Unspun

by Ruth Nickle

  As the trio approached, the piper was the first to notice that something wasn’t right. Where were the children? Could they have finished and wandered off already? Rounding them up was going to be one more pain to add to the day’s collection.

  What they found in the brambleberry rows sent the piper and his fellow inspectors into a panic. The bushes were picked clean as intended, but on the ground lay empty gathering baskets. Each was stained with the unmistakable brambleberry mark, but there were no berries left intact. The ground was well-stained with berry pulp and juice, now left to the birds and beetles. But where were the children?

  In a daze, the piper ran down the rows with the mayor and harvest overseer close behind, desperate to make sense of what he had seen. And now it was all coming into focus. Like a swarm of locusts, the children had devoured every last brambleberry once the piper was out of view. Then they had moved on to the rows of late strawberries. Completely wiped out. Then the raspberries. Eaten through. The bilberries. Gone. And at last, there they were—all the children on the ground between the hedgerows of unripened elderberries—squirming in audible discomfort with telltale signs of berry vomit. And the piper knew why. Elderberries were already toxic when fully ripened and uncooked, and the green berries were worse. Fortunately, the consumption of all the other berries had probably left them full, explaining why most of the elderberries were still on the bushes. Had they started with elderberries, there was little doubt that the outcome would have been far worse.

  The piper had a new problem. He now had a bunch of sick kids who were evidently horrible at counting and had very little self-control. Two problems, really, for he would probably be hanged for his role in the berry crop fiasco on account of Oldendorf’s ill feelings toward Hamelin. He could read his fate on the stony faces of the mayor and the overseer as their attentions turned from surveying the damage to sizing up the piper. The only real upside was that he was now untethered by thoughts of wealth and could do what he should have done long before now.

  “Fellows, I do believe that our berries are all sitting there right behind you,” he said, pointing. And as the two men turned to look, the piper took off sprinting between the hedgerows, away from them.

  He hoped that he would have enough speed and stamina to make it to the visible forest glades and maybe hide in the trees until he could safely escape. But in less than a minute, he was overtaken, tackled, and pummeled several times in the head and body by the harvest overseer.

  Exhausted and a painful wreck from the torso up, he lay there, pinned to the ground by the overseer.

  “Good work. Tie him up until the others arrive. I know they heard us,” said the mayor, tossing some cord. “I’m going to take a lot of pleasure in hanging one of Hamelin’s own saboteurs.”

  “Please! I’m not from Hamelin! I beg you! This is all a mistake!” the piper cried.

  “That’s exactly what a spy would say,” said the overseer, pressing the piper harder to the ground.

  “No! Hamelin cheated me, so I stole their children with magic,” the piper gasped.

  “That’s also what a spy would say.”

  “I can prove it!”

  “That’s definitely what a spy would say. Save it for the gallows,” said the overseer, binding the piper’s ankles together.

  But the mayor, remembering that he had indeed seen the piper command the rats at will, was disturbed by this strange claim, and asked, “And just how would you prove it?”

  “Get off me and I’ll show you,” said the piper, wheezing. The overseer held his grip and looked over at the mayor, who, after a small eternity, nodded his head. The overseer loosened his hold and pulled the piper to his bound feet.

  The piper took his pipe from the bag that had been flung aside in the scuffle and loudly played the melody—simple and whimsical. Like clockwork, the child army began to emerge in methodical fashion from the rows of elderberries. They plainly looked miserable about it and weren’t going very fast, as if the feet said “yes” while the face said “I hate you for this.” They were now a grotesque spectacle of pale, moaning, stained, sickly faces that would have caused an unfamiliar stranger to swear these to be the wiedergänger undead, come back to torment the living.

  The mayor gasped. “Stop them. Send them away!”

  “I can’t. They’ll keep coming. But they’re the same awful little children who came with me. Shocking, I know.”

  “Look!” said the mayor, pointing. “Now our children are coming, just like the others!”

  It was true. The Oldendorf children ran toward them, some with buckets or brooms still in hand; their eyes were wide with confusion. And chasing after the Oldendorf children were a mob of townspeople, looking utterly bewildered by this strange phenomenon.

  “They’ll have your head for this,” said the mayor.

  “I’ll make sure of it,” the overseer chimed in.

  “What’s done is done,” the piper said, wincing. “I can’t pay you or bring the berries back, but I have an idea that doesn’t involve a noose. Please hear me out.”

  And with the mayor’s consent, the piper quickly recounted the day’s series of events—Hamelin’s duplicity, the impulsive kidnapping, and the unfortunate journey that brought them to Oldendorf. He ended by proposing a plan that he hoped would appeal to the mayor’s sense of justice (along with his ego). He had no chance to gauge the mayor’s favorability toward the idea because the mob of villagers arrived and, seeing what the piper had done, was ready to pull him limb from limb. Now all the battered piper could do was await his punishment.

  The Oldendorf children and villagers were flanked by the awful army of Hamelin children whose wailing and whimpering for home were truly wretched.

  The mayor stretched out his hands to signal that he was about to speak (and possibly to create a momentary barrier between the mob and the piper).

  “Oldendorfers, you see how our berry crop has been ravaged at the hands of Hamelin’s children, led by this man.”

  The mob cursed and yelled.

  “I want my berries!” cried a woman.

  “I must remind you,” continued the mayor, “that by our law, the punishment of children goes no further than lashings.” The mob grumbled. “On the other hand, this man is not so lucky. I know how much you enjoy a good hanging once in a while, and it would send a message to Hamelin that we will not allow this with impunity.”

  The piper cringed as the mob roared with approval.

  “On the other hand,” said the mayor, “The loss of the berry crop has happened before and as you know, it is not critical to our winter rationing.” The mob grumbled some more.

  “I want my berries!” yelled the same woman in the crowd. The mayor ignored her.

  “On the other hand, we cannot let Hamelin go unpunished. The very fiber of our identity as Oldendorfers depends on this.” Those in the mob nodded.

  “On the other hand—”

  “That’s too many hands! Let’s hang him!” yelled a gravelly voice in the mob. A cheer went up and the mob started to advance.

  “Quiet!” The mayor shouted, waving his arms to keep them at bay. “Before you decide his fate, I give you one other choice—and I believe it may suit us better than killing this scoundrel, who I’m not even sure is a Hameliner . . . ”

  * * *

  It was dusk in Hamelin. Those at home were gathered in mourning: what had begun as a glad day, free of rodent pests, had turned sour with anger and anxiety. The mayor had concocted a story about the piper trying to demand triple the pay after finishing his dirty work and then stealing the children in retaliation when he didn’t get it (in reality, the mayor hadn’t paid him a single guilder, saying he had taken longer than promised and should be grateful for the practice). Since the disappearance of their children, most of the townsmen had been out in companies, concentrating their search along the riverbank because
they feared the worst.

  From the forest outside Hamelin, there came a flutter of birds, seemingly disturbed by something in the trees. Then came the unmistakable lilt of a pipe, distant at first, but growing steadily louder. Those who were indoors came outdoors, and those outdoors took their torches and set out toward the sound to investigate.

  The piper emerged from the woods, but this was not the piper they remembered. True, he seemed to be the same person, but now he limped slowly along and looked haggard and unnatural, his face a ghostly gray (courtesy of the ash the Oldendorfers had added as part of their conditions). It seemed that all his remaining energies were put toward maintaining his tune, and the people of Hamelin now saw why. Behind the piper, a throng of children with the same eerie ashen faces, looking even more terrible than the piper, lurched forward with every step.

  “Wiedergänger!” gasped a woman.

  One of the boys behind the piper raised his hands in ghastly fashion toward the woman and cried, “Mama, Mama!” whereupon the woman shrieked and fainted.

  The piper stopped playing as the children continued to advance behind him. The townspeople were frozen in terror, not knowing whether these children were living or dead, whether to embrace or to retreat. Some of both occurred, along with some more fainting.

  Suddenly the piper brought the pipe back to his lips and played a different tune. From the grasses and forest came the rats. Big rats. Small rats. Oldendorf had far more rats to deal with than Hamelin. Now they would be Hamelin’s to deal with. As the piper stopped and the spell dissipated, Hamelin’s citizens watched in disbelief as rats scattered and scurried into the town’s recently vacated nests, holes, houses, barns, and fields.

  The piper had saved his own life by bringing both Hamelin’s children and Oldendorf’s rats back with him, enduring a torturous return journey that consisted of alternating between child and rat tunes. All the while, he had been forced to listen to the children’s sickness-induced groans, weariness-induced cries, and rat-induced squeals. With his bargain fulfilled at last, the piper scanned the crowd, hoping to complete one more task. Finally spotting Hamelin’s mayor, the piper staggered slowly toward the petrified man until the two were face to face.

  “It looks to me like you’ve got a rat problem,” the piper managed. “And it’s not going to be cheap.”

  Ethical Will

  by Kaki Olsen

  Part 1: Shiva

  Lena knew that Mom would have liked a quiet graveside service, but it was simply impossible given the circumstances. Oncology nurses who had been her comrades-in-arms during the battle against leukemia were now here for the war memorial. Actual comrades-in-arms in uniform or civvies came to remember the brave soldier who had died in her own bed. Family members were fewer in number, but the focus of attention.

  Mom would have preferred that a few friends and immediate family cluster around the coffin, with their taciturn rabbi performing the ceremony with no flourishes, but the sheer number of people demanded a place in which to congregate. The memorial service was well-attended at the synagogue, and the respectful quiet that ought to have been maintained became an amplified cacophony of weeping, sniffing, and surreptitious murmurs.

  In the memorial hall, Lena was fortunate to be wedged between Aunt Anna on one side and one of Mom’s cousins on the other. They had both kept respectful silence since entering, and whenever the congregational noise swelled, Anna would tighten her grip on Lena’s hand. It wasn’t a very effective gesture of comfort, but it anchored her to something other than the oppressive crowd that had turned up in her mother’s honor.

  It was easier at the cemetery, where much of the noise was carried away on the wind and the crowd was punctuated with headstones. When the rabbi sang the Kaddish, Lena was able to focus on his soothing voice rather than the fact that lowering the casket into the grave gave her no peace or sense of closure.

  Sitting Shiva was a welcome respite from the formality of the funeral, but it was less pleasant to receive the condolences. She endured kisses to her cheek and comments about how much her mother had loved her, but she inevitably felt some kind of shame for her anger at the dearly departed. When her mother’s fellow soldiers told Lena how much Platoon Sergeant Hoffman meant to all of them, she gritted her teeth at the idea that “Hoff” would have preferred dying painfully from multiple organ failures to being the target of an IED somewhere in Afghanistan. Lena had been privileged to be with her mother at the end, but it had not given her any peace to witness the passing of the woman she had only sporadically been close to. No one who instructed her to call if she needed anything was likely to help if the horror of her loss woke her in the middle of the night. The visitors wanted to fix her grief with a hug and a pot pie.

  Shiva lasted seven days, but after the third day, the stream of visitors slowed to a trickle. Friends and even a teacher paid their respects as the community poured out blessings and condolences, but the fifth day passed with even fewer appearances than the fourth.

  A few minutes before sunset on Friday evening, they dressed in their best clothes. They dutifully prepared the foods because life and faith had to go on, even during Shiva. Aunt Anna lit the candles and recited the Kabbalat Shabbat prayers. It had been Mom’s place to lead Kavod Shabbat, so it was only appropriate that her youngest sister continue her efforts.

  “Lena,” she said after they had wished each other a good Sabbath, “would you lead us in singing?”

  She had been assigned this role since time immemorial and, her imperfect voice cracking even more than usual, she sang the hymn to invite in the two angels of Shabbat.

  “Shalom aleichem

  malachei hashareit

  malachei elyon

  mimelech mal’chei ham’lachim

  hakadosh baruch Hu.”

  The Talmud said that the angels who accompanied them to Shabbat would look upon the state of the household where they were invited. If the home was full of light and the spirit of Shabbat, a good angel would bless them that they would find the same spirit the following week. His counterpart was a malevolent angel and capable of pronouncing unhappiness on the house should he be displeased with their worship.

  A friend had once compared this to Santa’s naughty-or-nice tally, and Lena had always wondered if she was one bad thought away from invoking the malediction of the second angel. She had never openly tried to make this an unhappy place, but she had to wonder if her good intentions would be offset by the impatience she had felt on the day of the funeral. Maybe her irritation that cousin Eleanor had burnt the challah would give the second angel power and the good angel would be compelled to agree with his decision.

  Still, because she could not help but hope for better things to come, she invited both angels in.

  “Peace be unto you, ministering angels, messengers of the Most High, of the supreme King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.”

  As they asked that the angels come in peace, the candles flickered as though some unseen person had sighed in their vicinity, but they continued, raising their voices in unison.

  “Bless me with peace, angels of peace . . . ”

  There was no way to know if they had earned a seal of approval, but the only spirit of unease at that Shabbat was the one that had lingered since they returned from the graveyard.

  * * *

  The reading of the will was something of an anti-climax. Mom had never put much stock in personal belongings, so she had seen to it that the house and her personal income would go to Lena. A few family heirlooms went to friends or family, but she made no mention of clothing or personal journals. Anna had proposed that they donate any books that the family could live without to a library in need and made a half-hearted attempt to decide what clothing they should send to Goodwill.

  Mom waxed poetic about why Lena should always have a home to call her own and how the money she had left should be used for her education
, but she had left one cryptic line at the end of the document.

  It is my wish that Lena welcome my nutcracker into her life.

  After the reading of the will, she returned to the family home. The antique nutcracker waited for her on the mantel, where it had been on display every day she could remember. He was over one hundred fifty years old, but so lovingly cared for that the paint still looked new. Lena accepted the bequest instead of finding a good ballet school to adopt it, but left it where it had been for years without giving thought to how else she could “welcome” the nutcracker.

  “I have one just like this at home.” Meg took the foot-high toy off the mantel. “Mom thinks they’re the perfect way to decorate for the holidays without being smothered by tinsel or fairy lights.”

  The high school friends she hadn’t seen much of since graduation two years ago had shown up on the last day of Shiva, just after Lena had returned from the lawyer’s office. They all seemed more amused than anything by the gift.

  “Yeah, but yours only comes out in December,” Alison rejoined. “I’ve seen this on the mantelpiece forever.”

  “And as far as I know, it’s been there since Nana Marie got it for reasons that aren’t exactly obvious to the rest of us. Especially since it’s, you know, a Christmas sort of decoration,” Lena replied.

  Meg shrugged. “Well, it’s not what you’d usually find next to the menorah, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with keeping an heirloom from the Gentile section of your family tree.”

  “I was going to leave it there until I couldn’t stand the sight of it, but Mom wanted me to welcome him. How am I even supposed to do that?”

  “Throw a party?” Erin suggested. “Buy sugar plums and gingerbread and whatever else they had in that fairy tale kingdom in Act Two. Spend all night on a sugar high, then put him back on the mantel until you’re home for the holidays.”

  Lena felt almost guilty for being able to smile at that, but it was the first time she had felt amused by something in two weeks and she was supposed to accept consolation from members of the community. She didn’t quash the urge.