"Jack's endless fall, he screams in vain, a boy forever lost in pain."
There once was a hill.
A beautiful, sloping green crowned with wind-kissed grass and laced with the scent of sweetwater from a crystal spring.
Atop that hill stood two children, Jack and Jill.
They laughed with abandon, unaware that the hill was not a hill at all, but a wound stitched into the earth, waiting to split.
The rhyme they inspired is known well:
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water...
But they never came down.
Not really.
Not the way the story tells.
The Climb
Jack was the bolder one, always racing ahead, barefoot and reckless, eyes wide with dreams. He believed the spring atop the hill held more than water. He believed it whispered secrets to those who listened.
Jill was quieter. Thoughtful. Always looking behind them, as if the village down below might vanish the moment she looked away.
They climbed often.
Always for water.
Always at dusk.
It became a ritual, something ancient and unknowingly sacred.
But the hill had begun to change.
They didn't notice at first.
The climb grew steeper.
The wind colder.
The grass, though green, swayed against the grain.
On the final day, as the sun painted the clouds with blood-orange strokes, they climbed one last time.
The Fall
No one saw it happen.
Only the rhyme remains.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.
But the rhyme is a lie.
Jack didn't fall once.
He fell forever.
The Curse
It began the moment his foot slipped on the dew-slick grass. The pail flew from his grip, spiraling like a silver coin in the air. Time slowed, the sky yawning open above him as if to swallow him whole.
And then... he fell.
But he did not hit the ground.
The hill stretched. Twisted. Pulled itself skyward as he plummeted downward.
He screamed for Jill.
He screamed for the sky.
But gravity betrayed him.
The world inverted.
And he fell... and fell... and fell.
The hill became a spire. The spire became a spiral. The spiral became a void.
He landed only once...into a mirror.
It cracked.
And beneath it was another fall.
Another Jack.
The Loop
He wakes mid-fall.
Over and over.
Sometimes he lands on sharp stones and feels his bones split like wet firewood.
Sometimes he crashes through glass, seeing a hundred reflections of himself... each more broken than the last.
Sometimes he never lands at all... just drifts in silence, watching the world ripple like a dream remembered wrong.
He forgets what stillness feels like.
He forgets what breath is, except as a scream.
He forgets his name until the rhyme reminds him:
Jack fell down and broke his crown...
The words echo in the wind like laughter without joy.
The Fracture
Time does not pass in the place Jack falls.
Or perhaps it does, and he simply no longer measures it.
He sees other things now.
Shards of moments.
Ghosts of hills.
He sees Jill... sometimes ahead of him, sometimes beside him. Sometimes crying. Sometimes calling.
Once, he caught her hand.
It was cold.
She pulled him close and whispered, "You weren't supposed to fall alone."
Then she shattered into mist.
And the fall continued.
The Watcher
There is a figure that watches the fall.
Tall, cloaked in shadow, with eyes like pocket-watches wound too tight.
It stands on platforms that appear and vanish, always just out of reach.
It speaks in riddles and teeth:
"The hill was a lie. The spring was the key.
You climbed toward a story that never wanted you free."
Jack throws himself at the figure.
He claws through air.
But the moment he nears it, the world folds inward, and he is cast back... into the wind, into the scream.
Back to the beginning.
The Spiral
Eventually, Jack begins to understand.
The fall is not down.
It is inward.
A descent into memory.
Into guilt.
Into truth.
He remembers things the rhyme never told.
He remembers why they climbed the hill alone that day.
He remembers the pail had words carved into its handle.
He remembers the spring bubbling with whispers that tasted like lies.
And he remembers what Jill said before he slipped:
"You heard it, too, didn't you?"
The Hill's Secret
The hill was a prison.
The spring was its mouth.
And Jack, in his eagerness to fetch the water, ignored the voices that told him to stop.
The spring had called to him since he was a child.
It promised answers.
Freedom.
Magic.
All it asked for was a fall.
A fracture.
A crown.
And Jack, like a fool, gave it all.
Jill's Descent
Though the rhyme says Jill followed, the truth is more complicated.
She jumped.
For love? Perhaps.
For guilt? Maybe.
For escape? Likely.
But unlike Jack, she did not fall forever.
She landed... in the valley between dreams.
And there, she waits.
Building staircases from memories.
Writing letters Jack will never read.
Whispering rhymes he cannot hear.
Trying, always, to reach the brother she could not save.
The End That Never Comes
Jack has forgotten what ground feels like.
But he still hopes.
Hope is the cruelest thing the fall allows.
Sometimes he sees lights below.
Sometimes he hears songs from a kingdom long lost.
Sometimes he thinks he sees the sky again.
But each time...
The wind returns.
The hill bends.
And the fall begins anew.
The Boy Who Falls
If you walk past the old hill on the edge of the Fairytale Kingdom, you might hear it:
A rush of wind with no storm.
A cry with no throat.
A rhyme spoken not by children, but by the hill itself.
" Jack's endless fall, he screams in vain,
A boy forever lost in pain.
He tumbles still through shattered air...
A broken dream beyond repair."
And if you stand at the top long enough...
If the sky turns just the right shade of dusk...
You might glimpse him.
A flicker in the corner of your eye.
A boy, reaching upward as he disappears beneath your feet.
Falling.
Always falling.
Forever falling.
End of Chapter 4
Next: Chapter 5: The Crooked Man's Shadow