Pipe Dreams

When the rats ate Herr Bergman's footstool, Father decided to call on the mayor. It was the same day they ate my crutch, but I was the only one who cared about that. The footstool meant money, after all; it was nearly finished and had been left on a workbench near my bed. I had leaned my crutch against the same bench, where it would be within easy reach. Easy reach of the rats, it turned out!

By the time I woke that morning, the footstool had only two legs left and the crutch looked as though a band of beaver had taken a fancy to it. The carved pad on top had been nibbled to a stub, and the rest was nearly four hands shorter than it had been the day before. When I leaned my weight on it, the whole shaft split down the middle and sent me sprawling.

I am not sure which made Father angriest—the sight of me, far too old to be sobbing on the floor in a pile of splinters, or the unpaid hours and new wood it would require to rebuild the stool. I know only that he was red-faced and trembling when he leaned down and yanked me to my feet.

"What will it take?" he yelled, bracing me against him and clamping his huge arm around my waist. "Do those monsters need to eat the trim off his wife's jacket before our fool of a mayor decides to hire the piper?"

I thought of the mayor's wife, a thin woman who walked as if she were standing on her toes inside those fur-lined boots of hers. And then I thought of the egrets I had carved on the top of my crutch, each one carefully polished with mineral spirits until its wings shone.

"A crutch is one thing," Father told me, as if he had heard the words I'd only thought. He steered me toward the workbench, where four small chests waited for finishing. "You can make another in a few hours, if you don't insist on decorating it like an emperor's walking stick." He made a snorting sound, the whinny of a large, steaming horse, then looked forlornly at the mess on the floor.

"This stool was nearly ready." He kicked the legs that remained on the halbchewed base. "The old man will not pay us twice for one stool." He handed me a mallet, unrolled an apron of chisels across the bench, then grabbed his cap and jacket from the pegs by the door. "I will call on the mayor after I fetch the birch," he told me, his tone as stern as if I were the one who had chewed the stool to shreds. "Find what you can for supper, boy. I'll not be back till that lout and his council have come to their senses."

I knew there was endless work ahead. But still I felt slyly grateful, glad that, for once, I was not the "lout" father blamed for our troubles. Ever since I was four and old enough to hold an awl, father had complained of my work. For nearly eleven years, I had been boxed about the ears and scolded for carving too slowly or polishing too fine. Now, whether or not the members of Hameln's council saw the error of their ways, Father clearly meant to set them straight. Which meant, in turn, that I would spend a whole day without being told that Frau Weedmeir was too blind to notice the finish on her strongbox. Or that unless the young Springmans had turned into royalty overnight, they did not require garlands on their settle.

As the bells of St. Nicolai rang the hour and Father started down the road, it occurred to me that he had misplaced the blame for our woes. It was, after all, that musical rat-chaser, not the council, who was the cause of the infestation. For the piper, it seemed, was entirely too good at his job. Three other towns had already hired him, and now all the vermin he'd sent packing had found their way to Hameln! The slithering rodents were everywhere: in cupboards, where they jumped out if you opened the door; in grain bins, where cooks found their droppings mixed with the chaff; and often as not, in nurseries, where they waited until dark to crawl into the cradles and set the babes howling with their nasty bites.

By the time the bells of St. Bonifatius had begun chiming, too, I was already at work. Not on the jewelry chests Father would expect finished by his return, but on a fresh crutch. Until now I had needed a new one only when I grew too tall for the old. To own the truth, I had been proud each time that happened, though Father said the only difference between a crippled child and a crippled man was that the man ate more.

Like stragglers trying to catch up, the bells in the church by the river always rang late, so now as those in our cathedral were finishing their song, the latecomers had just begun theirs. Carving as I listened, I was astonished to find my hands deciding on a new design before the rest of me had any inkling what they were about.

I had chosen a small piece of cherry with a sharp, uneven grain that would make it useless in Father's eyes. But it would do for the armrest of my crutch, and as I worked my carving tool along the grain, I created a jagged range of mountains, like the Weserbergland beyond our town. The sky behind the range I left as smooth and empty as a beggar's plate. Yet by the time both bells had fallen silent, I knew what to carve there: just above the mountains I shaped the egrets from my old crutch. Instead of standing on their long legs in a stream, though, these birds soared toward heaven, their wings beating wedge-shaped Vs into the sky. With such wide, beautiful wings, I thought, who needed legs?

When I was born, Mother hid my twisted leg until after the christening. Which is why I was baptized Emmett, a fine old name that means "hard-working and strong." I have proved to be one but not the other, and although Mother used to say "Better a strong heart than a strong back," Father never agreed. The first thing I remember is learning, much later than most wee ones, to crawl. And the second thing I remember is Father's face as he watched me drag my lame leg after me. Even now, when I catch him looking at me, I know what he sees—a worthless scrap, a waste piece like the blemished poplar he uses where no one will notice, on the bottoms of drawers, the undersides of tables, the tops of chests he will paint over.

While Mother was ill, Father tried to please her by praising my work or—and this always made her smile like a girl at Christmas—saying he thought my bad leg was beginning to straighten and flesh out. But my leg was getting no better than she was. And after she died, one day past Michaelmas last year, he no longer took the trouble to hide his impatience with me. And I no longer had her tender kiss on my head when she bade me good night. Or the sound of her laughter if I added a silly new verse to the songs we used to sing.

Our earliest "concerts" featured a single song, "Backe, backe, Kuchen," "Bake, Bake a Cake." She used to sing that one to me when I was little, as she shaped our griddlecakes by the hearth. "To bake a cake you need five things, I'm told." Her voice was light as the bells of the river church, coming to me from above as I sat in the shadow of her skirts. "Eggs, butter, salt, milk, and cornmeal to make it gold." Grinning up at her, I sang a different cake for us, one made with worms, toads, mud, and pee to make it gold! When I added my extra ingredients, Mother always reared back her head and laughed. Then she would bend down and scoop me into her arms. "Let us keep that recipe our secret, young man," she would say, pinching both my legs till the one I could feel tingled. "I think your father would rather I use cornmeal, after all."

There were more songs, more secrets over the years, and the laughter always bubbling between us. In the end, though, Mother was too weak even to sing. So I did both our parts, singing first the traditional version of an old favorite, like the one where the queen goes riding "all in green, green, green." Next I would sing my version, which featured all the people in our town—the mayor's wife in boots, boots, boots; Papa in sawdust, dust, dust; and Mother in fur, fur, fur. "And where will I get fur?" she asked me once, smiling gamely from her pillows.

I grinned and whispered in her ear. "You know our good neighbor's little dog, the one that keeps yapping all night long?"

Mother put her hand over her mouth, then laughed until she coughed. And coughed until I ran for water. After, she lay breathing so hard I was afraid for her. I hid my fear, but vowed never to make her laugh again.

I cannot explain how such sad memories made my fingers fairly dance over the wood. Perhaps it was because I knew I could not spend the time on this crutch I had lavished on my others. They had each been fashioned in stolen hours, minutes snatched when Father was at church or delivering furniture or running errands. Always, I had the old crutch to make do with until my new one was ready. Now, though, unless I wanted to be carried every where, I needed to finish today.

When the armrest was done, I found a pad of fleece to cushion it. I had just put it aside to work on a chest, when Father burst through the door. He was smiling, noisy and flushed with triumph. I tried to hide the disappointment that swamped me when the place was filled with his smell, his great arms sweeping across the room.

"You should have seen the crowd," he said, glancing only briefly at the chest before me. I had put just one coat of varnish on it, and the brass fittings still lay scattered on the table. I was certain he would rage about how little I had accomplished, but instead he gossiped on.

"It seems I am not the only one who wants to beat some brains into that muttonhead of a mayor! The council chambers were full to bursting. The whole town is fed up with the rats."

"Did you tell them about the footstool?" I asked.

"Yes, but that was nothing next to some of the others' stories." He hung up his cap and jacket, then sat across from me, reaching by habit for something to work on. As he grabbed a chest, I pulled my bad leg away from his glance, hiding it under the bench.

"The miller says the vermin have left him nothing to grind. And one fräulein told how her baby's fingers will not stop bleeding since those infernal pests bit its hand while it slept."

I said nothing, but put the top of my unfinished crutch under the bench as well. I had not shaped the shaft yet, so I would have to swing myself from bench to table to bed for the rest of the day. Father was sure to find new work for us after the little boxes were done.

"I thought we would have to wait all day," Father went on, "while everyone told his tale. I guess the mayor did, too, because suddenly he jabbed one chubby finger into the air and called for silence. 'Good folk,' he said, 'I have heard enough.' He leaned over and whispered to a member of the council, then raised that silly finger again. 'I will hire the piper tomorrow.'

"There surely never was such clapping and shouting. You'd think the old fool was bringing Our Savior to town. He promised to send for the rat-catcher by first light—he even offered to fetch the man himself. You should have heard the stomping and whistling at that, boy."

My father seldom used my name, and I would go days without hearing anyone call me Emmett. The blacksmith's apprentice sometimes shouted, "Hi, there, Emmett!" as I passed the smith's stall, and of course, the children outside the baker's all knew me and my soft heart. "Emmett! Emmett!" they would shriek each time I came for the seeded rolls Father favored. "Give us a crumb, Emmett! Give us a taste!"

"That will be a sight to see," Father was saying now. He had begun work on the chest, his hands moving so expertly with the fittings, he hardly needed to look at all. "I expect the whole town will be in the streets to watch the piper." He raised his eyes to me, and if I saw no fondness there, his expression was at least kind. "We shall take the morning off, boy. I would not want to miss those inky devils skittering out of Hameln."

"I am afraid I would only slow you down, Pater," I said, ashamed. "Unless you will allow me to carve a new crutch tonight?" I hated the reedy way my voice rose at the end of the question, the way my eyes avoided his.

He barely hesitated. "No need," he told me, waving my concern away with his thick, corded arm. "We will ride in the lumber wagon and have a fine view from there." Nothing, it seemed, would dampen his spirits, not even a crippled son.

Good as his coerced word, our mayor saw to it that the famous rat-catcher came to town the next day. It looked as though a puppet show or a magical healer were expected, so lined with people were the streets around the main square. Father and I, perched atop our wagon, had a clear view over the heads of the crowd: we could see the grand spire of St. Nicolai rising across from us and the pie sellers and candy vendors weaving through the throng. The children who normally haunted the baker's were now stationed behind the pastry seller, dogging his every step like pigeons waiting for him to drop some of the sweet stuff.

I was wishing I had been able to whittle a new crutch, to sneak away and buy a few squares of honey bread for those hungry youngsters, when silence fell on the square. The vendors stopped hawking, the children stopped playing, and everyone turned to look down the road from town hall. There, marching to the strangest, shrillest tune I had ever heard, a man wound his way in and out of side streets, gradually advancing toward the crowd in the square.

His flowing cape winked from red to green to blue as he moved. His leggings were a bright wheat color, and he wore a small striped cap on his head. By the time he had worked his way to the market square, I could see that his shoulders were broad and his face smiling. I could also see that he was not alone. Behind him, trailing like a long black ribbon in the dirt, were the rats of Hameln. The piper moved briskly across the square but appeared not in the least alarmed, as if there were nothing strange about being followed by an endless parade of rats.

And endless it was. Every rat from every rat hole in the city seemed to have fallen in love with the piper's music. Mice, too, had joined the swarm of small dark bodies that hurried in a steady, squeaking stream after the rat-catcher. As if his whistle pipe had taken ill and could play only in fits and starts, the piper's tune resembled nothing so much as a bout of hiccups, or the whine of wind trapped behind a thick oak door. It faded and swelled, darted and turned, but to the vermin it may as well have been church bells calling them to penance. Like the sinners they were, they rushed by the hundreds—nay, by the thousands—along Market Street past our astonished eyes.

By the time the last rat finally scrambled down the street, the piper had long since disappeared from view. But our holiday did not end there. People began to break from the crowd and rush after the rats to see where the piper would lead them. Father, not to be outdone, flicked the reins across old Patience's back and turned the cart to fall in line with the others. We rode past most of the good citizens of Hameln till we came to the edge of town and the river. And though we stopped at the shoreline, the piper and his devil's brigade did not.

Still smiling in between breaths on his pipe, the rat-catcher was knee-deep in the chilly water of the Weser. He continued to play the strange music and the rats continued to follow him—right into the water. They leapt with a will into the river, paddled briefly, then sank with a chorus of sharp, outraged shrieks. Soon the water was black with them, chopped to a froth with their desperate splashing. The air around us rang with the shouts of everyone on shore. Father threw his cap against the sky, and I yelled until I was hoarse. It felt grand, indeed, to see the end of those long-tailed nightmares and to have something to cheer about at last.

It was not two days later that Father went back to see the mayor. The tax collector had paid us a visit and been turned away. "The rats are gone," Father told the man, who despite his huge girth seemed reluctant to demand what he'd come for. "Why should I give you money now?"

"The mayor promised the rat-catcher," the collector said. "Only yesterday, he gave his word."

"Then he should have given his money, too." Father shut the door in the poor man's face, rubbed his hands on his apron, and returned to work. But when the blacksmith and the baker decided to complain to the mayor that he was asking for too much money, Father took off his apron again and went with them. I was not sorry to see him go. The trip to town hall would surely give me time to finish my crutch. Hobbling as I was from place to place, I missed my wooden leg!

As it happened, I could have fashioned two crutches while Father was away. I worked happily for several hours, even adding a chain of grazing sheep along the shaft. Then, instead of wondering what was keeping him, I set off for the baker's the minute I was finished. As always, the beggar children were waiting in the alley by the shop. When I came out with a loaf for Father and me and a bag of buns for them, they sent up a great hurrah and gathered around me, all talking at once. "Here, Emmett!" one boy in a dirty vest cried. "Look how skinny I am!" He opened the vest and lifted his shirt to show me his belly. "Emmett, that's nothing," a smaller boy yelled. "That pig's belly is a mountain compared to my hungry stomach." He closed his eyes and sucked in the flesh under his ribs.

The girls in the group rolled their eyes but could not keep from laughing. They weren't about to show their bellies, so they tried a different tack: "How rude these ruffians are!" a girl named Gretchen scolded. Taller than most of the boys, she was not above cuffing the younger ones when they misbehaved. "If you want a sweet, your talk must be sweet," she told them, then turned to me. "Oh, Herr Emmett," she whined in a high, thin voice nothing like her normal tone. "How kind of you to buy those buns." She bent her long frame into a deep, awkward curtsy. "May I try one, pretty please?"

But it was Ilse, as usual, who won the first piece. She stood quietly in the middle of the pack, a shy little thing in a black cape and bonnet. When I dangled a raisin-filled bun above the rowdy crew, she did not raise her hands like the rest, though her hungry eyes followed the treat. So of course, I tore off a good half of the little cake and gave it to her. "Here, fräulein," I said, bowing from my crutch. "Gott segne Dich." God bless you.

Some of these children, I knew, had parents who sent them out to beg while they themselves spent the day drinking in the Green Boar or picking the pockets of those who did. Others had been orphaned or abandoned when their parents died or were sent to jail. These unfortunates tagged along with the rest for protection. But Ilse had a mother, she always made sure to tell me, who neither drank nor robbed. "Mein mutter sie wird zu himmel gehen." My mother is going to heaven. The poor woman, it seemed, was too ill to leave her bed, and like my own mother at the last, lay patiently waiting for the coughing to stop and her pain to end.

Ilse took the cake now and, as I might have expected, tore a generous portion off to give to a squalling infant in another girl's arms. They were like a family, these orphans and runaways, a tiny family that looked after its own. I knew it was a sin, but sometimes I envied the beggar children. I had a warm bed and a father who taught me a trade, but I had no littermates, no warm bodies to jostle and nest against.

***

Father came back home well satisfied, whistling as he hung his coat and cap by the door, took up his apron, and tied it around his waist.

Though I would never have dared whistle out loud, I was whistling, too—inside, where my little beggars had lifted my spirits. The children had all admired my new crutch. Not only was it sturdy and just the right size, but the carving was surely my finest: the sweep of wings, the cut-out mountains on the armrest, and then, along the shaft, a shepherd leading his flock down from the foothills. I could not help but feel pride when the ragamuffins gathered round, touching it as if it were a relic in church. How Use had laughed as she counted the sheep and followed their tracks with her tiny finger!

I used the crutch now to make my way to our hearth, though I ran the risk of Father's making a joke of the "curlicues and doodads" with which I'd decorated it. "And what did he say, the mayor?" I asked, hooking a small pot above the flames. It was well past suppertime, and the church bells had rung twice since I'd lit the candles.

"The old fool," Father told me, bent over the last of the four chests. "He sings whichever way the wind blows."

I could not cook griddlecakes the way Mother used to, but cornmeal mush made a fine supper with roasted turnips. Not that Father would taste the food, anyway. He always ate like a human whirlwind, sucking up whatever was on his plate, belching after and stumbling to bed.

"Once I persuaded him that the rat-catcher could not very well summon dead rats back from the river," Father said, looking extremely pleased with himself, "he agreed there was no need to pay so much as he had promised.

"In fact," he added, turning the chest, applying varnish with his smallest brush, "I warrant he has decided not to pay him at all."

"But the rat-catcher worked the whole morning," I said. Father surely knew what it was like to have hours of labor go for nothing. Wasn't that why he had gone to the mayor in the first place?

He shook his shaggy head now, shoved the finished chest toward me. "Did you see me smile even once, boy, when I was fitting the lock on this box?" He stood up to take off his apron, then came to the table where I'd set out our bowls. "Do you see me asking good folk to pay me for a pipe dance?"

"But the rats, even the mice, they..."

"Those vermin were chased here by that rat-catcher," Father said. "It was all part of his plan to fleece the town."

"Still," I told him, "they are gone now. The piper kept his part of the bargain."

"He kept it with magic. Those rats were under a spell." Father brought his bowl to the fire, held it out for me to fill. "For all we know, that spell caster is in league with the devil. Would you have me help Satan earn his keep, boy?"

There was nothing to say. It mattered little whether the piper was a heavenly messenger or the devil's own son. Father would not be persuaded to pay for help he no longer needed. We finished our meal in silence and went to our beds the same way.

It was three days later, on St. Paul and St. John's feast day, when the piper came back to Hameln. The mayor gave him no money, and the rest of the council scolded him for trying to do business on a feast day. Then they all hurried off to church. Which is where Father and I were when the rat-catcher followed his debtors into the great nave of St. Nicolai. The mass was beginning, and we two had just found a bench in back when the piper strode in the door. He made his way down an aisle in the direction of the altar. I watched him stop at the seventh station of the cross, glance briefly at the council members who had taken seats up front, and then look up at the statue of Our Fallen Savior.

The piper, in that moment, bore little resemblance to the smiling magician who had played the rats down our streets only days before. Older, wearier, he looked as pained and tormented as the image above him on the Way of Sorrow. By the time he woke from his sad trance, the councilmen had all closed their eyes and assumed pious expressions. The piper turned on his heel and went back to the street.

Underneath the chants for mass, I heard a different music start up in the square outside. Though it sounded faint as fairy tunes, something in this lively melody made me restless. After a while I could bear it no longer and, bracing my crutch against the bench, rose from my seat. Father was used to my standing so as not to pain my bad leg. When I left his side and walked out the door, he remained unmoving and still, so still I suspected he had fallen asleep.

If the music had been faint in the church, it was not much louder in the open air. It sounded like a melody played a great distance away, and so it proved to be. A crowd of children—from toddlers carried by their brothers and sisters to boys and girls of twelve summers—hurried past me on the road out of town toward the mountains. I looked ahead of them and saw a line of children, wide as the road, stretching from the gates of the city into the hills.

I shook my head, wondering what could be drawing them away, when my little family of beggars rushed by. "Come on, Emmett!" they cried. "You will miss it all if you do not run." They buzzed past me like a swarm of bees headed for the hive. Only Use and a tall boy named Heinrich stayed behind.

"You will never keep up with your bad leg, Emmett, sir," Use said, studying me with sad, grown-up eyes.

"He is too old to go, anyway," Heinrich told her. "Come on, Use, or we, too, will be left behind."

"Wait!" I hobbled after them. "What is it? What is that music?"

Ilse hung on my crutch, jumping with eagerness. "You see? He hears it." She pulled and tugged me ahead. "Emmett can come, too."

"But the piper said..." Henrich turned, talking as he walked backwards toward the peaks of the Weserbergland.

"How old are you, Emmett, sir?" Use unfastened herself from my crutch, tried pushing me from behind.

"Nearly fifteen," I told her, suddenly feeling that my age was something to be ashamed of.

"I told you." Heinrich turned back to face the mountains. "He is too old. The piper said only children could hear his song."

"I cannot hear it well," I told them, stopping to listen again. The piper's music swelled from far away, but it sounded sweet today, not at all like the brisk high-pitched tune with which he had lured the rats.

"Emmett is our friend," Ilse announced. "He must come with us. He will share the food and new clothes."

"Food?" I asked. "Clothes?"

"Yes," Ilse told me. "Can you not hear it in the music?" She cocked her pretty head to one side, as if she held a seashell to her ear. "There will be more than we can ever eat if we go with him, Emmett." She smiled, her whole body alert, eager. "And firewood for Mama. And a medicine to cure her cough."

"And puppets," added Heinrich. "I hear a puppet show. There will be benches to watch it on, and no one will kick us away because we lack coins."

"I hear milk for all the babies," Ilse said. "And new shoes with no holes!"

"There is all this in that music?" I hobbled faster, my face to the mountains. But I despaired of keeping up with the rest. Then, as we passed our street, I remembered the lumber cart. "Wait here, Use," I said. "We shall catch the piper yet."

By the time I had harnessed old Patience and ridden the cart to the spot I'd left them, Heinrich had gone on ahead and only Use remained. I pulled her up next to me and we took off at a good pace. As we traveled through the huge gates that guard our town, we passed others along the road, and they begged rides, too. Soon the cart was packed with little ones, laughing and waving their hands at those who must walk. We moved more slowly now, but at last I heard the music grow louder.

When we caught up to the piper, he had marched the children through the open fields and into the foothills of the mountains. He put down his pipe to survey the line of young ones still snaking its way out of town. I, too, turned to see them, and the sight took my breath away. I had not realized how many children lived in Hameln, but here they all were! It looked like an army, like the children's crusade that had gone to fight the infidels when my grandfather was a boy. Granddad had loved to tell how the children across Germany and France dropped their milk pails and hoes to take up swords and shields.

There were no swords in the ranks that filled the winding road from Hameln, but surely that small army marched with as good a will. On sturdy legs, they came hurrying to join us, and those who were too young to walk were carried by those who were not. I could have varnished a dozen chests in the time it took them to move to our position in the foothills. When they had, a great hush fell over them all as the piper raised his hand to speak.

I pulled the cart as close as I could, and by picking up a few of the children who had crept nearer still, we were able at last to be no more than a few yards from the man who had saved Hameln from the rats. He was not dressed in the gay costume he had worn before; instead, he was clad in green, like a hunter. He sported no cap, but wore a cape with a great clasp that gleamed in the sun. "Kinder," he said. Children. "Your parents are in church. They seem to believe they need not live a holy life so long as they bend their knees at mass." His smile, like a mischievous child's, belied his harsh words. "But I bear you no ill will on their behalf. In fact, I hope to spare you the hardships that have fixed themselves like barnacles to the souls of your elders."

He finished speaking, then took up his pipe and played a short tune. His music was no longer faint, but as clear as if I had leaned over a tumbling falls and was letting the roar fill my ears. I wasn't sure what the piper's words meant, but his music made a picture in my head. I saw deep woods broken by a single ray of sun piercing it from overhead. A bird, like the ones on my crutch, flew out of a tree and called to me.

Then the music stopped and the piper spoke again. "Love and song are your birthrights," he told us. "Like good Moses, I have come to lead you out from this hard Egypt to a place where you shall have both." He lifted his pipe once more to his lips and, though I cannot say how, played a chain of notes that sounded like laughter. For a dizzy moment, time melted away and I was holding my mother's skirts, smiling into her surprise. Toads in our cake, Emmett? What will Papa say?

As I listened, the music turned slower, sadder. Now—perhaps it was in the way the piper rolled his fingertips across the stops—the notes sounded like sighs. Their softness made me think of Mother again, but this time I remembered her voice, how it was thin as a whisper in those last, lost days: And where will I get fur?

"In the place I am taking you, lambkins," the Piper told us, putting aside his pipe for the third time, "it is always spring, and buds are forever new. Nothing grows old and sour. No one is cold or hungry or lame." At this last, a few young ones turned to look at me, but I did not mind being singled out. It felt almost like an honor, as if my bad leg had earned me this moment.

When the rat-catcher ended his speech and headed up the steep wall of rock ahead of us, his tune changed again. It trickled from his pipe like a sweet May drink that made us want more with every sip.

I do not know what the others on the path below us heard in that song, but I know each child in our cart found something different in the ditty. One boy laughed like a yipping pup, shouting that it announced a holiday for apprentices; another said the tune would take us to the other side of the mountains, where a great ship with a crew of child sailors lay in port; poor Gretchen insisted the piper was playing a palace, where she would wear gowns with jeweled bodices and diadems in her hair. I looked at the beggar girl's tangled mop and almost laughed out loud, but Use cupped my chin in both her hands and turned my face to hers.

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, even my little beggars, had told me how they played in such caves, how they followed dark tunnels to underground rivers or to the sudden light and flowers of mountain meadows. Which is why, when the rat-catcher smiled and walked into the cave, not one of the children was afraid to follow.

He remained just inside the entrance, now waving the children in, now playing his sprightly marching tune. Soon nearly the whole crowd had walked into the cave—big brothers carried little ones, friends raced arm in arm, stragglers picked up their pace and dashed toward the black hole in the mountain. Each of them raced for the dream the song had promised them, each sure they were only steps from making it come true. On they marched, looking for grand meals and new shoes, dead parents and lost sisters, ball games that would never end and dolls that could grow up with their owners. Beds of lace and silver dishes, talking dogs and smiling moons and rivers full of fish that caught and cooked themselves.

The piper stayed just inside the cave's mouth, waving to each child who passed. All the while he kept playing and all the while wings fluttered in my head and heart. "Go on, now," I told Use. I struggled to my feet and settled onto my crutch again, even though I could feel a blister where it rubbed under my arm. "I will follow fast behind."

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.