by Jane Yolen
The music made her turn from the player and look at the window. Stuffing one of the paper balls in her pocket, she dropped the other on the the CD player where it rolled off on to the floor. She ignored it and tugged at the window till it opened, then climbed out onto the little balcony where she and Nick had often had tea parties when they were both younger.
There was a soft wind puzzling through the trees. For late October it seemed very warm. The moon was full and orange. She knew in the back part of her mind that her parents and the police were coming up the stairs. Probably talking about her erratic behavior, her smart talk. Arguing about the puzzle of the missing trick-or-treaters. Her mother was probably crying. Maybe sobbing. Her father might still be trembling. The cops were surely flinging accusations.
But that didn’t seem to matter now. Oddly, all that mattered was the song. The haunting flute that was calling to her.
She took a deep breath and the air both burned and soothed her throat at the same time.
“Nicky,” she whispered. “Hold on, Bugbrain. I’m coming.”
She was determined to bring him back. She believed that finding him was the least she could do, having failed to go with him or keep track of the time. But her head was muzzy with the flute song now, and she wasn’t thinking straight. She reached over, touched the trellis which was still covered with late blooming bloodred roses, swung her leg over the railing of the balcony, and started to clamber down.
She never felt the thorns.
Skirting the empty police car, she didn’t notice the light in her bedroom window where her parents and the two cops were opening closets and looking under the bed, her mother crying and her father on his cell phone calling Mars again. Or the lights in the Temples’ house next door where people were watching the television, frantic for news. Or the dog on Mrs. Lee’s front porch whining but afraid to go down the steps.
Instead, she got to the road and began to dance.
One foot, two, glide and glide, she followed the song of the flute along Elm Street, heading toward Main Street, the piping luring her on and on and on.
17 · A Death in the Family
Flute in hand, Gringras remembered more: he remembered the quiet dinner with his older brother, Tormalas the heir. He remembered letting his brother prattle on about politics and the possibility of war with the Unseelie Court. Meanwhile in the kitchen, Alabas poisoned the food. Poisoned Gringras’ food.
Tormalas’ tasters had eaten heartily off the heir’s plate, pronouncing it safe. After that it was a simple matter for the switch to be made. A little misdirection (“Look out!”), a little sleight of hand (Gringras dabbled in the more mundane illusions as well as the true magic), and soon Tormalas was chewing happily on venison chops lightly seasoned with century plant.
He ate for three more minutes and then slumped to the floor, to all appearances stone-dead. Appearances, as Gringras knew and had planned for, could be deceiving. And nowhere was this truer than in Faerie.
* * *
THE HEIR’S BODY LAY IN state for three days.
On the first day, the attendants washed and dressed the dead prince in his funeral attire of white and gold. They set his body in a bier decorated with wild peonies and cultivated roses. The family gathered in a mourning circle around the coffin.
King Merrias, a stoic figure, sat still from dawn till dusk, while his wife wept impressively and tore at her long silver hair.
Gringras tried to look suitably melancholy. He kept dabbing at his eyes with an enormous white handkerchief. Occasionally he let out a large sigh.
Wynn, the youngest, had been sent for, but had not yet returned from whatever adventure he was currently on. Gringras had counted on that.
On the second day, the antechamber where Tormalas lay was opened to the public. Creatures from afar came to pay their respects. Fey lords and ladies in gaudy, shimmering raiment strode majestically by the body, barely deigning to glance down. Small brownies and hearth witches clucked their tongues as they passed, sighing at the waste of it all. Phookas, selkies, and other shape-shifters padded, hopped, or slithered by. Pixies and winged fairies wafted over the open coffin and wept beautifully, their translucent wings fluttering self-consciously. Even a lone boggart—emissary from the Unseelie Court—shambled past the coffin, glaring at it, perhaps angry he hadn’t the chance to kill the prince himself.
Gringras watched the display with amusement, but was careful to show nothing on his face but the expected grief.
Wynn had still not arrived.
Custom and religion dictated that on the third day the body was moved outside and placed on a large wooden pyre, scheduled to be burned at midnight. A crowd gathered early, jostling for position around the tower. The faerie rulers were long-lived and a state funeral was a once-in-a-millennium event.
Gringras stood in the hall outside the throne room, waiting for an audience with his father that would confirm him as the new heir. He knew that, once he was confirmed—even after Tormalas’ miraculous recovery, which should be happening a little after sunset—nothing short of Gringras’ own death could remove the mantle of power from his shoulders.
A stentorian voice echoed from inside the king’s audience chamber.
“Come.” It was the High Chamberlain.
Gringras straightened his cloak and, running first one nervous hand through his hair and then the other, opened the door.
His father was not alone. At the king’s side sat a handsome young man, broad of shoulder and strong of arm, with curly blonde locks crowning a pleasant, honest face. He was still dressed in his traveling clothes and, even though it was apparent he had rushed right to this chamber immediately after dismounting, he somehow managed to look fresh, clean, alert, and capable.
Wynn had finally come home.
18 · Music Man
Elm Street was quiet, as still as if it were some sort of painted backdrop to Callie’s dance. Even the wind had stopped. No cars purred along the blacktop. No leaves fluttered down from the maples and oaks. No cats prowled the side streets. The traffic lights had for some unknown reason all gone dark. The world was lit spookily by the Halloween moon.
Yet there was one sound Callie could hear clearly, and that was the flute tune that pulled her along. That sound was so real, so palpable, she believed she could have put her hand on it and it would have felt like a rope.
She danced along Elm Street noticing and yet not noticing, the way one does in a dream. One step, two, glide and glide.
As she danced by Greene Hall, where the concert had been held the night before, she suddenly heard another bit of music. The same tune, but a different voice. It seemed to cut through the golden rope that bound her by a single strand.
Still dancing—one step, two, glide and glide—she hesitated a moment to listen more carefully. That hesitation wasn’t willed, it just sort of happened.
This new voice was lower, sweeter, less insistent. She tried to think what it could be. It didn’t have the breathiness of the flute. The sound seemed more sustained, yet at the same time less fluid. There were occasional chords. Something strummed.
And then, all at once, she realized she was hearing a guitar.
Guitar!
She stopped in her tracks.
Scott played the guitar. Beautiful Scott with the wide Viking face, the long golden braid, and the deep ocean blue eyes. Who was sixteen going on forty. Her crush from what seemed years and miles ago, though it was just twenty-four hours away.
Looking over to the steps of John M. Greene Hall, she saw Scott haloed in the moonlight, hunched over his guitar and playing with such intensity, she thought she would cry. The sound he made was brilliant, clear, beautiful, and much more innocent than the sensuous piping of the flute.
“Scott,” she whispered, his name another kind of song, but he didn’t hear her.
The notes of the guitar drew her to him, one step, two, glide and glide. And the flute’s binding power was suddenly cut through, as if by a knife.
She danced quietly to the foot of the steps and stopped, watching him play, afraid to break the spell of his music, afraid to call attention to herself, afraid that if she spoke the flute would find her again.
Minute after minute she watched his right hand pick out tunes, strands of pearls on the strings. Minute after minute she watched his left hand crawling up and down the neck of the guitar, marking the notes with precise fingering. But he must have sensed her standing there, for finally he glanced up, his face momentarily innocent of all knowledge but his music. Then his face seemed to clear, as if he’d suddenly wakened.
“Hey…” he said, and stopped playing.
“Hey…” she replied.
He was no longer wearing the pants with the painted rats, but a pair of plain black jeans, and a leather jacket over a white tee. His hair was hanging loose, Alice in Wonderland style, down on his shoulders.
Briefly she wondered what she had on, hoped it was better than her soccer shirt and Old Navy jeans, knew it wasn’t, and houghed through her nose like a horse.
“You been here long?” he asked.
“Long enough,” she said.
“It’s sure quiet in this town,” he said, then ran his fingers along the guitar’s neck, just playing a scale, but the notes shivered up and down Callie’s spine as if his hand had wandered there by mistake.
“Too quiet,” Callie responded. She tried to say more, but it was as if her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. Never at a loss for words, she was wordless now. She tried once more, forcing out the first word: “Rats!” And then it all came out in a rush. She told him everything: the missing trick-or-treaters, Gringras on the fire escape, the dancing rats. She even told him, though she blushed in the telling, what she’d overheard.
He put down his guitar, laying it carefully on its back on the step beside him. His hand hesitated for a moment over the instrument, as though he were comforting it, calming it. When he looked up at her again, his face seemed strange, pained, as if she’d just stuck a dagger into his heart. Then he sighed, and as though attuned to his every utterance, the guitar echoed the sigh back.
“So, it’s true,” he whispered. Callie had to lean far in to hear him.
She realized that he wanted her to ask. So she did. “What’s true?”
“For years…” he began. Stopped, took a deep breath, and started again. “For years I’ve worked hard at not understanding. ‘Just play the music, man,’ I told myself. Because the music is all that matters. The song that has to be played. Not how we get paid or how much. Not what the venue, where the gig. Not even the audience. Long as I’ve got enough for food and some new leathers and my picks and strings, as long as I’ve got gas for the bike…” He nodded at the motorcycle parked near the bottom step which Callie hadn’t even noticed before. “As long as I’ve got that, I’m fine, man.” He sighed again and once more the guitar sounded like wind stroking across the strings. Callie saw that in the moonlight, his blue eyes looked faded, ghostly, the skin of his cheeks almost translucent, like rare glass.
“But this time it’s different?”
He nodded. “Silver or gold or souls, he said. And I thought that was okay. Because it’s always been silver or gold. Every seven years. Like clockwork, man. I never asked what Gringras meant by ‘souls.’ I thought it was a joke. He jokes a lot, you know. And I don’t understand half of what he’s gassing on about. But it never seemed to matter much. At least to me. The music’s been that good.”
She sighed back and all the while her head thought, I’ve never been a sigher. A fairy tale type. I’m a hardheaded journalist. But she sighed nonetheless. Because she wasn’t a journalist, not yet. She was only fourteen years old and in high school.
“But it matters now,” she whispered.
“Because it’s children,” Scott said. There was a powerful cry in what he said.
“Then you believe me?”
He nodded. “Yes, I believe you. Because it all fits. Silver or gold or souls. Not a joke. Not a joke at all. And I can’t let that happen. Not to kids.” He shivered. “Kids—I don’t know a lot about them. Except I can’t let it happen.”
“We can’t let it happen,” Callie whispered, daring to put them together. Then she added, “Again.”
“Again?”
She sighed again, mostly at what she now had to say. “I tried to write about it for my school paper, before the kids in the neighborhood disappeared, but it seemed too far out, like I was trying to force the puzzle pieces to fit. But now they all slide into place.” She held up her hand and counted on her fingers. “Hamelin. The Children’s Crusade. The little princes in the tower. All the other places kids have disappeared and were never found. He’s a regular milk carton creep.”
Scott leaned over, picked up his guitar, and stood. “Not on my watch.” He sounded like a soldier. “My dad took me from my mom. Moved us away across the country. Gave me a new name. I don’t even know my old one. I never saw her again.”
“You could still find her,” Callie offered, thinking all the while: I’m talking to Scott. Really talking. “After this, I mean. You could find her.” She hesitated, then added, “I could help. There’s computer searches and stuff.”
He shook his head, and the golden hair shimmered. “She’d be…” He hesitated. “Awfully old now. Maybe even dead.”
“Not much older than my mom and dad,” Callie said. “Couldn’t be.”
“You don’t know,” he said, started to say more, and stopped himself. “You couldn’t possibly believe it anyway.”
“Try me,” she whispered.
But as if he hadn’t heard, he said, “It’s the children who count now. Not me and my old problems. So, reporter girl—”
“Callie,” she said. “Callie McCallan.” She wondered if she should say more. Like where she lived. Or how old she was.
“Callie, put this on your back.” He handed her the guitar and she grabbed it with a kind of reverence. “We’ll take the bike. It’ll be faster.”
“Faster to where?” Then she suddenly remembered—to where Nicky and the other kids were. How could she have forgotten?
But her question seemed to stop him cold. “Damned if I know,” he replied.
The minute he said that, she heard the flute again. It was less compelling this time because she was standing so close to Scott, but there was no mistaking it.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
He nodded and held out his hand. “If we find the flute…”
She nodded back. “We find the kids.”
Without hesitation, she took his hand and followed him to the motorcycle, a black Harley Electra Glide.
“The Classic,” he said, fishing two helmets out of the backpack and handing one to her.
The helmet fitted her head as if designed for her.
Then Scott climbed on the bike and Callie, like a princess out of the old stories, got on behind. Putting her arms around his waist, she held tight, her head cheek down against his leather jacket. It smelled of many winds and many streets. It smelled of Scott. She made herself forget about all the girls before her who must have ridden with him.
“Which way?” he asked over his shoulder.
At first she had a hard time hearing with the helmet on, but she strained to listen for a minute. Finally she heard the flute song, as if it were being piped into the helmet, and she pointed down the hill toward the center of town.
He kicked the bike into gear and the motor caught.
For a moment the flute song was hidden.
For a moment Callie despaired.
But once they were out on Elm, going down the hill, Callie heard the flute again.
“That way!” she called out, pointing over Scott’s shoulder at every turning. “Now that way!”
So street by street, she guided them along till they crossed the bridge spanning the Connecticut and the turning onto Route 47.
“There!” Callie said, and they headed along the winding r
oad toward the little mountain range ringing the foot of the Valley.
19 · Resurrection
Gringras’ casting was nearly at an end. As he tied the loose ends of his spell with notes both sung and played, he remembered the words his father had spoken on the day Tormalas’s body was to be burned.
“I thought you should both hear this together.” King Merrias had stood and motioned Gringras to an empty chair by Wynn’s side.
Gringras would have preferred standing but the old man had stared silently at him until he took his seat.
Then the king began to pace the long crimson carpet. “I have given much thought to my choice. Balancing precedence. And this is what I have decided. We are nearly at war. The Unseelie test our borders daily. If I die in battle, Faerie will need a warrior to lead it.” He looked pointedly at Gringras. “Not a musician.”
Not a musician? thought Gringras frantically. But I am next in line! “Respectfully, sir, but tradition…”
“Tradition favors the oldest living son—it does not require it.” The king looked almost pained as he made his proclamation. “Gringras, I am sorry. You are a fine young man. Charming. Intelligent. Talented.”
Talented. Gringras wanted to spit on the palace floor.
“But I have made Wynn heir to the throne,” the king continued. “It is for the good of Faerie, you understand.”
Gringras could not speak. He could not breathe. Tormalas was sure to know who was at fault when he recovered. Gringras knew his only protection from his brother’s wrath was to have been his position as heir. Without that he was ruined. Because his father was right. He was no warrior compared to either of his brothers. Just fine, charming, intelligent. Talented.
And ruined.
Ruined. Like a cracked pillar thrown down in the wood.
He almost smiled. Thinking of lyrics at a time like this!
