by T F Carthick
And they began to make a big fuss of how dogs were a public menace and exaggerated stories of dogs attacking humans started spreading, till finally the town council had to yield. Dog-catchers were commissioned and the dogs were done away with. With the elimination of their natural predators, wasn’t it natural that rats should multiply? But people just don’t realize these kinds of things. That is how people have been all the time. They wanted quick-fix solutions to all their problems then, and they want quick-fix solutions to all their problems now. They never learn.
Also, I suppose the mayor probably thought he would never be called upon to follow through upon his promise. So, he promised a grand reward just to appear to be doing something. That is another folly of humans, especially the leaders. They care more about perception than actually getting things done. And often initiatives undertaken to manage perceptions end up doing more harm than good.
Anyway - enough of my philosophizing.
Returning to the events, the piper left quietly and was not seen for the next two to three days. The mayor thought he had left for good. He totally forgot about the fellow and got back to his daily routine.
Then suddenly, on the fourth day, the people of the town were greeted by a strange sight. The piper was back with the pipe on his lips. Some odd sounds were emanating from it. And all around him were rats. Little rats. Big rats. Black rats. Gigantic rats. Bandicoots! It was almost as if every rat had been magically summoned by the piper. The music itself had an unusual quality to it. It was not what humans would normally call music. But I could sense a certain rhythm and melody in it that had a strange kind of allure. I am sure the rats must have felt it even more strongly. No wonder they came out in such large numbers in response.
Continuing to play his pipe, he began to walk slowly. The rats followed after him as if spellbound, while the inhabitants of the town looked on, equally enchanted. Soon he was close to the river. He stepped into the river and calmly waded through till he was right in the middle of the river, the water covering his whole body up to his neck. He stood there and continued to play on. One by one the rats began to follow after him. He seemed completely unperturbed as he watched the rats jump to their deaths, charmed by his music. Once the last of the rats were drowned, he calmly made his way back to the river bank, water dripping from his clothes. He then silently walked away from the town and disappeared. The town, on one hand, was shocked at the gory spectacle. On the other hand, they were relieved to be free of the threat of the rats.
In the next two days all the horror at the piper’s completely ruthless execution of the little creatures was completely forgotten and the town was in a celebratory mood. The streets were all decorated. Entertainers were called to perform – musician, jugglers, fire-eaters, acrobats, buffoons and the like. Wine flowed freely. The sound of laughter echoed all around the narrow streets of the city.
On the third day, the people noticed a stranger approaching the town. As he came into view, they recognized him – it was the piper. The mayor walked up to greet him.
“Come! Come! We welcome you, our savior! Come and join our celebrations. A goblet of wine for you?”
He just shook his head, his face maintaining the comic sobriety.
“Why do you look so grim, my friend? You have got us rid of the cursed rats. Now let us share our joy with you.”
“I came for my reward,” he said.
“Reward? Yes. Yes. We will definitely reward you. For now, join us in the merriment. You are a performer, aren’t you? Why don’t you play some songs for us? Come on, folks. Give a big hand to the piper.”
“Can I just have my reward, please?”
The mayor frowned. “Why so curt, my friend? Come then! I will give you a reward.”
They made their way to the mayor’s office. Once they were inside, the mayor opened the safe and counted out a hundred gold coins.
“Here you are, my friend. The humble reward our town can afford.”
“But you mentioned a thousand gold coins.”
“Be reasonable, my man. Our town will go bankrupt if we gave you that much. This is all we can afford. I will make it two hundred if you like.”
He counted out another hundred gold coins.
“But it was you who promised a thousand gold coins.”
“I didn’t mean it. It was just something I uttered in the heat of the moment. Come on. Two hundred itself is a tidy sum. Please take this.”
“No. A thousand you promised, and a thousand I shall have.”
“Ok. Give me some time. Let me discuss with the rest of the council.”
In those days one could buy a whole month’s provisions for a single gold coin. So two hundred gold coins was indeed a princely sum. For a thousand, one could buy off all the land in a town. There was no way they could give him a thousand. It would be as good as being eaten out by the rats. The mayor wondered what could be done.
He took the piper to his home and bid him to rest while he went to pull out his council colleagues out of the celebrations.
After over two to three hours of heated discussions, the mayor made his way home with the proposal they had decided.
“You can have this two hundred now. In another ten days’ time we will collect money from all our people and have another three hundred ready. The remaining five hundred, we shall give you in installments over the next five years. I hope this is agreeable to you.”
“No. You promised to give a thousand gold coins if I got rid of the rats. I have kept my promise. You keep yours.”
“Where am I denying, my friend? We are just asking for time.”
“Ok. I shall give you a week’s time. At the end of which I shall return and you shall have the thousand coins ready.”
“One week? Give us more time, my friend. Where will we get so much money from? This five hundred itself will squeeze us dry.”
“I do not know how you will manage. Borrow from the neighboring towns. Petition the king. Do whatever. But I want my entire money in a week’s time.”
The piper got up and left the mayor’s office, warning once again, “I shall be back in a week.”
The next day, the mayor again summoned the council and put up the piper’s demand in front of the town. The town’s richest man Johann, a large man in his early forties, rose to speak. “We can’t bend to every demand of the scoundrel, Gerhard.”
“But I did promise him,” the mayor said weakly.
“A promise made without consulting the council has no legal validity. And he has no written proof of the promise.”
“But….”
“Not ifs and buts. We owe him nothing. You were kind enough to offer him the five hundred gold coins which is a fortune in itself. But the blackguard is too greedy and seeks to bankrupt us. We won’t stand for it. He shall get not a single piece of gold off us.”
“But we can at least try to talk to him.”
“You have seen where talks have brought us. The time for talking is past. It is now time for action. I, as a member of the council, pass a motion to completely reject the piper’s claims. Those in favor raise your hands.”
All hands except the mayor’s went up.
“And those against?”
There was just one hand – Gerhard’s!
“I do not feel good about this, Johann.”
“Don’t worry, Gerhard. Leave it to me. I know how to handle such fellows.”
On the eighth day, Johann waited at the gates of the city with his men. They did not have to wait long. The piper came into sight, playing a merry tune on his pipe. He clearly was in a better mood than the previous visit. I think if Gerhard had tried, he could have convinced him to accept five hundred gold coins with some persuasion. But things were now out of the old mayor’s hands. Johann had a different way of handling matters.
Johann signaled to his men. They immediately fell upon the piper, pinned him to the ground and bound his arms and legs.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“You are now our prisoner.”
Johann pulled out a knife from his pocket and brought it close to the piper’s neck.
“One little cut and that will be the end of you.”
The piper did not respond. His face had turned all red and one could clearly see the rage on his face.
Johann brought the sharp edge of the blade closer to the neck till it just touched the neck. An inch more and it would cut.
“So, you wanted a thousand gold coins, did you? So here is the deal we offer you. A thousand gold coins for your life. Deal?”
“This is not done.”
“No. This is how I do things. Is a thousand gold coins too small a price for your life?”
To emphasize his point, he applied slight pressure on the knife and made a cut in the piper’s neck. Blood welled and began to flow down his neck.
“So, do you accept our conditions? Do you still want a thousand coins? If you insist, we will of course keep our promise. We will bury a thousand gold coins in your grave along with you.”
“Keep your money and let me go,” said the piper in a surly voice.
“Wisely chosen, my friend. As long as one is alive, one can always earn more money. Now leave and never ever show your ugly face in our town again.”
They released him and returned triumphantly to the town hall.
“Ha ha ha! That must have shown him who he was messing with. Old Gerhard was always too much of a softie. No wonder he lets himself be bullied by every Tom, Dick and Harry.”
“Indeed, boss,” said one of the henchmen.“I think it is time you made a bid for the position of mayor. We need someone strong like you at the helm.”
Little did these people realize that they were not done with the piper yet. It was again a case of trying to find a quick fix for the problem. But as I said before, life’s problems seldom have such easy solutions. Any attempts to solve them in such a simplistic manner only serve to worsen the situation. A month passed. Nothing happened, and by now Johann and his henchmen had been crowing from the rooftops about how they had handled this difficult piper and saved the town from complete bankruptcy.
Then one fine day in the middle of the night, the piper made his appearance at the gates. All the people of the town were sound asleep. I had a kind of ominous feeling about his reappearance. He was no ordinary man. The humans may have forgotten, but I can never forget that completely unfeeling, detached air with which he had drowned all those rats. I have heard some men from a neighboring country tell a tale of one of their emperors who was apparently playing the fiddle when the entire city was burning. This piper was that kind of a man, who would be calmly playing his pipe while setting fire to the city.
It did not take me long to discover his game. Like he had done on the previous occasion, he reached the center of the town and started playing. Only a different note this time. A note much more pleasant to the human ear. And once again they came and crowded around him. Not the rats, for there weren’t any left, but all the children of the town. You see, he was playing the notes that would tug not at the hearts of the rats but at those of the human children. They all got up from their sleep, opened their doors and came out. Their parents, meanwhile, continued to sleep soundly. For the music was such that it lulled the older ones to deeper slumber while bringing forth the younger ones.
Once all of them had come, he began to walk. I wondered if he would head towards the river again. I was dreading the thought of the people waking up the next morning and finding the bodies of their children floating on the surface of the river Weser. Some knew to swim and might escape. But many of the smaller ones did not, and would end up like the rats. But the piper clearly had other plans, for he headed towards the hills. He climbed over the hills and the children followed after him. All except little Michal and Joanna. For Michal was lame and Joanna was blind. Neither could make their way up the hills. But the others followed him, and they soon disappeared out of sight.
That was the last I saw of the piper. And of the children.
I never found out what happened to them. Over the years, various stories have reached me. Some say, he took them all to a cave and left them there to starve to death. Some say he took them with him to the strange land he had come from and raised them himself as a tribe of pipers. Some say he took them to a faraway kingdom and sold them off as slaves. I would never be able to find out what really happened. I do hope and pray they survived and lived a decent life.
Of course, what I did see was the grief of the townsfolk when they got up the next morning and found all the children gone except for little Angela, who was deaf. Little Michal and Joanna were found curled up together beneath the hills. The kids were woken up and the whole story came out. They organized search parties and looked all over the hills. But there was no sign of either the piper or the children.
Johann put the entire blame for this situation upon the mayor, conveniently hiding his own role in the whole matter. Gerhard, completely overcome by guilt and grief over the loss the town had suffered, did not utter a single word. He quietly tendered his resignation and retired to his home. The sad and angry people of the town unanimously elected Johann the new mayor. This is always the way of men. Dire situations call for the best of men at the helm. But instead, when things turn bad, people more often than not end up choosing the worst among them to lead. It would be years before the people would realize the disastrous consequences of choosing one such as Johann to lead them. But that is a different story for a different day.
What the Hobgoblin did
He is lonely. There are not many of his kind left anymore. Humans have overrun all the lands, driving the elder races to the verge of extinction. He keeps hidden from the sight of humans. Human interaction has never been good for him. Humans fear and hate him – whenever he is spotted they come at him with pitchforks, burning torches and stones. Or they want to use him – they capture him and don’t release him till he grants their wishes. One of the greediest and most vicious of all races he has ever seen.
But they are an extremely emotional species. So much drama in their lives! He is fascinated by their emotions. He literally feeds on them. The humans lack even the most basic magic of the elder races. But they have emotions. That is their magic. So, he lurks around human dwellings. He stays hidden and watches. And listens.
He sometimes wishes he could directly experience human emotions. They seem so powerful even from afar. How much more magical it must be to experience them first hand! Anger and fear! Hopes and dreams! Love and longing! He is no longer satisfied just being the observer. He wants to feel them himself. But he is loath to interact with the foul humans.
His thoughts are interrupted by a sound of a woman sobbing. It is coming from one of the chambers in the palace. He is curious. He gingerly makes his way towards the source of sound, avoiding the eyes of the palace guards. He has this ability to make himself invisible to human eyes that are not specifically looking out for him. The sound becomes increasingly louder as he approaches. The chamber from which it is emanating seems locked, though. But locks and doors are to keep humans out. Or to keep them in, as the case may be. They mean naught to one such as he. He can pass through walls as if they do not exist.
He enters the chamber and what does he see inside? A lass. A comely lass. Sitting in a corner and weeping. He is so taken in by her loveliness and utter vulnerability as she sits by the spinning wheel crying that he overcomes his natural repugnance towards the human race and approaches her.
“What distresses you so, my dear?”
She stops crying and jumps up in alarm, completely startled by the sudden appearance of stranger.
“Who are you, you vile creature? Go away at once, or I shall call the guards!”
“Now! Now! Don’t get so worked up, my dear. I mean you no harm.”
“Who are you? How did you get here? What do you want?”
“That’s a barrage of questions. Let me answer one at a time. The first is a difficult one and let’
s leave it for now. The second is easily answered, I just floated in through the walls. And as far as the third question goes – it is not I who happens to be the one in want but you, my dear. I only seek to help you.”
She seems somewhat mollified. But she still continues to glare at him suspiciously. While his diminutive form makes him somewhat less threatening, his gnarled features and outlandish attire more than make up for it. After all it is not every day that country lasses run into child-sized men dressed like clowns with wrinkled faces weathered by age and pointed ears sticking out like the wings of a malevolent bat.
“Don’t be scared, my dear. I mean no mischief to you. Tell me why you cry and maybe I can be of help to you.”
He tries his best to keep his voice as reassuring as possible. It seems to be working, for he can see the expression on her face change from fear to worry. She lets out a sigh.
“It is all the fault of my father. It was my father’s vain boasting that brought me to such dire straits.”
“I don’t understand, my dear. What did you father do?”
“Oh, yes. I am so sorry. I forgot that you know nothing of my pitiful state of affairs. Let me start by introducing myself. I am Sally, the miller’s daughter. My father is such a big mouth. It is his boasting that got me into this terrible fix.”
He leans forward and nods sympathetically. She continues.
“This father of mine goes all over the town boasting that he has a daughter who can weave straw into gold. And as my luck would have it, the rumor somehow reached the king. And the king…”
She breaks down into tears. He looks on as she weeps inconsolably. He is not sure what to do.
“The king had us summoned to his presence and asked my father to prove his claims. Father tried to give some lame excuses and wriggle out of it. This tactic of his generally worked with the village-folk. But not with the king. Did father really think he could hoodwink the ruler of the land so easily? The king is the shrewdest man alive in the kingdom. No wonder he rules over all of us. He had my father thrown inside a prison and locked me up here, in this chamber. He has given me a night to spin all this straw into gold or my father will remain in the jail-house for the crime of spreading lies and cheating people. I can’t bear to think of it. I have no one in the world except my father.”