The Children of Hamelin

by Danny Lasko

  “We are kings, you and I. Will you join our family to save our world?”

  I carefully reach out and run my finger across the full length of the blade. My hand curls around a meticulously carved deep blue grip. I feel the power of the shield wash over me as I lift the sword and meet Boxrud’s eyes with my own.

  “I will.”

  16

  Mirastory

  IT BEGINS THE SAME WAY EVERY TIME.

  I’m sitting in a pile of dirt, happy to be outside in the summer heat, lining up rocks and twigs in formation on a miniature field, its boundaries carved into the hard earth. The eight players must be in the right spot when the whistle blows. The slick black rock in the middle of the pack? That’s me. I’m one of the eight.

  But I’m alone. The curly-haired kid with the drop of sweat dangling from his nose isn’t there. His team of rocks lies still opposite mine. In fact, the entire neighborhood is empty, only the hot, whistling wind dancing with the dust and wild grass bullying its way through the cracks in the pavement. I scuffle my feet just to break the silence.

  “Hello?” The sound of my seventeen-year-old voice surprises me. I look down at my hands and my legs, feel the slight stubble on my chin.

  “Hi.”

  I whirl around to a boy, no more than ten years old with shaggy black hair and a button nose, sauntering up the middle of the cracked and weed-ridden street where I live, his hands mischievously behind his back. His oversized denim overalls zip-zop along the rough blacktop, threshing the hems into white strands of ragged cotton. He isn’t worried about cars. This neighborhood hasn’t seen one in decades. He smiles. I’m happy to see him.

  I’m happy to see anyone.

  The black-haired boy stops, waiting for something. He thinks I know what, but I don’t. I’m about to tell him when he nods to the makeshift field in the dirt. That’s right.

  He watches me, listens to my strategy for the Ames Cyclones to defeat the Sioux City Serpents in The Escape. I point to each rock and twig and clearly explain how my team will light the pillars and capture the trove, and as a prize, we get seeds for fruits. And some vegetables, but mostly fruit.

  “Where’s Dirk?” I ask. But the black-haired boy simply stares at me.

  “Where is he?”

  “Which one are you?” he asks, ignoring my question.

  “This one,” I say, pointing to the tall, shiny black rock.

  “You are one of the eight,” says the black-haired boy.

  “Yes.”

  “You are one of the eight.”

  My eyes narrow and search his face and then my surroundings, looking for an explanation, but the boy continues on script, ignoring my confusion.

  The black-haired boy tells me he has something to show me, but we have to get out of sight. And when there’s something secret to share, there’s only one place to go.

  The two of us scurry through the neighborhood of tumbledown homes and ramshackle sheds and into a field of wild plants tugging at us with every step, like they want to know what we’re up to and maybe join in. But we’re too fast for them. I let myself play the part of my younger memory. I reach our secret place first—I’ve always been faster—a burned-out old freight car that once rode the rail lines before the iron tracks twisted and tore. I take a scan of the field to make sure no one’s followed us, then boost the other boy into the car.

  I know what’s coming. We slide into our usual corner, the furthest from the door. The black-haired boy’s excitement is so high that I have to shake his shoulders to get the news out of him.

  “Don’t ask me where I got it,” he says before opening his cupped hands. I know what it is even before I see the flash of red and green. He has to push it into my face before I remember to say my line.

  “A strawberry,” I say, wanting more explanation. The black-haired boy presents the strawberry again, expecting me to do something with it, but I don’t.

  “Count them,” he says.

  “The seeds?”

  The black-haired boy nods.

  “One hundred ninety-one.” I’ve counted them before. Many times.

  “One hundred ninety-one,” he says again.

  “Yes.”

  “One hundred ninety-one seeds. One hundred ninety-one.”

  “Peter, what’s going on?”

  “You’re my best friend,” says the black-haired boy. “If I get to taste it, you get to taste it.”

  “But you don’t get to taste it! You don’t … ”

  He holds out the strawberry by its rough green stem right in front of me.

  “You first, Horatio,” he says, smiling. I hesitate. I want him to eat the strawberry. I want him to carefully press his fingers around the plump red body of the berry, spin it around so its narrow nose points toward his mouth.

  “I can’t,” I whisper, ignoring the tears falling off my cheeks, hoping Peter will do the same. “I’m not … you don’t get to … ”

  But he won’t. He pushes it into my hands. It’s beautiful. I let my fingers caress its bumpy skin, rolling over the one hundred ninety-one yellow seeds peeking out from the surface. Finally, I sink my teeth into the strawberry. He watches me, licking his lips and giggling with giddy anticipation.

  “What’s it like?” asks the black-haired boy. I look around for the intrusion I know is coming, but I don’t see him anywhere.

  “Nothing like it,” I tell him, reciting my lines. I shove it back to him. “Your turn.”

  “What’s it like?” he asks again.

  “Peter, I don’t understand—”

  The boy places his young hand on mine, calming me. His eyes pierce me, pushing me to answer.

  “What’s it like?”

  My eyes well up. When you’re nine years old, you don’t really think about what was or what could be, what’s wrong with it and what can be done to fix it. But I’m not nine years old anymore. And a strawberry isn’t just a strawberry anymore. I’ve known it every day since.

  The black-haired boy reaches out for the fruit, but my arm is yanked away before I can give it to him. We gawk at the intruder, lugging me out of the freight car: a man with fine yellow hair and a goatee to match, his large hand wrapped around my forearm.

  “Dad.”

  “We have to go, Horatio. Do not fight me.”

  Even as a seventeen year-old, I’m yanked from my seat and disappear from our no-longer-secret place, the strawberry still a prisoner in my grip. My friend pokes his head out of the door, watching my humiliating exit.

  “The Synarch has found us.”

  Even now, I feel my breathing stop. I hear my friend leap out of the freight car and follow us.

  We dart through the dusty neighborhood, back to my house, my friend following us all the way.

  “Count the steps!” he cries. I look back, wanting him to explain, but he just tells me again.

  “Count the steps!”

  I don’t need to count the steps. I know how many steps. Three hundred thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven until we reach the usually unused driveway of our house.

  “Three hundred thirty-seven,” says the black-haired boy catching up to us.

  “Yes! Three thirty-seven! What’s happening?!”

  Men and women, no longer strangers to me, are waiting for us, loading my pregnant mother and my granddad into a fancy-looking transport that floats about a foot and a half off the ground. Several of the neighbors have stepped out of their homes to see what’s going on.

  I hoist Peter Dawes, my best friend, over my shoulder and carry him with me.

  “He can’t come,” says my father.

  “Yes. He can,” I fire back.

  “How many seats?” asks Peter, still hanging over my shoulder.

  “What?”
<
br />   “How many seats empty?” He points to the transport.

  “Exactly twenty-three.”

  “Twenty-three.” I glance outside the window, knowing what I’ll see. The massive iron clouds hovering above Ames Academy. My once neighbors, now a desperate pack of refugees–all two hundred forty-three of them–lunge for our transport. But they won’t make it. They never do.

  “Two forty-three,” he says.

  “Why?!” I cry.

  I set Peter down on a seat next to me. My dad doesn’t seem to care. He’s too busy looking at a digital screen, pushing buttons.

  “Activating five-three-five. We’re safe.”

  “Five three five,” repeats Peter.

  “Peter, what are you talking about? Why—”

  “One hundred ninety-one. Three thirty seven. Twenty-three. Two forty-three. Five three five. You are one of the eight.” Peter Dawes crawls over to the still open door.

  “No, Pete! Wait!” I grab his little hand, kneeling down to meet his eyes and stuff the strawberry into his hand. “Taste it.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Please. Taste it. You have to taste it.”

  He doesn’t take it. Instead he closes my fingers around the fruit.

  I bury my face in my hands and let my body fall toward Peter’s arms. I feel his hands wrap around my back and head.

  “Let go, Horatio. It’s okay to let go.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Trust the Soul. Listen within.”

  I pick my head off the boy’s chest. Peter pulls my hand holding the strawberry up in front of me and pokes it.

  “You know what to do with this.” He puts his small hand on my shoulder. “Goodbye, Horatio. I’ll tell Dirk you say ‘hey.’”

  “Peter?”

  Peter Dawes drops out of the door and is immediately swallowed up by the panicked horde. My breathing stops. Suddenly, a stream of blazing yellow discs plows through the district of Ames, Iowa, igniting a raging tidal wave of fire that engulfs the entire town in a matter of seconds. My eyes are glued to my friends below, their families, my neighbors, the people I grew up with, the people who knew me, watched over me, running hopelessly in slow motion until the wave of fire washes over them.

  I expect it to end, but it doesn’t. Not until I have time to see a single girl, about my age, with hair as red as burning ember, lying in the path of the oncoming fire.

  “Annie!” I cry, jolting up from the silken pillows. I’m back in the bed that I used when they first brought me here. I stand up and pace the floor as I catch my breath and wipe the cold sweat from my neck and forehead. The sounds of the ocean waves crashing on the shore pull me out to the balcony. Light creeps over the horizon, but the sun won’t show itself for at least another hour. But I’m not going back to sleep. I can’t.

  I get dressed, grab the sword, and decide to roam around the castle grounds. I remember a celebration last night. At least four hundred wizards are here. Or were, shouting about the fall of the Synarch and the rescue of Allen and raising their glasses to me, the soothsayer who will show them the way.

  I creep out my door and down the hall, finding an entrance to a great courtyard surrounded by stone walls at least fifty feet high. It’s incredible, this place. Surprises around every corner, it seems, as remarkable and shocking as the Star Room. Serefina, the fire woman, said something about it last night, how dozens, sometimes hundreds of wizards through the centuries, architects, artists, illusionsists, spent their entire lives building this fortress, celebrating the power of the Soul, using it as a laboratory to find its limitations, which apparently have still not been found in over three hundred years.

  I find myself back in front of the redwood doors and open them. The book still lies on the table where Boxrud and I read. Suddenly, numbers flash through my mind—191, 337, 23, 243, 337 and 535. Numbers from my dream. Numbers that seem to shake with urgency the closer I get to the green-bound book on the table.

  I turn to the one hundred ninety-first page of the Mirastory and scan the columns of writing.

  The Shadow Clan’s power rises with each setting sun. The eight princes and the Auravella they wield, they and I are the last defense against them. Only a prince of Mira shall wield the power of the Auravel and only in defense of Mira.

  Should a prince fall in his duty, he will be raised in spirit. His work will be raised by another, chosen by me or by the remaining princes should I also fall. And only if we all fall shall the lands of Mira be left to the wolves and shadow.

  But the princes will not be alone. Whether I fall or no, they will always have an Ally, who will guide them when they do not know the way.

  “You are one of the eight.”

  I hear Peter Dawes’ voice in my head, but I shake it clear to move on.

  Page 337 . . .

  . . . I give the princes the Auravel, the instrument of defense and prosperity, and the power to act as I would act. The Grey will teach them. And they will carve it from the branches and bones of Mira.

  A vessel of art and creation, a merging of power and mercy, the SongKeeper’s Aire cries out halfway between dusk and dawn on the seventeenth anniversary of her birth. The Aires will be the prince’s strength.

  The voice of the SongKeeper and the breath of the prince will as one be Mira’s deliverance.

  “Annie,” I call out to the stone walls. “Annie’s a SongKeeper!” I nearly bolt out of the room, but Peter’s remaining numbers blind me until I fall back to the book.

  Page 23 is the same page as the passage Boxrud showed me about the restoring of the Soul. I almost skip ahead until something catches my eye before the text he read.

  The princes have fallen. This once good and glorious world of hope, love, and liberty will succumb to the false trappings of the Shadow Clan if left alone. It is the inhabitants’ own doing. They have chosen their way. And the chains they wear, they helped forge.

  All is not lost. One power remains that could end the dark places of the world forever. It is the living light of Mira. But it is young and not yet strong enough to shine over shadow. I must give it time to grow, time for Mira to feel the weight of their irons and shake them off.

  The sacrifice is mine to give, as a father sacrifices for his child. So I leave Mira’s fate to its children, four score and eleven. I have broken the light and knit a piece with each of their souls, even the living light of Mira, and charge these children to care for it, nurture it until the power within can defend forever against all enemies of Mira.

  One I leave behind. The others I bring from all lands and lead through Grimm’s Looking Glass to the Earthlands, far beyond the grasp of the Shadow Clan, far beyond the travails of Mira, and into a world they can prepare for the day of restoration. May the Children of Mira fare better than their fathers.

  My head hangs heavily upon my neck. Every inch of my skin crawls with disgust. The Children of Hamelin were wrong out of ignorance. They were deceived and left to fend in darkness. But Boxrud. He had the truth. And he ignored it. All because he wanted this world for himself.

  I want to leave, but Peter’s last two numbers fill my mind. I flip to page 243. My eyes immediately jump to a list near the center of the page, spaced away from the other text:

  And these are the lands of Mira: Grimm | Neverwood | Olympos | Mir Island | Earthlands | Oz

  Earthlands. Earth. Is a part of Mira.

  “You know what to do with this,” echoes Peter Dawes. I can still feel the wet, sticky last third of the strawberry placed in my hand, its juices running over the side.

  I flip to page 535, hungry for new knowledge.

  My dear Children, I send you to the Earthlands with your souls entwined with the living light of Mira. Your brother Berebus has taken to calling it the Soul. A fitting title, for all inhabitants
of Mira have a light within to guide them in dark places.

  But it is for the Earthlanders that I send you to be a greater light. I have hidden them from the rest of Mira, beyond the grasp of the Shadow Clan, for they are a strong people with the greatest capacity for good. And in the end, they will be the champions that will come to aid our beloved world in its darkest time. The Soul will make ready the noble and great among them. And in turn, the Soul will be made ready.

  The time of restoration I cannot foretell. If you, my Children, use the Soul to build up the Earthlanders and lighten their paths under darkening skies, the Soul will surge. But if you seek to hide this power or grow deaf to their cries, the Soul will be stayed and its growth mired in fear and selfishness. Listen within.

  But the time will come. For the Soul will cry out to the one left behind, and he will find the pure-hearted child to lead the Children home and restore the Soul. One child will lead, but the four score and ten must be willing.

  Moments await when your hearts will fail you, when you seek the fairer path for fear of suffering. You will choose to fight yourselves and the plan I have set for you. And I give that choice to you freely. Your battles will be hard and your losses punishing. You will lose hope. But do not fret long, for our wrongs bring us closer to wisdom. It is in the darkest night when the light shines brightest. Listen within to find your light.

  And now, dear Children, farewell. I soon go to battle against the very shadow that darkens our skies. Though I will hinder its advance, it will consume me. Use the time I give you. Use it wisely. Return to us. Make haste.

  May the Soul of Mira protect you forever.

  Suddenly, the distant roar of the crashing waves fades, as does the rustling of leaves dancing in the breeze. There’s a warmth in my chest, almost a burning, calling out to me. And I listen.

  Earth is part of Mira,

  The Soul was meant to help, not to be hidden.

  The wizards seek to rule this world, not serve it.

  “He’s going to destroy the Looking Glass,” I blurt as the realization hits me in the chest. I have to find the Looking Glass. I have to find Berebus Pock. I have to find Annie!