Nearly fetal in his corner by the ale barrel, Nicolas hid his face, shaking his head behind his hands. Before I could press him further, a silvery voice began to sing from the doorway.
By the end of the first verse, Nicolas had lifted his head. By the end of the second, he’d drawn a lanyard out of the collar of his long underwear. From this lanyard hung a slender silver pipe that dazzled the eye, though no sun shone in that corner of the cottage. When Dora Rose got to the third verse, he began piping along.
By the time they reached the bridge of their impromptu set, I was dancing around the cottage in an ecstatic frenzy. The silver pipe’s sweet trills drove my limbs to great leaps and twists. Dora Rose danced, too, gasping for breath as she twirled and sang simultaneously. Nicolas stood in the center of the cottage, tapping his feet in time. The song ended, and Nicolas applauded, laughing for joy. Dora Rose gave him a solemn curtsy, which he returned with a shy bow. But as he slipped the silver pipe back beneath his underwear, I watched him realize that underwear was all he wore. Shooting a gray and stricken look my way, pretty much making me feel like I’d betrayed him to the headsman, he jumped into his tiny cot and pulled a ratty blanket over his head. Dora Rose glanced at me.
“Uh, Nicolas?” I said. “Me and Dora Rose’ll just go wait outside for a few minutes. You come on out when you got your clothes on, okay?”
“She’s a swan!” Nicolas called from under his cover. I patted a lump that was probably his foot.
“She needs your help, Nicolas. Her sister got turned into a harp yesterday. All her family are dead now. She’s next.”
At that point, Dora Rose took me by the ear and yanked me out of the cottage. I cringed—but not too much lest she loosen her grip. Dora Rose rarely touched me of her own volition.
“How dare you?” she whispered, the flush on her face like a frosted flower. “The Pied Piper? He could dance any Folk he pleased right to the death, and you pushed him? Maurice!”
“Aw, Dora Rose,” I wheedled, “he’s just a little sensitive is all. But he’s a good friend—the best! He’d never hurt me. Or mine.” She glared at me. I help up my hands. “My, you know, friends. Or whatever.”
Dora Rose shook her head, muttering, “I am friendly with a magical musician, he tells me. Who’s familiar with Faerie. Who knows about the Folk. He’ll help us, he tells me.” Her blue eyes blazed, and I quivered in the frenzy of her full attention. “You never said he was the Pied Piper, Maurice!”
I set my hands on my hips and leaned away. Slightly. She still had a grip on my ear, after all. “Because I knew you’d react like this! Completely unreasonable! Nicolas wouldn’t hurt a fly half-drowned in a butter dish! So he’s got a magic pipe, so what? The Faerie Queen gave it to him. Faerie Queen says, ‘Here, darling, take this; I made it for you,’ you don’t go refusing the thing. And once you have it, you don’t leave it lying around the house for someone else to pick up and play. It’s his livelihood, Dora Rose! And it’s a weapon, too. We’ll use it to protect you, if you’ll let us.”
Her eyebrows winged up, two perfect, pale arches. Her clutch on my ear began to twist. I squeaked out, “On another note, Dora Rose, forgive the pun”—she snorted as I’d meant her to, and I assumed my most earnest expression, which on my face could appear just a trifle disingenuous—“I have to say, your idea about singing nursery rhymes to calm him down was pretty great! Poor Nicolas! All he sees whenever he looks at a woman is the Faerie Queen. Scares him outta his wits. Can’t hardly speak, after. He’s good with kids, though. Kid stuff. Kid songs. You were right on track with that baa-baa tune of yours. He’s like a child himself, really…”
Dora Rose released my ear. More’s the pity.
“Maurice!” She jabbed a sharp finger at my nose, which was sharp enough to jab back. “One of these days!”
That was when Nicolas tiptoed from the cottage, sort of slinky-bashful. He was dressed in his usual beggar’s box motley, with his coat of bright rags and two mismatched boots. He had tried to flatten his tufted hair, but it stuck up defiantly all around his head. His black eyes slid to the left of where Dora Rose stood.
“Hi,” he said, scuffing the ground.
“It is a fine thing to meet you, Master Nicolas,” she returned with courtly serenity. “Bevies far and wide sing of your great musicianship. My own mother”—I saw a harsh movement in her pale throat as she swallowed—“watched you play once, and said she never knew such joy.”
“I’m sorry about your family,” Nicolas whispered. “I’m sure the juniper tree didn’t want to do it. It just didn’t understand.” His eyes met mine briefly, pleading. I gave him an encouraging go-ahead nod. Some of this story I knew already, but Nicolas could tell it better. He’d been around before it was a story, before it was history. He’d been alive when it was a current event.
Nicolas straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat.
“Your Folk winters at Lake Serenus. But perhaps, keeping mostly to yourselves, you do not know the story of the Maze Wood surrounding the lake. The tree at the center of the wood is also…also at the center of—of your family’s slaughter…You see, before he was the god in the tree, he was only a small boy. His stepmother murdered him. His little stepsister buried his bones at the roots of a sapling juniper and went every day to water his grave with her tears.
“To comfort her, the boy’s ghost and the juniper tree became one. The young tree was no wiser than the boy—trees understand things like rain and wind and birds. So the ghost and the tree together transformed the boy’s bones into a beautiful bird, hoping this would lighten his sister’s heart and fly far to sing of his murder.
“That was in the long, long ago. Later, but still long ago, the villagers of what was then a tiny village called Amandale began to worship the ghost in the tree. The ghost became a god. Those whose loved ones had been murdered would bring their bones there. The god would turn these wretched bones to instruments that sang the names of their murderers so loudly, so relentlessly, that the murderers were brought to justice just to silence the music.
“Many generations after this, these practices and even the god itself were all but forgotten. The juniper tree’s so old now all it remembers are bones and birds, tears and songs. But the Mayor of Amandale must have read the story somewhere in the town archives. Learned of this old magic, the miracle. And then the Mayor, then she…she…”
A small muscle in Nicolas’s jaw jumped. Suddenly I saw him in a different light, as if he, like his silver pipe, had an inner dazzle that needed no sunlight to evoke it. That dazzle had an edge on it like a broken bottle. Handle this man wrong, and he would cut you, though he wept to do it.