Tales from the Brothers Grimm and the Sisters Weird by Vivian Vande Velde Read Free Book Online Page A

landing in the garden.
    Jack took one step, tripped over an ivy vine, and went sprawling. He tucked the hen and the harp in close to him under his jacket so they wouldn't get injured and rolled down, down the hill until he came to rest with his face pressed against the bars of the gate by the street.
    He got to his feet, dizzy and bruised but still holding on to both hen and harp. He looked over his shoulder and there was Effie's father running toward him, holding a huge black cooking pot and calling, "The cauldron, the cauldron, too!"
    Sure that if he wasn't fast enough he was going to get eaten, Jack squeezed through the bars of the gate and took off down the street.
    After a while he couldn't hear the sound of pursuing footsteps anymore, and when he looked over his shoulder there was no sign that he was being followed. But just in case, he never slowed down. He ran and ran, all the way home, bursting through the kitchen door just as his mother was sitting down to breakfast.
    "Jack!" she said, seeing him covered with twigs and dirt. "What's happened?"
    Jack flung himself into a chair, panting loudly.
    "I thought you went to town to look for a job," ‹his mother said.
    "I did," Jack gasped between wheezing breaths. "And I found one, too. I'm a cow salesman."
    "
Cow salesman!
" his mother cried. "What kind of job is that when we only have one cow?"
    "Oh," Jack said. "Good point."
    His mother rested her head in her hands. "I hope you at least got a good price for her."
    "Ahm..." Jack said reaching into his pocket. He came out with a handful of lumpy, beer-encrusted beans.
    "That's disgusting." His mother pulled on his sleeve until his arm was hanging out the window and shook the mess off his hand. "You were gone a whole day and night, and all you come home with is a handful of beans?" she shouted.
    Jack wished his mother wouldn't be so loud; his head felt as though it was about to burst like a dropped egg. Which reminded him ... He reached under his jacket and pulled out the hen, which he set on the table.
    His mother looked at him skeptically. "You traded our cow for a chicken?" she demanded.
    Jack shook his head, which he shouldn't have done, not with his headache, then he said, "No. The beans must have been magical beans. They grew into this incredible ... well, I guess it must have been a beanstalk ... which reached up, up, up ... to a city in the sky."
    "A city in the sky," his mother repeated.
    "Giants lived there," Jack continued. "The lady giant tried to help me. She hid me in the oven. But the man giant could smell people. He was going to eat me."
    "
She
put you in the oven," Jack's mother said, "But
he
was the one you were afraid of?"
    "And they had this hen that lays golden eggs and this harp"—Jack pulled the cloth-draped harp out from under his jacket^ "that sings. I barely escaped with my life. The giant was chasing after me with a cooking pot."
    "You
stole
these things?" Jack's mother cried in horror. "Did I raise my son to
steal
things?"
    "They didn't want them," Jack protested.
    "A hen that lays golden eggs and a harp that sings—
and they didn't want them?
"
    Jack squirmed. But before he could think of how to answer, the hen clucked loudly, sat down, and laid an egg. A perfectly white, perfectly ordinary egg.
    Jack's mother just looked at Jack.
    Jack sighed. "I guess I forgot to mention that you have to feed the hen gold before she lays golden eggs."
    "But we don't have any gold," his mother pointed out.
    "But we will." Jack pulled the cover off the harp. "People will come from miles around to hear this. They'll pay us. Sing, harp," he commanded.
    And the harp did.
    In loud, off-key, gooey, sticky, ear-shattering, eye-watering, fingernails-on-blackboard notes.
    Jack's mother put her head down on the table and covered her ears. "Stop," she cried. "Make it stop."
    Jack threw the cover back over the harp.
    Eventually the harp stopped singing.
    "Oops," Jack said.
    Jack's mother raised her head, then