Dora Rose put her hand on Froggit’s shoulder when his panicked glance streaked to her. “Fear not, princeling,” she said, as though soothing a cygnet. “Have not we wings and wits enough between us?”
Before the kid could lose his nerve, I sped on, “Me and Nicolas will be the distraction. We’re gonna set Amandale hopping, starting this afternoon. No one will have time to sniff you out, I promise—no matter what shenanigans you four get up to. We’ll meet you back in the Maze Wood in three nights’ time, with the rest of…of what we need. You know where. The juniper tree.”
Froggit nodded. His brown eyes filled with tears, but they did not fall. I looked at Dora Rose, who was twisting her hair back up under my wharf boy’s cap and refreshing the dirt on her face.
“Help her,” I told the kid, too quietly for Dora Rose to overhear. “She’ll need you. Tonight most of all.”
Froggit watched my face a moment more, then nodded with firm decision. His excitement smelled like ozone. He shoved his charcoal stub into his pocket and stood up, wiping his palms on his cutoff trousers. Solemnly, he offered his hand to Nicolas, who clasped it in both of his, then transferred it over to Dora Rose. She smiled down, and Froggit’s gaze on her became worshipful, if worship could hold such bitter regret. I knew that look.
Stupid to be jealous of a tongueless, tousled, char-smudged bed wetter. Bah.
“Take care of each other,” Nicolas admonished them.
And so, that Cobblersawl kid and my friend the Swan Princess-in-disguise made their way down a dark alley that teemed with the sort of refuse I relished. Until they disappeared from my sight.
“Shall we?” Nicolas’s voice was soft and very dreadful behind me.
“Play on, Pied Piper,” said I.
Nicolas set silver lip to scarlet mouth and commenced the next phase of our plan.
Have you ever seen a rat in a waste heap? The rustle of him, the nibble, the nestle, the scrabble and scrape. How he leaps, leaps straight up as if jerked by a string from the fathoms of that stinking stuff should a clamor startle him? How swift he is. How slinking sly. Faster than a city hawk who makes her aerie in the clock towers and her dinner of diseased pigeons. A brief bolt of furry black lightning he is, with onyx for eyes and tiny red rubies for pupils.
Now imagine this natty rat, this rattiest of rats, with his broken tail, his chewed-looking fur, imagine him as he often is, with a scrap of something vile in his mouth, imagine him right in front of you, sitting on your pillow and watching you unblinkingly as you yawn yourself awake in the morning.
Imagine him.
Then multiply him.
There is a reason more than one of us is called a swarm.
Amandale, there will be no Swan Hunt for you today.
Nor will bread be baked, nor cakes be made, nor cookies, biscuits, doughnuts, nor pies. The smell arising from your ovens, Amandale, is singed fur and seared rodent meat, and all your dainty and delectable desserts bear teeth marks.
No schools remain in session. What teacher can pontificate on topics lofty and low when rats sit upon her erasers, scratch inside the stiff desks, run to and from the windowsills, and chew through whole textbooks in their hunger for equations, for history, for language and binding glue and that lovely woody wood pulp as soft and sweet as rose petals?
The blacksmith’s hand is swollen from the bite he received last night as he reached for the bellows to stoke his fire. The apple seller has fled from fear of what he found in his apple barrels. The basket maker burns in his bed with fever from an infected breakfast he bolted without noticing it had been shared already by the fine fellows squatting in his larder. I’m afraid the poor chimney sweep is scarred for life. And no, I don’t mean that metaphorically.
The Wheelbarrow Mollys and the Guild of Bricklayers are out in the streets with their traps and their terriers. Poor fools, the futility! They might get a few dozen of us, maybe a few hundred. They might celebrate their catch that night with ales all around. But what’s a few? We are thousands. Tens of thousands. Millions. The masses. We have come from our hidey-holes and haystacks. We are out in force.
So what if the local butcher flaunts his heap of fresh sausage stuffing, product of today’s rat-catching frenzy? We’re not above eating our own when we taste as good as sausages! And we’re not above petty vengeance, either. You, smug butcher, you won’t sleep cold tonight. No, sir. You’ll sleep enfolded in the living fur of my family, Folk and fixed alike, united, yellow of tooth and spry of whisker. Resolved.
In the midst of mothers bellowing at those of us sniffing bassinets and cradles, of fathers shrieking like speared boars as they step into boots that bite back, of merchants sobbing and dairymaids cursing and monks chanting prayers of exorcism, there is a softer sound, too, all around. A sound only we rats can hear.
Music.
It is the Pied Piper, and he plays for us.
He’s there in a corner, one rat on his boot-top, two in his pocket. That’s me right there, scurrying and jiving all up and down his arms and shoulders, like a nervous mama backstage of her darling’s first ballet recital. Oh, this is first-rate. This is drama! And I am the director.
Amandale, you do not see Nicolas, the red in his black hair smoldering like live embers in a bed of coal, his black eyes downcast and dreamy, his one rat-free boot tapping time. He’s keeping us busy, keeping us brave, making us hop and heave to.
Amandale, you do not see Nicolas, playing his song, doing his best to destroy you for a day.
Or even for three.
On the second Night of the Rats (as the citizens of Amandale called our little display), Mayor Ulia Gol summoned a town meeting in Orchestra Hall.
Sometime after lunch that day, I’d fleshed back into man-shape, with two big plugs of cotton batting in my ears. This made me effectively deaf, but at least I wasn’t dancing. The point was to stick as close to Ulia Gol as possible without ending up in a rat catcher’s burlap bag. To that end I entrenched myself in the growing mob outside the mayoral mansion and slouched there for hours till my shadow stretched like a giant from the skylands. As reward for my patience, I witnessed the moment Henchman Hans brought Ulia Gol news that the rat infestation had destroyed her bone orchestra.
“All that’s left, Madame Mayor,” moaned poor Hans (I’m not great at reading lips, but I got the gist), “is bits of bone and a few snarls of black hair.”
Ulia Gol’s florid face went as putridly pink as her wig. Her shout was so loud I heard her through the cotton batting all the way to my metatarsals. “Town meeting—tonight—eight o’ clock—Orchestra Hall—OR ELSE!”
I ran back to report to Nicolas, who laughed around the lip of his pipe. Slapping my forehead, I cried, “Clever, clever! Why didn’t I think of it? Manufacture false evidence; blame the rats! It’ll keep thief-hunters out of the Maze Wood for sure. Did you think that up, Nicolas?”
Pink-cheeked, Nicolas shook his head and kept playing.
“Wasn’t Dora Rose,” I mused. “She’d view leaving fragments behind as sacrilege. One of our stalwart recruits, then. Froggit? He’s great, but he’s kind of young for that level of…Or, I suppose it could’ve been Possum’s idea. Don’t know her so well. Always thought her one of your sweet, quiet types, Possum.” Readjusting my cotton batting, I mulled on the puzzle before settling on my final hypothesis.
“Greenpea. Greenpea, I’ll grant you, has the brain for such a scheme. What a firecracker! Back when the Swan Hunt started, she was the most vocal opposition in town. Has a kindness for all animals, does Greenpea. Nearly took Hans’s head off with the shovel when he tried to make her dig up that first murdered cob. Ulia Gol took it back from her, though. Broke both her legs so bad the surgeon had to cut ’em off at the knee. Fear of festering, you see. Least, that’s what he said. But he’s Ulia Gol’s creature, badly gone as Hans. Yup, I’ll bet the hair and bone were Greenpea’s notion. Little minx. I’d like to take her paw and give it a shake. Oh, but hey, Nicolas! We’d best get a move on. You haven’t eaten all day, and the sun’s nearly down. Mayor Ulia Gol’s called a town meeting in a few hours regarding the rat conundrum. I’ll fur down and find a bench to hide under. That way I’ll be ready for you.”