There was no way that she could pull the carpet over and disguise what she’d done, but the desk would hopefully suffice. At any rate, Agnes’s hand would not be able to get at them. She pulled the desk and chair back into place, darted down the first few steps, closed the trapdoor behind her and locked it from below. She told the students to leave the light switch off and stay silent. Maybe Agnes would assume that the students had run out the other door of Fern’s classroom and escaped unseen.

When all was silent for over half an hour, Fern climbed up the stairs and lifted the trapdoor only an inch. If the giant Agnes was watching through Fern’s classroom window, her huge distant eyes would not even notice it. However, it gave Fern a chance to look out and see if Agnes was still there. Sighting nothing at the window and hearing no movement outside, she noticed that there were no shadows over the windows either. Agnes might well have moved on. She cautiously opened the trapdoor and walked over to the window. Looking out she could see nothing.

Fern walked to the door, unlocked it and opened it just enough to peek out and get a look from a different angle. What she saw in the distance was mind boggling.

The giant Agnes was climbing up a gigantic beanstalk which had somehow grown in the field beyond the back of the school. Fern ran out into the school grounds and watched until Agnes seemed to disappear from sight in the clouds. She ran back inside, let all the students come up from the cellar and sent them home early. She then explained the whole story to the township and everyone decided that it would be best to leave whatever lay at the top of the beanstalk unexplored. The field in which it grew was guarded for some time by armed men with cannons, in case a hungry Agnes Jensen should choose to return. After three months, they were convinced that the giantess would not come back down, and abandoned it. She had obviously found all the food she needed in the place to which she had gone.

School had resumed successfully, with 24 year old Miss Kara Jones replacing Miss Jensen as the infants’ teacher.

A few months later, on the last day of school, Jeremy knew that he would not be missed by the teachers. When school broke up, he snuck out into the fields beyond the back of the school, and came to the beanstalk. It could only have been accessed through the school, which was private property. The teachers had forbidden the students to go into those fields. They were permanently out of bounds, so that nobody would ever go to the beanstalk again.

However, Jeremy would not be caught, now that the two teachers would be on their way home to start their holidays. Jeremy looked at the stalk. Its trunk, if one could call it that, was wider than his own body.