The Grimm Diaries Prequels Volume 11- 14: Children of Hamlin, Jar of Hearts, Tooth & Nail & Fairy Tale, Ember in the Wind, Welcome to Sorrow, and Happy Valentine's Slay. (7 page)

Because I am the devil, I can’t recite the prayer itself. All I can say is that, according to what happened later, the prayer was either horribly executed that it offended the gods, or that Hamlin was damned and no prayer would have helped it.

Hamlin’s founders and locals slept, looking forward for the God-sent solution the morning after.

That night, something strange happened.

Although music was prohibited in Hamlin, their dreams where infested with strange melodies. Most of them woke up sweating in the middle of the night, feeling that something had gone terribly wrong.

In the morning, they woke up to the sound of a seductive melody, played by a stranger with a pipe. The founders started to worry, because it was the same melody they had dreamt the night before.

The founders jumped out of their beds, horrified by the sound of sweet melodies, which they called the Devil’s Voice. It was a sin to listen to the music, and it had to be avoided at all costs.

Now, I will have to take a break from this story and burp or die laughing. I know you’re curious about what happened next but I just can’t help myself. But Music was the Devil’s Voice? Is that supposed to be my voice, the one I am telling you this story with now? This is so pathetic, typical human behavior, to blame me for anything that they don’t like. Did you know that I can’t even play an instrument? I suck at it. When I was a kid – and you must believe me, I was a kid back then in Heaven – the angels refused to let me play any instrument when we performed in school shows for our parents. When I insisted, they gave me an old drum and let me rap it like a mad monkey. Then when they found out that I still sucked at it, they finally decided to get me a triangle. You know that metal triangular instrument that you hit with another metal stick? It almost doesn’t make any sound, and could barely be heard among the rest of the instruments. I spent those musical events bored out of my mind, hitting the triangle every now and then as if I were some snobbish butler in a castle calling for dinner.

Anyway, to get this part short, I have no music. I don’t use it to lull people and I actually think it’s all noisy and clichéd, especially love songs which are most of the melodies played in the world.

Phew. Glad you heard my little rant. Back to the stranger who came to Hamlin…

On that peculiar day, the children of Hamlin were curious about the music, which they had never heard before.

“How are these fabulous melodies produced?” they wondered.

The founders shushed them and ordered them not to leave the houses until they dealt with the stranger who came to town the day after they’d prayed for help.

The stranger was dressed in multicolored clothes that the founders had never seen before; everyone described them as pied clothes.

To the few educated people in Hamlin, the Piper looked like someone they had read about long ago in history books. They recognized his looks to be that of a jester, a joker, or a harlequin, which were funny men who had no serious jobs but to entertain the king and the queen of the court. It had always been debatable if they were real or a figment of historians’ imaginations, even though respectable men like Shakespeare mentioned jesters briefly, calling them the Shakespearean Fool in his books.

One of the founders reminded the others that the pied cloths of the Piper also looked like one of the characters on Tarot cards, which was considered a work of witches and devils—my lips are sealed; I am not going to even comment about that. The founders were worried because of the Piper. They thought he represented some kind of unknown evil, especially that he played the Devil’s Voice.

But the cheerful posture and the happiness exuding from the Piper eased the founders’ anger for a moment, particularly when he told them that he could help them with the rat crisis.

The locals argued that the stranger was sent from Heaven, and that he was the answer to their prayers. The founders still didn’t trust him and thought everything about him reminded them about the evil they had fled to Hamlin to avoid.

In the end, they asked him to stop playing his music and hide his pipe from the children’s infatuated eyes and ears.

“You claim you can save us from the rats?”  A founder asked the Piper.

“I certainly can,” replied the Piper.

“How so? Do you know of a prayer, a charm, or a word of God that would kill the rats?”

“I don’t see why a word of God would
kill
anyone?” the Piper mused. “God is most merciful, isn’t he?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” the founder shrugged. “I meant to ask if you have a word of God that would send the rats away, the way a hymn could send spirits out of a damned house.”

The Piper laughed cheerfully. There was a small bell tied to his hat that rang when he cocked his head. It added to his silliness and mystery.

However, there was something wicked about his cheerful persona. It was like clowns; they’re all fun with their silly make up and theatrical reactions until they open their mouths and talk. It’s not the words they say that scare you. It’s the fact that they have fangs—you know all clowns have fangs, don’t ya?

“What are you laughing at?” the founders said.

“Nothing in particular,” the Piper said. “Has laughing become a sin?”

“When it’s not appropriate and without reason,” a founder nodded.

“Silly me,” the Piper tried to look respectful, but the bell on his hat rang again, and it was even harder to think of him seriously. A nun in the back was about to crack a laugh, but refrained from disrespecting the court. “I have an easier way to save your souls,” the Piper said. “I don’t need charms or anything like that to lull that rats away from your town,” the Piper pulled out his pipe again. One of the founders flashed his crosses against it as a response. “It’s only a helpless pipe, not a blood sucking demon,” the Piper said, and the man eased back to his chair. “When I play a certain melody from this pipe, the rats will follow me wherever I lead them.

“Nonsense,” said another founder.

“Wait a minute,” an old nun in the back said. “But it makes sense that the Devil’s Music would attract the small squeaking demons. It makes perfect sense.”

“How smart of you, sweet lady,” the Piper cheered. He didn’t seem to argue much. Reasons, however quirky, were only means to an end, and it seemed that he was broke and needed the job to get paid.

“Well,” one of the founders said. “Did you do this before? Do you have any experience for the job?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” cheered the Piper, standing up, reciting the words as if reading a poem. “I have proudly freed a kingdom called Tartary from huge swarms of gnats,” he stretched out his hand as if he was going to do a little dance. ”And I saved an Asian kingdom from the monstrous brood of vampire-bats with my music. When I played it, all the bats followed me until I lead them to a volcano and that melted them to death.”

“Vampires?” a founder asked. “What are vampires?”

Although vampires existed, few people knew about vampires in the thirteenth century—and don’t believe that crap about Dracula being the father of vampires. The dude was a victim like any other. How vampires began is another tale, one you will actually get to know part of it by the end of this story.

The Piper began telling the founders about vampires—which he insisted on writing as vampyres. Surprisingly, the founders believed such demons existed, maybe because they believed that everything outside of Hamlin was pure evil.

At this point, I’d like to say that everything I told you up until in now was documented in one way or another in the books of history. Some of these facts were merely hinted at like the Shakespearean Fool, and some other facts were described with clarity. Everything the Piper said about his past was mentioned by Robert Browning, the English poet, many years later. Robert Browning wrote the most famous documented poem about the Pied Piper, the one children learn about in school without reading between the lines to know what Browning was hinting at.

Here is what Browning said about the Piper’s past in the poem:

In Tartary I freed the Cham,

Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats.

I eased in Asia the Nizam,

Of a monstrous brood of vampyre-bats.

Like I said, everything the Piper said about his past was true until this point.

So finally, the founders made a deal with the Piper to lull the vicious rats away and drown them in the nearest river outside the town. If you ask me, and if I were a priest or a nun, I wouldn’t want to spread the disease of the contagious rats through a river. How would I feel about hearing that the plague killed another nearby village a month later? Didn’t I tell you stupidity is the eighth sin?

“I want you to pay me ninety nine pieces of your currency when I complete my masterpiece,” demanded the Piper.

“Masterpiece?” the founders frowned.

“I am going to play an incredibly tempting melody to lull the rats. That’s what most artists call a masterpiece.”

“Whatever you like to call it, just get rid of the demon rats,” the founders didn’t care about the fact that the Piper was an artist, an exquisite musician who was about to perform miracles with his music that the likes of Beethoven couldn’t achieve centuries later. Did you ever hear of a Mozart lulling a plague out of town? The Piper was one fine artist in a time when his cure was accused of being the Devil’s Voice.

“Ninety nine it is,” the founders shook hands with the Piper. He even closed his eyes and pretended to pray with them to bless the agreement.

“Now that we shook hands on the deal,” the Piper cheered again. “I’d like to remind you that you, founders of Hamlin, are under oath, and that you’re now bound to
pay the piper
when the deed is done,” he pointed proudly at himself with his thumb.

“The people of Hamlin always keep their promises,” the founders assured him, even though it showed that they resented the Piper for the music he was playing.

The Piper pulled out his five-hole pipe as the founders clamped their ears with their hands.

“No one appreciates art anymore,” he sighed. “Let’s lull the rats. Rattata, rattata!” he liked that phrase because it reminded him of music and rats at the same time. “Rat tatattata, tatattata!” he tapped his feet and hummed a tango tune.

Until this point in the story, I’d say the Piper might have been a good and cheerful man once, but since no one really knew who he was or where he came from, I guess the possibility of him being a good soul will stay buried in the past. I am only going to tell you who he became after, not sure who he might have been before.

The Piper walked out to the streets, wearing his pointed shoes, and tapping his feet and smiling to his tune. His cheeks bubbled when he breathed into the pipe, playing it skillfully. The children started to peek out of the houses, from under the bed sheets, and from the top of the Juniper trees to listen attentively to the lovely music he played.

It wasn’t just the children who were curious, but also the rats, that started to squeak loudly to his tune.

The walls of the houses and the pipes started to rattle, and then a slow drone came upon Hamlin. It sounded as if a volcano was about to erupt and blow everything they had worked hard for. It was actually the thousands of rats following the piper across the streets.

The rats skittered out of the holes, coating the ground with the color of black, like a huge spiky carpet all over the ground. The earth shook as the Piper played faster. The melodies saturated the air that some swore they saw its wave with their own eyes. The melody was even better than the stories they’d been telling each other, for what they saw was one of the most unbelievable stories ever told—and it was a real one.

The founders resented the tune the Piper played but couldn’t complain, watching the rats flee away as if it was judgment day. The children were hypnotized by the tune as if they were being drugged into hallucinations of mirth and joy.

Step by step, note by note, breath after breath, the Piper led the rats across the streets of Hamlin, all the way up the hill and then down the other side until they reached the river Weser where he drowned them—possibly after infecting the German waters for years. Who knows, maybe Hitler drank from that river and it messed up his mind.

The Devil’s Music worked like a charm and the rats fled Hamlin forever, but what should have been the ending of all fears was only the beginning of so many tears.

The Piper came back to Hamlin to collect his pay, and instead of being welcomed and thought of as a hero, he was frowned at and humiliated.

It turned out the founders of Hamlin decided they couldn’t pay him because after the town had been cured, they discovered that they had committed a sin by allowing the Devil’s Voice to be heard in Hamlin.

“What are you talking about?” the Piper said angrily. “I saved your lives from a terrible disease, and you vowed on keeping your promise and to
pay the piper
.”

“That was then, and this is now,” the founders said bluntly. “It’s a dire situation when the only thing that lulled the demons out of Hamlin was another demon. You didn’t save us. It was the Lord who did, because we are good people. Even if you did save us, there are undesired consequences that we’ll have to deal with for years.”

“Consequences?” the Piper scratched his head, trying his best to sound as cheerful as he was before. “Like not having rats anymore, like living a healthy and prosperous life? What consequences?”

“Our children have been possessed with your Devil’s Music and they keep humming the tune day and night. It’s like the devil is cursing us wherever we go.”

Boy, I wish I really was there. I would have had the laugh of my life. What was I doing in 1284 again?

“You don’t understand,” the Piper said. “If there was one sin you think you’ve committed, then it’s that you haven’t paid the Piper.”

The Piper left. He might have been empty handed with no money in his pockets, but his heart was filled with blackness and hatred for Hamlin. As he walked away, one of the founders dared to accuse him of having brought the rats into Hamlin himself, and that it was a trick he did, traveling from town to town so he could offer his services and get them to pay him.