The Grimm Diaries Prequels Volume 15 - 18 (7 page)

For the next two days, the elders of the town could do nothing about the
pumpkin piper
who had their children living in
his coach in the middle of town. No matter what they tried, they couldn't do
anything about the situation. The pumpkin piper, instead of stealing the
children, had created his own bratty army out of them, and wouldn’t leave town.
The children made noises all day and all night. They sang and danced and
snored. They threw pumpkins at each other, and made all the mess they weren’t
allowed to when they lived in their parents’ houses.

The pumpkin piper's coach was a world of its own. It was way bigger from
the inside than it looked from the outside. There were yellow roads, green houses,
milky rivers, and a pink sky inside. There was a field where all kinds of food
grew on trees, and all kinds of toys grew on trees, too. It was so amazing that
sometimes the children came out only to tease the elders, and show them how
much fun they had.

The elders were clueless. They didn't understand what was going on, and
they didn't know how to get their children back. Whenever they approached them
and tried to talk reasonably, the children threw pumpkins at them and knocked
them down. And when the children were busy playing inside the coach, the
ostrich fought them away, spitting rocket pickles at them …

“I’m really curious about who this pumpkin piper is,” Marmalade said,
fiddling with her hair by the fire. “I always thought the Piper was an evil,
dark man. I know that the locals in the town of Hamlin didn’t pay him, but then
he came back later, as if he had sold his soul to the devil. Every kid in
Sorrow fears him greatly.”

I noticed her being uncomfortable mentioning the Piper’s name, and she
had all the right. The Piper of Hamlin was a vicious being who scared everyone
with his rats. As she talked, I saw a magpie on a tree in the distance. Magpies
were said to be the piper’s alliances. It was said that they were one of the
few that knew his tune that lulled children. God only knew what he’d done to
them.

I looked away from the Magpie. After all, the pumpkin piper wasn’t the
Pied Piper of Hamlin, although they had a lot of things in common. I told
Marmalade not to interrupt me, and continued my story …

One day, the pumpkin piper decided to have a barbeque for the kids
outside the coach. He went out into the forest and caught two boars, and came
back. No one asked him how he got them. The kids just watched him slice them
neatly with a peculiar hand knife, as if he had done this a thousand times
before.

They started the fire late at night—part of it was to taunt their parents
and show them they could stay awake until such late hours—and they started
grilling and
picnicking, while the pumpkin
piper played his music. Some of them went back into the coach and pulled
bottles of barbeque sauce hanging from the trees. The pumpkin piper’s fork was
a special one - red and very big. They also brought leaves from the trees and
used them as napkins.

He showed them how to prepare for the barbeque, and ordered them to pull
feathers from the ostrich so they could use it as an air blower. The ostrich
made a couple of objecting noises, but that was all. They bribed him later with
a big chunk of meat. Ostriches were generally omnivorous, but not this one. The
children weren’t surprised, because nothing surrounding the pumpkin piper was
normal.

The parents stood angry, biting their nails at their doorsteps, afraid to
approach. It wasn’t just the pumpkin piper who was provocative. It was the delicious
smell of barbeque, the ever happy sound of cheering children, and the fun they
had while he played his tunes.

It was supposed to be an enchanting night for the children, all until
another melody broke in from afar. A darker melody that almost hypnotized
everyone around.

The pumpkin piper sprang to his feet, almost choking on his flute. His
orange head paled for a moment, as he looked around for the source of the
sound. This wasn’t his flute. This wasn’t his melody. This was the real piper,
the dark one, playing.

“So this one is an imposter?” one of the parents pointed at the pumpkin piper
with a shivering finger.

Moments later, the dark melody neared, and a couple of Magpies fluttered
above the children’s heads.

The piper appeared from behind the forest trees, slowly entering the
town. He was dressed in a long, leathery black cloak and pants. His face was as
hollow as darkness encased within his black hood. His fingers were that of a
skeleton, long and wooden-like, and he played his long brass flute as if it was
a magic wand that conjured melodies from Hell.

They were sweet melodies from Hell, which no one was able to resist. Even
the elders found themselves tiptoeing at the doorsteps of their houses, pulled
toward the piper, as if he was a magnet—no one was sure if describing him as a “he”
was the appropriate word; he could simply have been an “it.”

The piper’s music mostly affected the children. They were already
floating in the air like balloons, ready to be sucked into darkness.

The pumpkin piper knuckled his fingers and drew out his flute. A pan
flute which consisted of five small pipes, gradually increasing in length. He
planned on fighting the piper’s melodies with his own.

The pan flute produced some kind of a hollow sound, as if there was a
genie breathing heavily from its guts. The melodies helped the children draw
away from the piper.

A battle of melodies began as the children were hung in mid air.

The piper stopped for a moment, and flapped his cloak like a bat. With every
flap, tens of big black rats scurried out onto the town, sniffing the air and
waving their whiskers. They were about to spread the piper’s Black Death with
smiles on their lips.

Then the piper played fiercer and faster notes, using his seven-holed
brass pipe. He was orchestrating the rat dance. The rats seemed to be
methodical about spreading the disease. They weren’t just scruffy rats,
smelling awful and causing helter skelter. They did it with passion, and they
loved it.

“Rattata, Rattata!” the piper said every once in a while, when he pulled
the flute away to take a breath.

The pumpkin piper took a deep breath himself, right through his zigzagged
mouth, and played away with his pan flute. His hollow melodies irked the rats
at first, causing them to stand on two feet like humans, and shield their ears
with their hands—I mean the other two feet.

The children fell from the sky and stood right behind the pumpkin piper.

“Kill the rats!” a child said.

“Fight the piper!” another girl made a fist.

But then the pumpkin piper needed to breathe again, unable to blow the
pan pipe continuously.

That was when the rats took advantage of the situation and spread all
over town, the piper playing them like marionettes with the invisible strings
of his melodies.

The pumpkin piper knuckled his fingers again, determined to hit back.
This time, instead of playing, he breathed into the pipe’s holes, spitting
white crumpled balls out onto the rats. Each blow, another white furry ball
fired out like a cannonball.

Each hairy ball took only a second before it stretched out its arms and clawed
feet, and turned into a cat chasing the rats away.

Most of the parents by the doorsteps fainted. They hated both rats and
cats, and couldn’t believe they were witnessing a war between them.

The children cheered for every white cat snatching a black rat from the
ground, and chewing away at it with blood trickling from their lips.

But the piper wasn’t going to stay hand-tied. He pulled out a white piece
of cloth and rubbed his flute clean, before he played yet another tune. This
time the magpies in the air multiplied, attacking the cats from above, and
pecking their fur away. Blood spattered all over town, even on the pumpkin piper’s
face.

It was the moment that he realized that he wasn’t going to beat the piper.
He ushered the children back inside the coach, jumped up front and whipped at
the ostrich to run away. It was time to escape, and leave this damned town
behind.

The ostrich gunned away as fast as four or five horses would have done,
but the piper wasn’t giving up on the children he’d come to collect like any
other town.

The pumpkin piper didn’t look back, but he could feel the thousands of
magpies chasing him and pecking at his coach. He was worried he’d die instantly
if they pecked his pumpkin head, for it was fragile and juicy.

Well, it was a pumpkin after all.

The children fought back tough; shooting pumpkins at the hordes of
magpies in the sky.
But then the rats attacked,
nibbling on the coach’s wheels.

Soon the coach would be without wheels, and they’d have to stop and
surrender to the Piper’s melodies—they were shielding their ears with their
small hands to resist its influence.

The pumpkin piper who loved pickles prayed to God to save him. All he
wanted was to save the children, play with them, and put a smile on their
faces. But no power on earth was capable of defying the piper, and he was
foolish to think otherwise.

As he whipped the ostrich again, a halo of a woman appeared in front of
him in mid-air. She was blindfolded and wore uncombed hair, and sat with her
legs crossed, like Indians, in front of a balance scale, trying to weigh apples
on one pan against snakes on the other.

The pumpkin piper thought he was hallucinating, but the woman’s image
wouldn’t fade away.

“I’m Justina, Godmother of Justice,” she said. “I can help you. All you
have to do is ask.”

For the first time since his arrival, the pumpkin piper spoke, “If you’re
real, and not a figment of my imagination, gift me with the power to fly,” he
demanded. “The only way to escape the rats and the magpies and the piper is to
be able to fly higher than any bird in the world.”

“Aye,” nodded Justina. “I will grant your wish. But since the universe
demands balance, you will have to give up something in exchange.”

“Who the heck is the universe, and why does it demand balance?” the pumpkin
piper said.

“For every thing you take, something you have to give,” Godmother Justina
said bluntly. “What say you?”

“I’d give anything to be able to fly the kids away from here,” the pumpkin
piper said from behind his zigzagged teeth. “I have to save them.”

“Let me
see
,” Justina pulled out a book and flipped through it.

“You’re blindfolded for God’s sake. What book are you reading? I don’t
have time for that,” the pumpkin piper said. “Take what you want of me as a
price to make me fly. What do you want? Take my flute, take my arm, my leg, and
even my eyes if you want.”

“Arms, legs, and eyes. What a low price to pay to be able to fly like a
bird,” she said, waving her hands in the air as if mocking him. “According to
the Book of Sand in my hands, and in order for you to be able to fly, I will
curse you to never grow up,” she followed. “You will stay sixteen forever. How
about that?”

The pumpkin piper hesitated, while he whipped away on the ostrich. He
couldn’t make up his mind. Was this good or bad, to never grow up?

“Do it!” the children screamed from a small window in the coach behind
him. “Do it. If you stay young forever, you’ll be so cool. You’ll never grow up
to worry. You’ll never have life pressures and become like our parents; wary,
envious, hating, and self conscious.”

The pumpkin piper thought these children were too young to utter words
like these. Still, he was confused if he should agree.

Then a magpie pecked at his head, and he bled some kind of orange juice,
which was as thick as human blood.

“I agree,” he yelled at Justina. “Let me fly, and never grow up again.”

“As you wish,” she said, and disappeared.

“Wait,” he pleaded. “Where are you going? You promised to make me fly.”

The piper’s rats and magpies were closing in, so the pumpkin piper
whipped the ostrich harder. This time, the ostrich flew a bit higher in the
air.

“Hooray!” the children hailed.

The pumpkin piper whipped the ostrich again, and it flew even higher,
pulling the coach in the air with it. Maybe Justina didn’t exactly make him
fly, but made him capable of conjuring others to fly. He didn’t mind, as long
as he was able to save the children.

Higher and higher, the pumpkin piper saved the children from the piper
who could not reach that high, nor could his magpies. The coach was flying so
high that it rested on a beanstalk in the end, one that had its huge leaves
acting like spiral roads leading to the clouds. The coach landed on those
spiral roads with its wheels. The pumpkin piper drove it to the top, where they
met with a super cool boy called Jack …

“So you and the pumpkin piper are friends,” Marmalade jumped from her
place. “You know him?”

“Very well,” Jack said, standing up.

“But what happened next?” Marmalade asked. “I still can’t figure out who
the pumpkin piper is. Do I know him?”

“You know him very well,” Jack said, seeding the earth with beans.

“Are you the pumpkin piper, Jack?” Marmalade suspected.

“I’m awesome Jack Madly. Why would I want to wear a pumpkin on my head?”
Jack watched the beanstalk grow high. He pulled Marmalade near and looked up.

“Why are we climbing the beanstalk now?” she wondered.

“To meet the pumpkin piper,” Jack smiled, and grabbed
one of the beanstalk leaves to pull him up. “Even
Tarzan can’t do this,” he added.

At the top of the beanstalk, Marmalade saw tens of children playing
happily, trying to tiptoe and catch the clouds with their hands. Once they saw
Marmalade, they hurried to play with her. She knelt down to play with them as
well, her eyes darting away, curious if she’d finally meet the pumpkin piper.

There, in the middle of Jack’s pumpkins, he sat playing his flute and
eating from a plate full of pumpkin and pickles. He stood up when he saw Jack,
and high-fived him as Jack slapped one of the snakes holding a pumpkin just for
the fun of it.