by Matthew Cody
“We should still have several weeks of good hot weather ahead of us,” said Lukas, pointing out at the evening sky, which was turning the color of wine as the sun sank low. “Isn’t that so, Paul?”
“I suppose,” said Paul, spitting bits of cheese rind into the fire. “If that map of yours is right, then I’d say we’ll cross the Eastern Fork in a day or two. After that, we turn north and make for the tower. I give us a fortnight’s travel yet, at the pace we’re keeping.”
At the pace we’re keeping. Though he didn’t come out and say it, Carter understood what Paul had meant. They’d be going faster if they didn’t have to slow down for Carter.
“The road grows more dangerous from here on out,” said Paul. “Even if the rats are behind us, there’s the Bonewood ahead of us. And beyond the Eastern Fork is the Deep Forest, and elves. We won’t find any hospitality there.”
“Then we’ll keep on going,” said Lukas. “The Peddler’s Road will let us bypass the Deep Forest entirely, so elves shouldn’t be a problem.”
As this seemed to be the final word on the subject, Carter tried to find something to do. This was, he realized, the first time he’d actually been bored since coming to the Summer Isle. He spent a few minutes absentmindedly pulling bits of stuffing from one of the mattresses and tossing them into the fire. He had to stop, though, because the room was beginning to smell like burnt hair. Max gazed out the window, and Paul was snoring softly in front of the fire. His head had fallen onto Emilie’s lap, and though she was staring at it as if a spider had just crawled onto her, she had yet to smack his forehead to wake him up.
Lukas laid the Peddler’s map across one of the beds and studied it. When he noticed Carter watching him, Lukas grinned. “I keep checking it to see if anything’s changed. But it’s the same as the day you two arrived. The Peddler had always claimed that this map was enchanted, but before the Black Tower appeared, nothing unusual ever happened.”
Carter joined Lukas on the bed. He let his eyes follow the dotted-line road from New Hamelin past the Western Fork and all the way to Shades Harbor. It seemed strange that despite the days of travel and everything they’d been through, they hadn’t explored more than a few inches of that map. There, to the right of Shades Harbor, the Bonewood was clearly marked; it lay between them and the Eastern Fork. It wasn’t a big forest, certainly not as big as the Shimmering Forest or the Deep Forest, to the southeast. Carter almost asked why it was named the Bonewood, but then he decided he didn’t really want to know. Not right before bedtime, in any case.
“Lukas,” said Carter. “What do you think we’ll find there at the Black Tower?”
Lukas rubbed his chin as he considered his answer. From her spot on the floor, Emilie turned to look, and Max watched from the window, curious, too. They were wondering the same thing.
“All we have to go on is the map and the prophecy,” said Lukas at last. “Only when the last son of Hamelin appears and the Black Tower found will the Piper’s prison open and the children return safe and sound. Not many details to go on, huh?”
“No,” said Carter. “Not really.”
“Well,” said Lukas. “If we believe the prophecy is talking about you, which I do, then maybe there’s some kind of doorway there, or a portal that only you can open. Or find. I don’t know. But when the Piper brought us here, we passed through a cave in a mountain, I remember that much. And he brought you two here, so there have to be ways to go between home and the Summer Isle.”
Carter remembered all those stories his dad had collected and how there seemed always to be a twist. It used to drive Carter crazy when he was little—the terrifying beast was really a cursed prince; Anansi the trickster was really at home in the briar patch, and didn’t fear the briars at all. Carter wondered if their own adventure, their story, wasn’t yet due for another twist.
“What is the Black Tower?” said Carter. “The prophecy says that the Piper’s prison will be opened.”
“Yes,” said Lukas. “That part worries me, too.”
“Maybe the tower is his prison,” said Carter. “Maybe the Piper has to take us home.”
Lukas’s expression grew hard as he slowly rolled up the Peddler’s map. “If so, it’s the least he owes us.”
Carter had never seen such a grim look on Lukas’s face before, but he understood it. The Piper had stolen them all away from their homes and their families and abandoned them here to fend for themselves against monsters. Like Lukas, Carter wasn’t sure how he’d react if he saw the Piper again.
The talking quieted down again after that, and nothing interrupted the crackle of the fire. Each child seemed lost in his or her thoughts, or maybe they were just enjoying the quiet and each other’s company. A warm fire, soft beds and a roof over their heads. Who knew when they’d feel this kind of comfort again?
“The rest of us should get some sleep,” said Emilie after a while. She nudged Paul awake, and he looked a little terrified when he realized where he’d been sleeping. But Emilie didn’t comment on it. “We have a long walk ahead of us,” she said.
As they divided up the beds, Carter caught his sister watching him. He knew she worried about him, and Carter wished he could do something to reassure her that he would be okay. He had Lukas, Emilie, Paul and, most important, his big sister to look out for him. Carter would be fine.
Someone suggested that even though they were sleeping indoors, it might be a good idea to set a watch. This time they split the duty between the five of them, instead of making Lukas and Paul shoulder all the responsibility. Lukas balked at first, but Paul gladly accepted the chance to get a little extra sleep.
It was late when Paul woke Carter to take his shift at watch, though the sky outside was still only a sunset purple. Paul told Carter that he’d nearly woken him earlier, because the boy had been mumbling in his sleep and looked as if he was having a bad dream. But all Carter could remember of the dream was music. Paul gave Carter a blanket to wrap himself in as he sat by the window and then took Carter’s place in the bed next to Lukas. The scout was snoring in minutes.
No one woke Lukas for the next shift, and it wasn’t until sunrise that anyone noticed that Carter was gone.
When they were little, Max and Carter used to play hide-and-seek in the hallways of their old apartment building. It was never much of a challenge for Max, as Carter wasn’t very good at the game, and there were only so many places you could hide in a long hallway. But Carter had still been young enough to think that if he couldn’t see someone, there was no way that person could see him. So his favorite hiding spots tended to be even more obvious than the stairwell and the laundry room. He liked to hide in one end of the hall with his eyes shut, or the other end of the hall with his eyes shut. Max’s job, even then, had basically been to wander up and down the hall and pretend not to see him.
Until one day, when Max finished counting to twenty and opened her eyes and her brother was gone. It was impressive at first, not seeing him in his usual places. She checked the laundry room and the stairwell, but he wasn’t there. Max checked back inside their apartment in case he’d somehow gotten in without her noticing.
In those next few minutes, Max felt a new kind of fear—a growing dread that her brother might really be gone. Time began to slow down, dreamlike, but she wasn’t asleep. And still Carter didn’t answer her calls. In a real panic, she ran inside and found her mother, and though barely intelligible because of her crying, she confessed that she’d lost her little brother.
It didn’t take more than five minutes for her mother to find him. Carter, it turned out, had knocked on the door of his best friend down the hall, something he’d never thought of doing before, and when their mom found him, he was sitting on the neighbors’ sofa, watching cartoons with his friend. He’d been very pleased with himself until he saw his sister’s face.
After that day, Max never played hide-and-seek with her brother again.
Max’s heart fluttered inside her chest like a bird in
a shaking cage. It didn’t help that she was running barefoot, but she didn’t have time to stop and examine her sore feet. Carter was out there somewhere, alone.
How long had they been running? An hour? Two? Long enough that she’d barely registered the change in the landscape. How the road turned northward and how the Bonewood seemed to chase it until the borders of that fearful forest butted up against the road itself. There were places where the pale trees had grown close enough to touch.
All Max knew was that she had to struggle just to keep up. Even Emilie was ahead of her, though not by much. She could barely see Paul’s shape in the distance as he followed Carter’s tracks in the road. They’d wasted time scouring the village for him until Paul had spotted a new set of tracks leading out of Shades Harbor and east along the Peddler’s Road; luckily for them, Carter’s limp made his footprints distinctive.
Max’s tongue was covered with a film of grit, and her mouth tasted of metal. Each gasp hurt, and she clutched at a stitch in her side until it felt like her innards would burst. Lukas judged that since her brother hadn’t woken him up for his shift, Carter had somewhere between a three- and five-hour head start. The good news was that it wasn’t so much time they couldn’t make it up if they ran hard. The bad news was that Carter was all alone.
Max had no physical reserves of strength left to call on, so she relied on her anger to keep her going. Anger at her brother for leaving her and anger at herself for losing him. At every bend in the road, she half expected to find him sitting on the ground and laughing at her. But she knew deep in her gut that this was no joke. Carter would have never run off in the middle of the night. Something had taken him. It didn’t matter if they were only following one set of tracks—Carter had been kidnapped.
She was so tired, she barely saw the ground in front of her and almost ran over Lukas as he came to a stop. Up ahead, Paul was now walking in a circle as he studied the road. Max looked questioningly at Lukas—there was no chance her parched throat could make words.
“We have to rest,” said Lukas, breathing hard. “For a moment, at least.”
Max tried to shout Why? at Lukas, but all that came out was a painful cough. Someone was handing her a flask of water. She took it without thanks and wet her throat.
“What…,” she tried again. Her voice was still raw and dusty, but at least it was working. “What do you mean? Why are we stopping? Have you found something?” Words came out in a tumble.
No one would look her in the eye. At first she thought it was because they were all ashamed that they wanted to stop and rest, but then Max realized they were not avoiding her eyes; they were staring at her feet. Her feet were bloody and torn. It was funny—she’d known they hurt, but now that she saw the condition they were in, it felt like she was standing on a bed of coals.
“I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Sit down,” ordered Emilie. “We need to clean and bandage those feet.”
“I can walk!”
“Eh, sorry,” said Paul. “Leaving a blood trail, even on the Peddler’s Road, is a very bad idea. There’re things out there we don’t want following us.”
Things out there…And her brother. Her little brother, alone. When Max found Carter, she was going to kill him.
“Paul and I will scout ahead while you get fixed up,” said Lukas, placing a hand on Max’s shoulder. “We don’t need to rest.”
“We don’t?” whined Paul, but Lukas ignored him.
“If we keep up our pace, I’m sure we’ll find Carter before too long,” said Lukas. “We have to be close.”
It was foolish for Max to protest. The truth was, these New Hameliners were in much better shape than she was, and she would probably slow them down even without her wounded feet. Their best chance of finding her brother now was speed. Reluctantly, Max nodded and allowed Emilie to help her sit on the side of the road.
“You be careful,” said Emilie to Lukas.
“Don’t worry,” answered Paul. “We will.”
“You be careful, too,” said Lukas. “Both of you. We’ll be back soon. Hopefully with Carter.”
Then Paul and Lukas were off. Exhaustion was catching up with them now, too. They moved at a jog rather than a sprint. Nevertheless, within minutes the pair of them were out of sight.
Emilie took a swig from her flask, then handed it over to Max. “Don’t drink too fast or you’ll cramp.”
Max forced herself to sip rather than gulp. She was far from full, but she heeded Emilie’s advice and gave the flask back to her. Emilie used it to wet a cloth from her pouch and began to dab at Max’s feet. They barely resembled feet anymore, just two swollen lumps of cuts and bruises. Max winced as Emilie cleaned what dirt she could out of the wounds.
“I have some ointments that I kept,” said Emilie. “They should help, but they sting.”
“I can handle it.”
The girl looked up at Max. “They sting a lot.”
Emilie was right about the stinging, and Max gave a sharp gasp as Emilie rubbed a green paste into her wounds. It might as well have been salt.
“So, back where you come from,” said Emilie, “did you have someone special?”
Max gritted her teeth against the pain and stared at Emilie, incredulous. Was this really the time for girl talk? But then she realized that Emilie was probably just trying to get Max’s mind off her feet, and off of Carter.
“If you mean do I have a boyfriend, no,” said Max. “Ouch, ouch! I’m going to need that foot, you know?”
Emilie ignored her complaining. “Was there ever anyone special?”
“I’m not even thirteen yet.”
Emilie shrugged. “I was just curious.” Then she began to wrap Max’s foot in a strip of cloth, which hurt a lot less than the ointment. Max watched Emilie work for a minute before something occurred to her.
“Why do you have boyfriends on the brain?”
Emilie blushed. “I do not have…whatever it is you just said. I was only being friendly.”
Then Max remembered last night in the little inn and a certain boy Emilie had sat next to the entire evening. Even when he’d fallen asleep and started to drool in her lap.
“Wow,” said Max. “I wouldn’t have seen that coming. Maybe you and Lukas, but Paul? Never.”
Emilie poured water on a new cloth and began dabbing at Max’s other foot, less gently this time. “I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Emilie.
“It’s okay,” said Max. “I’d bet he likes you, too.”
As if she couldn’t stop herself, Emilie blurted out, “Do you think so?”
“Why do you think he spends all his time trying to bug you? Boys are weird like that, but it’s a pretty good sign, I’d guess.”
Emilie went back to cleaning Max’s foot. “He really is insufferable. Not enough sense between his ears to fill a thimble.”
“I know. But I don’t think our brains get to choose these things.”
“Pish,” said Emilie. “I’m sure it’ll pass. Like indigestion or a sour stomach, I will just have to wait it out until it goes away.” She finished cleaning the other foot and reached for the ointment. “Now, you might want to bite down on something. This next part’s going to hurt again.”
After Max’s feet were cleaned and cared for, Emilie used strips of her own skirt to make wraps, and she bound Max’s feet as best she could. The rags would have to serve as make-shift shoes for the time being.
With nothing left to do, the waiting soon became unbearable. Max had just insisted that the two of them start to follow when Lukas appeared on the road up ahead. His face was ashen, and not from running.
“What?” asked Max, her heart in her throat. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s your brother’s tracks,” he said, shaking his head. “Carter’s left the road. He’s gone into the Bonewood.”
It was becoming Carter’s habit to wake up in strange places. This time, the last thing he remembered was sitting w
atch in their room back in Shades Harbor. He’d been fighting to stay awake and so moved his stool closer to the window, where he could feel the sea breeze against his cheeks and smell the salt in the air. Away in the distance, someone was playing a pipe. It was a lovely tune….
Then he’d woken up here, wherever here was. Carter was lying on a hard bench in a cluttered room with two barred windows on either side. There was a long, solid-looking table beneath one window, covered in jars and strange instruments. He saw a mortar and pestle, a little oil burner and a butcher’s block with an ominous dark stain in the middle. One corner held a lumpy bed, and another a rocking chair. In the center of the room was a bubbling cauldron and a cast-iron stove.
The floor was covered with what Carter had assumed at first to be a bearskin rug, but upon further examination, it was clear that this rug had never been a bear. Whatever creature that pelt had belonged to had been very big, and disturbingly human-shaped.
“Ogre skin,” said a little voice. Carter whipped around to see a little creature, perhaps a foot tall, in a cage dangling on a chain. He was furry, and at once reminded Carter of Tussleroot the kobold, only this one was not nearly as potato-shaped. “The rug is mostly ogre, I think.”
“Who are you?” asked Carter. “Where am I?”
“My name’s Bandybulb,” said the creature. “And you are in Grannie Yaga’s hut. Sorry to say.”
Carter glanced at the disgusting skin rug, then at the butcher block and over to the oven. Nothing reassuring about any of that.
“I don’t know who Grannie Yaga is, but I think I’d better get going,” said Carter, and he made for the door. Thankfully the handle turned—it was unlocked—and he cautiously pulled it open just a crack, barely enough to peek outside. He was inside a hut built in a clearing surrounded by a forest of ugly yellowish-white trees. Carter nearly yelped when a wind chime made from skulls began to rattle above his head, but there didn’t seem to be anyone out there to hear it. At least, no one he could see.
