The Secrets of the Pied Piper 1
Page 23
Then the rat swung the iron door shut, leaving Carter trapped inside.
The Peddler looked tired. They’d been traveling north for several hours now, and whatever magic he’d used to speed their journey along the road was at work out here on the moors as well. But this time it cost him. That was obvious from the exhausted look on his face and the sweat beading his brow, despite the plummeting temperatures. The Peddler had said that he drew his magic from the road, and the farther they got from it, the weaker he became. Max wondered if it wasn’t like plugging in a lamp, with the Peddler’s Road being the wall socket. But out here on the moors, there was nowhere for the Peddler to plug into, so the old man was running on batteries, and those were fading fast. Max was getting very worried about him, but she worried about Carter more. She’d been reassured more than once that the Peddler was one of the most powerful beings on the Summer Isle while Carter was just a ten-year-old boy. Max needed to trust that the Peddler knew his limits.
Things got worse when the snow began. What started as a light dusting soon turned into a raging storm. Large wet snowflakes pelted them while the bitter wind cut through their clothing. The Peddler produced heavy woolen cloaks from his seemingly bottomless backpack, but they did little to keep out the biting wind. Before long, everything was hidden behind a sheet of white. They had to rely on the Peddler to navigate, or else they could end up wandering in circles all night long, snow-blind.
The old man kept trudging onward, as the snow-covered moors gave way to rocky foothills, until at last Paul called out for them to stop. The scout had spotted a light in the distance. Sure enough, when Max cupped her hands around her eyes to block out the relentless snow, she saw it, too. A light burning in a tower window. A beacon in the storm.
After some searching, they discovered a trail that snaked up the hillside toward the tall tower. It was barely climbable in the snow, but it was the only way forward. The Peddler held up his hand when Max started ahead of everyone else.
“Caution, Max,” said the Peddler. He was white-faced, even in the dark, and breathing heavily. “The tower might be guarded.”
“But what if Carter’s already up there?” Max was frozen and tired herself, but their goal was in sight. They couldn’t stop now.
“The Peddler is right,” said Lukas. “We should rest for a moment and plan our attack. That’s our best chance to rescue your brother.”
Max grudgingly agreed, but she wouldn’t take her eyes off the distant lighted window. Perhaps Carter was in there already. At least he was out of the storm.
“And, Peddler,” said Emilie. “I think you should set down your pack for a while.”
“You know, Emilie,” sighed the Peddler, allowing the girl to slide the enormous backpack off his shoulders. “For once, I just might agree with you. There’s an ancient road here, deep beneath the ground. I can feel it, but I can’t find its magic, if it has any left. And I’m nearly spent.”
Paul, who’d been studying the hills around them, tapped Lukas on the shoulder. “Hey, my eyes might be playing tricks on me with all this snow, but did that hill just move?”
Everyone looked in the direction the scout was pointing, at a small snow-covered hillock a few dozen yards away. Max was reminded of Emilie’s story about the trolls and the mountains, and the hills that used to be trolls. Had they woken one up by mistake?
“There, it did it again,” said Paul, and as they all watched, the hill did seem to…adjust itself. It was the sort of movement a person might do if one had been sitting for too long.
The Peddler stepped in front and tried to peer through the falling snow. “It couldn’t be,” he whispered.
The hill moved again.
“Run!” shouted the Peddler. “Up the path and make for the tower!”
Then the hill stood up, and as it did, the thick blanket of snow that had been disguising it fell away to reveal a dilapidated old hut astride two giant legs. As it strode toward them, the front door of the hut swung open and a hook-nosed old hag, barely visible in the storm, leaned out and cackled.
“Can’t run fast enough, old man!” she called. “Grannie Yaga has you this time. She’ll eat your heart and use your bones to grow my Bonewood! Your road will crumble to ruin as my trees spread from shore to shore.”
The massive hut strode toward them, its legs stomping giant claw prints in the snow. They were trapped, with steep hills on either side of them. There was no place to outrun that thing.
Max was taken aback as the Peddler pushed past them to meet it head-on. For a moment, all his weariness seemed to melt away. The old man closed his eyes and straightened his back and breathed deeply.
“Aha,” he murmured. “There you are.”
The Peddler’s eyes popped open, and the earth beneath Grannie Yaga’s hut began to buckle and then break. From beneath centuries’ worth of rock and dirt, the ancient road that had once crossed these moors began to rise. Summoned by the Peddler, the slabs of broken flagstones pushed up through the earth. The ground shook and split apart, and Max was thrown off her feet, only to be caught by Lukas. Then a massive rumble tore through the hills, and the hut tripped over itself as one leg sank into the earth and the whole thing came crashing to the ground. Grannie Yaga screamed while her home toppled and her walls shattered and bone wind chimes clattered, and her fearsome hut collapsed into a pile of splintered debris.
Max covered her face as a wave of snow and kicked-up dirt blew over them. When she finally dared to look at the wreckage, the dust was already settling. The hut’s legs had broken in the fall, though one still twitched uselessly in the snow.
A few yards away, a funny, furry little man came crawling out of a broken wire cage that had been thrown free from the crash. When he discovered he was no longer caged, the little man did a dance of joy before scampering off into the night.
“Is…everyone all right?” asked the Peddler.
Max checked in with her friends and found that, like her, they were stunned but unharmed. The Peddler, however, could barely stand. Lukas and Max each grabbed one of the old man’s arms to help him stay upright.
“That was amazing,” said Max.
The Peddler grinned. “That old road had a little magic left in it, as it turns out. But just a little.”
Max looked up at the tower. They were so close now, but not close enough, and Max worried that the Peddler wouldn’t have the strength to make the climb.
“Tricky old man,” said a voice out of the darkness.
Max gasped as Grannie Yaga pulled herself out of the wreckage. One arm was bent in entirely the wrong direction and she was limping, but she was very much alive. She grinned, revealing a mouth full of iron teeth.
“Tricky old man,” she said again. “But Grannie is trickier!” With her one good hand, the witch began to gather up the shattered bones and broken skulls that had once decorated her hut. One by one she tossed the bones at the little group gathered round the Peddler.
“Hey!” shouted Paul as he was pelted with some creature’s rib bone. “Cut that out, you old witch.” He held up his frying pan threateningly.
The little bones couldn’t hurt them. The old hag barely had the strength to lob them underhanded. But then Max realized the real danger. It took a few moments for her mind to comprehend what was happening, because at first it looked like spring had arrived early as plants began to sprout up magically from the frozen soil. But the little saplings weren’t green; they were white, as white as bones, and they were growing fast.
“What’s she think she’s doing?” asked Paul. “Planting a garden?”
As white as the Bonewood.
The saplings became trees and vines, and the trees were reaching for them, the vines were curling about their feet. A branch closed about Max’s arm like fingers and it squeezed painfully.
The Peddler was trying to fight back, but his power was spent. What was left of the ancient road was broken. It would no longer obey his commands.
Grannie laughed
as she seeded more and more bones into this orchard of graves. Max’s friends chopped at the choking vines with their daggers, and Max was wielding her spade like a sword, knocking back the grasping branches. But the bone trees were growing faster than they could chop them down.
“Run!” the Peddler shouted. “Get to the tower! Go!”
Max surprised herself as she reached for the old man instead. She wanted to save Carter, she needed to, but she couldn’t leave the Peddler here to fight all alone. Especially not a battle he had no hope of winning.
But as she reached for the Peddler, someone else had a hold on her. It was Emilie, and she was dragging Max through the grasping trees and toward the lighted tower in the distance. With Lukas and Paul’s help they managed, whether Max liked it or not, to escape onto the mountain path.
Max was crying, and she saw tears in her friends’ eyes as well as they took one last look back. In the shadow of the ruined hut, a new grove of Bonewood trees had been born. But neither the Peddler nor Grannie Yaga was anywhere to be seen.
Then the four friends turned and silently continued their climb up the rocky path, made more treacherous in the storm. The Black Tower beckoned.
Carter hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, while standing in the small circle of light cast by his lantern, and listened to the song. Not the hypnotic, ethereal piping that had been haunting his dreams of late, but a simple melody. Someone upstairs was humming a tune, and it wasn’t difficult to guess who that might be.
Carter had stayed on the ground floor for some time, looking at the tall winding stair and trying to figure out a plan. He could try and escape out the front door, he supposed, but the rats were likely standing guard outside, and Carter wasn’t anxious to face King Marrow again. The choice was either to stay where he was or climb the stairs.
And there was something else. It was just a feeling, a worrisome feeling in the pit of Carter’s stomach that told him he was not alone. It could have been his imagination, but it was the same feeling he’d had as they were passing the ruins that circled the tower, like he was being watched, like there was more to the darkness than just the dark. Carter had chalked it up to the rats back then, but there weren’t any rats in here. Rats, he could see. Rats that big couldn’t hide in the shadows.
And Carter’s lantern wouldn’t burn forever.
Stay there, or climb the stairs. Carter chose the stairs.
It wasn’t easy for him. There was no railing to hold on to and the steps were devilishly narrow. Carter had to catch himself more than once when his brace slipped on the stone. By the time he reached the top, he was out of breath and his leg throbbed, and his lantern’s fuel was nearly spent, but he had at last come to another door. This one was an ordinary wooden door, not a giant one made of iron, and a warm light shone from the crack beneath it. Instead of a knocker there was a plain handle. Carter set his now useless lantern down and pushed the door open.
Inside the room, a cozy peat fire burned in a fireplace. In one corner, a mattress and bedding lay on the floor next to the remains of a dinner—a bird carcass and a few roasted vegetables on a baked-clay plate and a half-full glass decanter of water next to that. There was a stack of books neatly arranged in the corner, and beyond that, a tall sheet-draped object stood against the wall. A covered painting, perhaps.
At first Carter thought the rest of the floor was strewn with garbage, but as he looked closer, he saw that it was actually piles of wood shavings, and among the wood shavings were music pipes. Hundreds and hundreds of broken wooden pipes, carelessly discarded or smashed to pieces. But by far the strangest feature in the room was the sturdy iron chain that extended from a thick ring bolted to the middle of the floor to a heavy manacle clasped about the ankle of the person sitting on the windowsill.
The Piper wore his famous pied cloak, a tattered patchwork cape of yellow, red and green, slung over one shoulder, with the hood draped low over his face. He was still humming, and as he did so, his long fingers played along the length of an instrument that wasn’t there. He was practicing notes in the empty air.
Carter almost turned and ran. He’d made it this far, past witches and rats; he’d braved a winding staircase in the dark, and still he hadn’t balked, he hadn’t backed away. But now, as he spied on the hooded figure humming peacefully to himself in the window, Carter was afraid. There was nothing particularly threatening about the Piper, and he certainly wasn’t as monstrous-looking as King Marrow, but there was something about confronting this character out of legend—one of his father’s stories come to life—that stirred up a potent mixture of fear and awe in Carter. The two were wound up inside him and twisting tighter until he knew he had to either turn and scramble back down the stairs or say something.
“You’re the Pied Piper,” breathed Carter. His voice was barely more than a whisper, but even that felt too loud to his ears.
The Piper stopped humming and drew back his hood. At last, his face was perfectly clear. It was the hawkish face of a young man, barely old enough to shave, with a pointed chin and a pointed nose and thick eyebrows that met in the middle. The Piper wasn’t that much older than Lukas or Emilie, maybe fifteen or sixteen, at most. Carter’s first reaction to seeing the Piper’s youthful face was shock. His second was disappointment—the Piper was a teenager. Carter hated teenagers.
“Hello, Carter,” said the Piper, smiling amiably.
“You’re…you’re younger than I thought.”
“I’m older than I look,” said the Piper. “A lot older.”
Of course. And so were Lukas and Emilie and Paul and every child in New Hamelin, for that matter. Carter kept forgetting that his new friends had been alive for centuries, so there was no telling how old the Piper really was.
“I’m glad you made it,” said the Piper. “Once the witch got hold of you, I started to worry. Witches are unpredictable. Helpful one moment, shoving you into the oven the next.”
Carter took a single step into the room. It was much warmer in here than out there in the drafty stone stairwell. But he didn’t go any farther than that. “Didn’t you send her to get me?”
“No,” said the Piper. “That was an accident. She caught you on your late-night stroll. Sorry about that, by the way. I would’ve come to you but…” The Piper chuckled as he lifted his foot and dangled the long chain.
Despite his pleasant tone of voice, there was something in the Piper’s manner that set Carter on edge. He was all grins, but the smiles never reached his eyes.
“I don’t understand,” said Carter. “We were on our way here, anyway. We were coming to the Black Tower, so why did you have to—”
“We were coming?” interrupted the Piper, his voice rising a touch. “You see, that’s your problem right there. I wanted you here, by yourself.”
Carter experienced another twist of fear at the mention of his being alone. When his friends had been beside him, Carter had been on an adventure. Now they were gone, and the adventure had turned into something altogether different.
“Was that you we saw back in Hamelin, in the real world?” said Carter. “The ratcatcher?”
“Pest control professional,” said the Piper with a wink. “But as you can see, I’m chained up in here. I haven’t left this cell in ages. But my music, my music casts a spell that can seem as real as real can be, and it can go places I can’t. I wasn’t there in body, but you could say I was there in spirit.”
Carter thought back to their encounter with the exterminator. He hadn’t been able to focus on the man’s face or remember his name. It was like something that might happen in a dream. Or a nightmare. “So that wasn’t really you?”
“That was the spell,” said the Piper. “There was a time I could have visited you myself. There was a time I could travel freely between your world and this one, back when I had a magic pipe that let me do almost anything. Can you imagine?”
Carter looked around the room at all the discarded and broken pipes. “Is it one of these?”
“Why?” asked Carter. “You’re a magician. Can’t you just conjure your way out of here?”
“I wish I could,” said the Piper. “But magic has its rules. I keep trying to find ways around them, but it’s difficult. Without my pipe, I’m just not strong enough.”
“You were strong enough to kidnap me and my sister.”
The Piper glared at him, and Carter worried he’d gone too far. “Kidnap is not the word I’d use,” said the Piper. “But never mind. I may not be as strong as I used to be, but I’m still clever. I found a way.”
“Okay,” said Carter, still hugging the doorway for safety. “So…what happens now?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You could let me loose!” said the Piper, jingling his chain.
“I don’t even have a key,” said Carter.
“Didn’t need one to open the front door, did you?”
That was true—the door had unlocked for Carter when it wouldn’t for anyone else. But Carter hadn’t had a choice back then. Now he was pretty sure that freeing the Piper would be a very bad idea, not that he was prepared to tell the Piper that to his face.
“Okay, let’s say I do, then what happens?” asked Carter.