Chapter 9
The sky is streaked with roiling scum and cotton smoke. The black veil of night has long since been torn away by dawnlight.
Patrol managed to completely clear one of the streets, using strips of fire fueled by oil to deter the Rats from breaking back through. With flame and violence, they rid them from the road just a block up from me—right in front of the Govern’s manor. Because of course they’d focus on him.
I tried to get their attention. Screamed myself hoarse as I called to them. For someone, anyone, to help get me down. But not a single patrolman paid me any mind.
They’ve left me here to die.
Anger burns, but the pain in my back burns hotter. This helpless grief brews within me, soiling my soul and building up like steam.
How many people did I watch die? How many did I hear cry out in frenzied screams?
Every time I saw another person succumb to the Rats, my spirit dampened. Every time I flinched at another gruesome end, my mind curdled with the intrusive thoughts: Are my mother and aunt dying like that too? Have they already fallen? Has our home been infested?
My heart sloshes. Bubbling over like my agony.
I keep swaying on top of the pole, and I know I won’t be able to hold myself up here much longer. I’m dehydrated. Mouth dried through, throat burning, jaw aching. I can feel the wounds on my back dripping blood, my tattered shirt stuck against my skin in ruins.
“I’m sorry, M?m,” I croak.
Sorry that she had to live such a life. Sorry that her health failed.
That I couldn’t help her. Couldn’t get back to her.
Anguish racks me. I can’t be her light anymore.
Not when my body is trudging toward darkness.
I think that’s what devastates me most. Knowing she’ll look for me, and I won’t appear—and that’s if she has survived this Plague at all.
My head sags, chin dropping to my chest, ears chugging out my heartbeat as I boil and bleed beneath a sky that does the same.
All while Hamelyn is decimated.
Below, the Rats have spread throughout the city, their presence all-encompassing. Roofs and walls are gnawed through, mottled with holes. Bones of the dead litter the ground, while smoke streaks up the streets.
Hours pass in fits of delirium.
I keep jerking myself awake, split-second dreams jolting me as the horrors replay behind my closed eyes. I sway dangerously, nearly falling several times. Only fear and my vise grip on the chain keep me upright.
Soon, either the dreams or the exhaustion will send me toppling off the pole. Even if I managed to land without snapping my neck, I’d still be chained.
I’m going to die.
That realization is a cold whisper that taunts. My eyes burn with absent tears, my body too shriveled to cry anymore, throat too raw to pray.
But then, through my dazed lull, I hear something.
At first, I think I’m imagining it, but when it doesn’t clear away, I wonder if it’s the bell tolling, echoing and warping in my skull.
I raise my head as the sound lifts, and I hook my mind around it, trying to pull it in closer. To help me comprehend. To listen.
Music.
It’s low. Eerie. Like nothing I’ve ever heard before.
It sounds like something meant to haunt. Like it doesn’t quite belong with the living.
A song that snarls out.
I frown, tongue darting to my cracked lips as I search for the source. Sluggishly, I blink down at the street, and it takes a few moments to realize what I’m seeing.
The Rats are . . . moving. In tandem again, but instead of a chaotic stampede bent on destruction, they all perk up their heads, swiveling in the same direction. Then their stiff bodies jerk forward, like puppets yanked on a string.
My focus sharpens, and I look around to make sure I’m seeing things right. Everywhere, the Rats have all stopped what they were doing and have turned to move in synchronicity.
“What’s happening?” My whisper crumples, the question nearly silent compared to the song that crowds the air.
Back hunched, fingers aching where I still clutch the chain, I watch in fascination as the Rats start to roll down the streets like a mudslide.
Their screeches and squeaks compete with the noise, but then the music suddenly blares.
It’s loud enough to make my eyes water, and I still don’t know where it’s coming from.
With indomitable force, millions of Rats run over one another, spewing down the roads. They spill out of buildings, leap off rooftops, race down the alleyways. All of them heading in the same direction—to the city’s gates.
Gates that are now wide open.
My heartbeat staggers out a thumping knock.
The strange tune continues to play alongside this unnatural purge, as if it comes from the air itself. Piercing like a healer’s blade and drawing out the Rats like an infection.
It only takes minutes for their numbers to thin in their flight. For them to charge out of our walled city, like the final trickles of a spigot drying up.
I breathe hard, my mind reeling with disbelief, and then elation. But my celebration halts when movement catches my eye to the right. When I see the group of people walking up the street in my direction.
The last of the Rats race in front of them, herded toward the gates. The music is even louder now.
Closer.
I freeze as the group reaches the street just beside the stairs of the punishment platform.
And my eyes land on him.
He walks with authoritative command evident in every inch of his posture. There are three people with him, but he’s by far the most intimidating.
He’s tall, with thickened muscles beneath fitted black clothing and a dark cloak that flares at his back, with long strips of colors hanging down its length. Red and yellow and green and blue and purple, too vibrant among the garish destruction that surrounds him.
Black boots clad his feet, and his brown hair hangs loose around his neck, lighter than the wooden pole beneath me.
The roughened stubble along his jaw is a shade darker, burnished over his tanned skin.
Though he’s far away, I swear I can feel the reverberation of his every footstep travel up through the pole.
Or maybe that’s my pounding heart.
His head tips up toward me, but my gaze drops to his mouth.
To the pipe caught at his lips.
The source of the song streams from the black instrument. Engravings adorn the entire length, glinting as red as the stains on his pointed ears, as if it’s lit up with magic.
Because, of course, it is.
My stomach pivots, pulse skipping, but I can’t look away.
He holds the music pipe straight out, and wisps of vapor curl from the flared end like smoke. His fingers move rhythmically along the top, and I’m trapped, entranced, as the melody drapes over the city and sweeps away every last Rat.
And I know exactly who he is.
Because of the instrument he pulls away and stuffs in the scabbard at his belt. Because of the multicolored cloak that hangs behind him. Because of the bloodred drips branding his ears, and the power that pulses with his song.
The Pied Piper is here.