Slipping the silver pipe under his patched tunic, Nicolas advised, “Don’t get stomped.”
By this time, the rats of Amandale were in such a frenzy it wouldn’t much matter if he stopped playing for an hour or two. Most of the Folk rats would come to their senses and slip out of town while the getting was good. Likely they’d spend the next few weeks with wax stoppers in their ears and a great distaste for music of any kind. But they’d be back. By and by, they’d all come back.
The fixed rats, now…Smart beasts they may be, those inferior little cousins of mine, but their brains have only ever been the size of peas. Good thing they reproduce quickly’s all I’m saying. ’Cause for the sake of drama and Dora Rose—they are going down.
The Mayor of Amandale began, “This meeting is now in—” when an angry mother shot to her feet and shouted over her words. It was the chandler, wailing toddler held high overhead like a trophy or oblation.
“Look at my Ruby! Look at her! See that bite on her face? That’ll mark her the rest of her natural life.”
“Won’t be too long,” observed a rouged bawd. “Wounds like that go bad as runoff from a graveyard.”
The blacksmith added, “That’s if the rats don’t eat her alive first.”
The noise in Orchestra Hall surged. A large, high-ceilinged chamber it was, crammed with padded benches and paneled in mahogany. Front and center on the raised stage stood Mayor Ulia Gol, eyes squinting redly as she gaveled the gathering to order.
“Friends! Friends!” Despite the red look in her eyes, her voice held that hint of laughter that made people love her. “Our situation is dire, yes. We are all distressed, yes. But I must beg you now, each and every one of you, to take a deep breath.”
She demonstrated.
Enchantment in the expansion and recession of her bosom. Sorcery in her benevolent smile. Hypnosis in the red beam of her eye, pulsing like a beating heart. The crowd calmed. Began to breathe. From my place beneath the bench, I twitched my fine whiskers. Ulia Gol was by far her truer self in the Heart Glade, terrorizing the children of Amandale into murdering Swan Folk. This reassuring woman was hardly believable. A stage mirage. The perfect politician.
“There,” cooed the Mayor, looking downright dotingly upon her constituents,“that’s right. Tranquility in the face of disaster is our civic duty. Now, in order to formulate appropriate measures against this rodent incursion as well as set in motion plans for the recovery of our wounded”—she ticked off items on her fingers—“and award monetary restitution to the hardest-hit property owners, we must keep our heads. I am willing to work with you. For you. That’s why you elected me!”
Cool as an ogre picking her teeth with your pinkie finger. No plan of mine could stand long against a brainstorming session spearheaded by Ulia Gol at her glamoursome best. But I had a plan. And she didn’t know about it. So I was still a step ahead.
Certain human responses can trump even an ogre’s fell enchantments, no matter how deftly she piles on those magical soporific agents. It was now or never. Taking a deep breath of my own, I darted up the nearest trouser leg—
And bit.
The scream was all I ever hoped a scream would be.
Benches upturned. Ladies threw their skirts over their heads. The man I’d trespassed upon kicked a wall, trying to shake me out of his pants. I slid and skittered and finally flew across the room. Something like or near or in my rib cage broke, because all of a sudden the simple act of gasping became a pain in my everything.
Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t…
There came a wash of sound. Scarlet pain turned silver. My world became a dream of feathers. I saw Dora Rose, all downed up in swanskin, swimming across Lake Serenus. Ducking her long, long neck beneath the waves. Disappearing. Emerging as a woman, silver and naked-pale, with all her long hair gleaming down. She could dance atop the waves in this form, barefoot and unsinkable, a star of the Lake Serenus Water Ballet.
I came to myself curled in the center of the Pied Piper’s palm. He had the silver pipe in his other hand as if he’d just been playing it. Orchestra Hall had fallen silent.
This was Nicolas as I’d never seen him. This was Nicolas of the Realms Beneath the Hill. His motley rags seemed grander the way he wore them than Ulia Gol’s black satin robes with the big pink toggles and purple flounce. His hair was like the flint-and-fire crown of some Netherworld King. Once while drunk on Faerie ale he’d told me—in strictest confidence of course—that since childhood the Faerie Queen had called him “Beautiful Nicolas” and seated him at her right hand during her Midnight Revels. I’d snorted to hear that, replying, “Yeah, right. Your ugly mug?” which made him laugh and laugh. I’d been dead serious, though; I know what beautiful looks like, and its name is Dora Rose, not Nicolas. But now I could see how the Faerie Queen might just have a point. So. Yeah. Kudos to her. I suppose.
Nicolas’s smile flashed from his dark face like the lamp of a lighthouse. His black eyes flickered with a fiendish inner fire.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of Amandale!” Sweeping himself into a bow, he managed to make both pipe and rat natural parts of his elegance, as if we stood proxy for the royal scepter and orb he’d misplaced.
“Having had word of your problem, I came straightway to help. We are neighbors of sorts; I live in the lee of the Hill outside your lovely town. You may have heard my name.” Nicolas paused, just long enough. Impeccable timing. “I am the Pied Piper. I propose to pipe your rats away.”
So saying, he set me on the floor and brought up his pipe again.
I danced—but it was damned difficult. Something sharp inside me poked other, softer parts of me. I feared the coppery wetness foaming the corners of my mouth meant nothing salubrious for my immediate future. Still, I danced. How could I help it? He played for me.
Nicolas, who at his worst was so sensitive he often achieved what seemed a kind of feverish telepathy, was eerily attuned to my pain. His song shifted, ever so slightly. Something in my rib cage clicked. He played a song not only for me but for my bones as well. And my bones danced back into place.
Burning, burning.
Silver swanfire starfall burning.
Jagged edges knitted. Bones snapped back together. Still I danced. And inside me, his music danced, too, healing up my hurts.
Nicolas took his mouth from the pipe. “I am willing, good Citizens of Amandale, to help you. As you see, rats respond to my music. I can make them do what I wish! Or what you wish, as the case may be.”
On cue, released from his spell, I made a beeline for a crack in the wall. A sharp note from his pipe brought me up short, flipped me over, and sent me running back in the other direction. I can’t sweat, but I did feel the blood expanding my tail as my panicked body heated up.
“For free?” called the chandler, whose wounded babe had finally stopped wailing for fascination of Nicolas’s pipe.