“All that’s left, Madame Mayor,” moaned poor Hans (I’m not great at reading lips, but I got the gist), “is bits of bone and a few snarls of black hair.”
Ulia Gol’s florid face went as putridly pink as her wig. Her shout was so loud I heard her through the cotton batting all the way to my metatarsals. “Town meeting—tonight—eight o’ clock—Orchestra Hall—OR ELSE!”
I ran back to report to Nicolas, who laughed around the lip of his pipe. Slapping my forehead, I cried, “Clever, clever! Why didn’t I think of it? Manufacture false evidence; blame the rats! It’ll keep thief-hunters out of the Maze Wood for sure. Did you think that up, Nicolas?”
Pink-cheeked, Nicolas shook his head and kept playing.
“Wasn’t Dora Rose,” I mused. “She’d view leaving fragments behind as sacrilege. One of our stalwart recruits, then. Froggit? He’s great, but he’s kind of young for that level of...Or, I suppose it could’ve been Possum’s idea. Don’t know her so well. Always thought her one of your sweet, quiet types, Possum.” Readjusting my cotton batting, I mulled on the puzzle before settling on my final hypothesis.
“Greenpea. Greenpea, I’ll grant you, has the brain for such a scheme. What a firecracker! Back when the Swan Hunt started, she was the most vocal opposition in town. Has a kindness for all animals, does Greenpea. Nearly took Hans’s head off with the shovel when he tried to make her dig up that first murdered cob. Ulia Gol took it back from her, though. Broke both her legs so bad the surgeon had to cut ’em off at the knee. Fear of festering, you see. Least, that’s what he said. But he’s Ulia Gol’s creature, badly gone as Hans. Yup, I’ll bet the hair and bone were Greenpea’s notion. Little minx. I’d like to take her paw and give it a shake. Oh, but hey, Nicolas! We’d best get a move on. You haven’t eaten all day, and the sun’s nearly down. Mayor Ulia Gol’s called a town meeting in a few hours regarding the rat conundrum. I’ll fur down and find a bench to hide under. That way I’ll be ready for you.”
Slipping the silver pipe under his patched tunic, Nicolas advised, “Don’t get stomped.”
By this time, the rats of Amandale were in such a frenzy it wouldn’t much matter if he stopped playing for an hour or two. Most of the Folk rats would come to their senses and slip out of town while the getting was good. Likely they’d spend the next few weeks with wax stoppers in their ears and a great distaste for music of any kind. But they’d be back. By and by, they’d all come back.
The fixed rats, now...Smart beasts they may be, those inferior little cousins of mine, but their brains have only ever been the size of peas. Good thing they reproduce quickly’s all I’m saying. ’Cause for the sake of drama and Dora Rose—they are going down.
* * *
The Mayor of Amandale began, “This meeting is now in—” when an angry mother shot to her feet and shouted over her words. It was the chandler, wailing toddler held high overhead like a trophy or oblation.
“Look at my Ruby! Look at her! See that bite on her face? That’ll mark her the rest of her natural life.”
“Won’t be too long,” observed a rouged bawd. “Wounds like that go bad as runoff from a graveyard.”
The blacksmith added, “That’s if the rats don’t eat her alive first.”
The noise in Orchestra Hall surged. A large, high-ceilinged chamber it was, crammed with padded benches and paneled in mahogany. Front and center on the raised stage stood Mayor Ulia Gol, eyes squinting redly as she gaveled the gathering to order.
“Friends! Friends!” Despite the red look in her eyes, her voice held that hint of laughter that made people love her. “Our situation is dire, yes. We are all distressed, yes. But I must beg you now, each and every one of you, to take a deep breath.”
She demonstrated.
Enchantment in the expansion and recession of her bosom. Sorcery in her benevolent smile. Hypnosis in the red beam of her eye, pulsing like a beating heart. The crowd calmed. Began to breathe. From my place beneath the bench, I twitched my fine whiskers. Ulia Gol was by far her truer self in the Heart Glade, terrorizing the children of Amandale into murdering Swan Folk. This reassuring woman was hardly believable. A stage mirage. The perfect politician.
“There,” cooed the Mayor, looking downright dotingly upon her constituents,“that’s right. Tranquility in the face of disaster is our civic duty. Now, in order to formulate appropriate measures against this rodent incursion as well as set in motion plans for the recovery of our wounded”—she ticked off items on her fingers—“and award monetary restitution to the hardest-hit property owners, we must keep our heads. I am willing to work with you. For you. That’s why you elected me!”
Cool as an ogre picking her teeth with your pinkie finger. No plan of mine could stand long against a brainstorming session spearheaded by Ulia Gol at her glamoursome best. But I had a plan. And she didn’t know about it. So I was still a step ahead.
Certain human responses can trump even an ogre’s fell enchantments, no matter how deftly she piles on those magical soporific agents. It was now or never. Taking a deep breath of my own, I darted up the nearest trouser leg—
And bit.
The scream was all I ever hoped a scream would be.
Benches upturned. Ladies threw their skirts over their heads. The man I’d trespassed upon kicked a wall, trying to shake me out of his pants. I slid and skittered and finally flew across the room. Something like or near or in my rib cage broke, because all of a sudden the simple act of gasping became a pain in my everything.
Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t...
There came a wash of sound. Scarlet pain turned silver. My world became a dream of feathers. I saw Dora Rose, all downed up in swanskin, swimming across Lake Serenus. Ducking her long, long neck beneath the waves. Disappearing. Emerging as a woman, silver and naked-pale, with all her long hair gleaming down. She could dance atop the waves in this form, barefoot and unsinkable, a star of the Lake Serenus Water Ballet.
I came to myself curled in the center of the Pied Piper’s palm. He had the silver pipe in his other hand as if he’d just been playing it. Orchestra Hall had fallen silent.
This was Nicolas as I’d never seen him. This was Nicolas of the Realms Beneath the Hill. His motley rags seemed grander the way he wore them than Ulia Gol’s black satin robes with the big pink toggles and purple flounce. His hair was like the flint-and-fire crown of some Netherworld King. Once while drunk on Faerie ale he’d told me—in strictest confidence of course—that since childhood the Faerie Queen had called him “Beautiful Nicolas” and seated him at her right hand during her Midnight Revels. I’d snorted to hear that, replying, “Yeah, right. Your ugly mug?” which made him laugh and laugh. I’d been dead serious, though; I know what beautiful looks like, and its name is Dora Rose, not Nicolas. But now I could see how the Faerie Queen might just have a point. So. Yeah. Kudos to her. I suppose.
Nicolas’s smile flashed from his dark face like the lamp of a lighthouse. His black eyes flickered with a fiendish inner fire.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of Amandale!” Sweeping himself into a bow, he managed to make both pipe and rat natural parts of his elegance, as if we stood proxy for the royal scepter and orb he’d misplaced.
“Having had word of your problem, I came straightway to help. We are neighbors of sorts; I live in the lee of the Hill outside your lovely town. You may have heard my name.” Nicolas paused, just long enough. Impeccable timing. “I am the Pied Piper. I propose to pipe your rats away.”
So saying, he set me on the floor and brought up his pipe again.
I danced—but it was damned difficult. Something sharp inside me poked other, softer parts of me. I feared the coppery wetness foaming the corners of my mouth meant nothing salubrious for my immediate future. Still, I danced. How could I help it? He played for me.
Nicolas, who at his worst was so sensitive he often achieved what seemed a kind of feverish telepathy, was eerily attuned to my pain. His song shifted, ever so slightly. Something in my
rib cage clicked. He played a song not only for me but for my bones as well. And my bones danced back into place.
Burning, burning.
Silver swanfire starfall burning.
Jagged edges knitted. Bones snapped back together. Still I danced. And inside me, his music danced, too, healing up my hurts.
Nicolas took his mouth from the pipe. “I am willing, good Citizens of Amandale, to help you. As you see, rats respond to my music. I can make them do what I wish! Or what you wish, as the case may be.”
On cue, released from his spell, I made a beeline for a crack in the wall. A sharp note from his pipe brought me up short, flipped me over, and sent me running back in the other direction. I can’t sweat, but I did feel the blood expanding my tail as my panicked body heated up.
“For free?” called the chandler, whose wounded babe had finally stopped wailing for fascination of Nicolas’s pipe.
“For neighborliness?” cackled the bawd.
Nicolas scooped me up off the floor. He made it look like another bow. “Alas, no. Behold me in my rags; I cannot afford charity. But for a token fee only, I will do this for you!”
Me he dangled by the engorged tail. Them he held by the balls. Oh, he had them. Well-palmed and squeezing. (Hoo-boy, did that bring back a great memory! There’d been this saucy rat girl named Melanie a few years back, and did she ever know how to do things with her paws...)
Mayor Ulia Gol slinked out from behind her podium. Bright-eyed and treacherous and curious as a marten in a chicken hut, she toyed with her gavel. Her countenance was welcoming, even coquettish.
“A Hero from the Hill!” She laughed her deep laughter that brought voters to the ballot box by the hordes. “Come to rescue our troubled Amandale in its time of need.”
“Just a musician, Madame Mayor.” Nicolas’s dire and delicate voice was pitched to warm the cockles and slicken the thighs. “But better than average perhaps—at least where poor, dumb animals are concerned.”
“And, of course, musicians must be paid!” Her lip curled.
“Exterminators too.”
Ulia Gol had reached him. She walked right up close and personal, right to his face, and inhaled deeply. She could smell the Hill on him, I knew, and those tantalizing hints of Folk in his blood, and the long-lost echoes of the mortal he may once have been. The red glint in her eye deepened drunkenly. His scent was almost too much for her. Over there in his corner of the hall, Hans watched the whole scene, green to the gills with jealousy. It clashed with his second-best suit.
Ulia Gol’s expression slid from one of euphoria to that of distaste as she remembered me. Crouched in Nicolas’s open hand, I hunkered as small as I could make myself. I was not a very big rat. And she did have a gavel, you see, for all she was letting it swing from the tips of her fingers.
In a velveted boom that carried her words to the far end of the hall, she asked, “What is your price, my precious piper?”
“I take my pay in coin, Madame Mayor.”
I swear they heard his whisper all across Amandale that night. Nicolas had a whisper like a kiss, a whisper that could reach out and ring the bells of Brotquen Cathedral so sweetly.
“One thousand gold canaries upon completion of the job. If you choose, you may pay me in silver nightingales, though I fear the tripled weight would prove unwieldy. For this reason I cannot accept smaller coin. No bronze wrens or copper robins; such currency is too much for me to shoulder easily.”
Silence. As if his whisper had sucked the breath right from the room. The chandler’s baby hiccupped.
“Paid on completion, you say.” Ulia Gol pondered, stepping back from him. “And by what measurement, pray, do we assess completion? When the last rat drowns in the Drukkamag River?”
Nicolas bowed once more, more gracefully than ever before. “Whatever terms you set, Madame Mayor, I will abide by them.”
Ulia Gol grinned. Oh, she had a handsome, roguish grin. I think I peed a little in Nicolas’s palm. “It cost our town less to build Brotquen Cathedral—and that was three hundred years of inflation ago. Why don’t you take that instead, my sweet-lipped swindler?”
“Alas, ma’am!” Nicolas shook his red-and-black head in sorrow. “While I am certain that yours is a fine cathedral, I make my living on my feet. I take for payment only what I can trundle away with me. As I stated, it must be gold or silver. Perhaps in a small leather chest or sack that I might lift upon my shoulder?”
He tapped the Mayor’s shoulder with his silver pipe, drawing a lazy sigil there. Curse or caress, who could say? Ulia Gol shivered, euphoria once again briefly blanking out her cunning.
“One thousand bright canaries,” she laughed at him, “singing in a single chest! Should not they be in a cage instead, my mercenary minstrel?”
Nicolas twinkled a wink her way. “Nay,” said he, husking low his voice for her ears (and mine) alone. His next sentence fair glittered with the full formality of the Faerie court. Had I any choice when hearing it, I’d’ve bolted right then and there and never come out from my hole till my whiskers turned gray.
“But perhaps,” he continued, “thou shouldst be, thou pink-plumed eyas. A cage equipped with manacles of silver and gilded bullwhips and all manner of bejeweled barbs and abuses for such a wicked lady-hawk as thee.”
Pleased with the impudent promise in his eyes, and pink as her candy-colored wig, Ulia Gol spun around. The tassel on her black satin cap hopped like a cottontail in a clover patch. She addressed the hall.
“The Pied Piper has come to drive our rats away. He is charging,” she threw the room a grin as extravagant as confetti, “an unconscionable fee to do so. But, my friends, our coffers will manage. What cost peace? What cost health? What cost the lives of our children? Yes, we shall have to tighten our belts this winter. What of that?” Her voice crescendoed. Her arms spread wide. “Citizens, if we do not accept his assistance now, who knows if we will even live to see the winter?”
A wall of muttering rose up against the tide of her questions. Some dissent. Some uneasy agreement. Ulia Gol took another reluctant step away from Nicolas and waded into the crowd. She worked it, touching hands, stroking baby curls, enhancing her influence as she gazed deeply into deeply worried eyes and murmured spells and assurances. Shortly, and without any overt effort, she appeared behind the podium like she’d grown there.
“Friends,” she addressed them throbbingly, “already the rats are nibbling at our stores, our infants, the foundations of our houses. Recall how rats carry plague. Do you want Amandale to face the danger that leveled Doornwold fifteen years ago? We shall put it to the vote! I ask you to consider this—extreme, yes, but remember, we only need pay if it’s effective!—solution. All in favor of the Pied Piper, say aye!”
The roar the crowd returned was deafening. The overtones were especially harsh, that particular brassy hysteria of a mob miles past the point of reasoning with. I wished I had my earplugs back. Ulia Gol did not bother to invite debate from naysayers. Their protestations were drowned out, anyway. But I could see Hans over there making note of those who shook their heads or frowned. My guess was that they’d be receiving visitors later. Probably in the dead of night.
From her place on the stage, Ulia Gol beamed upon her townspeople. But like magnet to metal, her gaze clicked back to Nicolas. She studied him with flagrant lust, and he returned her scrutiny with the scorching intensity the raven has for the hawk. He stood so still that even I, whom he held in his hand, could not feel him breathing.
“Master Piper!”
“Madame Mayor?”
“When will you begin?”
“Tomorrow at dawn.” This time, Nicolas directed his diffident smile to the room at large. “I need my sleep tonight. It is quite a long song, the one that calls the rats to the waterside and makes the thought of drowning there seem so beautiful.”
“Rest is all well and good, Master Piper. But first you must dine with me.”
“Your pardon, Madame Mayor, but I must
fast before such work as I will do tomorrow.”
Her fists clenched on the edges of the podium. She leaned in. “Then a drink, perhaps. The mayoral mansion is well stocked.”
Nicolas bowed. “Ma’am, I must abstain.”
I wouldn’t say that the look Ulia Gol gave him was a pout, exactly. More like, if Nicolas’s face had been within range of her teeth, she’d have torn it off. He had toyed with her, keyed her to the pitch of his choosing, and now he would not play her like a pipe—nor let her play his. Pipe, I mean. Ahem.
His short bow and quick exit thwarted any scheme she might have improvised to keep him there. Outside in the cooling darkness, cradling me close to his chest, Nicolas turned sharply into the nearest alleyway. Stumbling on a pile of refuse, he set me down atop it, and promptly projectile-vomited all over the wall.
I’d never seen that much chunk come out of an undrunk person. Fleshing myself back to man-shape, I clasped my hands behind me and watched him. I had to curb my urge to applaud.
“Wow, Nicolas! Is that nerves, or did you eat a bad sausage for dinner?” I whistled. “I thought you couldn’t talk to women, you Foxface, you! But you were downright debonair. If the Mayor’d been a rat girl, her ears would’ve been vibrating like a tuning fork!”
Wiping his mouth on his hand, Nicolas croaked, “She is not a woman. She is a monster. I spoke to her as I speak to other monsters I have known. It is poison to speak so, Maurice—but death to do aught else. But, oh, it hurts, Maurice. It hurts to breathe the same air she breathes. It hurts to watch her courtiers—”
“Constituents,” I corrected, wondering whose face he’d seen imposed upon Ulia Gol’s. If I were a betting rat, I’d say the answer rhymed with “Airy Fleen.”
“So corrupted...Necrotic! As rotten as that poor rat-bitten babe shall be in a few days. They—these thinking people, people like you or me”—I decided not to challenge this—“they all agreed to the genocide. They agreed to make the orchestra of murdered swans, to abuse the god in the juniper tree. They traded their souls to a monster, and for what? Free music? Worse, worse—they set their children to serve her. Their babies, Maurice! Gone bad like the rest of them. Maurice, had I the tinder, I would burn Amandale to the ground!”
Bone Swans: Stories Page 9