Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [18]
The piper, in that moment, bore little resemblance to the smiling magician who had played the rats down our streets only days before. Older, wearier, he looked as pained and tormented as the image above him on the Way of Sorrow. By the time he woke from his sad trance, the councilmen had all closed their eyes and assumed pious expressions. The piper turned on his heel and went back to the street.
Underneath the chants for mass, I heard a different music start up in the square outside. Though it sounded faint as fairy tunes, something in this lively melody made me restless. After a while I could bear it no longer and, bracing my crutch against the bench, rose from my seat. Father was used to my standing so as not to pain my bad leg. When I left his side and walked out the door, he remained unmoving and still, so still I suspected he had fallen asleep.
If the music had been faint in the church, it was not much louder in the open air. It sounded like a melody played a great distance away, and so it proved to be. A crowd of children—from toddlers carried by their brothers and sisters to boys and girls of twelve summers—hurried past me on the road out of town toward the mountains. I looked ahead of them and saw a line of children, wide as the road, stretching from the gates of the city into the hills.
I shook my head, wondering what could be drawing them away, when my little family of beggars rushed by. "Come on, Emmett!" they cried. "You will miss it all if you do not run." They buzzed past me like a swarm of bees headed for the hive. Only Use and a tall boy named Heinrich stayed behind.
"You will never keep up with your bad leg, Emmett, sir," Use said, studying me with sad, grown-up eyes.
"He is too old to go, anyway," Heinrich told her. "Come on, Use, or we, too, will be left behind."
"Wait!" I hobbled after them. "What is it? What is that music?"
Ilse hung on my crutch, jumping with eagerness. "You see? He hears it." She pulled and tugged me ahead. "Emmett can come, too."
"But the piper said..." Henrich turned, talking as he walked backwards toward the peaks of the Weserbergland.
"How old are you, Emmett, sir?" Use unfastened herself from my crutch, tried pushing me from behind.
"Nearly fifteen," I told her, suddenly feeling that my age was something to be ashamed of.
"I told you." Heinrich turned back to face the mountains. "He is too old. The piper said only children could hear his song."
"I cannot hear it well," I told them, stopping to listen again. The piper's music swelled from far away, but it sounded sweet today, not at all like the brisk high-pitched tune with which he had lured the rats.
"Emmett is our friend," Ilse announced. "He must come with us. He will share the food and new clothes."
"Food?" I asked. "Clothes?"
"Yes," Ilse told me. "Can you not hear it in the music?" She cocked her pretty head to one side, as if she held a seashell to her ear. "There will be more than we can ever eat if we go with him, Emmett." She smiled, her whole body alert, eager. "And firewood for Mama. And a medicine to cure her cough."
"And puppets," added Heinrich. "I hear a puppet show. There will be benches to watch it on, and no one will kick us away because we lack coins."
"I hear milk for all the babies," Ilse said. "And new shoes with no holes!"
"There is all this in that music?" I hobbled faster, my face to the mountains. But I despaired of keeping up with the rest. Then, as we passed our street, I remembered the lumber cart. "Wait here, Use," I said. "We shall catch the piper yet."
By the time I had harnessed old Patience and ridden the cart to the spot I'd left them, Heinrich had gone on ahead and only Use remained. I pulled her up next to me and we took off at a good pace. As we traveled through the huge gates that guard our town, we passed others along the road, and they begged rides, too. Soon the cart was packed with little ones, laughing and waving their hands at those who must walk.