Soon after the market closed a man came walking towards where they were waiting down the road from Milaway. With no one else approaching from either way, Jack thought he’d make the perfect target.

“Halt, Goodman,” Jack said. While the three laborers kept their position on the wagon’s porch, he walked out onto the road. Doing so put a smile on his face. The action had given him a rush of nostalgia for his highwayman days. “On behalf of His Majesty’s army I must question you.”

The man coming down the way wore a wary look, but still cooperated. “What must you ask of me?”

“Your name.”

“Steven. May I have yours.”

“Due to the nature of my service, you may not,” Jack said. “But what I can tell you, Steven, is that we have reasonable suspicion that there is a man named Jack hiding out in the settlement down this way. Would you know anything about that?”

Steven shook his head. “First I’ve heard of anything of that sort,” he lied.

“I see. By any chance do you know a man who fits this description?”Jack described the young man who he had just sold beans to early that day and the villager found himself locked in contemplation. It was obvious the villager was having a hard time deciding whether or not he should lie to him again

“He was selling a cow that he claimed his family owned today if that helps,” Jack added on. Truth or a lie, he was fine receiving either, he just didn’t like the man wasting his time.

“Yes, I think I know a young man of the sort,” the man admitted. “Did something happen to him?”

“We have reason to suspect that his name is Jack. Earlier at the market he was seen trading a cow to a merchant for a handful of beans. When we questioned the merchant responsible for the exchange, he told us that the young man had admitted to him that he was a Jack. As such, the inquisition now has business with him in regards to His Majesty’s decree. Would you be able to inform us of his place of dwelling?”

“I think there has been some sort of mistake,” Steven said. “The youth I know is named Jacob.”

“Then I believe we are speaking of the same person. Jacob is the name that the merchant told us the youth had initially given him.”

“He probably told the merchant that his name was Jack as a joke. He’s got a good sense of humor.”

“Selling a cow for a handful of beans is a joke?”

The man scratched his cheek hearing that. “I wouldn’t know about that. But it’s been hard times around here since the giants attacked, you know? He probably—”

“Whether he be named Jack or Jacob at birth, is of little concern to us.” Jack cut him off. “The same could be said for what reasons he had for selling his cow. At this point, we can not truly confirm either. What matters is that he has portrayed himself as someone named Jack in his public dealings and for that he will be held responsible.”

“But Sir—”

“You will give me direction to this young man’s dwelling or both you and your family shall be punished for defying the king’s decree. Since you are coming back from the day’s market, I trust that my colleague in the square has made you aware of what that would mean for you.”

“Please Sir, he was just acting a fool.“

“And that was his choice, not your family’s. Unless he is a part of your family?”

“No, Sir.”

“Then tell me where to find him.”

The man hesitated briefly, but did so. “You take the road into the forest and then you take a right at the split in the road. It’s a straight path to his family’s property from there.”

Jack thanked the villager for his assistance, then told his men to restrain him. “Sorry for the rough treatment,” he told the villager, “But we can’t risk you interfering.”

Once they had the villager seated in the wagon, they took him back to the merchant’s house they were staying at. “Keep him here until I return,” Jack addressed his men. “I should be back by tomorrow evening.”

“Yes, Sir,” they responded.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

And there it was, trouble. Honestly, I didn’t even know why I had bothered hoping I wouldn’t run into more of it. Actions like that usually just ended up tempting fate, after all. It was too late for me to take it back now, though, I’d just have to deal with the consequences.

“Jack?” Hailee’s father called out into the woods. “Jack?” He went silent once he heard me running over to him.

While I was editing my story in my head, I noticed him entering the clearing and heading towards the house. After he spent a minute gazing at my bean patch he knocked on the house door and had a conversation with Agatha out on the porch. Considering how dark it was, I couldn’t tell who he was until he wandered over towards the giant’s path and started calling my name.

“Hey, Mr. Henry,” I said once I could see him a bit more clearly under his rushlight. "What’s got you out here so late?”

“Joyce sent me out here to check up on you,” he said. “She was worried that things might get a little tense between you and Agatha today.”

Well, she was right, I thought. “Why are you looking for me over here, though?” I asked. He’d headed straight towards the giants path after he finished talking to Agatha.

“I figured that if you actually thought Agatha was going to kick you out, you might do something stupid like heading off after those giants.“

“Really?”

"To be fair, you've changed enough that I couldn't be sure.”

Hearing that, I was beginning to wonder how they'd managed to keep the old Jack here for two extra years.

“Trading that cow for those beans was a new kind of stupid from you,” Henry continued. “Running into trouble is different from that, so I wasn’t sure if I’d find you up this way.”

I huffed. If he was here to lecture me, then I wasn’t in any mood. "Look, I'm sorry that Auntie Joyce sent you all the way out here during the night to check up on me, but other than my mom kicking me out for the night, I've got everything under control."

He snorted when I called his wife Auntie Joyce. Apparently, our past relationship was bad enough to make that hilarious for him. “So you don’t need somewhere to stay tonight?” he asked.

“I’m fine out here.”

“Hmph, then I guess it really was a waste of time coming all the way out here.”

“Sorry.” I shrugged my shoulders.

"If you're really sorry then you'll walk me back home. It's scarier than you’d think walking out here in the woods in the middle of the night by yourself, you know?”

I doubted it was actually all that scary for him considering there wasn't much bigger than our cat roaming these woods. "I'd be fine with it,” I said. “As long as there's not any detours."

“Hah, none of that today. Already had my fun. Need to get to bed so I can get some real work done tomorrow.”

"Then we better get going if you're gonna get any sleep." I went back to the spot I was staying at just outside the clearing and gathered up my stuff before we headed off towards the hamlet. Since we were closer to the giant’s path than the main road and since the giant’s path would be faster, we took that route instead.

“So how confident are you that those beans you traded for are going to work?" Henry asked me as we walked.

"More confident than I've been in most things since the giants came."

"Are those stalks out in the yard the ones growing from them?"

"Yeah, that’s them."

"Growing faster than the ones you grew at the start of the summer."

"Yeah."

"Don't run off if they don't end up coming out the way you want them to okay? If you don't want to stay with your mother because she's upset you can stay with us. We don't want you gone and no matter what she says when she's angry, she doesn't want you gone yet either. She'll just need some time to call down is all. If you’re gone once she’s over this mood, she’ll just end up sad.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks, Mr. Henry.”

“I’ll warn you now though, if you do end up staying with us, I’ll probably end up strangling you if you sell any of my stuff for more beans.

“I’ll try to keep that in mind too.”

“So what’s that you’ve got in your pot?” Henry asked, knocking on my special pot.

“My secret weapon,” I admitted.

“Well, I guess you can’t tell me if it’s a secret, aye?”

“I’ll tell you if you give me some coin to buy more beans.”

It didn’t take us long to reach where the forest and the path ended after that. Henry and I said our goodbyes for the night and I watched him for a bit while he made it the rest of the way to the hamlet.

Taking a quick look up at the sky, I definitely couldn’t tell what time it was, but I felt like it would probably be late enough once I got back. It was time to get up and check on my beans.

Bag on my back, rushlight held high and pot safely stowed under my arm, I set off back towards the clearing. The starlight made things much more clear once I got there. I’d actually be able to see my hands in front of me without my light. It wasn’t too hard spotting out my bean patch either. Especially with all the beanstalks popping out of it now.

Relief came with a sigh followed close behind by excitement and joy. I rushed over to my bean patch to get a closer look at the progress made. I didn’t have a ruler with me, but every sprout was about as tall as my hand if I placed it on the ground.

Definitely magic. I’d call such growth over the span of a few hours good progress for magical beans. Well, good growth if I didn’t consider the one that was supposed to be growing into a giant beanstalk. Uniform progress with your peers isn’t something you want when you need to grow at least a thousand feet taller than them, after all. But oh well, my giant beanstalk wouldn’t be a giant disappointment as long as the dimension beans turned out good. Hopefully, I could give it a little boost.

I took the lid off the pot I’d been carrying revealing the giant’s blood within. Even with the baron’s men buying up most of it and me getting a few faux molotovs along the way, I still made sure I had some left over for moments like this. If it did something good for the normal beans I had planted, then it should do something—hopefully—for the magic ones I’d planted too.

With a scoop of giant’s blood from the pot now in a bowl, I approached my test beanstalk. Just in case anything went wrong, I’d spaced it a few feet further from its brethren. Like the chef that I wasn’t, I used my secret sauce to give the plant an even glaze. Apparently, the beanstalk liked that treatment very much because as far as I could tell, it doubled in height in about five minutes’ time. As for the other beans, they’d grown about a fingernail taller.

Well, time to speed things up, I thought, before showering half of the rest of the beans—including my slacker of a giant beanstalk—in giant’s blood and leaving the other half untouched. The giant’s blood looked like it was doing good things for my stalks, but I couldn’t be completely sure until they were fully grown. Judging by the uniform height at which each plant stopped growing at somewhere around an hour later, I’d say that full grown was about three heads taller than me.

Violet stars sparked in and out of existence up and down my fertilized stalks; the result of their beans peeking out from their pods as a light wind blew. I picked a pod from the closest plant. Though it had room for more, the pod only housed one bean.

As best as I could tell under subpar lighting, the bean was some shade of dark purple. When I tried picking it out of its pod, a message rushed through my mind just like when I held the green ones. The bean wanted me to drop it in the giant’s blood I had left in the pot. Well, less so drop, more so throw. Whatever would get it there fastest.

I held up the bloodthirsty bean that sparkled violet close to my eye, and said, “Mmm, yeah, no,” then put it in my pocket. Considering I had only assumptions and next to no actual knowledge on how magic worked here, I was already playing a dangerous game. If I was going to accidentally sprout a giant man-eating plant monster, I’d rather do it in the morning after I’d gotten some more sleep.

I picked a few more beans—all just as eager to mentally express their bloodlust to me—before heading over to my giant beanstalk in the making. It didn't look so much like a giant beanstalk in the making anymore and it definitely looked like it was the same kind of vampire beanstalk breed I’d just spawned in my yard.

No giant beanstalk. We had reached the peak of off-script, but then again, the story was called Jack and the Beanstalk, not Jack and the Giant Beanstalk. Planting a giant beanstalk had been more of a vanity project for me rather than something practical. Most of the beans I’d planted were for the purpose of bringing me back to my original world with the people I cared for from this one. Not having a giant beanstalk was not the problem.

The real problem was that this basically proved the assumptions I’d made predicting the future using the Jacks of the Columns on my page were just that, assumptions. Yes, the bean merchant’s instructions and my own decisions had already given me the potential to derail my predictions, but losing my giant beanstalk seedling had put the final nail in the coffin. Now I needed to reassess what I actually did know before the story I was in threw another surprise at me.

I knew that this was a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk and I—as far I could tell—was the Jack being referred to in the title. In this world, there had been plenty of heroes named Jack and a few of them had been Jacks of the Beanstalk. From context clues, I assumed that I was the latest Jack of the Beanstalk, but unlike my predecessors, I had failed to plant a giant beanstalk on my first try.

Honestly, that made me feel a little bit like the failure out of the bunch, but maybe I was making too many assumptions. Just because all the other Jacks of the Bean had gotten it on the first try, didn’t mean I was a failure for not having done the same.

If I looked at it on the brightside and thought of having a giant beanstalk as something inevitable, that meant I now had two extra types of magic beans that the other Jacks didn’t have to go along with it. One of the bean types even looked like it may have potential as an anti-giant weapon. I’d probably need it considering how much more dangerous the giants seemed to be in my version of the story. Still had to find Ben and Matthew if I could, after all.

And since I wasn’t going to be busy climbing a giant beanstalk the next day, maybe I could afford another visit to my friend, the bean merchant. If the inquisitor had people watching out for me, I’d probably be fine if I just put on a cloak and a scarf. Milaway didn’t have didn’t have any guards—just a sheriff and his deputy—and hiding your face wasn’t something anyone, but a guard would stop you for.

As for the bean merchant, he’d probably be interested in trading beans with me. I wouldn’t give him any of the beans that would get me home, but I’d be willing to part with some of these purple vampires.

“Meow.”

Just as I was about to start thinking of what I could ask the merchant about the fey, a familiar black cat called out to me. Once I’d turned to look at the nameless cat, she walked up to me and started rubbing my leg. I kneeled down to give her a chin rub, but she put up her paw, placed it on my palm, and expressed her demands.

Hmph, Nameless had become a pampered girl. It had been a couple days since I had last given her milk, so no doubt that was what she wanted. Didn’t have any left to give, so I gave her a shrug, but then she wandered over to the pot of giant’s blood.

“Woah, I don’t think you want that,” I said, rushing up to her. It turns out that I didn’t have anything to worry about. She took a sniff of the giant’s blood, hissed, and then darted halfway across the yard.

Probably for the best. I didn’t think she’d turn into some tar lion from a few licks of it, but I wasn’t about to risk her having a single drop after the bloodthirst it had instilled in the beans.

I picked up the pot, put it in the barn, then filled a ladle with water for Nameless to lap up. She’d been staring at me as I’d entered the barn, but when I came back out she had her head turned to the forest.

I followed her line of sight, but couldn’t spot anything beyond the edge of the clearing. It was probably some small critter like her. Bigger creatures than that didn’t seem to be attracted to these parts.

I covered half the distance between the barn and Nameless, then told her, “Brought you some water.” She’d turned her head back to me as I approached, but did nothing in response to my words.

“Hmph.” Lazy cat, I thought. Wouldn’t even meet me halfway. I walked the fullway up to our difficult darling and kneeled down for her so she could have her drink.

“Meow.” And of course she complained when she saw it wasn’t the usual thing.

“I don’t have any milk,” I said with a shrug. That led into us having a back and forth for a couple minutes with her trying to clarify her requests to what she assumed was a simpleton and me trying to explain that I, in fact, was not an idiot. I don’t think either of us felt like we were getting across what we were trying to say by the end of that back-and-forth, so she gave up on me and decided to drink the water since it was here.

As she lapped up the water, I scratched the back of her head. Sometimes she’d get angry at me if I didn’t do that. Man, I thought with a smile, I’d have never put up with this spoiled brat if the other Jack hadn’t loved her so much.

A few seconds after thinking that, Nameless stopped drinking. She’d stopped because something had landed next to us. Between Nameless and me, there was now a small object emitting a red glow that highlighted the grass in a fist-sized circle around it. The thing itself was a radiant crimson, still sparkling as I’d seen others of its kind do earlier at market. In this moment, the dark red bean was showing its true brilliance.

“Meow!” Nameless didn’t appreciate it. She’d looked it over for half a second before her animal instincts kicked in and she went sprinting off into the night. Thinking she might have the right idea, I followed her example and started sprinting in the opposite direction.

It was the right decision. If I’d hesitated a second longer, I would’ve been caught in the explosion.