Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [73]
When he was done, he showered and dressed, carefully secreting all of his diverse instruments of death and mayhem into the various hidden pockets of his best brown suit. Then he checked out of his room, still in the dark hours of the morning, asking the night clerk to provide him with an international stamp and then post his letter for him. He retrieved his rental car from the very ordinary countryside parking lot and drove into Hamelin, where he once again surrendered it into the care of the all-night robotic underground automobile storage silo.
Taking Frost in its case with him, he walked the half-block to the high-arched gateway that separated modern Hamelin from the oldest part of the town. Just at the first light of dawn, Peter Piper stood outside the gate, looking up at the bas-relief sculpture on the gateway arch over his head. It depicted an ancient scene of the infamous Rattenfanger, the Pied Piper, leading a parade of ensorcelled children out of town.
In which Max perfects his craft
and then visits Hamelin,
where he does wondrous
and terrible things.
FROM THAT DAY ON, MAX LIVED ALONE IN the Black Forest, wearing not a stitch of clothing, and dwelling under no roof save the canopy of green branches overhead. His only possession was the flute named Fire, and if he hoped to stay warm, he’d have to learn to play a tune that would in fact conjure fire. Likewise, if he wished to stay dry, he’d have to devise a different tune that would make the rain pass him by, just as he’d have to compose a song of summoning, to draw the beasts of the woods to him, if he ever wanted aught to eat.
“Why can’t I stay here?” Max had said to the Black Forest Witch (for a witch indeed she proved to be), when she’d ventured to turn him out of her home.
“Because,” she said, “when you live in comfort you become lazy and indolent. The Max of old returns, the whining, human boy, who only wants all things to be provided to him. But when you face privation, when you’re forced to live rough, in the deep of the woods, the other Max comes alive. That’s the creature I want to know and encourage, the merciless beast in the night who never was a man but is a new thing all its own. That’s the Max that might someday learn to tame the powers hidden in Fire’s depths.”
“At least let me take my clothes and my sword.”
“Never,” the witch said. “You’ve accepted my gift, and all else belongs to me now. You may get them back someday, when you’ve unlocked Fire’s secrets. And even then you must first prove to my satisfaction that you can wear the things of man, and dwell among men, without becoming man again. Only then will you be fit to enact my chastisements against those who’ve so grievously tasked me.”
“How long will that take?”
“When has the passage of time ever mattered to me?”
Max knew that there were some questions to which an answer was neither expected nor desired. He suspected this was one of those. So, with nothing more to discuss, he took up Fire and went naked and alone into the forest, where he lived a long time.
ONCE A YEAR, ON THE EVENING OF THE HEXENNACHT, Max was allowed to return to the witch’s house. On his first visit he demonstrated how he’d learned to set fires and control the rains, making them appear and dissipate at his desire, all at the command of the many haunting tunes he’d crafted. He could make any animal of the forest flee from him, or else come to him, and sit passively, within arm’s length, while he took up a sharp stone and killed it for his supper. This too he showed to her.
“I’m not impressed,” she said. “Where’s the true mastery? Why is it you need to take up a stone to kill and strip the flesh? Why haven’t you composed a more subtle tune that will not only cause the animal to come to you, but to expire at your feet, and