by Matthew Cody
“The boys keep the darkness at bay the same way human beings have been doing for thousands of years,” said the Piper. “With light. With as many torches as they can stand. And then some.”
“Then I’ll do as I’m told,” said Carter. “I’ll stay close to the campfire.”
“But there’s another way, Carter. A better way.”
“What’s that?”
“Magic.”
Carter half expected the Piper to burst into laughter because, after all, the Piper was a magician and Carter was not. It would be just like him to make Carter’s fears into some kind of cruel joke, but this time the Piper didn’t laugh. He wasn’t even smiling. He looked at Carter with an unnerving intensity, an expectation. Like when he’d taken Carter’s leg brace away and expected him to walk.
The Piper nodded slowly. “That’s right, Carter. I’m offering to teach it to you.”
“Magic?” Carter said.
“Is that so hard to believe? I told you once that magic is about belief, especially here. The Summer Isle is infused with magic. It’s as common as the air we breathe. There’s magic everywhere just waiting to be used, but most don’t know how.”
“I can’t learn magic,” said Carter.
“Why not?”
“Because…,” said Carter, looking for the words. “Because…because magic is for magicians!”
“Now you sound like your sister,” said the Piper. “Denying what’s right in front of you. Look around you. You live in a world of magic now.”
“Leave Max out of this.”
“Why? Because she could never be what you are? Max didn’t belong here, Carter, but you do. You have the imagination, the passion to be a magician, Carter. A real magician. All you need now is faith in your own potential. All your life people have looked at you, at your leg, and seen weakness. But I see strength.”
The Piper knelt until he was eye to eye with Carter. “I understand what it is to be different. The Son of the Witch, they called me. All my life. And those who didn’t hate me pitied me. But it’s the pain that makes us stronger than them. Teaches us to overcome obstacles the rest of those fools could never dream of. All you need is practice and focus.” The Piper reached into his many-colored cloak and produced a small wooden flute. Carter had seen him whittling away at it for several days now, and it finally looked complete.
“Music is my focus,” said the Piper. “I’m a charmer, and I use my music to lure the magic into doing my bidding. Only, the magic here is so powerful, sometimes it comes at you like waves crashing against the shore, and if you try and take it all in, you’ll drown.”
“So you want me to learn to play the flute?”
“Music is my magic,” said the Piper. “Yours will come from a different place. You can start learning right now, but to teach you everything I know, to make you realize your true, full potential, I need to be at my strongest. And for that, I need my magic pipe back.”
There it was. The change in the Piper’s behavior, the miraculous healing of Carter’s leg, and now an offer to teach him magic! It all culminated in this moment; it was all a strategy to get the Piper’s pipe back. He’d said it himself—he was a charmer, and he was trying to cast an entirely different sort of spell over Carter now.
Carter didn’t even know how much of the Piper’s offer was genuine and how much was a lie. Maybe he could teach Carter a few tricks, or maybe he was telling the truth and Carter had the makings of a true magician. Carter wasn’t a warrior—he wasn’t that sort of hero—but what a thing that would be, to learn magic. Real magic…
“No,” said Carter.
The Piper’s face twisted into a snarl as his calm veneer slipped away. “Why not? Don’t you see what I’m offering you?”
“I won’t help you get your pipe back.”
“You’d be dead without me,” said the Piper. “You realize that, don’t you? I could leave you here in the wild, without friends to protect you, and you’d be dead in days. Because you insist on staying weak and helpless. I’m offering you the power to defend yourself, but you refuse, just to spite me. Or maybe it’s something else? Maybe you like depending on other people? Healing your leg was a waste, Carter, because you’re still a cripple.”
If Max had been there, she would have punched the Piper in the mouth for saying that. But she wasn’t there. There was no one to defend Carter but Carter.
Without another word, he turned and stomped off into the woods. For once, the Piper didn’t call after him, and Carter wondered if he’d finally given up on him, or at least given up the hope that Carter would ever tell him where the pipe was. Maybe he’d just let Carter keep marching. Maybe Carter was finally free.
Free to die, alone. A voice, very like the Piper’s, whispered in Carter’s head as he ran through the brush, and ducked the branches of thick ropewood. If the Piper didn’t stop him, where would he go? Would Bandybulb and Leetha be able to find him before some other, meaner denizen of the Summer Isle decided to have him for lunch? What if he was caught alone in the woods when the true night fell?
Carter ran for he didn’t know how long, but it was long enough to get himself lost. The once-sparse trees grew thicker around him, and leaves obscured his vision. If he stopped and stood perfectly still, he could hear the trickle of water running over rocks. He must be near a stream. Well, at least he wouldn’t die of thirst.
He brushed away one of the branches tickling his ear and tried to get his bearings. Perhaps he should follow the sounds of water? He turned and the branch brushed up against him again, this time scratching along his neck.
Then around it.
Before Carter could cry out, the branch, long and ropelike, coiled around his throat and pulled tight.
He was hauled off his feet, and he would have died right then except he was able to get his hands around the ropewood so that he wasn’t hanging by his neck alone. But it didn’t much matter because the tree was slowly tightening its grip, squeezing the breath of life out of him. Too late, far too late, Carter saw high up in the branches the shapes of dangling skeletons, a macabre variety of woodland creatures that had met their end in the branches of this hangman’s tree. As his vision began to cloud over with spots, a quiet voice beneath the panic wondered if anyone would ever know what had become of him.
Then the branch loosened its grip, just slightly, and the spots retreated as he managed to sneak in a gasp of air. At last, he could breathe, though he was still trapped high in the branches. As the rushing of blood in his ears receded, he heard music. The Piper’s pipe.
Slowly, reluctantly, the tree began to lower its branches. Carter’s arms were trembling, and he didn’t think he could keep holding on for much longer. If he lost his grip on the branch, his own weight would strangle him before he reached the ground.
It felt like an agonizingly long time before his feet touched dirt, even though it was only a few seconds. Although the hangman’s tree still fought him, its movements were sluggish, almost drowsy, and he managed to wriggle his head free of the now-loosened noose.
He collapsed to the ground. He touched his neck where the branch had snatched him, and his fingers came away bloody. On hands and knees, he dragged himself away. Away from the tree and toward the music. Against the dark trees he spotted the bright patchwork colors of the Piper’s cloak. The Piper wore a look of fierce concentration, which seemed at odds with the lullaby he was using to soothe the hangman’s tree. His hood was thrown back and beads of sweat glistened on his brow. He looked as if he’d been running. He didn’t so much as glance at Carter. All his attention was on the tree.
Then, quite unexpectedly, the music stopped. It ended abruptly with a loud snap as the frail little flute split in the Piper’s hands. The Piper looked down at his broken instrument with disgust at first, then with growing fear as the woods came alive again with the sounds of groaning wood and whipping branches, as the spell broke and the hangman’s tree woke up.
“Run!” the Piper shouted, and he rea
ched down to haul Carter to his feet, but the tree was awake now with a fury, and one massive branch swung into the Piper, smacking him across the back and knocking him to the forest floor. Another lashed out like a whip and tried to lasso Carter, but he managed to scurry free at the last second. The Piper rolled out of the way as the branch came down again, intent this time on bashing his head in. Dirt exploded from the impact, and Carter felt something tugging on his collar.
At first he thought it was the hangman’s tree, but when he looked up, he saw it was the Piper, back on his feet, shoving and pushing him to standing. The Piper ran forward and dragged Carter with him, barreling into the brush. Stumbling, falling and getting up again, the two of them fled the wrath of the hangman’s tree.
They didn’t stop running until they were not only clear of the hangman’s tree but clear of the thick copse as well. They tumbled, exhausted, to the ground in a field of tall grass, well clear of even a sapling.
They lay there for long minutes, saying nothing. Eventually the Piper took out a flask and drank deeply before offering it to Carter. The water was cool, but Carter’s throat burned like fire when he swallowed. He was safe, and shockingly alive, but he couldn’t get the image of those hanging skeletons out of his mind. He’d almost joined them, he’d almost died alone, just like the Piper had predicted he would. If the Piper hadn’t saved him.
Someone was always saving him.
“A-a-all right,” said Carter, but he could produce hardly more than a whispered rasp. The Piper leaned close to hear.
“All right what?”
Carter searched the Piper’s face for a hint of gloating, for that cruel twinkle in the magician’s eye. All he found was curiosity. Carter took a deep breath. His neck was in agony, but he gritted his teeth and buried the pain deep.
“Teach me magic.”
“The most important thing you need to understand is the difference between black magic and white magic.” The Piper was lecturing Carter as they trudged through a bog that threatened to suck the shoes right off their feet. The increasingly treacherous landscape meant that Carter was at most only half paying attention, which was just fine because he was pretty sure that most of what the Piper was saying was bogus. He got the sense that the Piper was making up an awful lot on the spot and calling it the rules of magic. Then the Piper grew irritated whenever he suspected that Carter wasn’t paying attention and grew impatient if Carter asked him to repeat something. In short, the Piper was a terrible teacher.
“White magic’s good, black magic’s bad, right?” answered Carter as he swatted away a bog fly the size of his thumb.
“Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong again,” said the Piper. He seemed to take great delight in correcting his “pupil” whenever possible. “Charms are white magic. But when a water spirit, a nixie, charms some poor old fool into drowning in her lake, is that good?”
Carter was tempted to offer another example of a piper charming a village full of children into abandoning their homes and parents, but he didn’t think that would go over very well. “Okay, so white magic can be used for evil, but surely black magic can’t be used for good!”
“Oh, really? Let’s say an ogre was rampaging through your land, destroying your countryside crops and smashing the villagers to pulp.”
“I don’t live in a village. I live in New York City.”
The Piper flicked Carter on the forehead.
“Ow!” Carter said.
“Use your imagination,” said the Piper. “The ogre is terrorizing your village and threatening your friends and family. And you happen to know this little curse that could stop the ogre’s heart in an instant. Freeze it dead.”
Carter shuddered. “Is there such a thing?”
“Oh, yes. It’s the blackest of magic—ending a life before its time. But if it could save your village from destruction…Would casting it be an evil deed, Carter?”
Carter thought about this. “I…I guess not.” Though it was hard to picture an ogre rampaging through Manhattan, he could understand the Piper’s point. But the thought of doing something like that didn’t feel right. Like he’d jumped into a pool of filthy water and couldn’t scrub off the oily sheen. “But if I were a magician, that curse wouldn’t be the only thing I could do. I’d know plenty of other spells to stop an ogre without killing it, right?”
“Not if you don’t start paying attention!” snapped the Piper. “I’m trying to tell you to stop thinking about magic in terms of good and evil. It’s useless.”
“Okay, fine,” said Carter. “So there’s white magic, which is charms and life and stuff; then there’s black magic, which is all about destruction and death. But if it makes you happy, I won’t call them good and bad.”
The Piper nodded. “That’s better.”
“Are there any other types of magic?”
“The elves’ magic comes from nature,” said the Piper. “Which mixes black and white up all together. Then there’s kobold magic, I guess.”
“What’s kobold magic like?”
“Boring. Silly. You want a charm to find your hat, or a curse to stink up a room, go ask a kobold.”
“Sounds like that would be kind of useful, actually,” said Carter. “My mom can never find her keys and—”
“Then why don’t you go find a kobold to teach you?” the Piper said, throwing up his hands. “Become the Summer Isle’s only magician that specializes in curdling milk!”
The bargain was that the Piper would teach Carter magic, and in return Carter would lead the Piper to his lost magic pipe. Carter’s side of the bargain, at least, was a lie. He still had no intention of letting the Piper get his pipe back. He was leading the Piper into the Deep Forest, where, if everything went according to plan, the Piper would be captured by Leetha and the elves. The problem was that Carter had started to wonder if the Piper wasn’t lying about his side of the bargain as well. They spent their time marching and arguing, and the Piper’s explanations of magic ranged from the insultingly simple to the bizarrely complex. But it was during their evenings together that the relationship started to change.
Perhaps it was just that the Piper was too exhausted from the day’s hard march to be mean, or maybe it was something in the routine they’d developed that calmed him, but every evening Carter would gather the wood for the fire and the Piper would cast a charm to light it. At these times, absorbed as he was in the magic, the Piper was almost patient with Carter.
Tonight he’d asked Carter to bring back a very specific list of ingredients along with the firewood. Lichen growing on dry deadwood. A red ant. A few other curious and seemingly random things that were not easily found on the barren moor. As Carter searched, he kept an eye out for Bandybulb. The little kobold still hadn’t reported back, and Carter was beginning to grow worried about the little creature. He waited for the kobold for as long as he could without raising the Piper’s suspicion, and when Bandybulb didn’t show, he headed back to camp.
When Carter returned, the Piper took a small mortar and pestle out of his pack and instructed Carter to dump the ingredients into the bowl. “Now grind them up into as fine a powder as you can. Let me know if your arm gets tired.”
Carter noted the Piper’s uncharacteristic concern for his arm, and got to work.
“Tonight we are making spark powder,” said the Piper. “It can be dangerous if it spills, so take your time and be careful.”
“You’re not going to charm up a fire with your music?”
“Not tonight. Tonight we use something more primal. Witch’s magic.”
Carter stopped grinding. “You mean, black magic?”
“It’s the first magic I learned,” said the Piper. “Good a starting place as any.”
“But we’re just starting a campfire, right? What’s black about that? It’s not like we’re killing anyone.”
The Piper smiled. “Tell that to the ant you just ground up in that bowl.”
Carter looked down at the mush that he’d been grinding t
ogether and made a face. If his sister, the vegetarian, were here right now, he’d be getting a lecture. “I didn’t think of it like that. I mean, it’s just an ant.”
“It is just an ant,” said the Piper. “And killing a bug is not inherently evil. Still, it is death magic all the same. That ant’s life will become the spark we need to make our fire.”
Carter went back to his work, but he cringed now at the feel of the mixture grinding under the pestle. “Witch’s magic is gross.”
The Piper chuckled. “I know. I had the same reaction when my mother first started teaching me.”
“Your mother taught you this?”
“During the good years, the people of Hamelin came to her for charms and medicines,” said the Piper. “Respected her, in a way. Then when the long winter came, they needed someone to blame for their misery. Adults will betray you every time.”
The Piper had told Carter the story back in the Black Tower. He told him about how the villagers had chased him and his mother out into the cold, and how his mother had gotten sick and eventually died from exposure. It was why, years later, when the Piper returned to Hamelin, he got his revenge on the villagers by stealing their children away. A childhood wound that refused to heal.
“I’m sorry,” said Carter, and he meant it. Whatever else the Piper had done wrong (and there was plenty), Carter still felt bad about what had happened to him as a young boy. Who wouldn’t? “I didn’t mean to bring it up.”
The Piper waved Carter’s apology away. “It’s irrelevant to what we are doing here tonight. What you need to know is this magic is called witchcraft for a reason. If you have the gift, all you have to do is follow the recipe.”
Carter still wasn’t sure that he had the gift, but there was little else to do between here and the Deep Forest. And if he could learn real magic, even a little, it would be worth putting up with the Piper for a few more days. It might even help them all in the end. Carter absently touched his neck and felt where the scabs had formed over the wounds from the hangman’s tree. A little magic might help him, at least. “Is that all that’s different between witch’s magic and the magic you cast with your music? Ingredients?”