The Grimm Diaries Prequels Volume 15 - 18 Page 6

  While still playing, the piper offered each one of the children cookies, as if they were his. Some children took them, but others shook their heads into a no; afraid their parents would get mad at them.

  The pumpkin piper started making a mess out of the kitchen; taking a bite from every kind of food he found available to prove to the children that in his presence, they could do what they liked. The children complied and happily turned the kitchen into a mess as well.

  That was every child’s ultimate dream.

  The pumpkin piper seemed dissatisfied with the amount of mess they made. It seemed like he wanted more of it. He started smashing things with a frying pan, still playing the flute with only his breath, without needing to play with his fingers. The children got the message and followed his path again, damaging everything in the kitchen, throwing food at each other, and laughing hysterically at the insane freedom they were granted.

  Then they saw the pumpkin piper stop in front of a jar of pickles.

  He was staring at the jar as if it were made of diamonds. He looked back at them, his zigzagging mouth widening into a larger smile, the tip of his pumpkin head wiggling like a TV’s antenna.

  The children laughed, watching the pumpkin piper open the jar and pull out a pickled pepper. He took a bite from it and made cringing sounds, his shoulders tensing a little. The pickled pepper was so hot that the pumpkin piper had to drink a cup of water to ease the fieriness. He even tapped his clinking shoes twice on the floor. The children laughed as they watched the pumpkin piper eat a couple more pickled peppers. He yummed them so eagerly, as if eating cookies.

  It turned out the pumpkin piper was fond of the pickled peppers. He took a deep breath to cool the burning fire in his chest, and started using the energy in playing the flute even louder now. He played even better, sending hot air through the holes of his pipe, like steam from a locomotive.

  And the dance began again.

  “Hey!” the children celebrated, following him everywhere. Never before had an older person been so much fun! Even though they thought he was a boy, they considered him much older than themselves.

  Unfortunately, the parents came back.

  The parents couldn’t believe their eyes, watching the pumpkin piper dance with their children in the middle of town. They checked their houses and discovered the mess the children had caused, and they just couldn’t take it.

  They were going to punish their children so bad.

  But first they had to save them from this unusual looking pumpkin piper. Then they would punish them properly afterward.

  In their defense, the children gravitated toward the pumpkin piper who’d been much kinder to them. He knew how to play and have a good time.

  The pumpkin piper ushered them back to his pumpkin coach. It astonished the elders how this small coach was actually big enough from the inside to accommodate all those children who entered. Was it a magic coach? An evil magic coach?

  "Stop it children," the elders pleaded. "He is fooling you. This is how he charms everyone, and then kidnaps them."

  The children didn't listen, and the pumpkin piper didn't talk. His masked, inanimate face scared the elders greatly. What seemed playful to the children rang huge warning bells, dinging and donging in the elders’ ears.

  It took them some time before they gathered their courage, and decided to approach the piper's coach. They held their guns and weapons, ready for him.

  The silent pumpkin piper wasn’t bothered. Inside the coach, the parents heard him whisper something to the children.

  They tried to pull the coach’s door open, but it wouldn’t give in. When they tried harder, it suddenly heated and burned their hands.

  Cautiously circling the coach, they begged their children to come out again.

  This time, the children did.

  Each child came out with a pumpkin in its hands. They were heavy pumpkins, and the children had to hold them with both hands and do their best not to lose their balance.

  "What the heck is that?" the elders exclaimed.

  "The pumpkin piper told us to tell you that we only want to play," a girl said, bending her back from the weight of a pumpkin.

  "What does that mean? Stop all that nonsense," another elder frowned. "Since when do strangers tell us how to raise our children?"

  "What do you mean you want to play?" another parent asked, sounding furious.

  "The pumpkin piper says that you have to let us eat what we want to eat, drink what we want to drink, sleep when we want to sleep, make fun of you the way we like," a boy said. "You can't scream at us anymore, yell at us, or hit us. You can't tell us what to do. And you aren't allowed to punish any of us. We’re only coming back if you learn that we, the children, are more important than you."

  "What kind of silly talk is that? You are children for God’s sake. You know nothing to talk that way," the boy's father said. "Come back here, or the consequences will be dire!"

  "And you, little brat," the girl’s mother shouted. "How dare you walk barefoot outside the house? Where are your sandals I bought for you? You're going to bring all this dirt in the house when you come back."

  "I'm not coming back if you keep acting this way," the girl stuck out her tongue at her mother.

  The elders growled and approached the children with reddened faces, and anger steaming out of their ears. A mother pulled her daughter by her hair violently, and a father slapped his son on the back of the head. Instead of reasoning with their children, they started punishing them with their bare hands, and the children began to cry.

  The pumpkin piper climbed out of his coach. He was silent as usual, and as cool as ever. He sat on top of the coach, crossing his legs. Instead of reacting to the angry parents, he lit a cigar and puffed smoke in the air. Then he whistled something to the children, some kind of secret code.

  The children got the message and nodded. It was only moments before they pulled away from their parents. Then the children started throwing the heavy pumpkins at them. Although the pumpkins were heavy, they suddenly floated in the air, hanging like a reluctant balloon before their eyes. All the children had to do was puff it, sometimes kick it like a ball, and the pumpkin knew where to hit. Like flying cannon balls directed with a remote control, the pumpkins flew back and hit the parents.

  The elders fell one by one to the ground, barely standing up again, and ran away. The children laughed victoriously. Grins filled their faces as the pumpkin piper treated himself with a most delicious pumpkin, some pickles on the side, of course.

  He finished eating while the children won the war against their parents, and clapped his hands clean afterward. He stared back at the children, climbed down and started high-fiving them before he played more music.

  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.”