Stumbling, it fled through the open doorway and sped off into the night, pawing out the flames as it ran. Then it rounded a darkened street and disappeared.
After the attack, the Watch arrived, and Max and her brother were moved to a new cabin, one with a working door. By the time dawn came, Max’s brother had fallen asleep again, only this time with his head in her lap. When she was a little girl, Max used to lay on her mother’s lap like that, on nights when she was too stubborn or too scared to sleep in her own bed. They’d sit on the sofa together, watching old black-and-white movies with the living room lights off, and sometimes her father would even join them. The blue light of the TV screen was Max’s night-light, her parents her protectors as she drifted off to sleep.
Tonight, Carter’s singular ability to sleep anywhere had paid off for him, while Max, wide awake and afraid, couldn’t stop shaking. But in time, the blackness outside turned to blue, then to pink, and a rooster crowed somewhere as it welcomed the sun.
Carter’s eyes blinked open. “Was that what I think it was?” he yawned.
“Rooster? Yeah, I guess.”
“Cool. My first rooster.” Carter kicked off his blankets and rubbed his eyes while Max stretched her legs. The day was already warming up.
“Hey there,” said Carter, waving at the boy sitting on the other side of the room. The boy nodded back but didn’t say anything. He’d leaned his chair up against the door and had a spear held lazily across his lap.
“Is he the boy you kicked in the…?” whispered Carter.
“I think so,” answered Max.
“You have a way of making friends, you know that?”
Max gave her brother a look to shut him up as she tried to work feeling back into her legs. They’d fallen asleep with Carter’s big fat head resting on them for the last several hours.
“Are we going to be allowed outside?” Max asked the boy. “Now that it’s daytime?”
The boy—Max thought his name was Finn—shrugged. “Lukas said he’d send someone to fetch you. We’ll wait.”
The Watch had sent one of their own to guard them. Max could have argued—maybe she should have—but the truth was she didn’t have any better ideas. The rest of the Watch had spent the remainder of the night searching the village for the rat creature that had attacked them. But the infuriating part had been how this Finn boy had refused to answer her questions. What was that thing doing here, and why had it attacked them? All Finn would say was that Lukas was more suited to answer but that he had better things to do right now. Finn had told Max to wait until morning.
The one piece of information they were able to get out of Finn, and the reason Max had finally stopped pestering him, was that Max and her brother hadn’t been the only ones attacked last night. A boy named Pidge had been hurt.
“How’s your friend?” Carter asked.
Finn looked up at them. His eyes were bloodshot and tired, and Max suspected she looked much the same.
“I haven’t been able to visit him,” he answered, with a touch of annoyance in his voice.
Of course. He’d been too busy babysitting them to go check on his friend.
“Do you know what time it is?” Carter asked his sister.
“Early.”
“Did you get any sleep?” Carter asked.
“A little,” lied Max.
“I can’t believe I fell back asleep after…you know.”
“You needed it.”
Carter winced as he tried to rub away a crick in his neck. “Tell you what, though.”
“What?”
“You go right on sleeping with your boots on. I strongly support it.”
Max allowed herself a little smile for the first time in what seemed like days. Her cheeks felt rusty and out-of-practice.
There was a knock at the door, and Finn motioned for them to stay put while he stepped outside for a moment. Max heard voices, then Finn reappeared, looking relieved. “It’s time,” he said. “Lukas and Emilie are ready to see you.”
They were led back to the village square, past the lone tree Max had seen there yesterday evening. Less than twenty-four hours ago, it had been a tree of naked branches. This morning, however, its boughs were pink with new blossoms. With the dawn, spring had come.
A couple of girls in long skirts and headscarves were keeping an eye on a group of smaller children as they collected fallen blossoms beneath the tree. When the girls spotted Max approaching, one made the sign of the cross over her heart.
What was it with everyone here? They didn’t look at Carter that way.
“Wait here,” said Finn, and he walked over to a girl sitting in a rocking chair outside a nearby cottage. They whispered together for a few moments, and then the girl opened the front door and gestured for Max and her brother to go inside.
The interior of the cottage smelled good, like baking bread. Someone had set out a light breakfast of sliced apples, fresh bread and smoked meat.
Lukas was seated while standing next to him was a girl Max’s age, only taller and broader boned. With her bright blue eyes, paper-fair skin and blond hair barely visible beneath her kerchief, she could have been quite pretty, but her stern expression gave her a hard look, and there were lines around her mouth and forehead—worry lines, Max’s mother would have called them. It was odd to see them on the face of a girl so young.
Lukas nodded to Max and her brother but said nothing. He seemed to be waiting for the girl to speak first. Max was suddenly aware that they had not been invited to sit.
“My name is Emilie,” said the girl after a few moments of silence. “Lukas tells me that you call yourselves Max and Carter?”
Max made a face. “We call ourselves? Those are our names.”
“We’ll see about the truth of that,” said Emilie, and she walked around the table until she was face to face with Max. “Long ago we learned the telltale signs of wicked magic: the point of the ears, a hidden tail perhaps…or hair the wrong color.”
Max slapped her forehead with her hand. “It’s my hair!” she laughed. “That’s what everyone’s been staring at. My hair is freaking you all out!”
Emilie took a step back, frowning. “So you don’t deny it?”
“Well, I’ll admit it’s pink. But that’s only because I dyed it. It’s not natural or anything, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Emilie sniffed. “I know of no pigment that could turn hair that color, nor any sane person who’d want it to.”
Max pulled her locks back over her left ear. “Look, you can see where I accidentally dyed my ear, too.”
Emilie looked over her shoulder at Lukas, who shrugged and said, “I asked her brother about it, and he, too, says the hair color is false, and that she’s always doing things like this. He told me she does it for attention.”
Max whirled around on her brother. “I what?”
Carter wouldn’t look her in the eye. He just whistled as he stared at the ceiling, but Max made a mental note to make him pay for that later.
Emilie crossed her arms over her chest. “She hurt one of your boys,” she said to Lukas, still considering.
“Just his pride,” answered Lukas.
“And don’t you find it a little too convenient that this girl and her brother show up just hours before a Winter’s Moon?” said Emilie. “How many years has it been, Lukas? And now out of nowhere…”
“Which is why they are important,” said Lukas. “And probably hungry, Emilie.”
Emilie didn’t drop her skeptical expression, but she did gesture to the table. “Break your fast with us,” she said. “And have a seat. There is much to discuss.”
Carter plopped onto the bench and began piling up a plate with apples and dried meat. Emilie remained standing, and so Max decided that she would stand, too. She didn’t much care for the idea of having to look up at this Emilie girl. She did, however, drink a cup of cool water as her brother struggled to work his teeth through a hunk of smoked pork.
“We need to know the truth about where you came from,” said Emilie.
“I already told Lukas everything,” said Carter, through a mouthful of food.
“Tell us again,” said Emilie.
“We’re from New York City,” said Max. “We were visiting Hamelin with our father. Not like this New Hamelin village of yours. It’s old Hamelin, only like modern…” Max found herself distracted by a small rustling sound coming from outside the window, probably just the children playing in the yard, but it was making it hard to keep her facts straight. Max was tired, and this was getting off to a poor start. “Where was I? Look, I don’t know what to say. Nothing here makes any sense! What is this place? What was that thing that attacked us?”
“That thing was a rat,” answered Emilie stiffly. “And I want to know how it breached our walls and why, out of an entire village of children, he sought you out.”
“I think we owe them more answers than that, Emilie,” said Lukas.
“That’s right,” said Max. “Because that thing didn’t look like any rat I’ve ever seen. Where did it come from?”
Lukas drew a cloth wrapping from his belt and undid it. Inside was a curved, claw-like knife. The leather handle was well worn, with an oily sheen.
“It came out of the darkness, but that’s how it got over the wall,” said Lukas. “A knife made for climbing as well as fighting. While most of the Watch was defending the north wall, he used this to scale Pidge’s tower. We found the holes driven into the wood there. In last night’s confusion, he escaped the same way.”
“You mean that thing’s still alive?” said Carter.
“Yes, but I’d say you gave him something to remember,” said Lukas, winking at Max’s brother.
“You still haven’t told us what this place is,” said Max, her patience gone. As she raised her voice, Max heard that rustle outside the window again—a quick, startled-sounding movement. This time Emilie heard it, too. She held a finger to her lips to ask for quiet as she moved softly across the room. Then, faster than Max would have thought possible, Emilie snatched up a broom and jabbed it through the open window.
There was a chorus of alarmed squawks as a number of black birds took flight.
“Crows?” asked Carter.
“Shoo!” shouted Emilie, still waving the broom out through the window. “Be gone, or I’ll call Finn in here with his bow!”
“Wow, what’s the problem?” asked Max. “They’re just birds.”
“No,” said Emilie, leveling a look at Max. “They’re crows, and that means you have to be careful what you say around them. They’re terrible gossips.” Then, satisfied that the crows had fled, she set down her broom and straightened her shawl.
Gossiping crows? Well, after giant rat creatures, Max shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Now then,” Emilie said. “To answer your questions. First of all, this place—”
“Well, it’s not earth, I’m pretty sure of that,” interrupted Carter as he reached for another strip of smoked pork. Max’s brother was a walking stomach. “Last night it was winter, and this morning it’s spring. Seasons don’t work like that.”
“I figured out that much, genius,” said Max.
“You both have the right of it, then,” said Emilie. “Long ago, we followed a piper wearing a pied cloak into a mountain cave filled with sunlight. He promised us a land of eternal summer, of joy in a place called the Summer Isle, where nothing aged and magic thrived. As you saw last night, that promise was half of a lie.”
Max had a flash, just for an instant, of seeing a tunnel of light when the Piper had stolen them away, too.
“From Hamelin were led away one hundred thirty children,” her brother recited.
“Yes,” said Lukas, taken aback. “How did you know?”
“It’s from a story,” said Max.
Lukas made a face. “So we’ve become nothing but a story?”
Max didn’t answer. These children didn’t seem aware of how long they’d been gone, and maybe time passed differently here, if at all. But in the real world, they’d been missing for over seven hundred years.
“Wait,” said Carter. “But if you all came from Hamelin—the real Hamelin back home—then why aren’t you speaking German?”
“We are speaking what everyone speaks on the Summer Isle,” said Emilie. “There is only one language here. Perhaps it’s a part of the magic of this place, but we have always been able to understand the kobolds, even the crows, and they us. Though I must admit the shape of your words are strange.”
Max stopped talking, suddenly self-conscious. Now that she paid closer attention, she could see that Lukas’s and Emilie’s lips didn’t quite sync with the words she was hearing in her head.
“Wow, it’s like a Babel fish,” said Carter, tugging at his ear. “Cool.”
“Huh?” said Max.
“From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” said her brother. “One of the best books…oh, never mind. This place works like a universal translator so that everyone can understand each other no matter what language they’re speaking. You need to read more science fiction.”
“No, nerd, I don’t,” said Max. Science fiction, indeed. “So that’s how you came here? You followed the Pied Piper?”
Emilie nodded. “We followed his music. The Piper came to Hamelin to rid us of the rats that had plagued our village for years. But when that was done and the Piper demanded his payment, the townsfolk refused. So the Piper returned during the night and cast a spell on the children, too. The music became a dream, and we followed it.”
“Something like that happened to us,” said Max.
“Only, ours was the exterminator guy,” added Carter. “Excuse me, pest control professional.”
“If you’ve heard his song, then you know it’s impossible to resist,” said Emilie. “I left my village and woke up here, with the rest of the children. Nearly every child from Hamelin who could walk.” Max caught Emilie and Lukas sharing a look, but before Max had a chance to ask them what it was about, the girl picked up her tale.
“The trees and flowers were so beautiful, but also strange. And the air smelled like honey. At first, we played and danced, and the animals of the forest played with us. The kobolds, the sprites of the forest, taught us songs and games. And we were happy. You have to understand, we’d lived hard lives in our village, filled with backbreaking toil, hungry winters, even seasons of plague. Our new home was so perfect that we didn’t give a thought to what we’d left behind. Not at first.”
“It actually sounds pretty great,” said Max, and she meant it. There was a part of her that dreamed about that very thing.
“It was paradise,” agreed Lukas. “It was everything the Piper had promised. The sun never set, not all the way. It never grew darker than twilight, and it never turned cooler than a midsummer’s evening. We met kobolds who warned us that there were dangers hidden away in the dark places, witches that lived in the deepest woods, and wicked spirits under the mountains and hills, but we avoided those places. Then one day, everything changed. A morning chill in the air that hadn’t been there before became a killing frost by late afternoon. A day that had started out in summer was caught in the dead of winter by evening. And that night, when the sun set, it set for real. True night was upon us for the first time, and a Winter’s Moon rose high in the sky.”
“We learned, on that first true night, that when the Winter’s Moon rises, monsters walk this land,” said Emilie.
“The rats,” said Max.
“They came out of the dark,” said Emilie, nodding. “At first, it was just sounds. Howls, strange gibbering in the night. Shapes that stalked us barely out of sight. But then the rats appeared. We, all of us, grew up terrified of the rats of our village, but as you’ve seen, these are much worse. They are the monsters of our nightmares.”
“They’re certainly bigger and smarter than the rats back in Hamelin,” said Lukas. “Our scouts tell us the creatures now make their h
ome somewhere in the mountains, though it’s said that there were no rats on the Summer Isle before the children of Hamelin arrived. So did we bring them with us? We don’t know, but the darkness here has a way of making your fears become real. We can’t explain it, but things are…born in the dark. Terrible things. It’s why we light the village on true nights, why we never sleep in the dark. It’s why we walk the walls.”
“The Summer Isle may be a dream land when the sun is up,” said Emilie. “But when darkness falls, it becomes something else altogether.”
Max could hardly believe what she was hearing. She wouldn’t have believed if she hadn’t seen one of the rat creatures with her own eyes. “How did you all survive?”
“We wouldn’t have,” said Lukas, “Except the Eldest Boy and the Eldest Girl of our village kept us together. They gave us jobs to do and a purpose. We set about building a fence. That fence grew into a wall, and New Hamelin was born.”
“Wow,” said Carter, looking at Emilie. “So that means…”
Lukas nodded. “Emilie is the Eldest Girl. We would’ve been lost on that first night if not for her.” Emilie made a tsking sound and waved the compliment away, but she didn’t deny it.
“And that makes you Eldest Boy,” said Max.
“I am now,” said Lukas, looking down. “But I wasn’t then. That was Marc. And Leon after him. I just did what I was told.”
“And where are they now?” asked Carter. “Did they retire or something?”
Max winced. She could guess what had happened.
“They were lost,” said Lukas quietly. “I’m just the next in line.”
Carter quietly chewed on his breakfast as he absorbed what Lukas was saying. Children had been lost.
“We’ve learned much since then,” said Lukas. “Kobold rumors mostly, and kobolds lie a lot. But they tell of a time before, when the Summer Isle wasn’t the wild and dangerous land that it is today. They say it was once a magical kingdom, but things began to change when two powerful magicians sailed to shore. The magicians are known as the Piper and the Peddler.”