Peter & Max: A Fables Novel

by Bill Willingham

  “We ran and ran,” Dorthe said, tears streaming down her dirty face. “Brigitte and Elfride and I. But a creature got poor Elfride!” That cleared up the minor mystery of which daughters he’d found. “There wasn’t even any sound,” she continued, hiccupping the story out in short fragments, between sobs. “I thought Elfride just tripped, but then she said, ‘Something bit me,’ just like that. Real quiet, as if it wasn’t anything important. But then something pulled her down into a deep hole.”

  “A fell beast’s den!” Brigitte interjected.

  “Oh, then there was such screaming!” Dorthe said. “And ripping and tearing sounds.”

  “Bones crunching,” Brigitte added. “We heard every moment of it.”

  “And all the while Elfride kept calling out to us. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she cried, over and over again.”

  “But we did. We ran away.” And then both girls seemed to simultaneously run out of the power to continue their account. They looked up at him, whether for forgiveness or judgment, it was impossible to say.

  “Do you have any food?” Was all Max said in reply.

  “None at all,” Brigitte managed to whisper, between great and gasping breaths, as if any additional wind for speaking had quite deserted her.

  “Then what business can we have with each other?” Max said. Slowly, he drew Frost Taker out of its sheath.

  DAYS LATER, AS HE STUMBLED again through the forest, lost and directionless, Max considered that he might have made a serious mistake where the two Peep girls were concerned. He’d taken their clothing, which he had every right to. He’d torn it into rags and stuffed them inside of his own clothes, for additional padding against the night’s chills. But he’d left their bodies untouched. It was a waste of meat on the bone, he thought. At the time he couldn’t bring himself to consider such an unthinkable sin, the eating of one’s own kind. But now he reminded himself that he was no longer of any kind save his own. He was a new creature, of which there was only one in the whole wide world. He should have recalled that back when it could have helped him — back when he stood over their ridiculously available flesh. What a waste, he thought. I could’ve feasted, but instead I go hungry. That’s what I get for clinging to compassion, which no longer has a proper place in my heart.

  He stumbled and wandered, living on roots and berries, but there was never enough. No matter how much he found, he was always hungry. Then, one day, long after he’d given up keeping count of the days, Max emerged from the wood onto a small dirt road, which cut its narrow and winding way through the forest like the passage of a serpent. This was no major road, down which more invading troops could march. This was little more than a walking path. Only the smallest of carts could navigate this track.

  “It doesn’t matter!” Max called aloud. “Any path, no matter how small, means I’m saved!” This path would lead to places where people lived, or at least to a bigger road where there would certainly be towns and farmsteads, somewhere down the line.

  Since he was thoroughly lost by this time and had no idea in which direction the path ran, Max chose a direction at random and set out following it. Night fell quickly while he walked down the lane, as it always did in the deep forest. But in little more than an hour the path led to a small and tidy cottage tucked among the trees. There was a garden on one side of the cottage, and on the other side a small fenced-in yard, containing a milk cow and two fat pigs. A low shed anchored the far side of the fenced yard. Many clucking chickens wandered here and there around the homestead. A trail of inviting smoke rose out of the cottage’s stone chimney. Light flickered from the one window that he could see from the direction of his approach.

  Max could hardly believe his turn of good fortune. He stepped forward at a lively, almost jaunty pace, drawing his blade as he did so. The evidence of fire made him think of cooked meals and a hot bath. While he was still at least a dozen paces away from the front door, he’d already begun to think of this place as his new home — his very private new home.

  In which Peter

  learns something of

  the bureaucracy

  of conquest,

  commits a grave

  crime and then

  does it again.

  PETER REALIZED HE WAS DYING. ONLY A month ago he’d presented himself at the south gates of the walled town of Hamelin, certain that all of his trials had come to an end. But instead of reaching the glorious refuge of his imagination, he’d found a Hamelin that had already been overrun by invader troops from the far Empire. These occupiers were a strange and frightening bunch, which he was able to examine up close for the first time. The human troops must have been the officers, because, like all leaders, they kept remote from the town’s general populace. But it was the horrific goblin soldiers who mixed with the townsfolk, patrolling the streets, and manning the gates and street corners.

  Hamelin was a vast walled city, home to tens of thousands. It was roughly circular in shape and pressed up like a jealous lover against the eastern bank of the Weser River, which flowed almost due north at this point in its meanderings. A deep moat had been diverted from the river to ring the town, just outside of its high walls. Three great gate towers straddled both wall and moat at three of the four cardinal points of the compass; north, east and south. To the west there were two more gates; one opening onto a wide, fortified stone bridge that spanned the Weser, leading to a separate castle fortress on the west bank, and a second gate that opened onto a smaller bridge that led to a sliver of forested island in the middle of the river, dividing the river in twain for about five hundred meters. In addition to the gate towers, seventeen tall stone towers were spaced along the wall’s circumference, making Hamelin a truly imposing city.

  A town like this could repel the direct attacks of any army and withstand a siege that lasted years, Peter had believed when he’d first arrived. But the enemy invaders who occupied Hamelin had apparently done so without inflicting any visible damage on its unscarred battlements.

  Peter had arrived at the South Gate just as a long line of wagons, each piled high with the produce of the fall harvest, was entering the city. One of the rotund goblin guards simply waved him in as he approached, no doubt assuming he was part of the company of farmers delivering their goods. The goblin paid no further attention to him, even though he couldn’t help but gape in open astonishment at the creature. Like those he’d seen only from a distance, back at the Peep estate, this one had beady black eyes and green, leathery skin. Up close he could see the thing’s skin was spotted with ugly cankers and scored with deep, badly healed scars from past battles. Yellow tusks protruded from its oversized lower jaw, and its meaty fingers ended in thick, stubby claws. Its breath, even while standing more or less at rest, heaved louder than a blacksmith’s bellows, and it stank of sulfur and rot. It wore black armor over a coat of chainmail and carried a long spear, which looked anything but decorative.

  “Move along,” the goblin croaked in a rough approximation of the Hessian tongue. “Don’t clog the gate!”

  And so Peter did as instructed. As much as he was tempted to flee from the city and its terrifying conquerors, the plan among the two families was that they’d all meet up in Hamelin, should they become separated. If any of the others had survived, they simply must be here by now, Peter thought. Goblins or no, I can’t even consider abandoning my family, or Bo Peep, or any of her sisters or parents.

  So, seeing no other choice, he’d entered.

  If anything, Hamelin seemed bigger on the inside than out. And it was crowded with more people than Peter had ever imagined existing at all, much less squeezed into one place. From the bits of chatter he could overhear just by having to struggle through the crowds, he’d learned that many, or most, of them were recent arrivals and refugees, just like he was. They’d journeyed from smaller towns and homesteads all over the countryside, some of which had been burned during the invasion, while others had been forcibly taken for the sole use of the invaders.

 
; A town this crowded will make it harder for me to find my own friends and family, he thought. Then again, it might help me stay free longer to look for them, since one small boy can better lose himself in a crowd, the bigger the better.

  But Peter couldn’t start looking for the others yet. He’d arrived here with only the clothes on his back, Frost in its dull, leather carrying case, and nothing else. More than ever he dearly missed those seventeen fat gold marks that he’d been forced to abandon in the deep woods. Peter was experienced enough to know one absolute and unchanging rule of any town, no matter who ruled it. No money meant nothing to eat. The first thing he’d have to do, even before beginning to look for his loved ones, was to find a tavern or guest house, play his pipe, and pass the hat. Of course that assumed he’d be able to borrow a hat. His had been left in that long lost campsite, along with the gold.

  “Has the rot gotten to your head, boy?” the innkeeper said, after Peter had proposed to play for his evening customers. “There’s no singing and playing allowed in public houses no more — not since the gobs took over. It’s forbidden now. Are you trying to get yourself chopped into bits? Or, worse yet, are you trying to get me killed?”

  “I didn’t know,” Peter said. “I’m new here and —”

  “Well, that’s no excuse, is it? Just ask those who tried to plead ignorance. You can usually find their heads lining the East Wall, provided the crows and rats haven’t got to them yet. You got to learn the rules, boy, or a gob ax will fix you certain.”

  It was the same in every other public house that Peter had tried. One innkeeper had actually struck him just for asking, lest any of his customers overhear him even having such a conversation and think to curry favor by denouncing him to the guards.

  After a night spent cold and hungry, sleeping in an alley, Peter had decided to look for other kinds of work that didn’t involve playing music. He quickly found there was none of that to be found either.

  “I can’t let you work, young man,” a stable owner named Krupf told him, “not without a pass signed by the new Ministry of Labor. Not even a single sweep of the broom can I allow you.”

  “How can I get such a pass?” Peter said.

  “Well, that part’s easy enough. First you present yourself down to the Ministry offices and tell them who you are and how long you’ve lived in Hamelin and answer any other questions they think to ask. Then you wait to see if they issue you a pass, or cart you off to a slave camp. I’m told a gift of some kind to the desk sergeant can be helpful in that particular.”

  “I don’t have anything I could offer as a gift though,” Peter said.

  “No matter,” Krupf said. “Even if you could get a signed pass, you’d never find a job anyway. They’re all gone by now. I can’t spare a bit of work, or even a crust to pay you with. Mostly now I think the Ministry only keeps its doors open to lure in the less wary vagrants and street tramps. It’s the labor camps for you, I fear.”

  “But if I don’t find a job soon, I’ll have to leave the city in order to feed myself.”

  “You can’t do that either,” Krupf said, “unless you get a different pass from the Ministry of Travel. The new overlords don’t want people just wandering free and unregistered about their countryside, now, do they?”

  “But I got into the city without a pass.”

  “I’m not surprised. They want you in the bigger cities and towns. Easier to scoop you up then. No, young fellow, I fear it’s the camps for you. Best turn yourself in now and get that first bowl of dinner all the sooner.”

  And so it went.

  Peter had no documentation, but documents of some type or another were required for anything he might try to do to stave off hunger. Even begging was regulated in this strange new empire. Beggars required their own brand of written license to do so, which were issued by the Ministry of Charity. Unfortunately the Ministry of Charity was no more charitable than any other of the town’s uncountable regulatory offices. Hamelin was limited to no more than thirty such passes, and the waiting list to get one was already over a thousand names long — or so Peter had heard. He wasn’t willing to enter any government building to find out for himself.

  With no other recourse, Peter turned to eating garbage, but in a city as crowded as this, there was precious little of that to be found. And what he could find was often difficult to keep. Usually he had to be willing to fight others for it. Scavenging turned increasingly difficult as the days went by. Most of the other vagrants, finding themselves in the same position as Peter, formed gangs of desperate ruffians, all the better to fight off other gangs for the few scraps that could be discovered. Peter refused to join one of the gangs, since the standard rite of initiation required killing some smaller, weaker street-dweller to prove one’s will and ability to do all to serve the gang and to survive.

  He continued to sleep in alleys and gutters, but never for more than an hour or two at a time. Patrols of the goblin nightwatch regularly searched likely places where street tramps might be found. Some of the bolder gangs were even worse, routinely killing those they could find still living on their own, so as to keep its reputation growing, its members in fighting trim, and to reduce the number of mouths competing for the available food trash.

  The rat populations were increasing too, as they always did in a place where the human population is so much greater than the available food supply. The dead and dying may have been too terrible a food source for most of the town’s starving people to yet contemplate, but they proved a wonderful feast for rats. Turnabout being fair play, many of the street-dwellers started hunting rats. Peter tried it with limited success.

  On most days Peter was too weak from hunger to succeed in catching and killing one of the big Hamelin rats with only his bare hands and teeth as weapons. They were tough, fast and fought viciously when cornered. On those rare occasions when he did triumph, Peter ate the thing raw, meat and guts both. Then, strengthened just a bit, he usually celebrated by taking the rest of the day off to search for his lost friends and family. His reasoning was sound for the most part. If one or more of them had survived to make it here, there was a chance, slight though it may have been, that they’d done so with their gold in hand. Peter’s greatest fantasy in those rough days consisted of finding his mother, or Max, or any of the Peeps, and discovering that they lived like kings, with plenty to eat, surrounded in fact with every type of treat one could imagine.

  He seldom thought of Bo, or at least tried not to, because he no longer felt worthy of her. He couldn’t bear what he’d become — a human version of vermin, a filthy rat in the streets — and knew that she’d be justifiably shocked and appalled by him now.

  Sometimes he thought of his father, and when he did he imagined a terrible sight of many scarred and bearded soldiers standing over an unrecognizable thing on the wet forest floor. They wore his father’s blood, spattered over their face and skin and clothes, and didn’t mind it. Each one of them looked as frightening as Max had on that unspeakable night so long ago.

  When he could, he went from door to door in one of the town’s sixteen distinct residential neighborhoods, asking after his lost ones. Most of the time he’d had the door slammed in his face, before he could get his story told. The residents of Hamelin were learning not to talk to strangers for any reason. None of the few willing to listen to his plight had ever heard of anyone named Peep or Piper. No one he spoke to ever had a crust or a scrap to spare, and most were shocked to see someone beg without a license.

  In addition to the residents, any one of whom might think it prudent to turn him in, he had to be careful to avoid the guard patrols. On more than one occasion they’d tried to run him down. So far he’d managed to outrun them, scampering into the hidden warrens and shadows that any big town offered, and which he was learning in minute detail. But he was getting weaker, and therefore slower, by the day, while the goblins, though not as fleet of foot as the average human, were always well fed. Sooner, rather than later, they’d catch h
im sure enough.

  Once recently, one lucky gob had actually gotten a hand around Frost’s carrying case, which Peter still wore slung over his back. When he could feel the strap slipping, about to hitch up to where it would either come free of his head, or choke him around his neck, Peter had suddenly stopped running, turned and kicked the massive goblin in his large round belly. His attack couldn’t possibly have hurt the creature, but the gob was so surprised by the bold act that it let go of Frost’s case, and Peter got away. That sort of miracle wasn’t likely to happen twice.

  When nearly a month had passed since his arrival in town, Peter had to admit to himself that he was dying, slowly to be sure, but dying just the same. The days had steadily grown colder and wetter as winter approached, and he’d grown too weak to succeed much longer in avoiding or outrunning each one of the many dangers in this very dangerous place. In desperation, he considered his remaining options.

  First, he could turn himself in to the occupying soldiers and be taken off into one of their slave camps. He knew that in his frail condition he probably wouldn’t last long, but at least he might get to eat something close to a real meal again before the end.

  The second option was to try to steal the food he had no way to pay for, or earn in any other honorable way. The idea was abhorrent to him, especially so in light of his brother’s past accusation that he was nothing but a dirty thief all along. How long ago was that? It seemed so distant, but it couldn’t have been much more than two months past. How odd back then that Peter hadn’t any idea he’d ever want for enough to eat.

  The third option was the most alarming to imagine. He could try to find some way to sell Frost, his only thing of value, or trade it for something to eat. But even in his terrible state, knowing full well he was dying, the idea seemed monstrous to him. He’d promised to guard and cherish Frost always, ultimately surrendering it only when he had a son he could pass it on to. It was the first oath he’d ever taken as a man. He’d sworn a sacred vow to his father, only two nights before his father was slaughtered at the hands of the very invaders who were killing him now in dull and numbing increments.