I came to the town of Ulderi on a day so hot that even snakes balked at the sun, hiding beneath stones and in gloomy corridors that wound amidst the roots of ancient trees. The few dogs to be seen reclined in strips of shade, showing signs of life only by their panting, and the populace itself was sequestered in their homes.
The only things that moved about were the locusts. Great clouds of them billowed across the dreaming fields of barley and millet, sorghum and maize, voraciously consuming every crop they settled upon. Even amid the streets and buildings they flitted madly on their journey of consumption. The town was overrun by this plague.
“You there! Foreigner!”
The voice was gruff yet authoritative. I looked about for its owner, and saw eyes peering at me from dusty windows and cracked-open doors.
“You! Why is a foreign woman traveling in these parts?”
I found the speaker, standing tall in a doorway behind me. Dressed in slacks and a white dress shirt, the top few buttons remaining undone in the heat, he was swatting absently at the insects as they battened and lit upon him.
“I’m taking in your country’s beauty,” I told him simply. “I was only passing through Ulderi, but couldn’t help but notice the blight on this town.”
“The government does nothing,” spat the man. “They’ve left us to die. At this rate our crops will be gone in days, and then…”
“Famine,” I finished for him. “You are at risk of famine.”
“Yes.”
The man’s pugnacious demeanor changed and he ushered me toward him.
“Come! Come in, won’t you?”
I observed that his home, at three stories in height, was far larger than the surrounding ones. Its paint was fresher, and the pitched roof was of glazed ceramic tile, rather than of flat concrete construction or the typical corrugated steel. As I accepted his offer, I felt the spying townspeople follow my every move.
Passing through the doorway, I came into a handsome entrance hall. Several of the large grasshoppers had already entered the house, and they leapt about from the walls and flew ahead of me on their strangely hideous wings, leading me to a grand guest room wherein more of the pests had made themselves at home, feasting on the remains of flowers in vases and what had been a plate of bread.
“I’m the mayor of Ulderi,” explained my host, brushing at one of the invaders on the sofa before sitting. “Sorry to shout at you, but we don’t see foreign travelers here often.”
“I can forgive anyone for being on edge here,” I said. “Given the circumstances.”
The crop-fattened insects thudded against the windows.
“I don’t know how we’ll get through this,” said the mayor, shaking his head. Our non-perishable food stores are…limited.”
“It so happens I can help you. To rid the town of this plague, I mean.”
The mayor studied me, scrutinizing with eyes that simultaneously betrayed both suspicion and cleverness. He let loose a rumble of laughter.
“Get rid of the locusts? You?” He continued to chuckle. “It’s no time for jokes on this matter.”
“I’m not joking,” I said coolly, for I had made similar promises a dozen times. “I will rid your town of the locusts. For a price, of course.”
The mayor’s face took on a stony cast. “And what price is that, young lady?”
“It’s my understanding that a person working in these parts receives, on average, about 30,000 rupees per month. Correct?”
My host’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, that’s about right.”
“My price, then, is 60,000 rupees—the work of two months.”
“It will take you two months?” he asked, his fleshy visage creased with lines of doubt.
“Not at all. But even with unlimited time, all your townspeople wouldn’t be able to do what I will, so I believe my offer is very generous. You can wait and pay in full after I’ve completed the task.”
The mayor glanced around, as if searching for someone to smirk with at my temerity, but there were only the two of us in the room. “I don’t understand what you intend to do,” he said at last, “but at the very least I’ll be amused to see. When will you begin?”
“Momentarily.”
He rose to his feet. “Come then, out to the street. Let’s see what you can do. Do you need anything?”
“So we have an agreement?”
“Yes, yes, 60,000 if you do as you say.”
“Just a drink of water would be fine then, please.”
“Right away,” said the mayor, and called out to someone elsewhere in house.
After I’d fortified myself with the water, brought by a weary white-gloved servant, we emerged back onto the sun-bright street, where the mayor began bellowing in his native tongue to all who would hear.
Doors opened and people emerged onto the street in curiosity, swiping at locusts. I couldn’t understand what was being said, but having grown familiar with numbers in their language during my sojourn, I gleaned that he was explaining the monetary terms of the agreement.
A hundred pairs of eyes, with more arriving steadily, were now trained on me. I shrugged out of my rucksack and brought it around to my front in full view of all. From it I drew my varnished wooden flute. Carved from an oak felled in the primeval forest of Sababurg, I’d carried it since I was made a piper and sent back out into the world.
I brought the instrument to my lips and closed my eyes, feeling the air disturbed in every direction by the insects’ fluttering, and the way the hooked claws of their feet clung to my flesh and clothing. I heard their mouthparts ceaselessly sawing and manipulating their ill-gotten sustenance. I heard the scrape of their powerful hind legs as they leapt. I smelled the locusts just as they smelled each other, a chaotic matrix of greed and sex. I found their frequency. Their tone. I fell in line with the curling complexity of matter that they represented. I saw in the darkness behind my lids the lines of attraction they followed throughout their perceptual universe.
I blew into the mouthpiece. A long, solemn note. I blew again, increasing my lip pressure, perfecting a vibrational synchronicity with the locusts. To those gathered around, I imagined the sounds from the flute were otherworldly, magical, perhaps even suggestive of a mysterious dimension or layer to reality beyond the mortal plane they inhabited. That’s how the flute first sounded to me as a child. It was irresistible, and filled me with a pure joy that I’d seldom known.
Now, though, it needed only be irresistible to the agents of this plague. I could already feel the locusts, those that had infested the street, swirling around me in a miniature cyclone. I opened my eyes, and through the haze of flying forms saw the town aghast with shock and wonder. I knew what they were thinking, for I’d been considered a witch, a practitioner of black magic, many times before.
Undeterred, I swiveled and continued to play. The bugs never touched my flute, understanding on the most primitive level of instinct that it was the source of their newfound pleasure, that disturbing it would disturb in turn the tune that had hooked them, which to their meager intellect now seemed a matter of survival itself. Increasing my tempo, I blew slightly harder, my melody flowing out at a volume unachievable for the purely physical flutes of mankind.
There was a roar building in the air, growing louder and louder, like rapidly approaching thunder. I heard the crowd gasp and cry out behind me. The locusts were rising in their millions from the fields, far higher than the roofs of the buildings. The swarm angled toward me, and then revolved in the air above, as though around an invisible column, resolving itself into a great coil. I strode out of the town, light on my feet, with that dark coil spiraling overhead.
When I had traveled far enough to be out of sight, walking over a rise and descending into a barren valley, I lowered my notes whilst maintaining the essential melody, then gradually slowed my tempo. The locusts flew to the ground, forming a vast, crawling blanket atop it.
I changed the tune to one that no untrained human ear must hear in the vulnerability of this realm, and in seconds I had annihilated the locusts, their charred remains unfit even for the birds.
I sauntered back into town, greeted not by cheers, but a mixture of fear and stupefaction.
The mayor stood in the center of the street, a semicircle of large men arranged behind him with arms crossed. Protection.
“I’ve rid Ulderi of the locusts,” I announced. “I’ve come to collect the pay we agreed upon.”
Cracks formed in the mayor’s composure, and then he threw back his head, laughing heartily. Many of the townsfolk, taking their cue from this, did the same. Their nervous mirth filled the air.
“Two months worth of pay, you demanded—for that?”
“For doing what I said I would.”
“You merely played a little ditty on your flute and traipsed out of town.”
He dug a grimy paper note out of his pocket, uncrumpled it and held it above his head for those nearby to read its value. They tittered and nudged one another.
“Here,” he said, covering the distance between us in a few long strides, holding the money out to me.
“This is not what we agreed.”
The mayor bent down close to me. “You’re lucky we don’t kill you, sorceress. Now get out of my town.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I backed away from him, raising my voice for all to hear.
“I wasn’t seeking money anyway,” I announced. “I’m looking for an apprentice. A child.”
“A child?” growled the mayor, glowering at me. “What is this?”
“The rule is inviolate: I must offer my service to the town for a promised sum. If that payment is refused after my service has been rendered, I am permitted to take an apprentice.”
Fear crawled across the mayor’s face. “You…”
“As I was lured to the Far Kingdom as a child, so will I lure one of yours.”
I drew the flute to my lips and began to play, retreating slowly from the townspeople. They remained frozen in place by my song, just as the adults in Hamelin had been seven centuries before.
Several children came forth, and more poured onto the streets from their homes. Immediately I knew which one I wanted. The girl skipped to my tune, mesmerized. She would be a piper one day, after her coming of age in the Far Kingdom, where promises are always kept and no one is ever lied to.
With a flutter of new notes, all the children froze but her, dancing along toward me. I turned on my heel with her happily following, and before us I opened the rift to the Kingdom. All others, still paralyzed, saw it rippling before them in the air, saw golden lanes, and the sun-drenched meadows, and the spires of proud castles glittering on the horizon.
No one would ever believe them.
My piper was greedy in those days, and he took many apprentices. I only needed one, to be my successor someday many centuries hence.
I led the girl with my song, just as I was led in that crowd of children out of my native Hamelin, through the rift and into that land of honor and purity. Without looking back, I sealed the brief entrance behind us forever.