’ll get people to fret about you when you don’t need them to.”

“Okay.”

She was right, of course. Considering the consequences for me acting too odd was me getting burned at the stake, I didn’t want anyone fretting over me at all.

“When’s the next market day?” Agatha quizzed me.

“Three days from now.”

“And when’s the next one after that?”

“A week after that one.”

“We’ll need to go to this week’s one to stock up on things for the summer and maybe the next one after that. The giants didn’t take any of the money, so we should have more than enough.”

“Alright.” I took a bite of my pie.

“I want you to borrow a cart and go with Hailee’s father to sell some of the wood on the day before the market day coming up, okay?”

“But I thought you said that we’re only allowed to sell wood to the count.”

“We’re allowed to sell a little bit of it for repairs and supplies, we just need to keep a record. I’ll count all the wood when you and Henry load it up to the cart, okay?”

“Okay.”

Once we finished breakfast, I was about to head out to get started on cleaning up the mess that giant’s had left us when there was a knock at the front door.

“Agatha, Jack?” A familiar voice called. “It’s Henry and Hailee.”

“Coming!” Agatha started for the door with me following close behind. Sure enough, it really was Hailee and Henry at the front door.

“Thank you both for coming,” she said.

“Not a problem.” Henry said while handing me a few things he had strapped to his back. They were Hailee’s belongings.

After the funeral, Joyce had got to talking with Agatha and convinced her that we should have Hailee stay with us, “At least for a week,” so that Agatha could have some proper time to mourn instead of focusing on keeping things in order at the house.

Stepping away from the front door, I went to place Hailee’s things in the spare bedroom I’d slept in for the past two nights. Once I got there, I put her things down, then slipped my page out from where I had hidden it under the bed’s pillow.

“What’s that?” Hailee asked, having followed me there.

“Just some paper for me to write on if I wake up remembering anything.”

“Hmm?” She tilted her head. “I’m surprised you remembered how to write of all things.” She said, plopping down onto the bed. “I’d expect you to remember more about Ben and Matthew if you could remember that.”

I shrugged. “I remembered how to talk. Writing is sort of like talking, so they should come together.”

“I guess.” Hailee held out her hand. “Can I read what you wrote down? Andrew taught me how to read a little.”

“Sure,” I handed her the blank sheet, “But I haven’t had the chance to write anything yet.”

She gave it a quick look front and back, then handed it back to me. “Well, if you remember anything make sure to tell me, okay?”

“I will.”

I left her there, then headed upstairs to Andrew’s room since Agatha and I already decided that I would be sleeping there while Hailee stayed with us. After closing the door behind me, I summoned my profile back onto the page.

If only writing on it was as simple as that. I’d tried using ink on it the day before, but the page practically ate the stuff as soon as it left the quill.

“Jack.” Agatha called me from downstairs. I made my profile disappear again, then slipped the blank sheet under Andrew’s old pillow.

“Yeah?” I stepped out of Andrew’s room and found Agatha waiting with Henry and Hailee at the bottom of the staircase.

“My mom asked me to ask if you could make sure my father came straight home after dropping me off,” Hailee said.

“You think you can handle it?” Agatha asked.

Giving Henry, a man just shy of forty, a quick look over, I said, “Sure.”

“Well, no point in wasting time then,” Henry said. “Back to home and back to work as fast as I can.”

Hailee gave her father a look—which he ignored—before turning back to me once I started coming down the stairs. “Thanks, Jack.”

Before we left, Agatha gave me a few meat pies to give to Hailee’s mom. With a couple of goodbyes from Agatha and Hailee for Henry and one ‘be back soon’ for me, the two of us were headed on our way.

To my surprise, Henry was only able to hold on for about five minutes before he began making it clear why Joyce had asked for me to escort him back home.

“Hey, Jack.” He said. “I’ve got some of the good stuff hidden out in the woods. What do you say we leave the road for a little bit and go find where I left it?”

Here we go. “But your wife said straight home.”

“Oh?” Sounded like his first time hearing of it.

“That’s what Hailee told us.”

“And how is my wife supposed to know if we went straight home or took a few steps off the road here and there?”

“And if those few steps off the road happen to lead us into the sights of some giants?” I joked, but Henry waved me off.

“Then they can kill me if they want. Might as well have after they stuffed all of my hard work into those magic bags of theirs.” He motioned the shape of said bag. “You should have seen it. Stuffed more than half of the hamlet’s grain into them and the blasted things looked like they had plenty room for more.”

“Hmm.” From the way that Mr. Edward had been talking about it the day before it sounded much worse than half, and that wasn’t even considering the fact they’d taken all the livestock.

It was so bad, in fact, that he called for a village meeting right after the funeral. They’d already petitioned the baron for food with the report on the giants, but Mr. Edward asked everyone to pool together their money, so that they wouldn’t risk anyone starving.

“They’d probably call you the Jack of Bags if you had one of those.” Henry laughed. “What do you think?”

“I think we should keep to the road.”

“Come on, Jack.” He got up close and spoke a little more quietly. “This stuff I have. I’ve got it on good word that it was brewed by the fey themselves.”

Well, if that wasn’t the shadiest moonshine I’d ever heard of. “Sounds like more reason not to.”

“Huh?!” Henry grabbed my shoulders and we came to a stop. “Jack, before you lost your memories, you’d jump at anything if it had to do with the fey.”

“Well, I guess things are different now.” I said. He’d probably assume that I was saying that because of Old Jack’s family rather than me being different, so I was fine saying it. If I was being honest, though, I just didn’t want to be caught fooling around this early on. Especially not after I had gotten myself hyped up on the idea that I’d be taking care of Agatha literally the day before. It’d feel like I was slacking on the job.

And speaking more on jobs, I was kind of wondering what my ‘job’ as the protagonist was supposed to be at the moment. Yeah, I was supposed to be experiencing a retelling of a story about a guy growing and climbing a giant beanstalk, but knowing that hadn’t exactly proved helpful yet.

In fact, I’d say that unlike the rest of the information provided by the page, that knowledge, along with the knowledge that I was a Teller, had served more to confuse rather than to inform.

“Was I any good at telling stories?” I asked once Henry had let me go.

“Yeah, you were pretty good. Never convinced my wife that you and our boys somehow got lost in the woods instead of running off to have fun, but it was entertaining to hear the stories you’d come up with.”

That wasn’t the kind of storytelling I was talking about, but if that’s what he thought of first, then I could probably assume that Old Jack wasn’t known for telling ghost stories at the bonfire.

“You really don’t remember much, huh?” Henry asked. I had gotten that sort of question a lot at the funeral and it looked like Mr. Henry had been saving his turn to ask me until now.

“Looks like it from what your daughter told me.”

“Well, at least you're still alive. You’ll keep living, even if you can’t remember.”

“Yeah.”

“And besides, forgetting doesn’t sound all bad to me.”

“Certainly doesn’t sound good either.”

“Eh, there’s some good.”

“Like?”

“It’s good because your mother doesn’t need you crying beside her. She needs you to be strong. Can’t be sad if you don’t have a reason and forgetting is close enough to not having one.”

“And if I end up remembering?”

“Then we can take a few steps off the road and use that fey brew I was talking about to forget where we’re supposed to be going for a while.” Henry let out a groan as he stretched arms above his head. “Thought you might need a chance to be alone, but it looks like I’m the only one who needs that right now...”

With a deep sigh, Henry looked out towards nowhere. “You know that night after they took all my hard work away and stuffed it in their bags, a part of me wanted to walk into this forest and never come back.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Joyce and I have been married long enough for her to know what I do out here, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever end up showing her.”

There was a silence that we shared, after he had said that. I’m sure there were plenty of others in the hamlet who felt that way too. They just hadn’t had any business talking about their woes at someone else’s funeral.

I gave it some thought before saying, “If you really need it, we can go off the road for a bit.” I assumed he’d end up making me regret saying that, but Henry just shook his head.

“No. It looks like today isn’t one where you need to get lost. Maybe another time.”

Instead of trying to convince me that I should go drinking out in the forest with him, Henry spent the rest of our trip to the hamlet telling me more about who I used to be from his perspective, just like his daughter had done the day before. His stories were mostly focused on his favorite times his sons and I got into trouble with his wife, though.

When we arrived at the hamlet, I could see that the village men had done good work splitting the trunk of the tree that the grey giant had felled in the middle of the hamlet. Not bad, considering it’d been more than twenty feet tall when it was standing and that everyone had other work to do.

Apparently, back when the giants ruled, it was seen as an act of defiance for people to have a tree stand that tall next to where they lived. Humans who climbed them could stand above the giants, a position most giants thought us inferiors should never take.

Thinking about that, I wondered how pissed they’d be once I ended up climbing the beanstalk.