Pay the Piper (13 page)

She tried to catch Scott's eye in case he had any ideas, but he was staring at his feet, much like the children. Either he had been enchanted or else he was too depressed by his easy defeat at Alabas' hands. Callie didn't know which, but it was clear he'd be no help any more.

So
—
we're hostages,
she thought.

Putting it that way gave her some perspective. Made the unreal somehow more real. But she knew she would have to understand her situation if she hoped to get them out of it, and clearly she couldn't outfight them or outrun them. So, she'd have to outthink them.

She put her head in her hands, closed her eyes, and began to piece things together one little bit at a time, as if she were writing the story.

Why kidnap children?

To pay the teind.

Why pay the teind?

Because of the curse.

Callie looked over at Gringras who was still staring into the distance. Something came to her in a blinding flash:
Break the curse and he has no reason to take the children.

But that brought up a bigger question. She closed her eyes again. Why hadn't he broken the curse in however many centuries he'd been walking the earth? Surely he must have tried?

Only one way to find out,
she thought.
Ask.

“How long since you were thrown out of Faerie?” She was surprised at how solid her voice sounded when she felt wispy, unfocused, scared.

Gringras tore his eyes from the horizon and pinned her with his gaze. “By your count, little reporter, nearly eight centuries.”

Eight centuries!
Surely he was joking. But his face said he was telling the truth. So she took a deep breath. “Do you mean you never tried to break the curse—not even once?”

“There is no breaking it; it is too powerful.”

“So you never tried?”

Gringras shook his head. “Do not be intentionally stupid. Of course I have tried. Repeatedly. For the first one hundred years or so. Tried to find a mortal to love me knowing who I was, what I had done. My attempts were laughable at best, occasionally tragic. But then…” He shrugged and fell silent.

“Then…?” Callie prompted.

“Then I just concentrated on doing what I had to do.” His mouth was a thin line, and his eyes distant. He suddenly looked as old as he claimed, like some mummy in a museum. Turning from her, he seemed to be listening to that faraway music.

“That's just another way of saying you gave up,” Callie accused. “Stopped trying. Took the easy way out.”

“Easy way—hah!” Gringras turned back. “I know you think me a bad man. And it is true I have done some wicked things in my time. But I do try to avoid true evil. Still, the more time I spent trying to devise ways to break the curse and its impossible conditions, the less time I spent making money. So the last centuries I concentrated on silver and gold—and succeeded. Because I knew what you now know—what happens when I fall short on silver or gold. What I am then forced to do.” He pointed to the children without looking at them. “You cannot believe I enjoy this.”

Callie followed his finger and stared at the children. Next to Nicky stood his best friend, Jason Piatt. And the triplets from down the block. Little Jodie Ryan in her wheelchair was crowded next to the Napiers. And what looked like an entire second grade. Further behind them she saw some older kids, like Josee and Alison, only a few in actual costumes. They must have been taking the little ones around to all the houses.

Suddenly Callie was filled with despair: for them, for herself, for the whole situation. She choked back a sob. “If you don't enjoy it, then why can't you just let us go?” she pleaded.

Gringras responded in a monotone. “Next question.”

Sniffling, Callie tried to gather herself. Gave up trying. It was too hard. It was impossible … and then she realized.
I am doing just what Gringras did. Giving up. And no hero in Granny Kirkpatrick's stories ever acted that way.
She gave herself a shake.
Break the curse!
That's what had to be done. If she couldn't remember how it was done in the stories, she would find a way here, in real life.

Sitting up, Callie said carefully, “So, besides a mortal loving you, what are these ‘impossible conditions'?”

Gringras smiled slowly and without warmth, then began to chant:

“Hame again ye'll ne'er be

Till a mortal kens what faeries see,

Till a charmed soul stays of its own free will

And a mortal knows ye and loves ye still.”

He was about to explain it further, when Alabas spoke up.

“Your father approaches.”

Gringras nodded and stood.

Reluctantly, Callie followed suit. If Gringras couldn't think of an answer, perhaps his father could. She was surprised that the faeries were so close. She'd been concentrating so hard on questioning Gringras that she hadn't noticed that the music and laughter had gotten nearer. Now she could hear thundering drums and bleating horns as a strange procession crested a small hill.

Callie stared, agog, at the faerie court. Some of them walked, some flew, and others rode creatures as bizarre as themselves. The leading courtiers carried multi-colored banners on which things were written in an old-fashioned script. Several of them had musical instruments. Besides the drums and horns, there were long wooden flutes, an odd hand harp, and a kind of small bagpipes. One stork-legged man juggled balls of fire and two of the winged fairies had crystal balls floating before them.

And then there were the children—human children. Dozens of them, like little forlorn ghosts, white-faced, the sun shining right through them. They were dressed in rags of old-fashioned costumes, some clearly peasants wearing clogs. Several seemed highborn, in tattered velvet jackets and high leather boots that were scuffed and worn. Two little boys in silken nightshirts and nightcaps held hands and danced along barefooted.

The entire troop gamboled and sang, their approach a directionless, chaotic ramble that still brought them closer and closer to where Callie and the others waited.

In the center of this mad throng, astride a huge black horse, rode an older version of Gringras. The same thin face, the same piercing eyes, the same high cheekbones and mirthless smile. He wore robes of royal purple and a white ermine cloak. Atop his head perched a silver jeweled crown. By his side, on a gray mare, was a woman whose hair was bound up in ribbons and jewels.

That must be King Merrias,
Callie thought. And the queen.

When they got within ten yards, the king raised his hand and the parade halted as one. The music died, juggling balls disappeared, and flag-posts were planted into the ground. Even the wind seemed to obey and the banners fell slack as the wind died.

“Aren't they beautiful?” breathed Scott, lifting his eyes from the ground for the first time in an hour.

Callie took a closer look. There were small, warty creatures with red hats, and lithe humanoids who almost disappeared when they turned sideways. There were tall, slim folk with white hair and violet eyes, as well as hummingbird-sized fairies with translucent wings. Small, naked brownies stood side by side to giraffe-high trolls with slack jaws and too many teeth. Living balls of light illuminated the craggy faces of deformed dwarfish brutes. Normal-looking men and women suddenly turned into dogs and back again at the blink of an eye, and one even flopped around as a seal for a moment before thinking better of it and popping back into human form.

In a movie,
Callie thought,
they might be fascinating. Great action figures for a Happy Meal. But here, up close, and way too personal, they're something out of a nightmare.

Even the king, who, at first glance, was as good-looking as his son, seemed cold and distant and much too inhuman to be considered beautiful.

“No,” Callie said, turning to Scott, “they aren't beautiful at all. They're mean and old and ugly. And they want to keep us here forever.”
Forever,
she thought.
And if I don't figure out this curse
now,
I might
—
like Gringras
—
just give up.

Scott didn't seem to hear her. He kept staring, rapt.

However, Gringras
did
hear, and he spun Callie around by her shoulders to face him. He said, with a strange wild hope, “What did you say?”

Callie, confused, answered, “They aren't beautiful.”

“What
do
you see?” Gringras asked.

So, as King Merrias and his queen looked imperiously down at them, Callie described the court as best she could—the small warty folk and the large troll men, the winged fairies and the rest.

“You see them as I do!” Gringras said excitedly when she'd finished. He let out a long breath. “Reporter Callie,” he continued, his eyes alarmingly wide, “if it meant that your brother could go free, would you stay here in Faerie voluntarily?”

Callie glanced over at Nicky. He still looked so lost and frightened, his wizard robe covered with dirt and fall leaves. She remembered suddenly the time when he'd been barely a year old and had come down with a fever. Though just eight herself, she hadn't let her mother take her from his room. She'd slept on the floor next to his crib all that night and the next until he was better. Just as Mars had done the time she'd gotten the chicken pox. Then she remembered how Nicky had looked in his Batman jammies on the morning before he was taken. She regretted all the mean or petty things she'd said to him over the past few days. She couldn't remember now why she had been so angry with him—he was her only little brother and she loved him. Had loved him from the moment he'd been born.

“Yes,” she answered at last. “Yes, I would stay.”

Gringras was visibly shaking now and his grip on her shoulders was almost painful. “C-C-Cal … lie,” he stuttered, “do you love me?”

“What?” Callie replied, shocked. She shook his hands off with an angry shudder, then loudly, definitely, even defiantly she added, “Of course not!”

Gringras' face fell and his pale complexion reddened.

Callie began ticking things off on her fingers. “One … you kidnapped me, my brother, and all our neighbors and friends. Two … you're responsible for the abduction of who knows how many children over the years. Three … you killed your own brother.”

His face completely red now and his lips white as he pressed them together, Gringras turned his back on her.

“Four—you aren't even human. And,” Callie said and she poked him in the back with her four outstretched fingers, “you're nearly eight hundred years old. I'm fourteen. That's
sick
.”

Gringras seemed ready to expire from acute embarrassment. He shook his head and waved his left hand at her, trying to stop the onslaught.

About to come up with some more pointed things to say about his character, Callie stopped when she heard laughter.

It was Alabas. He was laughing, laughing from the belly, loud and raucously. Each time he seemed about to catch his breath, he would look up and see Gringras standing, red-faced, and he would burst into another fit.

“What's got into him?” Callie asked.

Gringras didn't reply but, giving a cold glare to Alabas, he stomped off down the riverbank.

On his horse, King Merrias watched this whole display without any visible emotions. Not a sparkle of amusement or anger dented his stone-like visage. Taking their cue from him, his entourage shuffled about a little but said nothing. Only the queen looked different, a spasm of something like grief passing over her beautiful face.

Alabas finally got his laughter under control and wandered up to Callie.

“Little reporter,” he told her, “all my many years I have never heard anyone talk to Gringras in that way. Even his mother did not scold him like that when he was a boy.” He chuckled again and seemed in danger of resuming his laughing fit. “Though it might have done him good.”

“But why would he ask me those things?”

“It is the curse,” said Alabas, and he chanted four lines from the now-familiar verse:

“Hame again ye'll ne'er be

Till a mortal kens what faeries see,

Till a charmed soul stays of its own free will

And a mortal knows ye and loves ye still.”

“I can make sense of most of it,” Callie said, “but what is
hame
? And
kens
?”

“
Hame
is home. ‘Home again you'll never be.' And
kens
means knows or understands. Apparently you can see through the glamour the Seelie Court have cast about themselves. You see them as we do. You ‘ken what faeries see,' though I wonder how you do it.”

She thought a minute. “Maybe…” she said slowly, “maybe it was the music.” Then she added, “Scott's guitar.”

Alabas nodded. “Of course.”

Thinking so hard her forehead furrowed, Callie suddenly said, “So, the charmed soul is me?” She nodded to herself with understanding. “He thinks if I volunteer to stay that would count as staying of my own free will? But there's nothing free about it. It's a will forced upon me. I doubt that would save him.”

Alabas nodded back. “As for the third clause, Gringras told you his life story. You know him now—as a mortal. If you could only love him, he believes it would break the curse. This is as close as we have come since we were exiled to finding a way out of this impasse. But, judging by the look on your face when he asked, it is as close as we will get today.” And Alabas broke into a fresh bout of laughing.

Callie didn't feel like laughing. She was tired and scared and now she was beginning to get angry as well. Was there nothing she could do? She didn't know much about love—had never even had a crush till Scott had come along—but she was pretty sure she couldn't
make
herself love someone. And certainly not the fairy prince, for all his unearthly beauty.