by Matthew Cody
“Have you had your fill of looking at me?” asked Leetha.
Carter blushed. He hadn’t realized he’d been staring so openly at the girl. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve just never seen a real-life elf before. Only stories.”
“What do the stories where you come from say about us?” She cocked her head at Carter, curious.
“Well, in some of them elves are great warriors. In others they are mischievous, even dangerous.”
Leetha nodded, as if this were as obvious as the sky is up and the ground is down.
“That’s some of them,” said Carter. “In others the elves are helpful.”
“How so?” asked Leetha.
“Well, some make shoes and others make toys.”
Leetha burst out laughing. She guffawed so loudly that Lukas had to tell her to quiet down, while Bandybulb complained that no one had let him in on the joke. Eventually, once she’d wiped the tears from her eyes and managed to catch her breath, Leetha tried to explain.
“If you asked an elf of the Summer Isle to make you a toy,” she said, “you’d end up tied by your toes to a tall tree branch and dangled as ogre-bait. But you are a very funny boy.”
“I see,” said Carter, although he really didn’t. “Can I ask you a question?”
“I cannot laugh so hard again this soon,” said Leetha, holding her stomach.
“It’s not a joke,” said Carter. At least, he hoped it wasn’t. “I just wanted to know why you’re coming with us. You helped rescue me from the Black Tower, and I’m really thankful for that, but you…ah…you don’t seem to like people very much. No offense.”
The smile drained from Leetha’s face, and for a panicked moment Carter was afraid that he had offended her. What did elves do when you upset them? It couldn’t be anything good. But when Leetha spoke next, there was no anger in her voice. “I was here when the Piper first brought the children of Hamelin to the Summer Isle, remember. One hundred and thirty children, led away by a piper into a mountain.”
“That’s a line from the legend back home,” said Carter.
“It isn’t legend here. Here it is tragedy. When the Piper stole the children of Hamelin away from your world, he stole the children of the elves, the Winter Children, away from the Summer Isle. But he missed one.”
“You.”
“Me. So, you see, as the last daughter of the elves, I have an interest in you, the last son of Hamelin. For I, too, have heard the prophecy.”
The prophecy again. Once, long ago, the Peddler had stolen a prophecy from a witch, which he in turn traded to Lukas for a joke. The prophecy said: Only when the last son of Hamelin appears and the Black Tower found will the Piper’s prison open and the children return safe and sound.
Carter had memorized it, because just about everyone he met here on the Summer Isle believed that he was this last son of Hamelin. Certainly the Piper had believed it, or at least believed that Carter was the direct descendant of the boy who’d been left behind. The two were similar in temperament and in appearance, right down to the same useless clubfoot. For a while, Carter had even believed in the prophecy himself, had enjoyed thinking himself special, but now he knew better.
He’d learned that the Piper had stolen the children of Hamelin as revenge for being banished from the village as a small boy because the people there thought him the son of a witch. There was no grand purpose at work here, just one person’s spite, which had caused the suffering of hundreds.
“I wouldn’t put my trust in prophecies,” said Carter. “You might not have noticed, but the children of Hamelin are all still trapped here on the Summer Isle. All I ended up doing was freeing the Piper for nothing.”
Leetha watched him for a moment. “Maybe I just want to see what happens next.”
The children continued their hike through the forest, but all talk died away as their clothes, still sweaty from the running, chilled their skin. They wrapped themselves in heavy wool cloaks from their packs, but the ever-present drizzle wouldn’t allow them to dry off, and the cold stole into their bones.
It wouldn’t matter whether they escaped the rats if they all succumbed to hypothermia. It wasn’t long before they were wondering aloud, through chattering teeth, whether it would be safer to turn back, even though the rats could be waiting for them. The trail continued to wind deeper into the forest, and the farther they went the colder it turned, until the trees became heavy with dripping icicles and the drizzle thickened to sleet. Lukas and Paul searched for firewood as they went, but everything in this forest was too sodden to burn. When Carter looked over at Paul, he saw that their scout’s lips were turning blue.
Carter became painfully aware that even if they turned back now, they would not make it out of the forest before the cold overcame them. They’d marched for hours beneath the heavy branches, and it would take just as many hours to march out again—only the trek back would be harder. Carter could no longer feel his fingers or toes, and his teeth were chattering so hard that he worried they would crack in his mouth. That, at least, was good. He’d read somewhere that if you were still shivering, then you weren’t yet freezing to death. Not yet. They needed shelter and dry wood for a fire, or else they were all going to die here in the Chillwood. And it had been Carter’s great idea to risk this forest.
In the end, it was Bandybulb the kobold who saved them all—or rather it was the kobold’s stomach.
They’d come to a fork in the trail, and by this time they were all so frozen and miserable that no one could tell which trail led deeper into the forest and which might lead them out. Paul wanted to sit down and rest, but Lukas and Carter propped him up. To sit down in this weather would be dangerous. You might not get up again. It was Emilie who noticed the kobold had gone missing. The Chillwood had quieted the little creature, and Carter had forgotten all about him.
“Bandybulb!” called Emilie as she squinted at the trees. It was hard to see anything in the unending sleet. She called for him again, and this time they all heard his tiny voice, like a squeak box, answering from somewhere nearby. He was hungry, he called back, and would anyone mind if he stopped off for a quick meal?
Carter and his friends looked at each other, incredulous. Had the small-brained creature gone delusional from the cold? Carter had the worrying image of Bandybulb lying in the mud, freezing to death as he ate his hallucinatory dinner.
Lukas helped Paul along as the four of them left the trail to search for Bandybulb. They followed the sound of his voice as the kobold described the meal set out before him: mushroom soup and a loaf of warm berry-bread. And cider. Piping hot cider.
When they found him, he was not lying in a puddle, nor was he freezing to death. Quite the opposite. Bandybulb was standing in the doorway of a hovel that had been built into the roots of a giant fir tree. Light and warmth spilled out through the doorway, and Bandybulb stood there with a checkered dinner napkin tied neatly around his neck. His lips were sticky with honey and his cheeks were stuffed full.
“Oh! I’m sorry,” he said, crumbs tumbling out of his mouth and all down his front. “Did you want some, too?”
Unlike most of his friends, Carter had no trouble sitting upright without banging his head on the ceiling of tangled roots and hard-packed soil. He could even kneel if he’d wanted to. All four of them had had to crawl inside the kobold burrow on hands and knees, but it was warm and it was dry and it was filled with surprisingly good smells for a hole in the ground.
They huddled together in a chamber the kobolds generously called the Great Hall, even though it barely fit the five children. A small stew pot hung over a tidy little fire pit dug into one wall. The fire itself was hardly more than kindling, but the walls of the burrow were so compact that the warmth stayed put, even as the smoke escaped through a small chimney vent up top. A kobold family lived in this burrow, and the mother and father waited on Bandybulb while casting suspicious glances at the children who’d invaded their home. Out of politeness, they’d offered food to Carter
and his friends, but Carter stopped the rest from accepting. Five normal-sized stomachs would probably clean the tiny cupboards bare. The shelter and the warm fire were enough.
Several young kobolds peeked out of an adjoining tunnel that led to the back rooms, rooms far too small for even Carter to fit into. He winked at the little ones, and they shrieked in delight before scurrying away.
“We want to thank you again for opening your home to us,” said Emilie as the father kobold cleared Bandybulb’s plate away. He nodded, but said nothing.
“Bandybulb could sniff out a kobold home in a field of troll dung,” said Bandybulb. He rubbed his round tummy and let out a little belch. “I thought you all could smell it, too, and just chose to ignore it.”
“And why would we do that?” asked Paul.
Bandybulb scratched his head in thought. “You were enjoying the weather?”
Paul looked like he wanted to throttle the little creature, but Carter put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. The thing about Bandybulb was that the creature was unusually honest for a kobold. Dim, but honest. If he said that he thought they were enjoying the freezing wet cold, then he meant it. Sarcasm was as alien to him as two suns in the sky.
“Bandybulb,” said Carter. “While we were stumbling along in the cold, were there other kobold burrows on the trail that we passed by?”
“Three or four,” said Bandybulb, nodding agreeably.
Paul put his head in his hands. “We almost froze to death out there,” he murmured.
“The Chillwood is thick with kobolds near the outskirts,” said Bandybulb. “Many fewer the farther in you get.”
“On account of the witch,” said the little kobold wife, speaking for the first time.
Carter sat up straight. He could feel the others tensing as well. “What witch?”
The kobold wife blinked at Carter and tugged worriedly at one furry ear as she spoke. “Roga of the Wood. This forest is her home.”
“Another witch?” asked Lukas.
Leetha snickered and shook her head. “You humans. Don’t you listen to your own stories? There’s always a witch in the woods.”
“Roga and Yaga are sisters,” said Bandybulb.
“How do you know that?” asked Paul.
“Bandybulb spent many days in Yaga’s cage, and Yaga talked about her. She said terrible things about Roga that Bandybulb won’t repeat. She sounded terrifying. I don’t think they like each other very much.”
“Well, she’s of no concern to us,” said Lukas. “If she haunts the Chillwood, then the sooner we leave it the better off we’ll be.”
“And then what?” asked Emilie. “If we escape the forest, and the rats who were following us, where do we go? We haven’t talked about that.”
No one answered right away. Emilie’s question hung over them all like the mist over this cursed forest. Carter and his friends had been fleeing so fast ever since their escape from the Black Tower that there hadn’t been the time for asking that simplest of questions. What next?
Carter was surprised when he realized that everyone seemed to be focused on him. “What? Why are you all looking at me?”
“You spent time with the Piper,” said Emilie. “Did he tell you what he plans to do next?”
“No,” said Carter. “I mean, not since we shattered his magic mirror. Without it, there’s no way he can leave the Summer Isle.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew they weren’t exactly true. The mirror was broken, yes, but it wasn’t the only magic that could transport the Piper between worlds. He hadn’t needed it when he first stole the children of Hamelin away, those hundreds of years ago. All he’d needed then was…
“His pipe,” said Carter, as it dawned on him. “That’s what’s next.”
Lukas’s face darkened. “You mean the one he played to lure us all out of Hamelin?”
Carter nodded. “He kept talking about it. I think the Peddler took it away from him when they fought.”
“The Peddler told us it was well hidden,” said Emilie. “But he didn’t say where.”
“Well, I’d bet you anything that the Piper’s looking for it now,” said Carter. “That’s his next move.”
“But how’s he going to find it?” asked Paul. “The Peddler hid it, and the Peddler’s…well, you know.”
“Well, at least if the pipe remains hidden, he won’t be able to do any harm with it,” said Lukas. “He can’t find it if no one knows where it is.”
“Someone knows where it is,” said Bandybulb.
Carter sighed. Now wasn’t the time to get into a debate with the literal-minded kobold about what someone meant. “We’re saying that no one here on the Summer Isle, no one living, knows where it is, Bandybulb. Don’t worry about it.”
“But the witch knows,” said the kobold.
Paul sat up so fast that he banged his head on the low ceiling. “Ow! What’s he talking about? What are you talking about, Bandybulb?”
But Bandybulb’s normally wide-eyed, innocent face wasn’t looking at them. He was looking away as he scratched at his furry belly nervously. “Roga will know where the pipe is,” he said. “Won’t she?”
The other kobolds slowly nodded.
“Everyone knows Grannie Yaga has the gift to see the future,” explained Bandybulb. “But her sister, Roga, has the gift to see the present. Nothing that happens on the Summer Isle is beyond her gaze. No person can hide, and nothing can be hidden. Roga sees all.”
“So she can find the Piper’s magic pipe?” asked Carter.
Bandybulb and the other kobolds nodded.
This new information was at once both frightening and exciting. If the Piper got hold of his lost pipe, then he would be more dangerous than ever. He could travel freely between the Summer Isle and earth, stealing away children by the hundreds. Centuries ago the villagers of Hamelin cast the Piper and his mother out into a harsh and brutal winter, and the Piper’s mother died because of their act. Those villagers were long dead, but the Piper’s quest for vengeance lived on, twisting until it became, Carter suspected, a kind of madness. If the Piper couldn’t punish those grown-ups who’d hurt him directly, then he’d punish grown-ups everywhere.
That was the frightening part of Bandybulb’s revelation. It meant that their fight against the Piper might not be over. But it also meant that there was still a way back. As long as the pipe existed, there was a chance that Carter and all the children of Hamelin could go home again.
Carter looked around at his friends and saw the same exhaustion and worry that he felt—it was etched into their faces in the dark bags under tired eyes, in the faces that had grown unaccustomed to smiling.
“If Roga could tell us where the pipe is, we could get to it before the Piper does,” said Carter.
“Wait,” said Paul. “You are not actually suggesting that we visit this witch on purpose. Grannie Yaga’s scarier sister?”
“It’s a reckless idea and will most likely get us all tossed into a cook pot or worse,” said Emilie.
“Thank you,” said Paul.
“But it might be our best choice,” she added.
“What?”
“Think about it, Paul,” she said. “Use that wool-headed brain of yours. If the Piper doesn’t already know that Roga can find his pipe, he will soon. And if he gets to it before we do, then our mission was in vain.”
“Our mission? Our mission was to find the Black Tower, and we did. We also found a whole lot of rats, the Piper, a witch and a gray man! Does anyone remember him? Raggedy old corpse that tried to kill Carter? Hmm?” Paul tried sitting up again and only managed to crack his head that much harder against the ceiling. Cursing, he sat back down again and rubbed his skull.
Carter certainly remembered the gray man. The wraith clothed in tattered rags that had appeared in the Piper’s chamber. Of course he remembered. He worried that he would remember forever, no matter how hard he tried to forget.
“We can’t pass up an opportunity like this,” said Carte
r. “Tell him, Lukas.”
But Lukas shook his head. “No.”
“What do you mean no?”
“I mean it’s too dangerous. We set out from New Hamelin to find the Black Tower, and we did that, for all the good it’s done us.” Lukas put a hand on Carter’s shoulder. “I’m glad that your sister found her way home, I truly am, but the rest of us are still stuck here, and now so are you. I wish we’d never left New Hamelin.”
“But the quest isn’t over!”
“Isn’t it? The map is gone, the Peddler is dead and the Piper is free from his prison. I’m sorry, but I think we’ve done enough damage.”
“The Piper said that his pipe could open doorways between worlds,” said Carter. “Don’t you see? That could be the key to getting everyone home again!”
“What about the prophecy, Lukas?” asked Emilie. “Only when the last son of Hamelin appears and the Black Tower found will the Piper’s prison open and the children return safe and sound.”
“A prophecy that was made by a witch!” replied Lukas. “The same witch that murdered the Peddler. He stole the prophecy from her, and she murdered him for it. This entire quest, this stupid dream that I led us on, turned out to be a giant lie. We were tricked, and then Grannie Yaga got the Peddler and the Piper got free. There is no way we are trusting another witch.”
“Lukas—” said Emilie, but the boy cut her off.
“No! You were right at the start, Emilie. We should have stayed safe behind our village walls. Tomorrow we make for New Hamelin. I’ll get the rest of you back safely, and then I’m finished. Finn will make a better Eldest Boy than I ever was.”
For a moment, Carter thought Emilie was going to say something more, but she shut her mouth and looked away. Lukas had convinced them all to go on this quest. More than anyone, more even than Carter, he’d believed in the prophecy and the chance for them all to return home. Carter hadn’t realized until that moment what sort of guilt Lukas must be feeling now that everything had fallen apart. Not one of them blamed him, but that wouldn’t matter so long as he blamed himself.