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H arriet slept that night under the stars. She’d been meaning to go back home to the castle, but ... well ...
“Qwerrreeeeelllcch!”
“Mumfrey, I don’t know what was in that bean you ate, but you smell like a rotten fish wrapped in old socks!”
Harriet wasn’t the most princessly princess in the world—she was happy to admit that to anyone who would listen—but a good ruler takes care of the people she rules over. That meant that she didn’t want to take Mumfrey to the castle stable and subject all the stable hands and the other quail and the kennel-newts to the extraordinary smells that Mumfrey was producing.
So she bedded down in a field, with Mumfrey downwind, and tried to sleep despite the noises that his innards were making. He sounded like bad plumbing.
“Good night, Mumfrey,” she said. “Try to get some sleep.”
“Qwwwwergle ...”
In the morning, Harriet woke up feeling refreshed. “Hey, it stopped smelling around here. Mumfrey! Do you feel better?”
“Qwerk!” said Mumfrey, which is Quail for “Much better!”
“What a great morning! I could go for a cup of tea ...”
It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining and the birds (other than Mumfrey) were singing. A little breeze blew, and went:
Harriet paused.
She was used to breezes going “whoosh” or perhaps “swish.” She was not used to them making a sound like a gigantic tarp snapping in a gale.
“Uh ... Mumfrey? Did you just hear .. ?”
Harriet turned.
Behind their campsite, a gigantic beanstalk climbed into the heavens. The top was lost in the clouds.
The sound that Harriet had heard was the leaves moving in the breeze. Each leaf was the size of a barn roof, and when the wind moved them, where a normal bean plant would have gone rustle-rustle, the giant beanstalk went WHOMPH WHOMPH WHOOOOOMPH .
The trunk was as thick around as the tower that Harriet had lived in until the incident with the thorn hedge. There was a bean dangling a few stories up that could have fed an entire village for a week, and somebody could have lived in the empty bean pod afterward.
“Mumfrey,” said Harriet slowly as her eyes went up ... and up ... and up ... “Mumfrey, at some point last night, did you get up to use the bathroom?”
“Qwerk,” muttered Mumfrey, scuffing his foot on the ground.
“I know that wasn’t there yesterday,” said Harriet. “But you ate a bean and now there’s ... that. So ...”
“Qwerk!” said Mumfrey irritably. This is Quail for “Fine! Yes, well, everybody does it. And I felt better afterward.”
Harriet could picture exactly what had happened.
The magic bean had emerged back into the world—ahem—and found itself in a pile of the highest-quality fertilizer that a trained battle quail could produce.
And it had grown.
It had grown a lot.
The breeze blew again and she saw the bean leaves lifting like sails in the wind. A cloud drifted away, and she saw even more of the beanstalk, going up and up, and then into another bank of clouds.
“Well,” said Harriet. “I guess I owe that chipmunk an apology. Those really were magic beans.”