Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [7]
“We’re happy out here. Happy enough, anyway.” Peter had a number of old scars on his lips and at the corners of his mouth. They were tiny and nearly invisible, except with a lucky combination of proximity and perfect light. In the distance, through the cottage’s open door, they could hear the muted dry tink of porcelain cups being mated with saucers and then one quick scrape of a heavy skillet along the top of a cast iron stove.
Peter was generally a quiet man, never demonstrative, except on those rare occasions when he came into the Farm’s village to play his pipe, often accompanied by Boy Blue on his horn, Seamus McGuire on his harp, and Baby Joe Sheppard on drums. And sometimes, when the mood struck, even dour old Puss would join in with his wild, screaming fiddle.
Peter would take his time getting through a sentence, punctuating even the shortest of them with one or more extended pauses. Some Fables got like that. They lived so long that they could no longer work up any sort of hurry. Urgency just faded out of them over time. His facial expressions were even more reserved than his speech, almost to the point of nonexistence. But Rose thought she could detect a contained sadness there, matching that of his wife. “Why don’t you tell me what you came to say?” he said, after awhile.
“Bigby phoned me from Wolf Valley,” she said. “He isn’t allowed on the Farm proper, so he wants you to go see him. Today,” she added.
“I guess I could do that. Long walk though.”
“You can take my truck most of the way. Just drop me back home first, and return it when you’re done. You’ll still have to hoof it over the hills.”
“That doesn’t bother me. Only —”
“Only you want to know why?” Rose interrupted. “What was the part that I didn’t know if your wife should hear?”
“Yes. Only that.”
“Bigby can tell you more details than I can.”
“All conditions, exceptions and dissembling are duly noted and acknowledged, Rose. Now please tell me the bad thing you know but don’t want to say.”
“Your brother is back in this world,” Rose said, almost so quietly that the wind took her words.
A shadow passed over Peter’s features and stayed there. He didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he said, “Someone will have to come out here and stay with Bo.”
“Why? You should be back from Wolf Valley before nightfall, provided you leave right away. Even with her wheelchair and all — Well, I thought she was pretty independent.”
“She is,” Peter said. “She’ll be fine on her own today. But later, tomorrow probably, when I leave, I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone. It could be for some time, and there’s always the chance I won’t make it back. Someone needs to stay here with her, while I’m hunting Max.”
Out in the golden fields the dogs herded sheep and the winds played their early October games, while overhead clouds gathered to spoil the blue skies.
In which Max finds a
mystery and Peter comes
into possession of a
family heirloom.
LONG AGO IN THE LAND OF HESSE, FAR from the fields that we know, a gray spotted mule named Bonny Lumpen pulled a fat and rickety caravan wagon down a dusty road. No one sat up on the caravan’s front bench to steer her. In fact, no reins connected her to any driver, present or absent, because she was one of the talking sort of animals who could simply be told where to go. And besides, she’d traveled this route many times before, once every year in fact, and she knew the way. Bonny Lumpen plodded along at her accustomed sedate pace, pulling the caravan behind her, which swayed precariously, first one way and then the other, in the road’s deep ruts, always threatening to turn over, but never quite making up its mind to do so.
The caravan belonged to the Piper family who, as their name implied, were traveling musicians. Just as Millers mill and Fletchers fletch, the Pipers piped. At least three out of the four did. The father, Johannes, and his two sons, Max, the eldest and young Peter, all played the long pipe, which was sometimes called the single pipe,