Pay the Piper (7 page)

They didn't look any better.

Or any worse.

*   *   *

DINNER WAS A STRANGE AFFAIR.
Her father was dressed like Harry Potter, with a wizard's pointy hat and a lightning bolt over his right eyebrow. But otherwise he was still in a business suit.

“Harry grown-up,” he explained. “Though I'll also have a robe. And boots.”

“And be stifling,” Callie said.

“Just warm,” he retorted.

Her mother as a witch was even weirder. She'd applied green makeup to her face and hands. Some of it had come off on the macaroni and cheese.

“Vegetable dye, I hope,” Callie muttered, pushing some of the greener pieces to the side of her plate.

Nick was having trouble keeping his wizard sleeves out of his bowl. He was a smaller version of his father, but the sleeves seemed large enough for both of them. Callie left the table, found two rubber bands, and made him cuffs.

“Thanks, Cal,” he said, looking up at her with adoration.
Probably,
she thought, with a twist of her mouth,
the same way I used to look up at Mars. Who dumped me to play the fairy king.

“Sorry I can't do the big T&T with you, Bugbrain,” she told him. “You sure look … magical.”

He beamed.

“The Piatt kids will be by in fifteen minutes, Nick,” the witch said. “We'll be gone, but Callie will be here when you get back.”

“And not a minute past eight o'clock,” said the big Harry Potter, adjusting his hat. “Then off to bed.”

Nick nodded. “Can I have one piece of candy then?”

“Just one,” the witch and the old Potter said together.

“Or you'll be flying higher than a witch without a broom!” added Mom, and punctuated it with a cackle.

“Remember that, Calcephony,” her father intoned and waved his wand. “Eight o'clock is pumpkin time for this little wizard.”

“Honestly,” Callie said, as she excused herself from the table and headed upstairs, “this has to be the weirdest family in the entire world.”

She was to remember that later. Much later. When she longed for their small strangeness in the midst of a much greater one.

13 · Casting

In a small wooded copse atop a large hill, Gringras had cleared an area to work. Lit candles stood at the five corners and a small brazier sputtered and sparked in the center.

As he skipped and danced, playing his flute, shadows from the flickering lights painted mad caricatures of him in the treetops. Woodland creatures—rabbits and squirrels and brown-eyed does—gathered around the clearing, their eyes glowing in the darkness.

Gringras reflected on how he had come to this predicament, this earthly place. How he, a minstrel prince of Faerie, could be reduced to a wandering busker, singing for his supper. How he, a magician of some skill, had ended up in this magic-less land, trying to cast any spell of note. How he, once a powerful prince, had become lower then the meanest
bogie,
who at least has the good taste to leave a changeling in place of the children
it
steals.

Gringras danced and played.

And remembered.

*   *   *

HE REMEMBERED THE WARM SPRING
day—like most of the days in Faerie—when he decided to kill his older brother.

Gringras had two brothers: Tormalas was older, and Wynn was younger, putting Gringras in the middle. He had neither the power of the older brother nor the freedom of the younger.
The middle billy goat gruff,
he thought. He followed humbly in their footsteps, a dutiful sibling, until he would finally fade into obscurity, munching on the good green grass on the other side of the bridge.

Gringras had no wish to fade into obscurity.

But, in Faerie, stories have real power. It is, after all, the birthplace of faerie tales. He knew the form: Oldest sons stay home to inherit kingdoms from wise kings and go on to become wise kings themselves. Youngest sons have grand adventures where they outwit dragons and demons and save princesses to marry so they, too, can eventually inherit kingdoms and become wise old kings.

Middle sons,
Gringas thought crankily,
middle sons chew grass.

He sat cross-legged on a small rise overlooking a field of purple and red flowers, chewing on a wheat stalk like a human farm boy. Tiny feylings hovered above the colorful blossoms, their miniature wings buzzing furiously.

“What say you, Gringras?”

Gringras jumped. He had been so deep in thought he had not noticed Alabas coming up behind him. Gringras spit the wheat stalk out and stood up with what dignity he could muster.

“What say I?” Gringras replied, “I say we change our destiny.” He spoke firmly and frowned when Alabas laughed.

“Big thoughts for such a warm, lazy day, my prince. I thought we were destined to eat lunch. I would not want to change that!”

Gringras' mood broke and he laughed, clapping his friend on the back.

“We will not change that part of it, Alabas. But let me tell you of my thoughts while we eat.”

A short time later, their appetites sated, Gringras laid out his murderous plan.

“If we get caught,” Alabas mused, “I cannot imagine the punishment we will receive.”

“We will
not
get caught, my friend. And besides,” Gringras winked, “my brother will only be dead for a short time.”

“Just long enough?” asked Alabas.

“And no longer.” Gringras was now as sunny as the day.

14 · Eight O'Clock Warning

Once the Piatt kids had come to pick up Nick—with many loud promises of getting him back by eight—the house quieted somewhat. Every once in a while, though, her mother's high, witchy cackle or her father's shout of “Where did I leave that wand?” broke through Callie's concentration.

Since her parents promised to leave a big tub of candy at the door with a sign saying
HERE'S THE TREAT!
Callie didn't have to go down to feed the princesses and wizards and elves who visited their front porch. The tub had been her mother's idea.

Sometimes,
Callie thought,
parents can be cool.
Though when she thought about it some more, she realized it was less cool than meant to keep her from the door and possible danger.

Danger!
she thought. Nothing dangerous or even anything slightly weird ever happened at her house; her parents wouldn't allow it. Except … She shuddered, then remembered that the dancing rats and Alabas' strange poem and the teind had all happened at the concert, not at her house. Shrugging, she sat down at her desk, content that she wouldn't be bothered by anything else. Then she put on her earphones and grooved to an Eric Clapton CD she'd taken from her father's collection.

She stared at the computer screen and the paragraphs she'd put there.

And stared.

And stared.

And stared some more.

Nothing came to her. Not an idea. Not another sentence. Not a noun or verb or dependent clause.

Not a
reason.

Nothing.

Twice her hand strayed toward the phone, ready to call her older brother. Twice she stopped. No magic explanations there, not even from the fairy king.

Before they left, her mother barged into her room, now entirely in witch black which made the green face and hand paint even stranger. She pulled the earphones off Callie's head. “Well, we're off now. The candy's in the big tub at the door. We'll be at the Turners' house. I've put their number next to the phone.”

Callie nodded, reaching for the earphones which her mother had tucked under one green arm.

“Now listen, Callie, if Nick is more than a minute or two late, I want you to call the Piatt house. Mrs. Piatt has never met a deadline in her life. And the kids are just like her. Honestly, I wish you didn't have this paper. I have a funny feeling…”

Her mother often had funny feelings. They never amounted to much.

Callie nodded again. “Deadline, phone number, funny feeling. I've got it! Let me get back to my article, Mom.”

“How are you doing on it, sweetie?”

“It's a tough one.”

“Well, journalism shouldn't be so tough. It's pretty straightforward, I thought. Just who-what-when-where-how.”

“It's also
why.
At least the best journalism is,” Callie said, quoting her teacher. “And it's the
why
I'm stuck on.”

“Oh,” her mother said, waving a dismissing and very green hand, “the
why
is easy, of course. Brass Rat just wants to make beautiful music.” She handed the earphones back.

“Right.” Callie took the earphones, which now sported green paint. She took a tissue and cleaned them. “The whole point of this stupid story is that Gringras and Brass Rat just want to make beautiful music. So they came to Noho the night before Halloween. How could I have been so dense as to miss that?”

“Now, now…” her mother said, “watch your tone. Remember I'm the witch. Not you!”

“Grab your broom, sweetie, time to rock and roll!” Her father's voice floated up the stairs.

Cackling loudly, her mother left.

Callie slammed the earphones back on, changed the CD, relieved to listen to the music of “Dante's Prayer” by Loreena McKennitt, relieved to be alone at last.

She wrote her story four separate times, and printed them out in different fonts, just for something to do. Each version sounded nuttier than the last: Rats. Pipers. Souls.

She tried to make connections between them. One was very science-fictional. One was straight Tolkien fantasy. One was clearly a fairy tale. The fourth was just plain nuts.

“I'll flunk journalism with this,” she said aloud. “And I'll deserve to. Maybe I should just become a fiction writer. Maybe I should tell folk tales like Granny Kirkpatrick.” She balled the stories up one after another until she had the four sitting by the side of her computer. “All they're good for is basketball.” She quickly sank two in the wastebasket across the room.

Taking the headphones off, she ran her fingers through her hair to unflatten it. The house was quiet. Too quiet. She listened carefully, expecting to hear something from outside—cars pulling up to disgorge their costumed passengers, the shriek of kids trick-or-treating, doorbells ringing.

“Probably already gone by our street,” she told herself, before putting the headphones on again.

Then she went on to AOL and tried to send instant messages to Josee and Alison, to tell them how awful the article was, and how sorry she was for acting so stupid to them in school, and what a hard time she was having. But neither of them was online.

“Of course, dummy,” she told herself, smacking her forehead with the flat of her hand for real this time. “They're out trick-or-treating. Getting muchos chocolates. Having fun. Not thinking about me.” Suddenly she was furious with herself for having volunteered to write the story.

Volunteered?
She'd begged to do it. She'd shouldered the other students aside, practically trampled on them, to get the chance to write the stupid thing. And now …

Who cares about the dumb old band, anyway,
she thought.
Or their exit-ential anthem. Or whatever Mars had called it. Who cares if they lost all their money or had to pay a teind or a blood guilt payment or whatever. And who flipping cares if rats dance all over them.

She felt sorry for herself for about five minutes. And did a really good job of it, computing her midterm grade with a possible F and then a D and liking neither of the results. Changed back to the Clapton CD. The song about his dead kid helped her bad mood along.

Finally, she tore the earphones off and flung them across the room.

Enough!
She was going to crack this story if it killed her.
And it just might!
she thought.
I'll just write what happened and leave the “why” of it to someone else.

But try as she might, she couldn't write it in a straightforward, connect-the-dots manner. It seemed even weirder on the page that way. She couldn't see what the dancing rats and the blood guilt had to do with anything, so she deleted the story and put her head in her hands.

Maybe she needed to back into the stupid thing. Just let it rip. What her journalism teacher called “noodling,” a word for going off on a controlled association.

“You mean ‘Free association'?” John Grenzke had asked.

“Nothing free about it at all,” the teacher had answered. “You've already paid your dues by doing your research. Like Watson on the double-decker bus suddenly coming up with the structure of DNA.”

John had understood the reference, if nobody else had, nodding his head. He had that kind of mind.
Probably go to Harvard one day,
Callie thought.
Not that he can write.

She picked up a pen. “Okay—controlled association!” She scribbled the word
soul
on a Post-it note, then spelled it backwards and inside out: l-u-o-s, o-u-l-s, l-o-u-s.

“Louse indeed!” She grimaced. “Lousy anyway.”

Then she spelled it s-o-l-e and pasted the Post-it on her computer.

“
Sole,
meaning alone, solo, one.” She shook her head. “And I really am all alone and out there on this one.”

She tried putting the word
sole
into a Google search, only her fingers slipped and she typed
soldo
instead.

A load of gibberish came up. She thought it might be Italian.

“All right, then,” she whispered, “what's this when it's in English?”