rainbowfic | Newsprint #16, Psychedelic Purple #1: Jack's Adventure (Uncategorized)

Name: Jack's Adventure
Story: Uncategorized (a fairytale)
Colors: Newsprint #16 (Much was decided before you were born.), Psychedelic Purple #1 (nothing's gonna change my world)
Supplies and Styles: n/a
Word Count: 911
Rating: general
Warnings: Mention of death (towards the end).
Summary: Once upon a time there was a boy called Jack, who was the only Jack in the whole world who had never had an adventure by the time he was fifteen.

*

Once upon a time there was a boy called Jack, who was the only Jack in the whole world who had never had an adventure by the time he was fifteen.

Children named Jack were a little bit magic, as everyone knew, though most would grow up to be adults with very normal jobs, such as woodcutter or blacksmith or a member of the king's guard. So when Jack's fifteenth birthday came and went without a single adventure, all of Jack's family were very surprised.

They knew Jack's adventure had been running late, and had been waiting with bated breath to see what would happen at the last minute, but absolutely nothing did. The sun rose; the sun set; and then it rose again, and Jack woke up that morning just like any other, not changed in any way, except for being one day older.

Jack didn't mind. Like most Jacks, he was an easy-going fellow, and took what life threw at him, and muddled along as best he could.

Word spread. In the coming months, visitors--some of them Jacks themselves--came to the farm where Jack lived, and interrogated his mother and father and sisters. Was his name perhaps Joseph instead? Could it be that on his naming day, the officiator stumbled over his words, and said Jock or Seth, and not Jack at all? Eventually, Jack's parents had to make a sign to hang outside the farm, saying: No more questions about Jack.

A year or so passed, and then, in late summer, there was the flood.

A great, brawling storm raged across the land. It whipped up trees and bent weathervanes, and blew apart haystacks and tossed around anything that wasn't tied down, and with it came a rain that beat the ground apart until it looked like porridge. After it was over, the floodguards had washed away, the bank of the river had collapsed, and all of Jack's family's fields were underwater.

There was no saving most of the crop. "What will we do?" cried Jack's father. "Winter's coming, and that's all our livelihood gone."

Jack thought about it, in his slow but clever Jackish way, and when the road was passable again, Jack rode to the nearest town on market day with a single pig in the back of his cart. Once he'd found a place for his cart, he tied a leash on his pig--it was a young pig, and not yet a great big hog--and walked around the market with it, looking at what was being sold.

"It's that Jack," people murmured as he passed. "You know, the one who's never had an adventure."

"Ooh, is it? I wonder if he's been cursed."

"You can ask him, I suppose."

It was not long before someone tugged at Jack's sleeve and asked him is his pig was magic.

"Not to my knowledge," said Jack.

"Why'd you bring it to the market, then?"

"Oh," said Jack, "I thought he'd appreciate it. He's never been to the market."

The people weren't convinced, no matter how often Jack told them the pig was just a pig. At the end of the day, he rode back home alone, having sold his pig for five hundred gold coins.

"Five hundred gold coins!" gasped Jack's mother. "For that runt hog?"

"That'll do more than see us through the winter," wept his father. "That's worth more than ten farms! Did you lie, Jack? Did you steal the money? It's not worth it if you'll be dragged off to the magistrate for this."

But Jack had not lied or stolen, so even if the rich man who bought his pig was disappointed when it wouldn't sniff out lost treasure or solve mathematical equations, he couldn't say he had been cheated.

Between Jack and his parents, the money was well and prudently spent, and turned to more money and more livestock, and so Jack's family lived well for the rest of their lives.

When Jack was old and tired, and ready to move on, having had children and grandchildren of his own, he picked up his walking stick and went over the old abandoned well in the forest at the back of the farm. This well had belonged to another house a long time ago, and had dried up, and there was nothing but sticks and leaves at the bottom, and so it was always kept well covered up to keep any animals or children accidentally falling in.

Jack lifted the lid with a grunt, his old bones creaking, and called down into the darkness. "You can come out, now."

At the bottom of the well, a light began to glow, and up from the darkness floated a single piece of parchment. It was a little musty and dirty, but it had not broken apart in the sixty years that had passed since it had been shut into the old well, and the word laboriously written on it in a childish hand shone with the uncanny light of magic.

Jack held out his hand, and the piece of paper dropped on it, as if carried by a gentle breeze. As it did, the glow vanished, leaving only the words written with a piece of charchoal: JACK'S ADVENTURE

Jack smiled. "I said I'd come back for you, didn't I?" said Jack. "Well, here I am. I'm ready."

Every Jack is a little bit magic, and more than that, every Jack gets his way in the end.