by Matthew Cody
Lukas managed to jump out of the way just in time to avoid the grasping talons of one of the hut’s feet. As he rolled to standing, he swung and stabbed at the creature’s toe, but his dagger merely bounced off the thick skin.
“Run!” Emilie was shouting, but there was another voice calling to them as well. An impossible voice.
Lukas looked up. There in the hut’s window was Carter, his face pressed against the iron bars. “Max!” Carter shouted. “Lukas! I’m up here!”
Max had heard him, too, but in her panic to get to her brother, she was rushing forward, heedless of the clawed foot that was rising again, preparing to strike.
“Ha-ha,” cackled the mysterious voice. “Maybe I’ll squash them into jelly, eh, sweet boy? Jam for our toast!”
“No!” Carter shouted at their unseen enemy. “Don’t hurt them!”
But whatever was controlling that hut wasn’t listening to Carter. The foot rose up over Max, ready to stomp her flat.
Lukas dove forward and tackled Max, knocking both of them out of the foot’s path. Then they tumbled, one over the other, off the road and through the underbrush, toward the creek. Max’s cloak got caught on a bramble bush and arrested her fall, while Lukas kept on rolling right into the creek, into the black water.
The cold hit him like a winter gale. His first thought was, How could water in the summer get so cold? An unnatural numbness began to spread along his hands and feet as he sank farther. It was dark under there, dark and frigid.
Lukas twisted around, but which way was up? He kicked, but he was tangled in his own cloak, and he’d never been a very good swimmer. This was his nightmare come to life. Panic gripped him. He needed to breathe.
Then he saw a shape making its way toward him through the cloudy water. A rescuer, perhaps. As it drew near, he saw long, bony fingers and a beard like seaweed, sprouting from an old man’s twisted face. Not a rescuer, then. It was reaching for him, and Lukas was going to die.
Then the creature turned and vanished, quickly fleeing to whatever shadowy depths it called home. Something else bumped Lukas in the back of the head, and he saw a branch being lowered into the water. Lukas grabbed hold as the branch began to lift, and Lukas rode it up, up, up.
He broke the surface with a choking gasp, and at last he could breathe. Arms reached for him, and he allowed himself to be dragged out of the vile creek and onto shore. He was shivering from the chill that had settled in his bones.
Max was next to him, wrapping her own dry cloak around him and holding him close so that her own warmth might add to his.
“I almost didn’t remember,” she said, looking down at Lukas with relief.
“R-remember what?” he said, and he coughed up a mouthful of black water.
“Nokk, nokk, nokk,” she said.
“Who’s there?” he answered weakly.
“I can’t believe it worked,” she said. “When I saw that thing reaching for you, I wasn’t sure it would. Where did it come from?”
“The dark,” answered Lukas, then pulled himself up to sitting and looked around. The hut was gone, and Paul and Emilie were standing over him with looks of intense worry.
“Where’s Carter?” he said.
“That hut thing ran away, and it took him with it,” said Max, quietly.
“What happened?”
Emilie and Paul exchanged a queer look, and Paul pointed back up the hill to the road. “He happened,” the boy said.
Standing on the road was an ugly little man wearing a backpack twice as big as he was. It was comically stuffed with objects; a lute with its strings missing, a birdcage with a bird missing, a dented crown and a shovel shaped like a hand were just a few of the odd items that Lukas could see poking out. The little man looked at Lukas and scowled, spitting over his shoulder as he did so.
“Idiot children,” he muttered.
They’d found the Peddler at last.
The Peddler turned out to be just about the ugliest man Max had ever seen. It wasn’t so much that he was physically ugly, though he was that—hunchbacked, with a few stray whiskers that could not rightly be called a beard and a bumpy face stitched together with wrinkles. No, it was more that the Peddler acted ugly. He spat and cussed at the little fire that he was trying to build on the side of the road, and every now and then he’d glare up at Max and her friends, standing several yards away for safety, and shake his head disapprovingly.
Max elbowed Lukas in the ribs. “He’s not what I was expecting.”
“You’ll get used to him.”
“Really?” said Paul. “Well, she’d be the first.”
“I think we should ask for his help,” said Lukas.
“What sort of help?” asked Max. “He doesn’t exactly seem friendly.”
Lukas leaned close. “He may not look impressive—”
“Or smell impressive,” interrupted Paul.
“But he is a magician,” continued Lukas. “And he might be able to help us find Carter.”
“Might as well stop your whispering and gawking,” called the Peddler. “Come close and tell me what you’re doing on my road.”
Max followed Lukas as they joined the Peddler next to his little fire. The little man was now tending to a cast-iron skillet filled with plump, sizzling sausages, the smell of which made Max’s mouth water so that she had to remind her stomach that she didn’t eat meat.
The Peddler uncorked a clay jug and poured some kind of thick syrup over the frying sausages. Then he speared a sausage with a bent fork he’d produced from inside his pack and lifted it to his mouth, dripping grease and syrup all down his chin and beard. Max noticed that he pointedly didn’t offer to share.
“We’re glad to see you, Peddler,” said Lukas.
“Course you are,” said the Peddler, through a mouthful. “If I hadn’t wandered along, you all would be just so much mush squished between giant chicken toes. Whatever are you New Hameliners doing so far from home, anyway?”
Although he seemed to be speaking to them as a group, Max noticed that the Peddler was staring directly at her. Maybe he’d never seen a girl with pink hair, either, but Max didn’t care. Nothing else mattered so long as Carter was in trouble.
“That thing took my little brother,” said Max.
“Brother?” grumbled the Peddler.
“His name is Carter,” said Lukas. “We spotted him in the window of whatever that creature was.”
“Was he baked in a pie?”
“No!” said Max.
“That’s good,” said the Peddler. “That thing you all keep talking about is Grannie Yaga’s enchanted hut—Grannie Yaga being a particularly vicious sort of witch. I say it’s good because if Grannie Yaga was going to eat your friend, she would’ve cooked him by now.”
“Cooked him?” Max felt Lukas’s hand on her arm, but she shrugged it off.
“At least she doesn’t eat them raw,” said the Peddler matter-of-factly.
Max stomped her bandaged feet, the simple act of which felt like she was jumping on thorns. “We have to follow them. We have to get my brother back!”
“You won’t catch up with her,” said the Peddler. “Not on foot and not by yourselves, you won’t.”
“Please, Peddler,” said Lukas. “Then how do we get him back?”
“That depends on where she’s taking him.”
“Where?” said Max. “Do you know?”
The Peddler squinted one eye up at her. “Well, I have an idea where she might be headed, but it depends on who your brother is—and who you are, for that matter. By your hair and your clothes you’re obviously not from New Hamelin, and you’re not a ghost. Not sure I should care either way, but since we’re talking…”
Max suddenly had the strong urge to snatch the Peddler’s iron skillet and smack him across the head with it. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was Emilie who calmed her down.
“The Peddler is rude, and often infuriating,” the girl said quietly, taking Max’s arm. “But loathe as I am
to admit it, he did just save our lives.”
“I’m okay,” Max said, taking a deep breath to get her temper under control. It was true that when the Peddler had appeared, Grannie Yaga’s magic hut had turned and fled into the Bonewood. Max didn’t understand why the squat little man should scare a creature like that. The New Hameliners said that the Peddler was a magician, but he hadn’t done anything magical that she could see. Max half suspected the witch’s running away had just been a coincidence.
Paul, it seemed, had been wondering the same thing. “Peddler, how did you scare that witch off?” he asked. “Trick like that could come in handy.”
“No trick at all,” said the Peddler, spearing himself another sausage. “This is my road. I don’t permit witches to use my road. Especially that one. She holds a grudge.”
The Peddler gestured to the sickly white woods lining the other side of the road. “Grannie Yaga tends the Bonewood, and you see how those trees look like they’re reaching out, stretching their branches to touch the other side? That’s because my road’s the only thing keeping that spiteful forest of hers from spreading. Old Grannie doesn’t like it, not one bit. But she won’t try to best me. Not so long as I’m walking my road, she won’t. She knows better.”
Max put her head in her hands. Magic roads. Forests of bones. All she wanted to know was how they were going to get Carter back. The lid she’d been trying to put on her temper blew sky high.
“Like this guy’s going to be able to help us!” Max shouted. “My brother’s been kidnapped, and we’re sitting around watching him eat breakfast!” First Max was yelling, then she was crying—she couldn’t help it—which only made her even angrier, which in turn made her cry harder. No one knew what to do about it.
No one except the Peddler. The little man produced a surprisingly clean handkerchief from his pack and handed it to her.
“Blow,” he ordered.
Max complied, honking like a goose as she did. “So stupid,” she said. “Crying like a coward.”
The Peddler shook his head. “Don’t be thick, girl. Tears have nothing to do with cowardice. Known plenty of cowards who never shed a tear in their life.”
“Whatever,” said Max, sniffling. She honestly didn’t know if the old man was trying to console her or scold her.
“You can keep the handkerchief,” he said. Max blew into it again. “I insist,” he added.
“Peddler,” said Lukas. “I gave Max my word that I would keep Carter safe and I…I failed. Can you help us get him back?”
As Max dried her eyes, the Peddler took another bite of his sausage, watching her and chewing thoughtfully. “I might be able to,” he said, after a moment. “But I never make decisions on an empty stomach.” He plucked the skewered sausage off his fork and dipped it into the greasy syrup still in the skillet. “So, stomach first, then we’ll talk about what I can do for you.”
The Peddler uncorked a jug and poured more syrup over his breakfast. “This here’s a rare sweet sap. There’s a pair of kobolds who make their home in a tall maple tree along the Eastern Fork. They use a secret magic to conjure that stuff right out of the tree. Cost me the last few hairs off my head in trade, but it was worth it. Unique thing, that magic tree.”
Max rolled her eyes at the Peddler, but after the cry, she did feel calmer. “You say they live in a maple tree?”
“Yes,” said the Peddler. “Not far from here.”
Max shook her head. “It’s maple syrup.”
“Hmm?” said the Peddler.
“Maple syrup,” repeated Max. “You just tap the tree—drill a small hole in it, hammer in a spout. My dad used to take us on vacations to Maine and we’d watch them do it. That’s where maple syrup comes from, inside the tree. Inside all maple trees, genius.”
The Peddler squinted at her. “You sure about that? Any old maple tree?”
“Yep.”
“No magic involved?”
“Nope.”
The Peddler slapped his hands on his knees. “Well of all the…I’ve traded a fortune….They said it was secret magic!” He jabbed his stick into the fire, nearly toppling the frying pan into the coals. “Never trust a kobold,” he was saying. “Should’ve followed my own advice for once.”
Paul was trying unsuccessfully to stifle a chuckle as the old man began cursing his bad luck, and when Max silently pleaded with Lukas and Emilie for help, the two just shook their heads. This was really one of the three most powerful magicians in all of the Summer Isle?
“All right, enough of this,” said Max. “Breakfast is over! Lukas, give me the map.”
The boy set the leather scroll case into her outstretched hand. “Peddler, do you recognize this?” she asked.
The Peddler stopped his grumbling and peered down at her hand. “Could be.”
“This,” said Max as she unrolled the map at his feet, “is the reason we’re out here. Your map, that you gave to Lukas.”
“Traded it,” said the Peddler.
“What?”
“I didn’t give it. I traded it to Lukas, there, for one of his jokes, as I recall. Turned out not to be a very good one, by the way.”
“And there was a prophecy that went along with it?”
“Yes,” said the Peddler. “Threw that in for free, too. Did I mention the joke was terrible?”
“Lukas, help?” said Max, exasperated.
The boy nodded. “Peddler, the prophecy went like this: Only when the last son of Hamelin appears and the Black Tower found,” he recited, “will the Piper’s prison open and the children return safe and sound.”
“Sounds about right,” said the Peddler.
“Well, there’s your Black Tower,” said Max, pointing to the tower symbol on the map. “And they, I mean we, think my brother, Carter, is the last son of Hamelin. Maybe.”
“That so?”
“Well, we were in Hamelin when we were kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped?” said the Peddler. “That’s strange. You sure you two didn’t fall down a well or walk through a magic closet. Maybe you’re a couple of runaways who got themselves lost in an enchanted forest.”
“We were kidnapped,” said Max. “Kidnapped by the Pied Piper of Hamelin, just like they were.” Max pointed at the others, but the Peddler just shook his head.
“Which is also strange, because the Piper’s locked away.”
“How do you know he hasn’t escaped?” asked Max.
“Because if he escaped, he’d come looking for revenge on the one who put him there—me!” snapped the Peddler. The old man had been irritable from the start, but now there was a new note in his voice, something sharper. He jabbed at the fire with his walking stick.
“There are stories,” said Lukas. “Stories that you had a great battle with the Piper. That you fought him and won.”
The Peddler grimaced. “Not something I care to talk about.”
Lukas picked up the map. “Then what about the prophecy? The prophecy says that the Piper’s prison will open.”
“I’m not sure about that,” said the Peddler, going back to stoking his fire.
“But it’s your prophecy!” said Lukas, and Max was glad to see that finally someone else was getting as frustrated with this sour old man as she was.
“No,” said the Peddler. “I told you once, Lukas, when we first traded for that map, that I’d gotten it from a witch.”
Understanding dawned on Max. A terrible understanding.
“That witch was the one who took Carter, wasn’t it?” asked Max.
The Peddler nodded. “Grannie Yaga, witch of the Bonewood, the very same. Told you she holds a grudge.”
“Then the prophecy was hers, too?” said Max. “We’ve come all this way because we were trusting something that monster said?”
The Peddler held up a hand. “It’s a fair charge to call Grannie Yaga a monster, but she does have the sight. Her foretellings are as genuine as daylight.”
“So it’s true, then,” said Lukas. “
Carter is the one who’ll lead us home.”
But the Peddler shook his head. “I didn’t say that. Maybe he’s the last son of Hamelin. Maybe. A prophecy is just words, and words can be slippery. Hard to interpret.”
“But the Black Tower appeared!” said Lukas.
Max shook her head. “That doesn’t matter anymore, Lukas. We have to get Carter back.”
“Could be the tasks are one and the same,” said the Peddler. “If Grannie Yaga hasn’t gobbled your brother up, then she’s got another use for him. Could be she struck some kind of deal with the Piper and she’s delivering Carter to him. The two have a bond, you might say.”
Max closed her eyes and tried to banish the image of her little brother in the clutches of some storybook witch. Carter always tried to put up a brave front, and Max knew that he tried especially hard because of his leg. He didn’t want anyone to think that he was ever worth less than anyone else, because he wasn’t. But in the end, he was still only a boy. He was only her little brother.
“If the Piper knows about the prophecy, then it could explain why he kidnapped you two,” said Emilie. “He could be trying to force the prophecy to come true so that he can escape.”
The Peddler didn’t say anything, but he didn’t disagree with them, either, which, judging by his behavior so far, seemed the best Max could hope for.
Paul, however, shook his head. “But if he’s still in prison, how’s he going around kidnapping more children? How’d he get Max and Carter?”
“Maybe he’s found a way to sneak out?” said Max.
“Is that possible, Peddler?” asked Emilie.
The Piper shook his head. “I don’t see how. He’s trapped. We took his magic away when we took his pipe away. It was the source of his power, just as I draw my power from this very road. Magic has very simple rules.” The Peddler’s words sounded confident, yet his face was clouded with uncertainty. It looked to Max like the Peddler was trying to convince himself of his own argument. “But then again, he always was good at breaking rules.”
“You know,” said Paul. “I’ve always wondered. What is it with you and roads, anyway? A road’s just a road. Nothing magical about it.”