By the time Elfie’s fever had drained away, the town was as silent as a graveyard. Nowhere were there the shouts and laughter and quarrels of children; only the feeble whimpering of infants in arms. It was as though all the town’s happiness had followed the piper into the mountain.
People got to hear that Elfie and Luke had been left behind, and didn’t know how to treat them. At first, they just stared as though they were freaks; they muttered and mumbled, distraught with suffering; their minds churning with questions: were these children of God, or agents of the devil? Were they precious to be guarded, or cursed and sent away? There seemed no one to ask; no one to make the judgement – as so many people had died – even the mayor. Some wanted to drive them away immediately; why should they be here when their own children had gone? More and more voices were raised in hostility.
A mob turned up at their houses and dragged them to the town square. ‘What shall we do with them?’ They stared at a platform which was usually used for executions, where ropes knotted into nooses were slung over the cross-beam. Luke’s mother made a passionate speech. ‘Don’t judge my son. He tried to follow the Piper – but you can see he’s lame, and couldn’t keep up. Let him stay at home with me. I’ll watch him and take responsibility,’ she pleaded. And Elfie’s father stammered with fear, ‘She had been dying of the plague,’ he told them, ‘and was too weak to follow. My son is in that mountain. Have pity; spare me my last child.’
‘For God’s sake let them go,’ rasped an old woman. ‘Why make scapegoats of these innocent children? It wasn’t them who broke the bond with the piper.’
At that, the townsfolk dispersed, though, feeling cheated of some kind of retribution, most shunned the children as if they might somehow carry the plague.
Then one day, while Luke and Elfie scrambled over the frozen mountain and snow had started to fall once more, there it was again: Everychild; standing so still among the fluttering snowflakes, watching them in the grey light of another winter’s day. And there was that same muffled silence; as if their ears had clogged up, and they didn’t even hear the sharp caw, caw of the raven as it swirled in the leaden sky. The child spoke:
‘You’ll never find the door without a pipe which plays the piper’s tune,’ it said.
For the first time Elfie and Luke looked at each other properly.
‘Where can we find a pipe?’ called Elfie.
But the child was already fading away into the whiteness of the snow.
‘I’m going home,’ muttered Luke, chilled to the bone. Swinging his crutches, he set off down the road. Where could he find a pipe?
Elfie followed along a little behind. ‘Have you got a pipe?’
‘Nope,’ said Luke. ‘I can’t play the pipe.’
‘Me neither,’ said Elfie. ‘Why don’t we ask old Heinrich the shepherd? He plays a pipe.’
‘Hmmm,’ grunted Luke, acknowledging that it was a good place to start. Elfie caught up with him, and they now walked side by side, heading towards the upper meadows where Heinrich had a hut. Here he kept watch over the town’s flocks of sheep through the winter.
They hummed the tune to Heinrich. He turned pale and backed away. ‘I’m not giving you a pipe to play that tune,’ he muttered. ‘Go away, you cursed children,’ and he shook his fist at them.
They stumbled away back to the town and went to see Helga. She had been their teacher at school, and she was the village piper’s wife. Surely she would help? After her husband died a few years ago, she had taken up the pipe, and piped for village occasions. ‘Can you teach us to play this tune?’ they asked, humming it for her.
‘What a horrible tune you sing me!’ she cried. ‘I hate it, I hate it. Of course I won’t teach it to you.’ And she pushed them out of the door.
Almost every house had a pipe of some sort, but though Luke and Elfie traipsed from door to door, most wouldn’t open to them, and others shooed them away. ‘Don’t you ever sing that devilish tune here!’ they shouted. Once again, voices were raised against the children. Once again, the town, gripped with grief and loss, wondered what they could do to break the curse.
How cold it was that winter. Nothing shifted the terrible chill. Birds fell dead from the trees, and the elderly and babies began to die of cold. It seemed that the spring would never come, and nothing would ever grow again. There was a dread of famine. ‘This is an omen,’ declared some bitter voices. ‘These children must die if our land is ever to recover.’
Once again, a mob gathered and went in search of Elfie and Luke. This time the crowd was bigger. As they marched down the road, they saw the children returning from the mountain. They began to charge towards them. Luke and Elfie stopped dead, horrified. These were their own townspeople, their own kith and kin; their friends and neighbours whom they had known all their lives. As the citizens stomped closer and closer, they saw faces distorted with grief, and starvation, and a wild desire for revenge.
Then, from the mountain there came a great white snowstorm, swirling and whirling. In the middle of it was Everychild.
I am Everychild,
That ever lived and ever died,
And ever swam and ever drowned,
Was ever lost and never found.
I am Everychild,
That ever laughed and ever cried,
That ever searched to find a land,
That ever reached to hold a hand.
I am Everychild.
A blinding whiteness enveloped everyone on the road. When it had dispersed, the children had gone. The road to the mountain was empty, and the townsfolk turned and went home with a feeling of shame.
Luke found himself lying in a soft, cold bed of snow, gazing up at tall, gently creaking pine trees. The sky stared down at him like a chill blue eye between the finger-like tips of the evergreen branches. They reached for each other far, far above his head, and sent flurries of snow tumbling onto his face. He could hear a voice singing a little way off. It sang the piper’s tune, and it wasn’t coming from inside his head. He sat up and brushed away a coating of snow from his clothes.
Then he saw Elfie; she was kneeling beside an icy-cold stream gushing out of a rock in the mountain. On the banks of the stream were some reeds growing through the snow. Elfie had broken off one of the reeds and, whistling and humming through her clenched teeth, was hollowing out holes with a small knife.
He scrambled over to her. She looked so blue with cold, so white-sprinkled with snow.
‘Elfie?’ he muttered.
She held up her reed. ‘I’ve made a pipe!’ she cried triumphantly. ‘I’ve never made one before.’ Then she put it to her lips and blew across the open tip; a sound as pure as the song of a thrush broke through the air. Excitedly, she ran her fingers up and down and then – out came the first notes of the tune they both knew so well. She stopped, amazed.
‘Play on, play, play!’ urged Luke. ‘You have the tune. That’s it. Don’t stop.’
She played. He helped her to her feet and, still playing, she moved round the base of the mountain. Behind them was the road along which the Pied Piper had brought the children from the town. She played and suddenly, with a tumble of pebbles, and a helter-skelter of snow, the whole side of the mountain juddered. First a crack appeared and then opened up, wider and wider like a giant yawn. They found themselves staring into the void beyond an open door. They stepped inside.
It was like stepping into the mouth of the Great Creator; into another universe: a universe with sky and stars and planets; with sun and moon, oceans, rivers and lakes. Everything that was in the world outside was here in the mountain: forests, jungles, deserts, hills and valleys.
Coming from deep inside the mountain, they heard a magical humming like a swarm of bees. ‘Come, come!’ it seemed to sing. ‘It is always summer here.’
They felt a glorious warmth flooding through their limbs, and they went deeper into the mountain, following the humming.
‘Come and find a world of mysterious forests teeming wi
th every animal: not just cats and dogs and foxes and badgers, and squirrels and rabbits, but prowling tigers, roaring lions, slithering crocodiles, coiling snakes and towering bears – none of them dangerous – at least not to children in this magical land, but just there to amaze you, to give you the shiver of fear, but never terror; and birds – as you’ve never seen birds before, with amazing wings, and dazzling colours, and spell-binding songs. And there are playgrounds, my dears! Playgrounds of wonderful, scream-inducing helter-skelters, and swings which rise into the stars, and merry-go-rounds with golden horses which gallop round the entire earth, and roller coasters swooping up and down and whirling around. Come!’
Elfie stopped playing and began to run. ‘Erik!’ she cried. ‘Erik!’
‘Wait for me,’ pleaded Luke as she raced ahead. But she went on running into the sunshine, and she never looked back. Desperate to keep up, Luke swung along after her.
Elfie stopped. Her shadow stretched behind her long and thin, as she stood stock-still in a shaft of sunlight. Luke reached her side. And there before them was a playground.
They stared in bewilderment.
There was no sound: no children’s voices.
There were swings and roundabouts, a merry-go-round, and a roller coaster; there were waltzers and helter-skelters and a pirate ship, too – everything to thrill a child; all piled with boys and girls; all in violent motion, yet still. There was no laughter; no screams of joy, and excitement; no shuddering giggles of terror; just silence.
But the joy they felt turned into a nightmare.
There were their friends from the town: Paul, Marta, Gunter, Jacob, Rachel, Peter, Heloise; but they showed no signs of recognition; they didn’t move and they didn’t make a sound.
Elfie ran among the children, calling for Erik, but he was nowhere to be seen. Luke suddenly saw his brother. He hobbled over to Bruno, bursting with joy. ‘Bruno!’ He clasped him, but Bruno’s body was rigid; his eyes saw him, or did they? – for they were as blank as strangers. Were they begging him for help?
‘Wolfgang?’ He reached out to his other brother, but Wolfgang, too, though open-mouthed with excitement, made no sound; no movement. They were both as still as stone; and there was little Susanna, frozen in a game of hopscotch, standing on one foot, about to leap to the next square.
‘Look at me, Suzi! I came after all! I managed to come into the mountain!’ Luke hopped in front of her. But she didn’t look up and, when he touched her, she was hard and cold.
Elfie came and stood next to him. Quietly, she took Luke’s hand. Thank goodness; it was warm and pulsating.
‘Are they dead?’ she asked in a small, scared voice.
‘Their eyes are alive,’ murmured Luke.
They heard sounds coming nearer: horses neighing and trumpets blasting, and above it all came the sound of a piper. It was a leaping, dancing tune, yet full of menace. Luke didn’t know why, but he was gripped by anxiety. Something made him hiss, ‘Hide!’ And he dragged Elfie behind the waltzer, pulling her to the ground. ‘Whatever you do, don’t move; don’t say a word.’
They peered through the gaps, and saw a woman on a snowy white horse. Alongside her was a young boy riding on a black horse. When Elfie saw the boy, she gasped. It was Erik. She was about to yell his name, but Luke clapped a hand over her mouth. He held it there till her body slumped as she understood that she must not give them away.
Servants helped the woman and Erik off their horses and, while she was taken to be seated in a red velvet chair overlooking the playground, Erik ran among the stone children in the playground. ‘Time to play!’ he shouted.
‘Where’s the piper?’ demanded the woman.
‘I’m here, madam,’ called an obliging voice. And the piper appeared: the same pied sort of fellow, dressed from his feathered cap, down to his pointed toes, in an outfit of every colour of the rainbow.
‘Pipe, pipe, pipe! Make the children play,’ ordered the woman. ‘My boy wants to play.’
Obediently, the piper began to play his pipes. The leaping, dancing tune got faster. It was a whirling tune which unfroze the children and made them burst into activity. The rides went into motion, and a great sound of merriment filled the air as they all went spinning and twirling, and twisting and flipping and whooshing and swooshing.
Erik watched with delight, clapping his hands, and throwing back his head with laughter. Then he leaped among them, shouting, ‘Play with me, play with me!’
Elfie wanted to rush forward and clasp her brother in her arms, but Luke grabbed her hand and tugged her away as if in play. ‘Something’s wrong. We must pretend to be like the others: play when they play, stop when they stop. Stay away from Erik till we know what to do.’
So they went on the slides and the swings, and swung about on the merry-go-round till they were dizzy; they threw balls at coconuts and fished for prizes; they helped themselves to great fluffy piles of pink candyfloss.
‘All right, stop now,’ said the woman after a while. ‘It’s time to go home.’
The piper stopped playing. The children stopped dead wherever they were: on the merry-go-round, on the pirate ship – frozen in full tilt, on the roundabouts and roller coasters, or just rough and tumbling on the grass. They stopped, as if they had been playing a game of statues.
‘Stop,’ hissed Luke. ‘Don’t move a muscle; don’t move your eyes.’ He and Elfie dropped to their knees as if playing marbles.
The boy clicked his fingers, and his servants came.
‘We’ll come again tomorrow, won’t we?’ asked Erik.
‘Of course, my darling boy!’ laughed the woman, and soon the horses turned and rode back through the forest with the piper following behind.
Luke and Elfie waited a long time before they finally moved. Taking up his crutches, Luke got to his feet and looked around anxiously, ready to freeze again. Then he nodded to Elfie that all was clear. Cautiously, they wandered among the stone-still children. Luke hugged and kissed his hard siblings, and thought he saw a small tear come into little Susanna’s eyes. ‘Wake up, please, Suzi,’ he pleaded.
‘What are we going to do, Luke?’ wept Elfie. ‘How can we wake them up? And what about Erik?’
Luke moaned in despair. ‘I don’t know.’
A strange flurry of snow whirled around them. They shivered and looked up. There, a little way off, was Everychild.
‘Everychild!’ Luke stumbled to his knees. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Everychild is Everywhere,’ a voice told him.
In tumbling house and rubbled street,
In palace gardens cool and neat.
In sinking boats, on foreign shore,
Looking for an open door.
Everychild is Everywhere.
And where the deer and tiger stroll
Where imams call, or church bells toll
Where the children play in peace
Where song and laughter never cease
Where people hate, or others care,
Everychild is Everywhere.
The child began to recede down the track on which the woman and Erik had ridden away.
‘We’ve got to follow!’ cried Elfie, pulling Luke to his feet. ‘Let’s go where they went.’
They hardly knew if they walked through a landscape, or if somehow, the landscape moved around them, but one moment they were in dark forests and jungles, where golden-eyed tigers prowled through the undergrowth, and monkeys leaped from branch to branch; then they were staring across an endless desert of shimmering sands, where black shadows sliced down the dunes, and camels moved along the thin horizon, and desert foxes prowled in the scrub. Then they were in a rich green countryside, of haystacks and leafy lanes, and suddenly in towns and cities and roaring traffic. But all the time, it was warm; it was summer: a perfect summer. It was as though winter had been banished from the mountain.
At first, Everychild was always in sight, though its body changed with the background: now it was no longer white as fr
ost, but green and brown; golden, then dark. Dark became shadows of night, then shadows of day which sliced across bright sunshine.
They had just crossed a glistening desert, rolling like a golden ocean, when there ahead of them was a great castle made of sand, with ramparts and towers and bridges. At first, it seemed to be a long way off, but in three strides, they stood before the castle gates.
The gates were closed – and there seemed to be no gatekeepers. They tried to knock – but a door of sand made no noise. Still, it opened silently.
Tentatively, they stepped upon a drawbridge, wondering if the sand could hold their weight. But it did, and they crossed into a courtyard, but there was no sign of anybody; not even guards. At the far end were some steps rising to a first floor where they could see beams of yellow light through the windows.
Side by side, Luke and Elfie walked to the steps and began to climb. They reached another door and opened it. They found themselves staring down a vast hall where, at the far end, sat the woman and, sitting at her feet, was Erik. Luke held Elfie’s hand like a vice to stop her rushing over to her brother, and she pushed her hand into her mouth to stop her calling out his name.
The woman looked up. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
Elfie answered. ‘I am Erik’s sister, Elfie. I’ve come to take my brother home.’
Erik didn’t move. It was as if he was under a spell.
‘Who are you?’ Luke asked the woman.
‘I am the Woman of the Mountain. I am Everymother,’ she said.
Everymother whoever cried,
Whoever loved and ever sighed
Whoever lost a child that died
Whoever grieved and ever wept
Whoever paced and never slept
I am Everymother.
‘Have you come to take away my boy?’ The woman seemed afraid.
‘He’s not your boy. He’s my brother,’ said Elfie quietly. ‘I want to take him home.’
‘Piper!’ she shrieked. ‘Where are you? I paid you to bring me a boy who could be my son. You promised me. We made a bargain!’ The woman began to wail.
Winter Magic Page 21