The Children of Hamelin

by Danny Lasko

“Hid it is the wrong phrase. Protected it, perhaps. The same way the Children protected themselves.”

  “But how did he find it?”

  “I don’t know,” answers Linus. “There’s more to the story than we know or are likely to get. Perhaps Pock knows.”

  “Let’s go ask him. Any ideas how we get in?” I ask, pointing to the orb.

  “No,” he says without hesitation. “I can tell you it is self-powering, with no off switch. Only the one who created it can turn it off.”

  “Or the one who lights the pillars,” I say, wrapping my hands around my face and wiping away the angst that can come only when an unwelcome truth hits you right between the eyes.

  “What?”

  “I have to play.”

  “No,” says Linus, his eyes bugging out at me.

  “Yes.”

  “What if we just hide out here during the game?”

  “Sensors are placed in the arena to make sure the right number of people are on the field. They’d find us before the game even started,” I tell him.

  “Then we could jump out as soon as the cage goes down and grab it.”

  “They’d grab us before we could put two feet on the ground. The only people who are going to get close enough to the trove are the players. I have to play.”

  “But without the Soul, you’re like—”

  “Everyone else, I know.”

  Linus relents, not able to come up with a better idea. We hunt around until we find the team tunnels for both the Magic and the opposing team, the Texas Storm. The Storm’s tunnel digs itself under the six o’clock tower, what appears to be a broken-down rail station. Surrounding it are the facades of old shops, an opera house, and a town hall, all of it built in the style of the early twentieth century, Linus tells me.

  “We’ll wait in the Storm’s tunnel. That’s where we’ll—get down!”

  I grab Linus, ducking behind a toppled park bench.

  “We’re not alone,” I whisper, pointing to a light coming from a window above an old brick fire station. We keep still, hardly breathing, watching for movement in the lighted room. But after an hour, we both decide that the light was always on and it had nothing to do with us.

  I notice a tingle in my finger and look down at the silver ring Pock gave me. Linus feels it, too. We step closer to the light, and the tingle starts to travel up our arms. With each step, the warmth pulls us closer to the light. We find our way into a dusty old apartment filled with dusty Victorian furniture and red carpet, a few picture frames of people we don’t know, and the source of the light, an old potbelly lamp. Even when I clumsily knock it over coming through the window, the small flame stays impossibly lit.

  “This isn’t mechanical,” says Linus, examining the flame. “This is some other power. Look.”

  He wipes the grime away from the lantern’s base to reveal the same type of swirling script from Pock’s letters. But this time, I know what to do with them.

  I play the first note, followed by the second and third, and by the tenth, I’ve closed my eyes and have let the music teach me which note to play. The somber tune, both sad and hopeful, wraps around us, soaks up the fear and anger from our chests, and replaces it with a comforting blend of confidence and what I can only describe as love. We’re safe here. Like we’re not as alone as it seems.

  Turns out we’re not. Six white pigeons tap their beaks against the double-paned glass from the outside. Linus slides the window open enough to let them in, but they stay put on the sill. They’re not looking at us. They’re peering down at something on the floor, a brown paper bag. Linus picks it up to find an odd thing inside.

  “Bread crumbs,” he says, smelling them. “And they’re fine. Even fresh.” He grabs a handful and spreads them out on the window sill. After a minute or two of watching the birds excitedly snatch the treat from the window, I sit on one of the old tattered couches. As crazy as feeding these birds seems to be, I am certain there is nothing more important for us to do at this moment. And by Linus’s constant replenishing of the bread crumbs, he agrees.

  “When I first heard that song, I knew we had something special.”

  We both whirl around so fast that the pigeons flap away in chaos. I double my fists while Linus poses to chuck the half-eaten bag of crumbs at the invader. But there’s something odd about him. The low voice, gurgling with wheezes, is kind and pensive. He’s looking out beyond us into the ruins of the park. His peppered hair and mustache, neatly groomed, match his pressed blue suit and tie. His skin is pale, like he’s sick, only more so. But the twinkle in his eye is wondrous and compelling.

  “Are … are you real? Or something else?”

  “You know,” he chuckles, sitting himself on one of the high-backed chairs against the far wall and actually motioning us to sit with him. We don’t. “You know, my whole adult life, I’ve experimented with how to bring fantasy into reality, and this tops them all, don’t you think? I just wish I could have shown it to more than just you two.”

  We don’t know what to think. I peer over to Linus to give me a clue of how this is happening, but he’s mesmerized and offers me nothing.

  “I’m not a ghost. I’m not an audioanimatronic. I’m something else. Something between a thought and a memory, and if you’re here, then it is happening just as he said it would.”

  “Who?” asks Linus, turning to me.

  “I think you know who,” he answers, surprising us both by responding. He seems to be gazing down at Linus’s hands still holding the bread crumbs, smiling with a confident satisfaction I can’t quite interpret.

  “Now listen to me because I am here to help. I expect by now my park is in a dreadful shambles, and I suppose I’m glad I can’t really see it that way. You’re looking for the Looking Glass?” asks the kind old man with a slight cough and wince in his back. He waits for an answer.

  “Yes,” I say finally.

  “And there are some bad folks trying to stop you from getting to it.”

  “Yes. Is it here?”

  “Of course. It’s why this park is here.”

  “To hide it.”

  “Well, officially, I suppose. It was a dream of mine from very early on to build a place where parents and children could enjoy the day together with rides and games and things. I was going to build it on twelve acres of land near my offices. But then I found it.”

  “The Looking Glass.”

  The phantom nods. “So I changed my plans. I couldn’t just leave it at twelve acres. I wanted something bigger, harder to search, in case any of the folks who are after it ever got wind that it was here. I consider myself having a pretty big imagination, but this,” he says, pointing out the window, “this is something more.”

  “But, sir, Mr. Disney,” asks Linus, “how did you find it?”

  “Well, the funny thing is, once we started retelling the different fairy tales, it was pretty obvious. Many of these stories had something in common, and I was convinced the storytellers were trying to tell us something. Something essential. Something that would change the way we think about living.”

  “That this world isn’t all there is,” I say without thinking. But the phantom seems happy with the response.

  “So I started looking for that something,” he continues. “And it led me here.”

  “Led you?”

  “Well, now, I suppose it’s a little different from where you’re standing than where I am,” he says. “It would have to be. You see, guests here call my park ‘magic’. It’s a place where imagination is simply in the air, where the world outside sort of melts away, and innocence and hope take its place. But the mistake they make—and how could they not, really?—the mistake is that they believe that the park, the place I built, is the reason for the feeling of wonder. As if rock and wood could conjure suc
h things. But what’s really the truth is that I built the park because of the feeling of wonder that was already here, coming from the portal–your Looking Glass–that connects this world with the others.

  “The Looking Glass isn’t just a portal to another world, boys. It’s a conduit to feeding imagination into the human mind. Each one funnels the element that allows us to connect thoughts and ideas together in creative ways. To find new truths and solutions. It helped me build this place.”

  “Each one?” asks Linus before I can. “You mean there are others?”

  “Well, sure,” says the kind old man. “How do you think we know about the other places, from the stories?” My mind races back to the Mirastory’s list of lands, some familiar, others I had never heard of. Each of them must be connected by its own Looking Glass. But why to here?

  “But they’re closed,” he continues. “And should they stay closed, not only will Mira fall in shadow, but so will Earth. One cannot survive without the other. But should the Looking Glasses be opened again, this world would see, well, a new renaissance of wonder and vision. Oh, to see that. Only this last Looking Glass can be opened from our side. And that is your task.”

  “Yes, sir. Where is it?”

  “I’ve marked it. If you have done what you’ve been asked to do and found what you’re supposed to find, you’ll recognize it when you see it. You can stay here in my apartment until it’s time. You’ll be safe. I know it doesn’t look like much now,” Walt Disney says, pulling himself up gingerly from his high-backed chair. He hobbles toward the large front window we crawled through and gazes out of it, looking at the world he’s created with eyes from the past. “But you should have seen it in its prime. It really was something.”

  We stand with him, searching, trying to picture the ruins and rubble as though it were new. And though the dark and dust keep us from getting the full vision, the feeling Walt Disney described, the reason he built this park, washes over us.

  “Now, boys, would you do me a favor?” asks Mr. Disney breaking the quiet.

  “Anything, sir.”

  “Play it one more time before I go.”

  I hold the Auravel to my mouth and play again the Aire inscribed on the lantern. The slow, moving melody wraps around us. I know the man cannot possibly hear what I’m playing, even if every muscle in my body is warning me of regret should I stop.

  Mr. Disney miraculously picks up the paper bag of breadcrumbs and pulls out a handful, spreading it on the windowsill as the white pigeons return.

  “That’s what it’s all about,” he says, gently brushing the crumbs from his fingers and turning back to his beloved park. “I hope I have done enough.”

  The illusion begins to fade. I have a million things to ask him, but it just doesn’t feel right to interrupt his thoughts. So all we can do is watch him disappear as the last few notes play out. We don’t talk. We take his advice and hole up in Walt’s old apartment, waiting for the game to start. And waiting for it to end.

  19

  The Fifth Aire

  “We will shame them! They will cry for mercy in their own house! They will beg us to stop! Beg us with tears! But will we stop?!”

  “No!”

  “Will we stop?!”

  “No!”

  “We will not stop! We are the Storm!”

  “Boom!”

  “We are the Storm!”

  “Boom!”

  “It is time to rain down upon the Magic with thunder and lightning! Do not stop! Onetwothree—”

  “STORM!”

  I’m not pretending that the chance to play for the Texas Storm wasn’t a welcome idea. The team screams out of the visitors’ tunnel to a chorus of boos two hundred thousand strong. Kelvin Mast, the Storm’s striker, crouches alone in the passageway. His head is bowed in concentration, visualizing his strikes and strategy. Texas has been one of the most dominant teams for more than a decade. The Magic, exactly the opposite. Mast isn’t nervous. He’s played the Magic twice this year and both times crushed them. I can see it in his body language, right before I flatten him from the rafters, knocking him out just as he reaches to activate his shield.

  I whisper my apologies to my boyhood hero.

  It takes less than a minute to pull his gray and yellow uniform off and on to me. I put the helmet on and whistle the signal to Linus, hoping he’s on the other end.

  “Whistling, Mast?” says a voice I’ve never heard. “Why don’t you get your butt onto the field before they hit you with a delay?” The Storm’s coach, Coach Rozelle. I fight the urge to gush.

  “I’m here,” says Linus’s voice. “Don’t worry. No one else can hear me. Remember, don’t do anything crazy. You don’t have the Soul anymore to watch out for you. Use your mind and you’ll be alright. Good luck, Horatio.”

  I hit the shield and feel the warmth of it wash over me and I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. I figure Linus is better off with the sword that I am. Besides, it’s a dead giveaway. I trot out of the tunnel trying to imitate Mast’s trademark “who gives a crap?” style. It’s showmanship. And I must be doing it right, because I can feel the hatred break on me from the stands.

  “I have you on screen, I have your vitals, I have a visual on Allen, and I’ve made contact with your father. Your mother is looking for Annie now. I’ll keep you posted,” says Linus. A few hours ago, we found an unused socket tucked away in a vacant terminal where Linus was able to access the game’s systems. Looks like he’s progressed since I left him.

  I’m warming up with the Storm’s elite receiver, de la Vega, a non-stop chatterer who’s telling me his idea of how to win the game.

  “Magic’s weak in defense, so I’ll be open the whole game, dude. Just do what we do and we’ll get out of here early. I got me some fun waiting in Revolution. I know Coach wants to go with a three-wide push, but I don’t know that the rookie is ready for that kind of pressure, so you just get with me and we’ll get this thing done, dig?”

  A three-wide push gives me what I need to start the game without looking suspicious. But I already knew that. I’ve seen every game the Storm has played since I was ten. I know their plays. Every one of them.

  “What’s this?” asks de la Vega, pulling at the Auravel’s sheath on my back. I whip away from him.

  “Good luck charm,” I tell him in my best Mast.

  “Dude, you don’t need no good luck charm. You got me.”

  I let him laugh and slap me on the shoulder.

  “Ooh. You been working out,” he says.

  Finally, the teams line up on their respective platforms, waiting for the signal. Our launchpad is a small porch elevated above the main level just in front of the rail station. The team lines up in their familiar positions. Riley Forge, the Storm’s sneak, may have better aim than I do. Willis, Pinks, and Delante, each with a mean streak. De la Vega and Austin, my main targets, along with one other receiver I don’t know, the rookie de la Vega mentioned in warm-ups.

  Down a long street lined with the same early-twentieth-century buildings, beyond the plaza and the silver and fire orb on a drawbridge, in front of a ramshackle, faded pink castle stand the California Magic, wearing new deep blue and pink uniforms. I zoom in my helmet’s screen to get a better look. Just as I figured. All wizards.

  Serefina, the fire wizard, and the two lightning wizards stand in the front. The gorilla’s there, too, and the rest I don’t know. I could barely beat them when I had the Soul. What chance do I have now? My only hope is that they follow the rules until the end of the game.

  With a blast of fireworks shooting off from the middle of the field, it’s on. All three of my receivers charge in different directions, going for pillars at four and eight, with the rookie heading upfield. My instincts tell me to chuck a star to twelve o’clock on the opposite side of the field, but
I know that’s habit speaking. Play it safe.

  I chuck a star each to de la Vega and Austin and am happily surprised that my aim is better than I had hoped. After throwing stars ten thousand times, something’s bound to stick.

  “Too short!” yells de la Vega in my ear. De la Vega dives to grab the star before it hits the ground and becomes inactive. “I can’t hit the pillar from here.”

  “Rookie, head to eight,” I call, not knowing his name. They announced it in intros, but I was busy knocking out the real Texas striker. I race toward Austin, but that throw made the distance. Austin chucks the star into the pillar, a towering steeple jutting out of a domed white building with a grooved roof like something out of an old sci-fi movie. A bolt of yellow shoots through the sky. Immediately, two bolts of pink shoot up from pillars two and ten.

  I leave de la Vega and the rookie to sort out their pillar and follow Austin to two, a pillar already lit up by the wizards. Here’s where the battle begins. It’s odd playing the game with strategy instead of gunslinging. Makes me nervous. I wait for two charging wizards to get close enough and then chuck a star over their heads toward pillar two, anticipating Austin’s arrival. Then I hide.

  I see them before they see me. I strike at the lead wizard, hitting him square in the helmet and disabling him. I pull a second star and aim for the remaining wizard.

  “Intercepted!” Coach Rozelle screams in my ear. My star to Austin was picked off by a hidden opponent and drills Austin in the chest, freezing him up. But worst of all, my attacking wizard has caught a pass and swings his arm toward me. But a tomahawk flies past me and drills him in his belly, dropping him to the floor. Forge gets on the com.

  “Get the game back, Mast.”

  The tomahawk will keep the grip down only temporarily, and Austin will be back in the game if I can keep it going. I manage to sneak past the wizard enforcers and light pillar two to yellow, but only for a few minutes. De la Vega and the rookie light pillar eight while the Storm’s enforcers stay back to protect as many lit pillars as possible. The wizards have a different ploy. Full press with only their sneak defending the pillars. And it’s working. Within an hour, the Magic light four of the five needed pillars.