Jack, the boy who climbed, climbed up and stole the sun. It glittered in his palm like green eggs. It sang like a broken chicken. He brought it to his mother, laid it in her lap, and said, “Take it. Take it, mother. Make it me; and I will go and sail off to sea."

She petted it quietly and turned it over and whispered in its ear, “You are not him, you're just a pea, a green stone plucked from underneath a tree."

Now Jack, the boy who climbed, climbed up to her and said, “I will not have you speak that way to me," and took the sun and out the door and on until he spied a spinster.

She rested to her knees, part pale, part green; she wanted more than anyone should need: a boy to slip her body out to sea.

Poor Jack. The scene that followed played him out like stream on end of stream. He was blue lines by the end, worn to shimmering.

She said, “You're blue. How so?"

“You spread me thin. You witch, you cancer."

It was strange, the tone, the scream. He seemed to drip. His legs stripped, ran anywhere.
His mind turned clear, white like an egg. He jumped to fly. He died. He tried everything.

Afterwards, from his castle (this was much later), he wondered, “If I hadn't left; if I'd left that sun up there and climbed on up that tree, I wonder . . . “

“Now Jack," she said (she was at the castle), “Stop fretting, pick the greens. I've soup.
I've soup to eat, need greens."

...