Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [20]
Flushed and eager, the little girl was more alive than I had ever seen her. "Come, Emmett!" she cried. "The piper is playing Mama's cure. If we follow, I will see her healthy and warm."
It was clear we could not ride up the cliffs. Old Patience was already silver with sweat, and even a billy goat could not have dragged Father's cart across that rocky slope. "We shall have to go on foot from here," I told the children. Forgetting that I was not a goat but only a one-legged boy, I hoisted myself to the ground and held up my arms for Use. She found my crutch and lay it in my hands instead. That was when it first occurred to me that I might not be able to follow the others.
I was swamped with a familiar loneliness, the ancient hurt of someone who has always watched while others ran and played, just out of reach. As the rat-catcher scrambled nimbly up the rock, playing all the while, I saw where he was leading everyone. Not with my eyes, since nothing was visible beyond the crest of the mountain. But the place came clear to me, as sharp and real as wind on a hilltop.
In the land the piper played, everyone flew. On wings wide as banners, radiant and fine as sunlight, young and old traveled effortlessly through the air. My mother was in his song, but she was no longer pale and coughing. Instead, she soared between clouds and birds, waving as she looked down at me and the mountains below. I waved back, already straining upward, feeling my own wings sprouting from my back. Even as I dug my crutch into the rocks strewn along my way, new wings, like two sweetly burning kisses, worked their way through my shoulder blades. Mama smiled encouragement and opened her arms, while those tender, feathered buds began to uncurl and lift me above the earth.
But not soon enough. For while the other children following the piper used both hands to haul themselves over boulders and swing across ravines toward the piper's music, I kept hold of my crutch. Though the rat-catcher's tune gave me wings, they were only a promise, a dream of what I would be when the piper led us home. I did not, could not, throw away my third leg just yet. Soon all the children except Ilse had left me behind.
"Do not worry, Herr Emmett," the faithful girl told me. She worked her little body under my free arm like a second crutch and tried to lift me over the narrow, winding gorge carved by a now vanished stream. "I will help you." She followed the piper's progress with longing eyes but would not leave me to fend for myself. With each small advance we made, I could see the end of the line of children moving further into the distance and hear my little friend's sighs grow longer and more forlorn.
Finally I could bear it no more. "Ilse," I told her, "you must leave me and go on." I had the pledge of the music to keep me company, and the vision of my wings. I brandished my crutch like a sword. "I will meet you up ahead."
"Nein, Herr Emmett." The yearning for her own dream was still in her eyes and voice, but she would not forsake me. She only adjusted my weight across her tiny shoulder and set out again for the ledge where the piper had come to a stop. "We are almost there."
Four more times, before we reached the others, I begged Use to go ahead. And four more times she refused. The piper was stationed above us, playing a sweet, jolly tune that gave us both fresh hope. But when we had at last caught up to the others, even his music could not keep my good leg from trembling like the bad. I was unable to take another step. "Here we are at last," I panted, throwing myself on a small grassy space between boulders. "Hurry up! I will come as soon as I have got my breath again."
Ilse raised her eyes to the mossy crag above the crowd of young ones. There stood the piper, guarding the entrance to a mountain cave. Many of Hameln's children,