by Danny Lasko
I don’t know how close she is or who else can hear it, but they will. Everyone will. If it’s all I have left, they will hear it. The song gives me new strength and seems to loosen the grip of the shield. I curl my arms in, forcing my free hand to meet the Auravel as I pull it to my mouth. And play.
Each note pierces the air with my Auravel’s otherworldly sound in perfect unison with Annie’s voice. On the twentieth note, the night brightens from some unseen source of light. Around the thirty-fifth note, I feel the shield finally go slack. I bolt to my feet and climb the hull of the stern-wheeler to the very top and see where the brightness is coming from. From every PureHeart in any condition, whether standing or collapsed on the ground or somewhere between, each body emanates a pale yellow glow. Not just the Children, the wizards as well. Everyone that holds a piece of the Soul within them, shines. Even Boxrud. And all of them, including the last of the trapped Citizen crowd, marvel at the duet drowning every nook and cranny with its music. From over the river I can see Boxrud crouching on the castle’s drawbridge, gaping at his glowing body, and the shock smearing his face.
“Stop him. Stop him!” he bawls. “Don’t let him finish the song!”
I keep playing as Serefina spits out her flame, but the streams fade just a few feet in front of her. The lightning and ice wizards just as impotent. The Magic’s sneak fires her arrows, but they whisk by me, harmless as houseflies.
At the fiftieth note, the bright light of each Child begins to warm and ripple to a deep orange. Finally, on the fifty-eighth note, the last note I know, the orange brilliance from the Children shoot into the sky, each beam meeting and forming into a whirlwind of light. I notice other beams of orange streaming from outside the arena, from other Children lost and otherwise. One shoots over my head from a dead tree on top of a mountain on the west side of the stadium. Annie’s song pulses and pushes the air with each new note. I pluck them out catching them in my breath and pushing them out through the broad tip of the Auravel. The whirlwind whips out thousands of streams of light, wrapping wizards in a fistlike grip before pulling the pale yellow glow out of them and feeding itself, causing their staggered frames to go dark. With each retraction, the whirlwind grows stronger and wider.
Boxrud stumbles backward, his eyes wide with a perfect realization or disbelief, I can’t tell which for sure. He turns to flee down the castle’s tunnel, but he doesn’t get far. The whirlwind has saved Boxrud for last, and the thousands of streams reach out for the Wizard King grabbing him like a fleeing fox, hoisting him high above the arena and pulling the Soul through the pores of his skin. His screams fade to gurgles, his gurgles to wheezes. His skin grows crusty and gray. The flesh peels off like dried meat. When the whirlwind releases him, only his bones remain, at least until they shatter into dust when they fall and smash into the castle’s drawbridge.
The whirlwind snakes along, past the red rock mountain and the rivers. I keep playing Annie’s song until the whirlwind of light rests upon me. I watch it thin and thrust itself into my chest, streaming through until every drop of light hides inside. It pushes at every inch of me, knitting itself with each fiber of my own body.
I stumble to my knees, gasping for breath. The sweat is still dripping from my face. My arms feel like lead; my legs feel locked in cement. I look down at my chest, where a constant orange glow burns brightly under my shirt. Finally, I scan the silent battlefield before me. Everyone, either standing or kneeling, stare at the light in my chest.
A vicious scream pierces the silence. Serefina cuts through the night on one of the Wizard’s speeders, shooting toward me like a bullet. I can’t move. The speeder spits a rapid shot of fire and light, igniting the stern-wheeler. I wait for the next shot to end everythign, but it never does, thanks to a sudden hurricane that twirls the speeder and its rider across the rivers and into the island, crashing in a forest of flame.
Beyond the burning stern-wheeler is Tanesh, the daughter of Talia, speaker for the Angels, standing on a nearby bridge, her long braid whipping in the after-breeze of her gale. She still has her power.
The other Children test their own, and each of them, those who committed themselves to the restoration of the Soul, still have their power intact.
The cracking and crashing wood beneath me keep me from celebrating. The stern-wheeler collapses, and I plummet into its fiery belly. I try to scoot myself away from the fire, but it’s everywhere.
“Horatio! Horatio! Find him!”
Drops of water splash my face warning me of the coming flood, which rushes through the hull, dowsing the flames.
“Horatio!”
“Dad!” I pull myself as best I can, but the Children beat me to it. My dad reaches me first and pulls me out of the wreckage, followed by Tommy Briggs grabbing my waist, lowering me down to the banks below.
“Healer!” my dad cries. “We need a healer!”
A gray-haired old woman pushes in, ready to lay her hands on me, but she stops inches away.
“He’s well,” she says, astonished. “Perfectly sound. Not even the hiccups to cure.” She starts laughing. My mother races in and wraps her arms around me. My dad follows suit.
“Wait,” I mumble. “Wait … ”
I pull my parents off of me and heave toward the west wall of the arena.
“Annie,” I call to my mom.
“Kathryn?” asks Dad. “Can you feel her?”
“Yes, this way,” she says, after pausing to listen to something I can’t hear.
With every step, I feel the fatigue leave me. My arms are working again. My legs are heavy but willing to move. Soon I’m running until we both stand in front of an odd plaster structure mixed with the overgrowth of unkept grass designed to look like a mound of dirt and an old, dead tree trunk sticking out of the top of it.
“There,” says my mom, pointing to the tree.
I leap the log fence and over a concrete trench that seems to trail through the entire structure, then scale the mountain, feeling like my old self again. Inside the dead tree, I find her, lying tied up and unconscious. Her throat’s been burned, the skin completely singed away to reveal charred innards. I don’t know what is more amazing, that she is alive or that she was still able to sing the fifth Aire. In fact, I don’t think she was conscious when she sang it. I cradle her in my arms and carry her down.
“Annie!” her mother cries. Mr. Walker pulls her back, but it’s a fight. I lay Annie down on a patch of grass nearby.
“Oh, man, it’s Annie,” says Tommy.
The same gray-haired healer pushes through the crowd and lays her hands on Annie, but to no effect.
“There’s just too much gone. I can’t, can’t … ”
I rest my hand on the old woman’s shoulder and put the Auravel to my lips. I play the Healer’s Hymn, the one from Hook’s harpsichord. She taught me to play it. Whispered it in my ear. I play it slowly, reverently, watching the muscle, the vocal cords, the skin knit itself back together. By the end of the song, Annie Walker is whole. I take her head in my hands.
Her eyes blink, then wander until they focus on me.
“Hi, gal.”
She smiles.
“You came back.”
I press her close, feeling her, smelling her, healthy and alive. I kiss her. She kisses me, many times, until we remember the elation of the hundred or so Children surrounding us.
“I fought them,” she says, still in my embrace. “I even escaped and ran, but then something happened. Like I was wrapped in a cloud. I saw what would happen. They were going to kill me if I kept running. But if I stopped, I would see you again. That’s all I wanted. I wanted to see you again.”
She spots my glowing chest and presses her perfect hand against it. Just as she has always done. I lay my own hand on hers, pushing it tight against me.
“You sang your song,
Annie. All of it. It reformed the Soul.”
“How could I … ?”
“You’re a SongKeeper, gal. And there’s no power on Earth that could keep you from doing what you were born to do.”
I pull her parents down to their daughter and let them have their turn while I explain to my parents and Valor about the Aire and the SongKeeper. They tell me the wizards have been detained, and none of them held onto their power during the Soul’s reforming. But not one of the Children of Hamelin is without it.
“Boxrud had it wrong,” I say, mostly to myself. “I guess we all did. The only way to hold onto the Soul was to be willing to give it away.” I stare in the direction of the obliterated statue. My father rests a hand on my shoulder.
“You did all you could do.”
I shake my head. I ask my dad for his audio com.
“Linus?” I say, setting the earpiece. “Anything?”
“It’s protected,” he says, “It didn’t burn at the Cellar, I don’t believe it burned now.”
“My thoughts exactly. Where are you?”
“Digging through the soot and ash. But it could be anywhere. A blast like that may have even sent it out of the arena.”
As if reading my mind, the blue-feathered frame of my Ally swoops through the night air.
“Will you show us?” I ask.
The eagle launches back in the air, flies toward a crop of tangled trees east of the plaza, rests in its branches for a moment, and then flies out again, holding Pock’s Auravel in his talons.
“I’ve got it!” cries Linus. Within seconds he’s joined us by the mansion.
“There’s isn’t a crack in it, not a nick,” says Linus after catching his breath. He tries to wipe the black soot and ash from it, but the remnants of the statue won’t come off. “Just a little dirty,” he says, handing it to me. “This belongs to you.”
“Did you find the Looking Glass?” asks Annie. I take her hand and lead her to the half-circle of brick, telling her about the Grey, my training, and pull out the Auravel and describe our visit with a ghost from the past.
“He knew,” she says. “All of them, they all knew.”
“At least they knew enough,” says Linus. “Those storytellers, each of them knew about Mira and that one day this world and that one would be reconnected. They helped us do it.”
Annie fingers the brick and numbers on the half-wall. “All this time the Looking Glass was just sitting here, millions of people passing it by, never knowing its importance. Maybe not even noticing it at all. One, seven, six, four.”
I nod and put Pock’s Auravel to my mouth and play. But the sound is different. Each note sounds like that of a dozen pipes playing together in a complex, beautiful harmony. I keep my focus. One, from Hook’s harpsichord, immerses us in its hopeful melody. I choose to play it faster, the way I first learned it. Each note creates a fine white wisp, which weaves its way in and out of cracks and broken windows in the streets and buildings of the park. Our surroundings change. The stadium seating, now empty, collapse in on themselves and blow away in the wind. Dripped with sparkling light, the mansion, the red rock mountain, the rivers and trees, the storefronts of Nola, the cindered stern-wheeler, the castle, the crumbling wall in front of me, the towering hollow tree, and everything else knit and build themselves to their original magnificent glory. Even the broken light bulbs a hundred years old burn bright in a blend of colored brilliance.
The seventh Aire, the Song of Illusion, illuminates the half-circle of brick in the renewed wall. Suddenly, the brick disappears, leaving a black gaping tunnel.
I play immediately into the sixth Aire, the one we found on Baum’s chandelier. The nearby rivers respond with a roar, and the water rises up into a flat, broad wall of liquid, still and gently moving. Finally, “Borrowed Light.” The black tunnel in the wall ignites into a brightness too strong to look at, beaming directly into the wall of water, displaying a distant image. An odd image at first–like we’re lying down looking into the sky through the thick, green leaves of a large tree, its trunk twisting around itself as though trying to wring something unwanted away. Across the portal sits a heart-shaped rock large enough to sit upon and dangle your feet. It’s not just an image. It’s a window. The Looking Glass to Mira.
I smile and look around at the Children of Mira, awestruck. Tommy Briggs stands slack-jawed in the middle of them.
“Tommy,” I call. “I bet you have a lot of questions.”
Tommy nods wildly. “Yeah,” he says, “like how come I just started glowing all of a sudden?”
“My mom can help you with that. It’s really good to see you, man.”
“That story, the story of the Pied Piper,” he says, surveying what’s happened, “it wasn’t just a story, was it?”
“No,” I laugh.
“So what do I do?”
“Listen within.”
He nods without a sense of what I’m talking about. “And now you’re leaving again.”
“For a while. You’re going to learn some stuff. And then we’ll see each other again. I promise. You with me?”
“All the way. No matter what,” he says, flashing his patented smile. We clasp hands and embrace. I flash forward, looking for a way to bring him with me, but The Soul tells me he’s needed more here. I want to tell him about everything. Everything I’ve learned, everything he needs to know. About the Soul, about Mira, about the Children and how he, his family, how they are part of something so much more than they thought! But all I can do is cling to his neck and pray for his protection.
I watch Annie watch the Looking Glass and can’t help but smile.
“You’re coming, right?” I ask, taking her hand.
She breaks away from her gaze and targets me with it.
“Absolutely.”
“Do we all go?” asks Mr. Walker, hesitant but hopeful. My dad, my mom, Valor, Tenesh, and all the other Children look to me for the answer. I see hope in their eyes. And for a moment, I struggle, knowing that they have waited for this all their lives. Their fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, and hundreds of thousands of others hoped they would live to see what they have witnessed. But the Soul tells me what to say.
“Soon. This world is a new kind of mess that needs to be cleaned up. The Synarch was under complete control of Boxrud and the wizards. That government has fallen. Everything that happened here today has been seen the world over. They’re going to have a lot of questions and need someone with answers to lead them. And Mira needs this world to succeed.”
My dad smiles back with wet eyes.
“There will still be people who fight in the face of truth or try to hijack it for their own gain. There will still be people who deny what they’ve seen. And the Children of Hamelin will need to teach them.”
I turn to Valor.
“There are still a lot of descendants left to find, tens of millions and more, wondering who they are. Some with just a spark remaining of the Soul. But its enough. They need to know where they come from. And where they’re meant to be going. You know what you have to do,” I tell him.
“Yes, thanks to this,” he says, pointing to the Mirastory. “Horatio, I was—”
“Look forward,” I interrupt. “Stay out of the trees and rocks,” I say with a smile. “Give the Soul away so it will keep growing. So we’ll be ready.”
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
“We will, Prince Horatio.”
I don’t think I’ll ever get used that.
“I am very proud of you,” whispers my mother, as she and my father embrace me.
I kneel to my sisters, Lizzie, holding Lily, and Jane.
“You’re going again?” asks Jane. I nod.
“Afraid so.”
“I guess I’ll nev
er get to ride the horses.”
“Never say never, little lady.”
I hug Lizzie and Lily.
“You are very brave,” Lizzie tells me, kissing my cheek.
“You’ll watch out for me?” I ask her, tapping my finger lightly on her forehead.
“Every day,” she answers.
“Good. But if I get into trouble, don’t tell Mom or Dad.” I wink at her and hug her close.
With a series of good-lucks and thank-yous and offers of prayers and warnings—sort of like after a game but with a lot more love—I take Annie’s hand and stop at the edge of the river.
Linus, standing along the fringe of the crowd, catches my eye and runs all ten fingers through his dirty blond hair.
“You should probably have this,” he says walking up to me, holding out the sword. I take it and again feel the shield wash over me before I sheathe it on my back.
“You should probably go say goodbye.” I tell Linus, sliding the sword back into its sheath.
“Yeah,” he says to me, “Um, goodbye. Thanks for everything.”
“No,” I say. “To them.” I nod to his parents and other Children. The realization startles him. He turns to his parents. His mother gasps; his father pats his son on the back.
“Go,” I hear his mother say. “Be brave. Be helpful. We love you so much.” And after a quick goodbye, he stands with Annie and me at the Looking Glass.
“You know,” nudges Annie, “you just rid the town of a serious rat problem.”
“Yeah,” I say, allowing the emotions of the last few weeks swell within me, “but I got paid. What is it?” I ask, noticing Annie’s impish smile. She hesitates but finally gives in.
“I wonder what weddings are like in Mira?”
I can’t help my smile. “Guess we should find out.”
I raise my arm, and a moment later, the blue eagle swoops in and lands with a fluttering of wings on my forearm. And as the four of us become engulfed in the watery light of the Looking Glass, a twinge of shame tingles down my insides, hoping that the new world, the world that has changed the very nature of my existence, will not be too offended that it took me so long to get a clue.
