Boom!

The sound hit me before the heat did. Terrifying, but discreet. I’d even go as far as to call it reserved for an explosion. As for the warmth that rolled over me, it wasn’t hot enough to burn me, but it was definitely hot enough to make me uncomfortable in multiple ways.

I turned around. Singed grass and a bald spot of soil wider than my shoulders now occupied the space where the crimson bean had fallen. I felt that chill. The same chill I’d felt when the baron’s man flew over my head. I had just almost died.

I turned to the direction Nameless had been facing when I came out of the barn and shouted, “Who's there?” I was pretty sure I knew, but it would be nice if I could see him.

“Just me,” the bean merchant said as he stepped out of the forest, hands behind his back.

“Just you, huh?” I repeated, taking an anxious look around the clearing. Run or stay, I was probably dead already if he brought a bowman with him.

“That’s right.”

I finished my quick scan of the clearing and didn’t find anyone else. “So why are you here?’ I asked, turning back to him.

“Came to collect my beans,” he said.

“The beans that I traded you a cow for?” I pointed back to my bean patch with my thumb.

“Those are the ones.”

“Okay. What are you going to trade me for?”

“Well, I don’t really think either of us are in a trading mood right now,” the merchant said. He was sliding his thumb against a pair of beans he held between the fingers of his left hand. Even in the dark, I could still make out their crimson sparkle.

“So what, you’re just going to steal them from me?”

“I don’t really consider it stealing when I’m taking from a deadman.”

“Then I think you’re coming a bit early then,” I said. “I don’t plan on dying anytime soon.”

“You’d be dead already if it weren’t for that cat spooking you. Guess they really are bad luck, huh?”

“Bad luck for you, good luck for me.”

“Bad luck for you too,” the merchant corrected me. “I’m probably going to have to make this a lot more painful for you now.” With that, he started his approach.

I put up one of my hands. “Look, I’m not interested in a fight,” I said, taking a step back, “If all you want is a few of my beans, then you can have some, okay?”

A crimson star lit in the merchant’s hand. “I think it’s a little late for me to be acting friendly considering the circumstances,” he said. He kept coming closer as I hurried my steps back.

“Well, we don’t have to be friends to make a deal.”

“Look, I’d rather not leave someone alive who knows too much about me, so unless you’re willing to agree to die…”

“I’m not really interested in that.”

“I thought as much.” The merchant pitched his bean at me and the shooting star came soaring past my head as I dodged to my right.

Boom!

He had good aim. I didn’t turn around to look, but if the heat from the blast was anything to go by, I had been just as close to death as I had been with the first bean.

“You’re fast,” the merchant said. I noticed he was holding his right hand behind his back.

“Yeah? Looks like you chose the wrong Jack,” I said, placing my hand on my axe. I could see him eyeing it.

“Maybe.”

“Why’d you even pick me out from the crowd?”

“If you take a look at those beanstalks a little ways behind you…”

I didn’t. “How’d you know I’d be able to plant them, though?”

“Who knows!” he said, straining the last word as he threw a star from his right hand.

I ducked under it then charged towards him with my axe drawn.

“Woah,” he said, taking a couple steps back. He placed his left hand behind him.

As soon as I saw that, I turned around and made a break for my bean patch. I kept looking back as I ran, but he just stood there staring at me until I had about reached the beanstalks. That’s when he threw the bean he was holding behind his back straight up. A crimson star raised a few feet above him, then erupted before gravity could bring it back down. A crimson fireball erupted above him just a second later, illuminating his face.

About ten seconds, I thought. That was about how much time had passed between him putting his hand behind his back and the bean’s explosion. That was probably the delay between prepping and detonation.

The merchant raised his voice, “You’re smarter than I expected,” and began his approach anew.

“Careful about throwing another one of those bombs at me,” I said from the security of my bean patch.

He stopped when I said that, but didn’t say anything in response. He just took a sac off of his back and kneeled down. I couldn’t exactly see what he took out from it clearly, but from the sheer amount of flickering light it was producing, and the number of crimson flashes fading in and out around it, it had to be a whole cluster of beans.

“Hey, you heard me? I’ve got your precious beans surrounding me now.”

“Yeah, I heard you.” the bean merchant replied. He put back on the sac and stood up with the bean ball hanging to his side by a rope. He put some force on one of the beans and it lit up like a volcano on a bean planet. Then, he started spinning the cluster by the rope and even more beans started to light up.

“Hold up!” I shouted, terrified I’d made a horrible mistake thinking he wanted the beans, but the merchant just put up his hand.

“Calm down. This one's not for you.”

He spun his meteor for a couple more seconds before letting go of the rope. It shot into the air with an arc as it defied gravity.

This one’s not for me, my heart dropped, Agatha? I snapped my neck back to look at our house. No. No way it’s making it on time.

Back to the explosion then. I spotted it at the top of its arc and counted down in my head as it began its descent, 3, 2, 1…

Boom!

Thunder cracked and a monsterous flame erupted above the clearing illuminating everything within in crimson light. Just like the other explosions before it, however, it only stayed for a couple seconds before making a swift departure.

It was just as I had suspected from the start. The more beans there were, the stronger the explosion was. If I had tried running into the forest or the house, he would have just thrown one of those and blown me and everything within thirty yards of me away.

“I expected more of a reaction out of you,” the merchant said.

“I’ve seen explosions like that before,” I responded. Never saw one in real life that big though and never so close. It had me so distracted that I hadn’t even made sure that he wasn’t throwing something else at me until it was done.

“An explosion?” the merchant asked.

“It’s what you made the beans do. You made them explode.”

“Never heard that one before,” He said. “I'll try to remember that.”

“I’ll be happy if you do,” I joked.

He raised his voice again. “You see what I can do with those beans?”

“Yes, Sir! Very big explosion, Sir!”

“If you don’t come out from that patch, I’m going to throw one of those at the house. And if you don’t come out after I do that, I’ll do the same to that place down the road too.”

Basically he was going to kill everyone in a two-mile radius if I didn’t let him kill me. “You think it’s better to make all this mess instead of letting me get away?” I asked. “After they find what you did, the army is going to be looking for what caused this, you know?”

“They’ll just blame it on the giants,” he said, taking off his sac again. “Some of them got magic too. Now are you going to come out of there or am I going to have to have my beans explode on that house?”

Oh? He used it in a sentence. It’s nice to know when someone takes your teachings to heart. “How do I know if I do what you say, you won't do that in the end anyway?” I asked.

“If you're smart enough to keep running your mouth, then I'm sure you can come up with a good enough answer on your own.”

I watched him leave one of his bean meteors on the grass and put his sac back on his back. A hamlet massacre wasn’t exactly discreet and neither was blowing up this cottage. If he didn’t have to, he probably wouldn’t do it.

“I guess you’re right,” I said, stepping out from my beanstalks.

“Enough of the time to get me this far,” he said, placing both his hands behind his back.

I approached him in earnest, each step bringing me greater anxiety, each step I took bringing me closer to death.

“Stop,” he said, after I had covered four-fifths the distance between us.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“That’s the problem. You’re walking a bit too smooth for a man who’s about to die. Talking a bit too smooth too.”

“You have a lot of experience watching people die?”

“Enough to see that you ain’t acting right.”

I sighed. “Look, if I’m going to die—”

He picked up his crimson meteor by the string. “Put your hands up right now before I light this whole place on fire.”

I did as the madman said, but kept my fists closed.

“So they’re purple, huh?” he said.

A feeling of defeat came to me. “You saw it?” I asked. He must have seen the bean’s glint through my knuckles.

“You really thought that was going to work?”

“You didn't really give me much for options.”

The bean merchant dipped his head to the side and put the bean meteor down. “Fair enough,” he said, taking his left hand out from behind him and letting his right hand take its place. A crimson star, freshly ignited, rested atop the center of his left palm.

“Make sure not to move.” He closed his hand, but crimson light still shined out between his fingers. “If you get caught at the edge it's going to be very painful.”

5…

“Thanks for the advice,” I said.

4…

I felt the sweat dripping down the back of my neck. Maybe I could dodge the first bomb, but at this range, I didn’t think I’d be lucky enough to dodge the one he was prepping behind his back too. A violet star and my aim, I’d have to put my trust into those.

3…

I dropped my fist, readying a pitch as the bean merchant pulled back for his own.

2…

Just as the bean merchant was about to throw, Nameless pounced. She rocketed up from the ground and straight onto his face, clawing.

“Ah!” the merchant shouted, throwing his bean wide.

1…

That was my chance. I moved in closer—Boom!—just out reach of his bomb’s eruption. As he threw my cat, she took his second bean along with her. I threw my bean.

Vines shot out from my violet star as it approached its target, wrapping themselves around the merchant, surprising both me and him. Another explosion went off to the side and the merchant fell to the ground, constrained.

A smile set itself upon my face as I dug into my pocket. Time to get some answers, I thought, rushing to get a second bean out. It looked like the merchant could barely wiggle like a worm, but I wanted him double-knotted just in case.

“Ah! Ah!” the merchant shouted, rustling in the grass as he continued to struggle. He was screaming louder than when he still had my cat on his face trying to claw his eyes out.

When I looked back up from my pocket, I could see why. A red light was flooding out from under his back. The vines had caught him at an odd angle and a result, he’d fallen straight onto his crimson meteor.