“Then?” said the Piper. “You’ve heard the prophecy: Only when the last son of Hamelin appears and the Black Tower found will the Piper’s prison open and the children return safe and sound.” The Piper finished it by pretending to play a riff on his imaginary pipe and grinning.
“Then, you get to be the hero!” The Piper slid off the windowsill and took a step closer. “Why don’t you let me loose, eh, Carter? Fulfill the prophecy—be important for a change.”
And that was it. The reason Carter was standing there at all, the real reason he hadn’t turned around already and slammed the door shut behind him. Carter did want to be the hero. For just once in his life, he wanted to save someone.
But wanting to believe, daring to believe in the prophecy, didn’t mean he trusted the Piper. “Why do you think the prophecy is true?” he asked.
“I’ll let you in on a magician’s secret, Carter,” said the Piper. “The first rule: Magic is believing. All the spells and charms in the world are useless if you don’t have faith that they’ll work. It’s about believing in something enough to make it true. That’s why there’s so little magic left back in your world—there’s too much doubt, too many adults telling everyone what’s possible and what’s not. But magic is all about believing in the impossible, especially here on the Summer Isle. So, tell me, do you want to believe?”
“But what if you got the wrong kid? What if I’m not the last son of Hamelin? I’m not even from there. I’m a New Yorker!”
“Oh, it’s not about geography,” said the Piper testily. “It’s about heredity. It’s the bloodline that matters.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know the story,” said the Piper, and he began to pace back and forth across the room, untroubled by the racket the chain made as it dragged across the stone floor. “One hundred and thirty children were led from the village of Hamelin by a magician into a mountain. But you also know there was another child. A boy who was left behind by accident.”
Of course Carter knew this. He remembered the boy in the play hobbling after the rest of the departing children, unable to catch up. Carter looked down at his own defective leg. Defective. That was not a word he would normally use, and he wondered why it had popped into his head. Nor handicapped, and especially not crippled. But he was feeling it keenly now. Carter felt different from everyone else in his life, and his leg was only partly to blame.
“The boy’s name was Timm Weaver,” said the Piper.
“So?” said Carter. “Mine’s Weber.”
“Not a far cry from Weaver, though, is it? Not so different that a few letters might have changed over the years, over the centuries. Timm Weaver grew up and had a family, though he was always haunted by dreams of what he’d missed. For generations I’ve watched his descendants, your ancestors, and waited for the prophecy to do its work. I’ve watched you. Fate brought you across the sea to Hamelin, Carter, and then to the Summer Isle. And then to me.”
The Piper stopped his pacing and looked down at Carter. “The prophecy marked you as the one, just like Timm. It marked your leg.”
Carter felt his eyes swelling with tears. “That’s not true,” said Carter. “My leg is because of genetics and bad luck. Not some magic prophecy.”
“Genetics?” said the Piper. “I understand that means something deep below the skin, invisible to the eye, does it not? In your case, an anomoly hidden inside each of your ancestors and passed down through the generations, striking some while sparing others. Sounds like magic to me.”
“I think you’re lying,” said Carter, his fear slowly turning to anger. Carter dealt with his disability; he learned to live with it because he had to—it was a part of him. But it wasn’t some magic badge that proclaimed him the chosen one or some such nonsense. Life wasn’t that cruel. “You know what? I don’t care what any prophecy says. I don’t have to free you. I get to decide.”
“And why won’t you?” said the Piper, his voice rising. “Because I’m a villain? Because some fairy tale says that I am?”
“The fairy tale says you stole Hamelin’s children because they refused to pay you what you wanted.”
“The payment was a test, to see if the villagers were as corrupt, as deceitful, as I thought. Carter, they owed me a debt that had nothing to do with gold.”
“But you took their children! And whether you like the word or not, you kidnapped me and my sister, too.”
“I rescued them!” shouted the Piper, and he lunged forward, yanking at his chain so viciously that Carter was forced backward. Carter’s back was pressed against the wall, but it was far enough—the Piper’s chain stopped feet from him. With a snarl, the Piper jerked at the chain again and again, but to no avail. It wouldn’t budge. Finally he gave up his struggle and sank to his knees, exhausted.
Kneeling there on the floor, his shoulders slumped and head bowed, the Piper looked like nothing more than a child pouting because he’d been given a time-out. “Who are you?” Carter asked. “I mean, who are you really?”
The Piper gave Carter a short, bitter laugh. “You know, I had a proper name once…but I’ve forgotten it.”
Carter thought of the New Hameliners and how they struggled year after year to hold on to the simplest memories. If the Piper had been just a year or two younger, he could have been one of them. He’d have fit right in.
“Well, what do you remember?” asked Carter. “Surely there’s something. You weren’t born the Pied Piper of Hamelin.”
The Piper sat back and crossed his legs, studying Carter. “I remember Hamelin, the real Hamelin,” he said quietly. “I remember a village starving in winter, and I remember the adults who blamed their misfortune on a poor beggar woman and called her a witch, throwing stones at her until she was forced to flee into the unforgiving cold. And I remember a little boy, and I remember the men and women who called him the Son of the Witch. I remember he clung to his mother’s skirts as they made their escape.”
The Piper drew his cloak around him and shivered despite the warmth of his little fire. “And I remember the boy swearing vengeance on the villagers, on men and women everywhere.”
Carter could hardly picture it. Being driven out of your home in the dead of winter, left to starve or freeze to death. “Didn’t anyone try and stop them?” asked Carter. “I can’t believe the whole village would do something like that.”
“Those who didn’t throw stones hid in their homes and pretended not to know what was happening,” said the Piper. “It’s the same thing in the end.”
In folktales, grown-ups were capable of terrible things; Carter knew that. Fathers abandoned their children in the forest, cruel stepmothers tortured their daughters. But those were stories, and there was something comforting in the fiction. Carter knew the real world was just as capable of terrible things. “That boy was you?” said Carter.
The Piper nodded and gave Carter a wry grin. “The Son of the Witch. In the eyes of grown-ups, you and I were both born twisted, Carter. It’s just that my deformity is on the inside.”
Carter’s cheeks burned. There was another of those words—deformity. There were so many words that he refused to use, so many cruel words that people came up with to describe themselves. Carter had tried his best not to fall into that trap. He was trying even now.
“How did you end up here?” Carter asked, wanting to change the subject.
The Piper wagged a finger. “Now, that’s a tale. But I mustn’t spoil all my secrets.”
“You did kidnap the children of Hamelin, though,” said Carter. “Was that your revenge on the townsfolk? And all that stuff about the rats, and not getting paid, was that just for show?”
“Do you think the children would have been better off if I hadn’t?” he said. “What was waiting for them back there? A life where they would grow up to be just as bitter and cruel as their parents? With nothing to look forward to but hard work and old age and death?”
“It was still wrong,” said Carter.
“Tell me something, Carter,” said the Piper. “And answer me honestly. Have you ever, in your entire life, met a truly happy grown-up?”
The Piper stared, his gaze boring into Carter. Carter imagined he could feel it on his skin, like heat, like sunlight thorough a magnifying glass. Was there such a thing as a happy adult? Carter could remember countless smiles and good times with his parents. But there were also the moments that he wasn’t supposed to see, the times when he’d catch a look between them that he didn’t understand. Then there were the terse whispers that sometimes grew into shouting and slammed doors. Sometimes Carter’s father would read the newspaper and it seemed like the joy was draining out of him, soaked up by the pictures on the front page that Carter wasn’t allowed to look at.
And there was Max. Not yet grown-up herself but already sagging under the weight of the Crouch, a monster Carter feared would only grow heavier as the years went on.
Maybe the Piper was right. Maybe happiness and growing up really were incompatible.
“I took the children, but I didn’t mean to abandon them, Carter,” said the Piper softly. “I wouldn’t have done that. Not ever. Not to children. But this…” He kicked at his shackled foot. “This kept me away. I brought them here to a land where magic still lived, and where they would never grow old. I planned on showing them all its wonders, but how could I help them when I was locked up in here? If you want to blame anyone for the ills the children of New Hamelin have suffered since, blame those who put me in here!”
Carter looked at the Piper. The truth was that Carter couldn’t know for sure if grown-ups were happy, or even if his own parents were happy, because he didn’t know what it was like to be a grown-up himself. But it was also true that his parents loved him, and they loved his sister, and he knew they would be so scared when they realized Max and Carter were missing, just as every parent in Hamelin must’ve been so scared when the Piper stole their children away.
“You didn’t ask them,” said Carter.
“What?” said the Piper.
“You didn’t ask the children if they wanted to go with you.”
The Piper got to his feet, his chain rattling against the stone. “I showed them paradise—”
“But it was a lie,” said Carter. “This place is the land of forever summer, except when it’s not. Except for the times when the sun goes down and monsters come out of the dark and witches hunt children in forests made out of bones!”
The Piper let out a callous laugh. “Monsters and witches are a part of childhood! Here on the Summer Isle, they’ve just stopped hiding under the bed.”
“You know, I feel sorry for you,” said Carter, and he did. If the Piper’s story was true, then Carter couldn’t imagine how terrible his life must have been. But that didn’t excuse what he’d done to all those other children. “I also think you might be insane.”
The word seemed to hit the Piper like a physical slap. He actually flinched when Carter said it.
“Remember, you wanted to be the hero,” said the Piper after a moment. “Well, what kind of hero would you be without monsters to slay? The Summer Isle has given you everything you ever wanted. I’ve given you everything you wanted! You should show a little gratitude.”
The Piper strode back to the window. “But I don’t need your thanks; I need something else. The portals between our worlds were closed long ago. But not all of them were locked!”
He walked over to the corner of the chamber, to the sheet-shrouded object standing there. It was nearly as tall as he was. “You’ve been to Shades Harbor—you understand that village’s enchantment?”
“Well, sorta,” said Carter, eyeing the mysterious object. He’d wondered what was under the sheet. “Ghosts and dreamers go to Shade’s Harbor to…I don’t know…shop.”
The Piper laughed. “Some do. But others bring their dreams with them. A seamstress remembers her spinning wheel, and there it is. A schoolteacher dreams of being a ship’s captain, and there’s the boat waiting for him in the harbor. I imagine the entire village was dreamed up by someone long ago and then forgotten. Like I said, magic is believing.”
Slowly the Piper drew off the sheet and revealed a mirror perched on an ornate wooden stand. By the dim firelight, Carter could see a reflection of himself standing next to the doorway, a boy leaning lopsided on his good leg.
“Once upon a time,” said the Piper, “a little girl sailed into Shades Harbor and dreamed of a magic looking glass. An enchanted mirror that served as a doorway between her world and a world of real magic. The girl woke up, but the mirror stayed behind. It was retrieved from Shades Harbor and given to me by a…friend of mine. This mirror links your world and this one. It is one of the very last unlocked portals. That’s how I found you, by looking through the looking glass. Of course, chained here as I am, I can’t physically pass through, but my magic can. I had just enough magic left for one last spell, one last song strong enough to bring you and your sister here.”
The Piper gazed down at the floor of broken pipes. “I can’t stay here anymore, Carter. So I’m offering the mirror to you in trade. The portal is still open. I’ll stand aside and let you and your sister walk through. You can go home, Carter, I swear. All you have to do is set me free.”
The most important difference between the rats of the Summer Isle and the rats back in old Hamelin wasn’t their size, although that certainly mattered when you faced one head-on. No, the most important difference, the one that made them really dangerous, was that the rats of the Summer Isle were smart. They’d learned how to bait a trap, and how to probe their enemy’s weaknesses. It seemed like every year the Watch needed to build the wall that much higher, because the rats were coming up with that many more ways to scale it.
Rats were smart, but children were smarter still. As Lukas and his friends skirted the ruins surrounding the Black Tower, he kept an eye out for any sign of movement. The ruins—a few tumbledown buildings and lonely piles of rock gathering snow—appeared empty. But though the rats weren’t immediately visible, that didn’t mean they weren’t lying in wait among the rubble. And though the light of their torches would make stealth that much harder, the children didn’t dare brave a true night without firelight. To do so would put them at risk of meeting things in the dark far worse than rats.
The Peddler had been confident that the tower would be guarded. If he was right, then to follow the main path out in the open would have been suicide, but Lukas and Paul discovered another roundabout way to the tower, by climbing the high outer wall that circled the ruins. From atop the wall, the light of their torches might not be seen by those on the lookout down below. They might pass unnoticed, just as long as whatever was guarding the tower didn’t look up.
It was impossible at this point to know if the Peddler had survived his battle with the witch, but either way, Lukas felt certain that the best way to honor him was to put all their efforts into rescuing Carter. The Peddler had given them a chance; now they just had to be brave enough and smart enough to take it.
Lukas held a lit pine torch in one hand and the heavy mallet in the other as he balanced himself on the narrow wall. It was less than two feet wide up on top and slick with invisible ice. The drop on either side was more than thirty feet. For almost as long as he could remember, Lukas had spent frigid nights just like this staring out into the blackness, on alert for the slightest movement. He wondered who’d built this ancient wall, and if they’d once patrolled it, just as fearful of the dark as he.
Lukas had a memory from his life in old Hamelin, one that always haunted him on these nights, of playing a game called King of the Castle. The rules of the game were simple—boys would stand on the village wall, which they pretended was their castle, and defend it while other boys tried to knock them off. They used sticks instead of swords, and if someone managed to knock all the other boys off the wall, he could proclaim himself king for a day. Even Timm, Lukas’s friend, would sometimes join them, calling out encouragements to Luka
s, though the boy couldn’t charge the wall himself. But if a boy fell too hard, the game would stop and everyone would gather round the fallen player to make sure he was okay. Sometimes, if Lukas got banged up badly, he would return home to the mother from his dreams, and she would clean his scrapes and whisper in his ear that he was going to be fine. But Lukas’s tears had never been about the little cuts and bruises—he’d cried because no matter how hard he tried, he never managed to be the last one standing. He’d never been king.
Tonight was another game of King of the Castle, but this time he needed to win.
The most precarious part of their crossing would be a spot where the wall passed by the shell of an old gatehouse. Paul said he’d heard sounds coming from within, and if there were rats inside, he and his friends would be in a dangerous position should they be discovered. But once they made it past that, it would be sprinting distance to the tower door. If guards were there, hiding in the shadows, Lukas hoped that he and the others might be able to overwhelm them, surprise them, and be inside before the guards had a chance to call for help. It was considered bad sportsmanship to sneak up on your opponents in a game of King of the Castle—you always attacked head-on. But the Summer Isle had changed the rules of the game.
The gatehouse itself was little more than a skeleton of stone, the roof having collapsed long ago. The wall passed just below a barred window into the tall gatehouse, and it was there they would have to be the most careful. To pass below the window, they would have to crawl on their hands and knees. Lukas went first. He looped his mallet through his belt and held the torch away from his body while he crawled along the stone one-handed. By the time he was safely past, his fingers were stinging from grasping the freezing stone, but he’d managed to cross without alerting anyone.
Next up was Emilie. She was having trouble crawling along the wall, as she kept kneeling on her skirt. Perhaps Max had been right, Lukas thought. Emilie really did need a pair of pants. But she was careful and took her time, wary of the patches of slick ice beneath her. She was halfway across when they all heard a sound, like something large shuffling around, coming from inside the gatehouse. Reflexively, their heads turned as one toward the open window, which meant that Emilie wasn’t watching where she was going. Lukas glanced back just in time to see her slip. Her arm slid out beneath her as she tried to grab the icy stone, and she had to scramble to keep from falling. Everyone froze in place as her torch clattered to the ground below.