The Children of Hamelin

by Danny Lasko

  I check my screens. Two hours and fifteen minutes to midnight.

  “Any word on Annie?” I ask.

  “What? Annie?! Mast, stay in the game!” yells Coach Rozelle.

  “Your mom thinks she’s in here somewhere,” answers Linus.

  “Here?”

  “Here, what?!” screams Rozelle. “Get your head in the game, Mast!”

  “Yeah, but with all the other wizards, it’s hard to get more exact than that.”

  I think about pulling out the pipe, using the Illusion Aire to give us some cover. But it’s too risky. Wizards will figure it out. They’ll see the Auravel and that could set them off and push them to destroy Pock’s Auravel right now. Can’t let that happen.

  “Starting over,” I tell my team, corralling them back to the launchpad. “We go after the players, not the pillars.”

  “Yeah!” shout the enforcers.

  “Forge, you’ve got to find and take out their sneak. She’ll be the one on fire.”

  “What?” Forge says through the com.

  “Trust me. Use your heat screen to find her.”

  Over the next thirty minutes, we manage to immobilize five of the eight wizards, including the sneak. That also means that the first to freeze will be free in a few minutes.

  The three remaining Magic are two grips and a striker. Plenty to do damage.

  “It’s now or never,” I say and send the grips off to pink pillars. The enforcers go hunting for the last of the Magic.

  The first three pillars are relatively easy. De la Vega strikes for two, Austin the third.

  Storm: 4, Magic: 2.

  One hour thirty-six minutes.

  I spot the rookie streaking for pillar six. He’s fast. Really fast. Familiarly fast. Watching him, I know what to do. I’ve thrown this strike a thousand times. To this grip.

  “I see you, Tommy,” I shout into the com. “You with me?”

  “All the way. No matter what,” comes the reply. I can’t help but smile. I chuck the star and watch it soar over the jungle of trees in the southwest corner of the arena. Tommy snatches it out of the air. They must have drafted him out of Allen. And before landing, he chucks the star at the spire of an ancient temple popping out of the wild green foliage. Storm: 5, Magic: 1. All that’s left is the rail station, our home pillar. We’re going to win this thing.

  I send all three grips to the station while I make my way back to the trove. There will be only a second or two between the cage opening and the trove being destroyed. I have to get Pock’s Auravel before it’s blown to bits.

  Just to be safe, I chuck three stars one after the other toward the station. But I don’t wait to see what happens. I turn to the trove and wait for the cage to drop. I don’t turn away, not even when I hear a crackling of thunder and the screams of my receivers.

  “Raysh!”

  I’m knocked to the ground. I tumble and get back to my feet, only to find Tommy’s body lying beside me, having taken the hit that was meant for me. His body is smoking from the blast. Another lightning bolt. The striker shoots more from his hands.

  “They’re cheating!” cries Linus from the com. “Why would they be cheating unless—they know. Horatio, your cover’s blown!”

  “You think?” I yell, pulling Tommy behind an array of tangled bushes. The lightning would have shorted out my shield just as it did with my sword. As it did to Tommy.

  “What just happened?!” cries Rozelle. “When did lightning become legal?!” He’s screaming at the refs, who ignore him. More screams come from our enforcers being engulfed in flame. Serefina’s back. Even Forge has been picked off.

  Forty-seven minutes.

  “Horatio,” calls Linus, “the Synarch cruisers and transports camped over Allen are moving out. West. Following a direct trajectory for us. They’ve called off the culling. They’re coming for us.”

  “Well, I guess that’s good news.”

  I flip my visor, unsheathe the Auravel on my back, and play Hook’s Aire. The Healer’s Hymn, first slowly, deliberately, watching Tommy as he wakes up. Then faster, repairing the shield.

  “You’ve got a lot of explaining, bro,” he says, now crouching beside me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, just trying to save, you know, the world.”

  Suddenly, three pillars burst into pink. A fourth one follows. Only the castle is left.

  “Well, if those screams came from our people, then we ain’t winning this game unless you think you can steal it.”

  “Steal it!” I cry. “I don’t have to win this game! Linus? Linus!”

  There’s no answer.

  “Alright, look,” I tell Tommy. “When the cage drops, there’s a pipe in the statue’s hand. You need to grab it and run.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Just grab it and run. No matter what happens to me, run.”

  I don’t wait for an answer. I leap out just as the striker readies his throw at the castle. I chuck a star on the run and nail him in the back, dropping him.

  Now comes the hard part.

  All around the arena, fans—no, wizards—climb out onto the field. Maybe a thousand of them. Just as I’d hoped. They’re hesitant. They know me. What I did in the star room. That I was supposed to be dead, but here I am. What they don’t know is that at this critical juncture, I’m freaking soulless.

  Suddenly, a flaming arrow hits me in the chest, freezing me. The Magic’s sneak is free. I fall to the ground, my Auravel locked in my hand. All I can do is watch while one of the remaining Magic takes a star from the striker’s pack and chucks it into the castle, changing the beam of light from yellow to pink. Magic: 6, Storm, 0.

  With a flicker, the silver and fire cage dissolves to reveal the statue of Disney holding the hand of a small creature with a large nose and wide, round ears. In Disney’s outstretched right hand, the Auravel of Berebus Pock.

  I hear the buzz before I see it. A massive transmitter perched on a giant platform on the east side of the stadium stretches out wired and rusted tentacles puckered with radar dishes, ablaze with yellow, red, and blue lights. Each point of light grows hotter and stronger. But I smile. They aren’t expecting Tommy. Any second, Tommy’s going to jump out of hiding, grab the Auravel from the statue and bolt out of here. Linus will be ready and will get him and the Auravel to safety. Another prince will be called. Tommy has never let me down. I have no thought he’ll start now.

  “Wait! What are you doing?!”

  Tommy Briggs yanks me up off the ground and lugs me into the cover of nearby trees and beyond.

  “I said get the pipe!” I yell at him as he carries me over his shoulder.

  “Sorry, bro,” says Tommy. “It’s you I’m saving.”

  I stretch my head back over just in time to watch the points of light merge together into a massive beam that strikes the statue and anything else in its path with an enormous clap, immediately incinerating everything. Nothing but a black-streaked ground dusted with cinder left behind. The blast knocks us both into a small stream in front of the frontier stockade.

  My breath catches at the same time my heart sinks. The statue is no more, just bits and pieces and ash strewn through the air and ground. No sign of Pock’s Auravel.

  Twenty-one minutes.

  “It’s over,” I say, staring at the nothing.

  “Yeah, live to fight another day,” says Tommy, patting my shoulder.

  “There are no other days!” I try to loosen my grip on my Auravel, but I can’t. I think about telling Tommy to rip it out of my hand. It wouldn’t do any good. Even if he could, I still can’t play it.

  I’m suddenly ripped off the ground from Tommy and hoisted high above the mob of wizards carrying me back toward the castle.

  “Linus, if
you can hear me, you gotta reset my shield. Override the system. So I can move—”

  I’m yanked from the water, lugged and tossed to the ground just in front of the castle’s drawbridge. They’ve mercifully left Tommy alone. They don’t care. They have their prize. The wizards, all five thousand of them, cheer. From the field, the stands. It might as well be five hundred thousand. Sparks shoot off like fireworks. The watching crowd swing their heads in confusion. Their team has won, they’re thinking. Why are they dragging out the Storm’s striker?

  “My dear Citizens of New Victoria,” says a booming, echoey voice through the arena’s sound system, “not only have you seen a tremendous game full of the type of competition, gamesmanship, and athletic brilliance worthy of the League’s reputation, but you are in store for an added pleasure. For I am pleased to proclaim that I, Anton Boxrud, Wizard King, have finally ended the greatest terror ever to afflict the good Citizens of this country.”

  Anton Boxrud enters the arena in his blue suit and dazzling pink tie through the shattered castle’s tunnel and bounds toward me. The crowd mumbles in confusion, though I’m not sure if it’s more because Boxrud called himself the Wizard King or the coming surprise he’s promised.

  “I have captured the outlaw Horatio Gaph!” Wearing his sinister grin, he rips my helmet off, exposing my face on the giant screens above. The sudden gasps from the crowd quickly turn to laughter and then to cheers.

  “I have done what the Synarch could not do,” he announces. The crowd doesn’t know how to respond. Some of them laugh, think it’s a joke, while others don’t dare. But Boxrud has every intention of clarifying.

  “The Synarch has failed this country. They have governed with the heavy hand of fear. Of pain. Of temptation and greed.” With every sentence he pulls on the pipe in my frozen hand, but the shield prevents him from taking it. Finally, he gives up and turns back to the crowd.

  “A small group of bureaucrats deciding who lives and who dies. Yet with all their might and power, they could not do what I have done. Eliminate the terror that is Horatio Gaph.”

  At first I think it’s the cheer of the crowd roaring through the stadium. But the roar is larger, more thunderous than even the screaming of two hundred thousand. An armada of Synarch cruisers crowds the sky over the Magic Kingdom, angrily rumbling their engines. The crowd screams, this time out of fear. They panic and run for the exits. Many fall off the bleachers and into the arena. They know what’s coming. No one rebuffs the Synarch without penalties.

  The cruisers aren’t the only ones in the air. Smaller, faster ships, like those that attacked us, but dozens of them, swarm the Synarch cruisers, blasting and burning the rusty hulls of the slower, awkward machines. In mere minutes, the entire fleet smokes and sputters and attempts retreat. But the wizards won’t let them. They strike without mercy. Ships are dropping out of the sky all around the arena. Legions of the Synarch military charge through the team tunnels, attempting to regain control. But Serefina and the ice wizard make quick work of them. With a burst of flame like cannon fire, the front line is engulfed in a wall of red and yellow, forcing any of the soldiers not caught in the inferno back through the tunnel where a five-foot-thick wall of ice seals them off. The wizards have locked down the stadium. They are in command now.

  Suddenly, I feel like I’m falling. Falling sideways, then rolling to a stop. After the dizziness fades, I realize I’m on higher ground overlooking the field. I’m not sure where I am. Rotting wood covered in chipping white paint. I smell water. I spot an old stern-wheel about five feet away, dangling in the air off the hull’s rear. I’m in the boat, wrecked along the bank of the river, standing on its end. And I’m not alone. Yellow apple-scented hair blows across my face.

  “Mrs. Sterling.”

  “Linus brought us here,” she says. “All of us. He and your father are working on overriding the shield.”

  “I’ve failed, Mrs. Sterling.”

  “Come on. I can get you out of here.”

  “No! He destroyed Pock’s pipe!” I yell, not caring who hears it. “It was the only key to the Looking Glass. And it’s gone. So is Annie. I’ve failed. There’s no hope.”

  “You’re not alone, Horatio,” says Mrs. Sterling. “As long as that’s true, there’s reason to hope.”

  I peek out of a crack in the hull as Children of Hamelin from all around the stadium pop out of the stands and down onto the field. Valor, my mother, the Walkers, the Sobs—there can’t be more than a hundred and fifty of them against a thousand wizards. But only a few of the remaining Children have the kind of power you’d want in a fight. Even Valor’s mind-reading doesn’t mean he can swing a punch. But Boxrud has chosen his wizards carefully.

  “They can’t be serious,” I call out to Mrs. Sterling, but she’s gone. All I can do in my frozen state is watch.

  Thirteen minutes.

  Using their surprise, the Children actually subdue hundreds of the wizards, and for a moment, I have hope that maybe they can pull this thing out. But Anton Boxrud has been plotting this day for centuries. And with Serefina, the lightning wizard, and the gorilla as his generals, it isn’t long before he and the wizards have the advantage. Walls of fire isolate the children into smaller groups where the gorilla takes them out several at a time or bolts of lightning strike at them. Mrs. Sterling jumps just behind Serefina and drops her with a whack to the head, but five other wizards attack before she has time to jump again.

  About twenty wizards, those closest to the castle, begin to flee, screaming. I think I hear the word “dragon.” The other wizards look in the sky, confused, apparently not seeing the danger. I’m confused, too, until I spot Jayce on one of the ruined castle’s turrets. Looks like Boxrud spots him, too, recognizing him from his travels with me, and orders one of his own to take him out. The gorilla bounds up the wall of the castle, bashes Jayce in the head with a bricklike fist, then picks him up and tosses him off. Jayce tumbles into the murky mote below, breaking the illusion.

  Then a flicker of hope dances down my spine. Annie’s father leaps up a tangled tree and the tree comes alive! At least looks that way! Coaxed by Mr. Walker, the tree swings its branches back and forth, wiping away attacking wizards with each swipe. Suddenly, the tree stops. Mr. Walker falls from its branches with ice clinging to his back and head. The ice wizard cackles and aims for another foe.

  The Angels fight with power and would probably save the day if they were only outnumbered ten to one. But twenty to one? Thirty to one? Even they can’t defeat them all. Soon, they, too, join the defeated.

  “It is finished,” says the Wizard King. “The Children are beaten, and the wizards prevail. And you, Horatio, I give you one last chance.”

  Boxrud strolls through the moaning, wrenching bodies of the fallen Children. I don’t know how many are dead. He circles around while he talks. He signals, and several of his wizards fan out. He doesn’t know where I am.

  “Don’t you see, Horatio? You’ve been abandoned by whatever power the Children profess to believe in. You found the Looking Glass but failed to open it. Your friends, your family have believed in a fairy tale, Horatio. The Soul saved us, my boy. Us.

  “All of this can still be repaired. Allen can still be saved. And I will spare the lives of the Children of Hamelin if you will bow before me, the Wizard King, and swear allegiance. And finally, instead of being the cause of so much death and destruction, you can save them.”

  Frozen inside the wrecked hull of the stern-wheeler along the banks of the river, I scan my surroundings for an answer. The front doors of the haunted mansion are about a hundred yards from me beyond a small wall, wild trees, and the fenced yard of the house. Impossible to move that far. I can barely wiggle myself a half inch at a time. I have failed. Pock’s Auravel gone. The Children of Hamelin defeated. Annie missing. The Looking Glass unopened. The Soul lost.

  Is th
is the last great sacrifice? What’s the alternative? My quest, only a hundred and fifty people wanted me to succeed or even knew what I was doing. The Citizens, the wizards, lo-pry everywhere, I could help them all. Be their champion. They know me. I could be free.

  “Mira,” I whisper. So many more than a hundred and fifty. Millions of Mirans, millions of Earthlanders who don’t even know this battle is going on, don’t know me or the Children, yet their fate also lies in the balance. I cannot give up.

  I stare at the dark red Auravel in my hand, still unable to use it. One, seven, six, four. I know the Aires! I know how to play them. If I could just move my arm. But I can’t. One, seven, six, four. One, seven, six …

  Finally, my stare focuses in on a small half-circle of brick built into a short, crumbling wall between me and the mansion, not twenty feet away. And on the keystone of the circle’s arch are the numbers one, seven, six, four.

  “The Looking Glass,” I say to no one. “The Looking Glass! I found it! I found it!”

  “What will it be, Horatio Gaph? Life for all? Or death?”

  Thirty seconds.

  I wrestle against the force of the frozen shield, fighting for every inch. It feels like my whole body is pressed under a building. The sweat pours into my eyes, but I don’t stop. I squeeze my shaking arm, pushing through the pain. But with every last ounce of strength, I can move it only an inch. I gasp. My eyes cling to the half-circle of brick, wishing for its help. For a miracle.

  Three. Two. One.

  “I’m sorry … ”

  Then a thing happens. A thing that causes my heart to pound hard enough to see it pulse under my uniform. A thing that flows into my ears and down my entire frame, causing it to shake with hope. A thing I have been waiting to hear since I first met Annie. A thing that happens halfway between dusk and dawn on the SongKeeper’s seventeenth birthday.