Serendipity Market by Penny Blubaugh Page A

were each close enough to touch a plant, I reached out my hand, palm up, and moved it gingerly toward one of the pods. Christobel yowled and bashed her head against my leg. My mother said, ‘John, do you think you should?’
    â€œBut by now my fingers were touching the pod. Heat radiated off it, heat that I would have sworn I could feel running through my arm all the way up to the elbow. It was the same heat that had come off the beans themselves when Jack had put them in my hand just two days before. I jiggled the pod and watched the color flashes glint in the sun. The reds and blues, the greens, and oh! those violets. I reached for the stem. ‘Should I?’ I asked.
    â€œChristobel hissed. My mother said, ‘Oh, John, I don’t know if that’s wise.’ And the pod fell, snuggling and rolling against my palm like a drowsy little mouse.
    â€œâ€˜Well,’ I said, but I don’t remember what I planned to say after that, because suddenly pods from all three plants began to fall. The three of us—my mother, Christobel, and I—were caught in a rain of pods. By the time the stalks were empty, the herb garden was covered with piles of pods and beans that reached to my knees.
    â€œThe falling pods had made a noise like hundreds of fingertips tapping on cloth-covered tables. When they were all off the plants, the silence seemed to echo.
    â€œâ€˜Gracious,’ my mother finally said. She sounded breathless. ‘Goodness gracious.’
    â€œChristobel meowed.
    â€œMore silence, until my mother said, ‘I’ll just go and get a nice basket,’ which made me laugh out loud.
    â€œâ€˜That’s like cleaning up after the flood last spring with a teaspoon.’
    â€œâ€˜And what do you suggest?’ My mother used her huffy voice.
    â€œI laughed again, and shrugged at the same time. ‘I don’t really know.’
    â€œâ€˜We have to do something. We can’t just let them rot.’
    â€œChristobel yowled in agreement.
    â€œâ€˜I suppose,’ I finally said, ‘we could ask the millerfor some of his grain baskets. Just so we could move them into the old barn.’
    â€œâ€˜An excellent idea.’
    â€œI hooked up our pony cart, drove toward town, and borrowed baskets from the miller. We worked like dray horses, even Christobel, although her idea of help was to slap both beans and pods out of the baskets after we’d put them in. We eventually filled our whole barn and half of our stable before we were able to take those baskets back.
    â€œWe were in the middle of this work when Lazy Jack came back. His eyes widened when he saw our harvest. I stopped shoveling beans long enough to grab him by the arm. ‘Jack,’ I said, and I smiled my most unpleasant smile. ‘Where did these beans come from?’
    â€œâ€˜I said they were magic,’ Jack said, pulling against me and edging toward the road.
    â€œâ€˜You did,’ I agreed, following along. ‘But you neversaid from where.’ My mother, who is quite fierce when she chooses to be, was at this moment hidden behind a pile of beans. But Christobel and I were a match for Jack even without her. I gripped his arm tighter and glared down at him. Christobel tried to bite through his shoe. I said, ‘Where, Jack?’
    â€œâ€˜The—the giant,’ Jack stuttered.
    â€œâ€˜What giant?’ I shook his arm, not gently.
    â€œâ€˜The one up there.’ Jack pointed straight to the billowy summer clouds, straight to the one that was shaped like a very large dog.
    â€œâ€˜A giant in the clouds? That’s who gave them to you?’
    â€œRemember that until after I planted Jack’s beans, I was unconvinced of magic. While my opinion had changed, I still wasn’t sure that I could make the leap required to believe in giants.
    â€œJack squirmed.
    â€œâ€˜Jack?’ I asked, squeezing his arm now.
    â€œâ€˜Of course.