by Matthew Cody
Max didn’t get the chance to choose as Mrs. Amsel pushed past her and into the house. Max glanced worriedly up and down the street again, half expecting to see shapes standing in the shadows, yet there was nothing but cars and rain.
The housekeeper shook off her umbrella in the hallway and peered around.
“Are you here by yourself?” she asked.
Max hesitated. She still didn’t know what to tell her and what to keep secret.
“It’s okay,” said Mrs. Amsel, patting Max on the shoulder. “Come, I will make us a pot of tea and some breakfast.”
As she went into the kitchen, Mrs. Amsel glanced down at the dirty leather backpack flung carelessly in the corner. It was Lukas’s, and Max had been carrying it when she fell through the mirror. Last night she’d dropped it there on the floor and then forgot about it.
Mrs. Amsel prodded it with her toe. “Not yours?”
“Uh, it belongs to a friend,” said Max.
Before Max could stop her, the housekeeper hefted the backpack up by the straps and plopped it down on the kitchen table. “Heavy,” she said.
“Hey,” said Max. “That’s not mine. I mean, you shouldn’t open it.”
Mrs. Amsel ignored her as she untied the drawstring and turned the pack upside down, spilling its contents onto the table.
What was the woman doing? Max started to reach for the pack but stopped herself. She suddenly remembered the missing documents from her father’s briefcase, and she wondered how well they knew this little housekeeper? Not well at all, if she thought about it. They’d been acquainted for just a matter of weeks. The little old woman looked harmless enough, but after all Max had seen, she wasn’t so sure. The housekeeper could be anybody, really.
Her father was missing. Her mother, mysteriously unreachable. Max started to back away. She could run for the door, and then…something. Go to the police?
“Ah,” said Mrs. Amsel. “We are in luck.” She was examining a leather scroll case that Max recognized at once—the Peddler’s map. Lukas must have stowed it in his pack before their attack on the tower.
Max stopped retreating, and she felt her face grow hot as her fear turned swiftly to anger. That map did not belong to Mrs. Amsel. That map was the reason Max and her friends had traveled from one end of the Summer Isle to the other, and why they’d suffered so much to get so little. Whatever Mrs. Amsel wanted with it, Max wasn’t about to let her have it.
“Give it back,” said Max. But Mrs. Amsel was already unrolling the map on the table.
“Stop it!” Could Max bring herself to punch an old woman? She didn’t think so.
But to her surprise, Mrs. Amsel looked up at her and frowned. “Ah, I’m scaring you,” she said. “I don’t mean to.”
“It’s just…it belongs to a friend,” Max said cautiously. She took a deep breath to try to calm down.
“I see,” answered Mrs. Amsel. “You sit while I put on tea.” Then the little woman began filling the kettle with water from the sink. As she did so, Mrs. Amsel spotted the carafe of cold coffee from the night before and shot Max a sour look.
“I know, I know,” said Max. “I’m going to stunt my growth.”
Mrs. Amsel put the kettle on the stove to boil and then took a seat opposite Max.
“Your brother?” asked Mrs. Amsel.
“He’s…out with Dad.” Max still wasn’t ready to trust the woman.
Mrs. Amsel smiled sadly. “No, I think we both know he’s not, meine liebe. Look at the map.”
Max didn’t understand what the housekeeper was talking about, but she looked down at the dirty, water-stained Peddler’s map, unrolled on the kitchen table. It was no longer a map of the Summer Isle. The ink-scratch drawings had somehow rearranged themselves from the familiar contours of the Summer Isle to an even more familiar image. A dotted line stretched from a town marked Hamelin through Germany and France, and across the Atlantic Ocean, all the way to a spot marked New York City, on the North American coast. In a spidery, looping scrawl, someone had written the words The Winter Children.
The Winter Children. That was what the Peddler had called the elvish children who were stolen by the Piper all those years ago. Were they still here on earth, and in New York City, of all places? It didn’t seem possible.
Max looked up from the map to see that Mrs. Amsel was watching her, studying her. “Who are you?” asked Max.
“I am who I said I am,” she said simply. “I am Greta Amsel, and I’m a housekeeper. But that’s not all I am.” Her eyes twinkled as she smiled, and she pulled off her kerchief to reveal two small ears that came to a point at the tips. “Why do you think I am so short?”
Max stared at the strange, diminutive woman and began to notice other subtle details that she would have missed before her journey to the Summer Isle. The ears had been hidden, but the broad face and the dark, ruddy complexion had been obvious. “You’re an elf?”
“Quarter elf on my grandmother’s side,” said Mrs. Amsel. “In English, people call those like me elflings, because humanlings is too much of a mouthful.”
Max could hardly believe it. When she suspected Mrs. Amsel of hiding secrets, she hadn’t dreamed it would be this secret. “But why didn’t you say anything before? You could’ve told us, could’ve warned us!”
“Of what?” said Mrs. Amsel. “I know a magic map when I see one, but I do not know as much as you think I do. You must tell me the rest, and maybe then I can help you.”
So Max told Mrs. Amsel her story, and the housekeeper, or elfling, or whatever she was now, listened as she sipped her tea. When Max at last came to the end, she found she could barely describe what it had felt like to wake up and realize that Carter was still gone. It hurt too much.
Mrs. Amsel made a shushing noise and patted Max’s hand, which ordinarily would have annoyed Max, but at this particular time, it felt comforting.
“When you arrived in Hamelin, I suspected there was something about you and your brother,” said Mrs. Amsel, shaking her head. “But, of course, I could not begin to suspect what it was. It wasn’t until the rats attacked that I realized that you might be in danger, and I tried to stay and help, but your father insisted I leave. After all, elfling I may be, but I am also an old woman.”
Max got up from her seat and began pacing around the kitchen, filled with a new energy. And a lot of questions.
“Do you know what happened to Dad?”
Mrs. Amsel shook her head. “The morning after the attack, I came here as early as was proper, but the house was empty. I assumed he was taken, the same as you and your brother.”
“No,” said Max. “We haven’t seen him—well, not really. And I can’t reach my mom back in the States, either. I’m worried about both of them.”
Max went to the window. The rain was beginning to let up. “Mrs. Amsel, even if you are a…”
“Elfling.”
“Yeah, even if you are one of those, that doesn’t help me unless you know a way to the Summer Isle. I need to find my parents, but first I have to get Carter back.”
Mrs. Amsel offered Max a weary smile. “The people of Old Europe knew much about magic, but they didn’t understand it. When my ancestors, the original elf children, were brought here by the Piper, some tried to blend in. They grew older, and some even raised families. But the elves soon discovered that though they were growing older here in this world, it happened very slowly. The elves who’d married humans outlived their families. It became harder and harder to hide. In time, it became too dangerous for the children to remain among the humans. There was a great exodus, and the lost children of the elves fled across the sea to a new world. There, they found a new island that the native people called Manhattan. The Winter Children built themselves a village and used the last of their magic to cast a powerful spell that walled it off from humans forever, thereby creating a safe haven for their kind. Little did they know that the very same island would one day be home to the greatest city of man as well. But the spell kept
them well hidden, and for centuries they have remained right under your very noses.”
Mrs. Amsel rose and stared up at Max. Even standing, the woman only came to Max’s chin. “There are those who’ve given up hope of ever returning to the Summer Isle, and when an elf gives in to bitterness, it is a fearsome thing. But there are still more like me, those who hope. If there is a way back, the secret may lie in the hidden city of the Winter Children.”
Mrs. Amsel began to carefully roll up the Peddler’s map. “I’ve never been to that city, but I know people who will help us get there. Other elflings, and a few humans who we can trust, but I fear there may be others who will try to stop us. I don’t think I was the only one waiting for you and your brother.”
“That man in the shadows!”
Mrs. Amsel nodded. “I don’t know who or what he was, but now that we have your map, we shouldn’t wait around to find out. There’s magic in that map, and magic is in short supply in this world. I suspect it will lead us where we need to go. It will help us find a way back to the Summer Isle.”
“We?” Max asked.
“If you’ll have me,” said Mrs. Amsel. “Your father asked me to look after you and your brother, and even if he was ignorant of my true nature, that sort of bond is powerful to my kind. I…failed him. I want to make amends.”
Max rubbed her temples and tried to clear her head. It was all so much to take in. A hidden city of elves beneath New York City. Mrs. Amsel’s being part elf herself. Her parents gone missing.
“I’m not just asking to help you,” said Mrs. Amsel. “I’m asking you to help us. To help all the Winter Children find our way home again.”
Max looked down at the Peddler’s map, at the words beneath her home of New York. The Winter Children. Yet again, Max had been dropped into a world she didn’t understand, only this time it was right here on earth. Everything looked the same, but nothing was. The world around her felt as alien as the Summer Isle had been, but this time, she didn’t have Carter to keep her company.
Carter. All it took was the thought of her brother and her mind was made up. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t, abandon him. She didn’t know about prophecies or hidden magical cities, or armies, but she knew she would bring her brother home. That was her quest, and it had been all along. She would rescue Carter. And maybe the prophecy was true, and they would return all the lost children home, humans and elves and everything in between. Max was certainly ready to try.
She felt surprisingly calm and light. It was as if she’d been carrying around a weight on her shoulders, something mean and heavy, that had suddenly lifted. For some reason, she thought that Carter would be proud.
“All right,” she said as she accepted the Peddler’s map from Mrs. Amsel. Then she began to carefully repack Lukas’s backpack. After all, he would want it when she saw him next. “When do we leave?”
The story will continue in
The Magician’s Key
Like the Peddler’s Road itself, this story has taken more twists and turns than I could have imagined at the start, but luckily there were many trusted guides to help me along the way. I’d like to first thank a pair of outstanding editors: Michele Burke, who first saw the potential in the story of the children of Hamelin, and Michelle Frey, who dug in and helped me make the book you hold in your hands. And thanks to Team Hamelin’s Stephen Brown, Kelly Delaney and Karen Greenberg. They say it takes a village and this book very nearly did.
Thank you to my wonderful friends and first readers Jason Keeley and Krista Hoeppner Leahy; to Craig Phillips for bringing the Summer Isle to life in pictures; and to my agent, cheerleader and pal Kate Testerman.
Thank you to my son, Willem, for sharing his own stories with me.
And most especially, thank you to my patient wife and partner, Alisha, for supporting me and listening to endless talks about rats. Rats, rats, so many rats.
Matthew Cody lives in New York City with his wife and son. He is also the author of the Powerless trilogy, Will in Scarlet, and The Dead Gentleman. You can follow his exploits at MatthewCody.com.
