Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [88]
Peter turned away from the church and strolled down Market Street, which had been converted into an open-air walking mall, where no motorized vehicles were allowed. Restaurants, small diners and snack stands lined the street, which also had tables and chairs under shady umbrellas set out in the middle of it. Peter sat down at a random table, to wait for one of the restaurants to open up and provide him with breakfast. And even though he was quite alone in the street, he resisted the urge to constantly pat himself down, to make sure that all of his deadly secret weapons were still in place. He set Frost’s case on the table in front of him, and wondered if he shouldn’t open it up and play himself a tune. Perhaps the last song I’ll ever get to play on it, he thought, a sad and simple little farewell requiem just for myself.
PETER LOOKED OUT OF THE RESTAURANT WINDOW as he finished his breakfast, and noticed that the town had woken up at last. A man in a Pied Piper costume strolled past the window, playing merrily on his flute, and followed by a half dozen happy tourists, busy snapping pictures of him with their digital cameras. The Piper was dressed in a red and purple tunic, over tights of orange, green, yellow and white. He sported a cape of many colors and a cap with a trio of two-foot long pheasant feathers arcing out from it. He played a modern style metal transverse flute. Then, less than a minute later, another Pied Piper passed by, going the other way. This one was dressed identically to the first, but played a modern clarinet instead of a flute. In addition to his modest flock of tourists, this one was followed by a troupe of children dressed in gray mouse costume pajamas, with long cloth tails and hoods that had plush, pink and gray mouse ears sewn onto them. There were at least thirty children in the procession, and they followed their Piper in pretended enchantment, dancing and prancing along to his tune.
Peter hadn’t been able to finish his bacon and eggs. He was too nervous about the coming confrontation to do justice to a full meal. Placing a twenty-Deutschmark note on the table, for the check, plus a nice tip, he picked up Frost and left the restaurant. Market Street was crowded now. Hundreds of early-bird tourists had turned out to soak up every atom of the day’s celebrations, which might begin slowly, but would end tonight in grand, drunken feasts, public concerts and exploding fireworks. Peter turned south, away from the center of town and the largest mass of crowds.
Almost immediately, just outside of the old town’s post office, around a gradual bend in the street, Peter encountered a large stone fountain depicting the Pied Piper of legend. This was the particular fountain he’d been looking for, the one that appeared, as if by strict regulation, on the cover of every tourist brochure. It had a five-sided base, which enclosed its main pool. A pillar rose out of its center, which blossomed out into a cup-shaped upper pool that was decorated all around its circumference with carvings of parading children, along with the required rats. A life-sized bronze statue of the legendary Piper stood up from the stone cup’s center, looking nothing at all like his brother Max. This one at least was depicted as playing on a front-held, flair-ended flute, similar to what Max had actually played, so many years past.
Peter sat on the fountain’s edge, setting Frost’s case down beside him.