by Matthew Cody
It was a twisted shape, painfully thin, and covered head to toe in decaying, tattered rags. Where the skin was uncovered, it was a mottled gray color, like spoiled meat. The creature wore a dirty scarf wrapped around its nose and mouth, so that all that was visible of its face was a pair of dead black eyes, and it stared at the children with all the hate in the world.
“Gray man,” breathed Paul as he stepped into the room.
A gray man. That was the monster that haunted Carter’s fears, and that was the monster the darkness had made real. The gray man held up a long-fingered hand to protect itself from the light and retreated to the corner of the room. His sister’s torch was keeping it at bay.
Carter ran into Max’s arms. His friends were all there, though Lukas looked pale, and he was leaning on Emilie for support. And there was someone else with them, a dark-skinned girl with long, pointed ears.
“I knew you’d find me,” he said as Max hugged him closer. “Hey,” he whispered, looking at the strange girl. “Do we have an elf on our side now?”
Max grinned. “Her name’s Leetha.”
“That’s so cool.”
It was the elf girl, Leetha, who broke up the reunion. “We should go now,” she said, eyeing the gray man warily.
“Wait!” said Carter. “We can’t leave yet. I think I’ve found the way home.”
“What?” said Lukas weakly. “How? Where is it?”
“It’s here,” answered the Piper. With the appearance of the gray man and Carter’s friends, Carter had almost forgotten about the Piper. In the light of Max’s torch, the Piper’s features had taken on a more sinister look—the deep-set eyes, the long nose, the sharp features. The Son of the Witch. Carter felt his sister stiffen.
The Piper pointed to the mirror, to the glassy image of the little bedroom in Hamelin. On the other side of the mirror, past Carter’s bedroom window, the night sky back home was giving way to the pink of pre-dawn. “There it is,” the Piper said. “The way back. All you have to do is get past me, and him.”
The Piper pointed at the gray man as the creature reached up and tore the scarf from its face. Where its mouth and nose should have been, there was nothing but a ragged, gaping hole. No lips, no teeth, just a black void.
The Piper pulled up his hood and wrapped his pied cape around him. “It’s about to get cold in here, children.”
The gray man exhaled. He leaned forward and blew out a gust of frigid wind. It smelled like rot, and it was as cold as ice water. Carter had to grab hold of Max’s arm to keep from being blown backward.
Max’s torch sputtered and died.
The room was plunged once more into darkness. In the children’s panic, Carter lost hold of his sister. He stumbled forward and would have fallen face-first onto the ground, except someone caught him just in time.
That someone was the Piper.
“Got you,” said the Piper, wrapping one arm around Carter’s throat and pulling him close.
“No!” cried Max, but when she tried to come to her brother’s rescue, the gray man stepped between them. It took a swipe at the children, and Carter heard his sister cry out in pain. Leetha and Paul charged the gray man, and the room echoed with the sounds of fighting.
“This could have been easier,” the Piper was saying into Carter’s ear. Then he grabbed Carter’s arm and twisted. Carter tried to fight back, but the Piper was too strong.
“You know, I’ve had seven centuries to think about what I did back in Hamelin,” said the Piper. Carter whimpered in pain. He was afraid the Piper was going to break his arm. “I thought about what I did to the children. Seven hundred years to ponder, and do you know what I realized?”
Carter couldn’t answer; he was busy trying not to cry.
“I realized that I’ve been thinking too small,” said the Piper. Then he gave Carter’s arm one last yank, hard, and forced Carter’s hand onto the cold chain around the Piper’s leg. There was a loud click and then a clatter as the manacle popped open and fell to the floor. The Piper released his grip, and Carter fell to the ground. His arm throbbed painfully, but it was unbroken.
“At last!” the Piper said, laughing at the chain lying open at his feet. “You had your chance. Now I’ll use the mirror myself. I’ll go back, only this time I won’t stop with the children of Hamelin. This time I’ll rescue them all. Every child on earth!”
“You’re out of your mind,” said Carter, struggling to stand up.
“No,” said the Piper. “I’m at war. I’m at war with the so-called grown-ups who drove my mother and me out into the cold. With the men and women who called me the Son of the Witch and spit on me when I passed. Don’t you see, Carter? I’m saving the children from getting older, from turning into the very same monsters that ruined my life! This is my war against the sin of adulthood. The Piper’s war, and it’s just beginning.”
At that moment there was another scream, and Leetha went flying across the room, having been backhanded by the gray man. The creature turned, and in the dim moonlight, Carter saw the handle of Leetha’s dagger sticking out from the creature’s chest. It didn’t seem to care.
What had Carter done? The gray man would kill them all, and the Piper was threatening to kidnap every single child on earth. It was impossible, of course—he couldn’t take them all—but with that mirror, how many could he steal? How many hundreds or thousands would go missing every year? How many would vanish as mysteriously as the children of Hamelin had?
Max appeared by his side. In the fighting, she’d ducked past the gray man, risking everything one last time for her little brother.
“Come on!” she said. “We have to run!” She tried to pull Carter to his feet, but his leg gave out beneath him.
“Max,” said Carter. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Max. “Get up!”
Then Carter heard a ghostly sigh, and he looked up to see the gray man standing over them. His friends had fought valiantly. They’d fought for him, and they’d lost. The gray man had been born out of Carter’s fears, and now it was coming for him.
Max grabbed Carter and hugged him close. “Don’t look, Carter!” she cried. But Carter stared up at the gray man instead. If nothing else, he wouldn’t let the creature take him with his eyes shut.
The gray man leaned in, just inches from Carter and his sister, the gaping hole in its face drawing in breath like a death rattle. It reached out its hands, fingers topped with sharp, broken nails, grasping for Carter’s throat.
Then it snapped its head up as a light shone across its face. A brilliant orange light.
At first Carter didn’t understand where the light was coming from, and he looked around frantically to see if one of his friends had discovered a torch or a lamp. It was neither. The light was the bright glow of a new day breaking through his bedroom window back in Hamelin, streaming in through the mirror and shining on the gray man like a spotlight.
It was still true night across the Summer Isle, but inside the Black Tower, dawn came early as light from the sunrise in Hamelin spilled through the mirror portal.
The gray man started to smoke and smolder as its rags caught flame in the sunlight. It reared back in pain, but it didn’t make a sound. The Piper, however, let out a shout of outrage.
“Max!” said Carter. “The mirror!”
“I know!” answered his sister.
Carter pulled himself back to standing but, as always, Max was quicker. She dodged past the burning gray man as the creature fell to the ground, writhing in agony.
Max lunged for the mirror. It wouldn’t take much, Carter thought. The mirror looked precarious enough on its old wooden stand, but as fast as his sister was, the Piper turned out to be faster. He grabbed Max by the shoulder but didn’t shove her away—instead he shoved her into the mirror.
And she was gone. One moment there, and the next, not. From where he was, Carter could see his sister on the other side of the mirror, lying unmoving in her bed in their little Hamelin house, wor
lds away.
The Piper snatched up the fallen sheet and threw it over the mirror, dousing the sunlight. The sudden change left spots swimming in front of Carter’s eyes. The gray man lay still on the floor, like a wooden statue burning down to ash. With the mirror covered, the only light in the room came from the burning corpse, but that was already fading.
The Piper turned to Carter, a cruel smile on his lips. His eyes were glassy and they glinted in the dying torchlight, like a cat’s. “Well, your sister is home,” he said. “I suppose keeping half a promise is better than not keeping a promise at all, eh, Carter?”
Carter took a few steps toward him, as the smile melted from the Piper’s face. “It’s over. The mirror is mine. Stop trying to be the hero, Carter. It doesn’t suit you.”
Carter didn’t know if his sister could hear him through that mirror in a different world, but he needed to say goodbye.
“Max!” he called. “Don’t worry about me anymore. I’m going to be all right.”
Then Carter kicked. He kicked with everything he had. But he wasn’t aiming for the Piper; he was aiming for the mirror. He couldn’t let the Piper use its magic to steal more children away to the Summer Isle. Despite the weak muscles in his bad leg, he was still wearing the brace made of metal and plastic, and he felt a satisfying crunch beneath his heel as he brought his foot down on the mirror’s wooden stand. The entire thing tilted forward.
“No!” cried the Piper. He tried to stop the falling mirror, but all he managed to grab was the sheet as the looking glass toppled over and shattered against the stone floor—another world’s dawn cracked into a hundred different pieces.
Now Max, and all the children of earth, were safe. If she had been in Carter’s place, he was sure she would have done the exact same thing.
The Piper’s face twisted with rage, and he roared as he reached for Carter. But then there was a loud clang of metal hitting something hard, and the Piper slumped unconscious to the floor.
Paul stood above the Piper, waving his frying pan over his head with a look of triumph. “I need to give this thing a name!”
“Quiet, everyone!” said Leetha, appearing next to Paul. She ran to the door and listened. Then Carter heard it, too—the sounds of many feet scampering up the steps.
“More rats!” said Emilie. “They must have heard the fighting.”
“We’re in no shape for another battle,” said Lukas, still leaning on Emilie’s shoulder.
Leetha grabbed Carter. “Come with me,” she said, and led the rest toward the window.
“What are you doing?” said Paul, looking down at the distant ground. “We can’t jump from up here!”
“I told you,” said Leetha, “the North Wind owed me two favors. I still have one left!”
With that, she shoved Carter out the window. Carter felt a scream catch in his throat as he squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the impact that didn’t come. The wind roared in his ears and froze his fingers and his nose, but he didn’t hit the ground. Then he heard Paul screaming somewhere nearby, and when he finally opened his eyes, he saw…
They were airborne. Leetha, Paul, Emilie and Lukas were not far behind him, and all five children—four humans and one elf—were being carried through the air, held aloft by a strangely person-shaped cloud. From a certain angle, you could even pick out his great big beard.
“Children of New Hamelin, meet the North Wind!” shouted Leetha, her words barely audible in the rush of air around them. The elf girl was laughing. She was the only one laughing, as the other children looked like they might get sick. Paul wouldn’t open his eyes at all; the poor boy just kept screaming.
The North Wind carried them through the air until a pink-and-orange sunrise split open the nighttime sky. Below them, the winter landscape was already melting away, revealing a fresh swath of green across the hillsides and through the trees. Dawn had finally come to the Summer Isle, and with it a new spring.
It had begun as a quest to return home, but it had become something very different. The Piper was free, and though his mirror was destroyed, Carter didn’t think that would stop him forever. His magic pipe was still out there somewhere, perhaps hidden away, but if he managed to find it again, he might be more dangerous than ever. There were other doors between the worlds, he’d said. Carter knew that the Piper wouldn’t stop looking. People needed to be warned. The elves and the Hameliners, they needed to know that the Pied Piper was coming.
After that, Carter didn’t know whether he would find another way home for him and the children of Hamelin. He didn’t know if there was another door out there waiting for him and his friends to discover. It scared Carter to think about accomplishing all of this without his sister to guard him, but another part of him felt relieved to know that she, at least, was back home safe and sound. And Carter was pretty sure that in destroying the mirror, he’d just protected the earth from the Piper’s wrath. For the time being, anyway.
In spite of all that had happened, today he felt like a hero. Today Carter was flying.
It was a dream, thought Max. The Summer Isle was just a dream.
She lay in bed, blinking up at the mirror hung next to her closet door. The light of a new day shone in through the window and reflected in the mirror, and no matter which way she positioned her head, she couldn’t escape it. She tried pulling the covers up over her face, but after a few minutes the air under there got too stale and stuffy to breathe and the blankets itched her neck.
But what a dream.
She’d never dreamed in such detail before, or of such wonderful and terrible things. Max’s brain had conjured up whole people that she still thought of as friends. Lukas, Emilie and Paul. Even Leetha. The people with those names never truly existed, yet it felt like she’d lost them. It was silly to miss people who’d never been there.
Max, don’t worry about me anymore. I’m going to be all right.
“Carter?” she said, sitting bolt upright. “Carter!”
His bed was empty. It hadn’t been slept in. Max looked down and saw her muddy clothes, the moccasins the Peddler had given her. She ran out of the bedroom and downstairs into the living room, calling for her brother, for her father, but no one answered. Into the kitchen, then back up the stairs and into her father’s empty bedroom.
It hadn’t been a dream. Carter’s bed was empty. Her father’s bed was empty.
Max collapsed on top of it.
Max waited up for her father all evening long, huddled in the living room chair by the window with an afghan blanket wrapped around her legs, despite the heat. She watched the sidewalk for him, hoping that he would come home late like he always did. And she also watched the shadows across the street for something else. But her father never came home, and nothing moved across the street except for a late-night dog walker and her small pug puppy. When Max tried her father’s cell phone, she found it buzzing on his bedside table next to his briefcase of papers, the briefcase he never left home without. A quick examination showed her what she already feared. The two documents—the boy’s journal and the mysterious table of contents—were both missing.
What had become of her father? Had the Piper stolen him away, too? Or was this the work of someone else? Max had thought her father was just being paranoid about his work, but maybe he’d been right. If he didn’t come home, she might never know.
She tried calling her mother in New York, but all she got was her mother’s voice mail on the cell phone and the answering machine at home. She continued leaving messages as she grew more and more concerned about her mother as well. It was as if everyone she loved had suddenly disappeared.
Max wasn’t hungry, but she did wander into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. She wanted to be awake in case her father came home in the early hours of the morning. But as she went through the motions—measuring the coffee by the tablespoon and dumping it into the glass carafe, setting the kettle on the stove and lighting the burner—she did so slowly, in a zombie-like trance. Th
ere was a disconnect between Max’s body and her brain, with the one here in the kitchen doing mundane things like making coffee while the other was still back on the Summer Isle, still worrying over her brother and the rest of her friends.
She tried not to think about the gray men or the Piper, those horrible last things she’d seen before falling through the mirror. She focused instead on Carter’s words, on his promise.
Max, I’m going to be all right.
But how could he know that? How would he be all right without his big sister around to look after him? Lukas and Emilie were still with him, and that was a blessing, but they weren’t family. They didn’t know Carter like she did. Really, no one did.
Despite the coffee, and despite herself, Max did eventually fall asleep in the chair next to the window. The exhaustion of the last several days, and the sadness that weighed on her heart like a stone dropped in a river, pulled her down into a fitful slumber.
She awoke some time later to the sound of someone buzzing the front doorbell. Blinking the sleep from her eyes, Max ran to the door. She was still so groggy that she wasn’t thinking clearly, and it wasn’t until she’d already thrown open the door that she realized her father wouldn’t have rung the bell.
It was little Mrs. Amsel, standing there holding an umbrella against a light drizzle of morning rain. Clouds had rolled in while Max had been asleep, and it was impossible to tell what time of day it was. It was hard to mask her disappointment at seeing the tiny housekeeper, but at least it was a friendly face.
“Ah, meine liebe,” said Mrs. Amsel. “You look awful!”
Honest to a fault, the old lady was.
For a moment Max was torn about what to do. Should she try to get rid of Mrs. Amsel, maybe make up some lie about her father and brother coming down with the flu or something? Or should she tell the little woman everything, even though there was no way she’d believe her? It’d feel good at least to tell someone. Max had never been so alone.