Black Pearls (7 page)

Making sure she could keep me in sight, the little girl scampered off. At first she stopped every few steps, to turn and wave, waiting until I had waved back before going on. Finally, though, the music set her running and she did not stop until she reached the cave. I watched her bow shyly to the rat-catcher, watched him pause his tune for the briefest moment as he bent his head to whisper something in her ear. Whatever it was, it made her smile—no demure lass's smile, but a broad grin fit for any careless boy. That smile was the last I saw of Use. She turned to bid me make haste, then raced eagerly after the rest.

I was nearly alone outside the cave. Besides me, only a girl my own age and a toddler had not yet scaled the hill to the piper. And if the piper's music had not shown me my heart's desire, had not sounded like wings and my mother's laughter, I would have let those two stragglers climb the last rise without me. My arm had been rubbed raw by the new crutch and the arduous climb.

At last, though I had to follow a good distance behind the girls, all three of us stood before the rat-catcher. Up close, he was even more handsome than he had seemed from afar. His countenance was lined and dark from the sun, but his features were noble. He looked at me with such warmth that I was astonished when he put down his pipe and barred us from the cave's entrance. "I am sorry, indeed," he told us, "that you have come all this way. But you may go no further."

At first I could not believe his words and persisted in trying to enter the cave as the others had before us. It was not until he braced his hand on my chest that I stopped trying to slip by him.

"You are grown past twelve," the piper said, not unkindly. "It is too late for you." He stared at me, taking my measure as if he planned to fit me with stockings and a cape. "Perhaps it is for the best, after all. The way is long on the other side. You have the heart for it, but not the legs."

"As for you two," he told the girls who stood fast by the cave, clutching each other's hands, "the wonders that wait yonder are only for the little one." He turned to the older girl. "Go home with this lad. Your parents will be glad of your return."

I wanted to tell him about the wings I had felt sprouting from my back, about the place where legs would not be needed. But he was already pushing the two of us from the cave, and though his dusky face had turned sad, his voice was firm: "Be a good fellow now and lead this lass back home."

The smaller girl tried to reach her sister from behind the piper, while the older one wept, begging him to let her go with the rest. It was not until she and I had been forced back onto the path outside the cave that I realized her eyes were of no use to her. Instead of scrambling up the path, she remained pressed against the rocky sides of the cave, trying to feel her way back the way we'd come.

"I want to see," the girl wailed as she walked. "Please, let me see."

But the piper turned his back on us, withdrew into the cave, and raised his hands. As if he had pulled down the cover of a stall or drawn the curtain on a puppet stage, the stone wall of the cave began to thicken and cover the entrance. Bit by bit, the hole sealed itself up, and though I raced back and beat my crutch against the rock, there was no stopping it. Soon there was nothing left but the moss-covered face of the mountain. It was as if it had stood that way for hundreds of years, as if there had never been a cave there at all.

The line of children that returned to Hameln that afternoon was a good deal shorter than the one which had set out in the morning. The blind girl, whose name was Berta, and I moved slowly, inching our way back to town. This time, of course, there was no music to urge us on, and my good leg had begun to throb, so that the poor girl's leaning on me made each step more painful than the last.

Berta told me she had stolen away from home without telling her mother. She had persuaded her little sister to come with her, but now feared what her parents might do when she returned. "I heard the music," she said, "and felt I would die if I did not follow the others. But now I have lost my little darling and must live all alone in the dark."

She stopped to wipe her tears, then leaned on me once more. My leg nearly folded under the renewed weight, but in truth I had begun to feel less sorry for myself. I could see, after all, and could walk where I pleased, slow as I was.

"I am happy for my sister, but what is to become of me, Emmett?" Berta seemed to grow more frantic as we drew toward the city gates. "My mother keeps me like a linnet in a cage. I am never allowed outside the house unless my sister takes my hand."

Sure enough, once I had guided her back to the small house from which she had snuck away at dawn, a woman rushed out and, without a word to me, hurried Berta inside. I never saw her again.

As for
my
homecoming, Father was clearly relieved when I walked through the door. "Good!" he said. "I have a new order for three stools and a hope chest." He set the work out between us on the bench. "I told the smith that thieving rat-catcher wouldn't want a cripple."

I did not bother to ask who might best be called a thief, the piper or the men who had refused to pay him. Instead, I kept my silence. For once, I looked forward to working at the bench, to a long stretch of hours during which I would not have to put my good leg to the test or lean my sore arm across my crutch.

As we set about the new orders, Father told me how the entire town was in an uproar, how all the mothers and fathers had missed their children after church. How they had scoured the streets until a nursemaid and two mothers reported that all the little ones had run after the piper. The women had called and called, had chased after the children, but the youngsters had hidden from them, then scampered out of sight.

When I confessed that I, too, had followed the piper, Father paid me more mind than he ever had before. He held my eyes while I talked, took in every word. He asked question after question, then decided he must visit the mayor once more. "We will send men into the cave," he said. "We will catch that wizard and make him sorry he ever set foot in Hameln."

But you know how it turned out, don't you? Everyone for leagues around has heard the story. The cave has not been found, nor has a single child returned to Hameln. All the parents are in mourning and the street down which the piper led his children's army has been renamed. Now we call it "
Bunelose Gasse,
" the street of silence. The council has passed a law that no singing or music be allowed there, not that anyone feels like singing or play ing music, anyway. Hameln is a ghost town, with no little ones chasing down the roads, pleading for pennies to spend at the market or laughing and clapping at the puppet shows. My small beggar friends no longer wait for me by the baker's, no longer suck in their stomachs to prove how much room they have for cakes and buns.

There are other boys and girls my own age left here, but none younger than twelve. So we are half what we were, forlorn and sorrowful, though some of the parents have not given up hope. Even now, a full year since the piper led the children away, they light candles and place them in the front windows of their houses each night. Sometimes, when I am coming back from errands, I look up to see lonely shadows standing watch at all these windows. Our churches are filled to overflowing with mothers and fathers praying that their sons and daughters will be restored to them. Two crosses of white stone have been erected in the foothills outside the city gates, one on each side of the place where Berta's little sister and I saw the entrance to the cave.

As for Berta, her mother guards her so closely now, she is not even allowed in church. When Father sends me out with the wagon, I always drive past her house in hopes of talking to her. But all I see is a shadow peering from behind the windows, a shadow I fancy is Berta, waiting for another chance to run away.

And me? My good leg has not recovered from my climb up the mountain. It pains me often now, and Father says I am useless. Perhaps he is right, for I am grown sickly, too, like my mother. Sometimes I burn more wood than I work, sitting by the fire and shivering, even when the day is warm.

I have not forgotten the song of wings or the place the piper's music promised me. I remember every note, and I sing them over to myself when I am feeling well enough to work at the bench. I do not know if such a paradise exists or if, as the town fathers all say, the rat-catcher fooled the children and marched them into slavery. Use's dream, you see, never came true. Her mother died a few weeks after Use and the others disappeared. I went to see her once. I told her how Use longed for her to get well, but she only sighed and turned her face to the wall. Magic and life are both like God's will, impossible to understand.

I have put words to the rat-catcher's melody, words that speak what his pipe played. "
Every hope you've ever hoped, every dream you've dreamed.
"It is a song I dare not sing aloud, but it is seldom out of my heart. "
Every plan you've ever planned, every scheme you've schemed."Now
and then, Father looks at me darkly, as if he knows what I am thinking. "Sit up straight," he growls. He shakes his head and nods at my leg, propped on a stool to keep it from throbbing. "You have carved too deep there," he will say, pointing. Or, "Do you want to shame me with that finish?"

I do not care. I draw my leg under the table and bend over my work so he cannot see my face. I keep singing, inside, where only I can hear. When I come to the part about rising off the ground like an egret, about letting my legs dangle in the sky, I feel those two burning kisses again on my back.

He who dares to follow me,
he who dares to fly,
shall set the wind against his breast,
shall see with God's own eye.

I swear to you, my new wings start to sprout, to unfurl in that small, close room where I work under my father's scornful gaze. The certainty comes stealing over me then, a tingling bright and clear as the bells of St. Bonifatius. Once more the piper promises me, once more the pledge is made—it will not be long before I, too, have flown away.

The first thing she noticed was that she wasn't cold anymore. When she opened her eyes to see if someone had stoked the fire, there was a pair of bare feet on the earthen floor in front of her. She had fallen asleep over the mending, and her fingers tingled, either from wearing a thimble too long or from the spectacular warmth that filled the whole room.

Gretel knew it was her angel even before she looked up, even though when she did, there were no wings. Or perhaps, she thought afterward, they had been folded behind, where she couldn't see. The figure standing in their tiny cottage looked at once astonishing and familiar. Though the body was taller, stronger than she remembered, the face was the same, and the eyes—the eyes that studied Gretel with head-to-toe delight. And just as she had each time her angel came to her, Gretel wanted more than anything to reach out, to touch the shining skin, the long transparent robes. But she couldn't bear to frighten the vision away and to find her hands empty, clutching air.

So she sat still, basking in the warmth and a steady, low sound that was like the humming of crickets, though it was long past the season when those tiny noisemakers rubbed their legs together to announce spring. It was as if everything around her—the small table, the fire in the hearth, even the bedrolls under the window ledge—was buzzing like bees, whispering in the language of birch or flame or sweet hay.
Mother,
the table said.
Mother,
spoke the fire and the hay.
Mother.

When Hansel slammed through the door and staggered in under a mountain of cordwood, the whispering died and the angel melted away. "Are your ears stopped, girl?" he asked, spilling the logs by the fire, wiping his face with his sleeve. "I told you I would kick the door when I had the wood ready."

Blinking, Gretel willed back the angel, the tiny voices. But there was only Hansel, filling the room with cold air and resentment. "I did not hear you, Brother," she told him. "I was ... sewing."

"Ay," he said. "Inside, where it is dry and warm. While I was splitting wood with no gloves."

She wanted to make it up to him. She always wanted to make it up. "I saw something, Hansel. Something beautiful." If she could help him see it, if he could share the splendor, maybe he would feel warmer.

"And what was that, Sister?" He looked out the tiny window to make certain their parents weren't nearby, then threw himself, full-length, in front of the hearth. "Still more heavenly nonsense? More messengers with wings?"

She picked up her mending, told the cloth instead of him. "I could not see the wings this time," she said. "But there was such a feeling of peace in the house, Hansel. I know Mother was nearby, and I know Father will come back with good news."

Hansel rolled onto his stomach but sat up suddenly, his fingers to his lips. "Not a word of your visions, girl." He scrambled to his feet and set about stacking the logs of wood. "Do you hear?"