By Jagger van Vliet
From out of a murky trance, there came the sudden rushing of light, the brutal sting of salt, and the sullen grey of morning. A thin, brown rat named Percival awoke from a terrible dream and looked blearily out into the gloom. Nothing around him was familiar, save for the hordes of other rats who were also waking from their own respective slumbers. All of the rat colony, it would seem, had fallen fast asleep on the precipice of a towering black cliff, which hung over a vast, foreign sea. Occasionally, a frothy wave would burst against the rocks far below, sending flecks of spray hundreds of feet into the air. Percival’s snout twitched as several icy droplets landed on his whiskers.
Percival had scarcely taken in his alien surroundings when a sudden burst of panic hit him squarely in his little murine heart.
“Myra!” he cried, scurrying into the drowsy crowds. “Where is she? Oh, where is Myra?”
Of course, Myra was Percival’s wife. She was a little smaller than Percival, a little greyer too. Percival peered in at each passing face, searching for her unmistakably lovely incisors, her radiant black eyes, her sinuous pink tail.
“Not so loud!” a particularly slumberous rat remarked as Percival passed.
Despite Percival’s alarm, widespread panic had not yet instilled itself in the wider assembly of rats, due in part to most not yet remembering what had transpired before they miraculously awoke on the cliff.
It came to them in slow fragments mostly, such that at one point, one rat with long white whiskers bolted upright and barked, “We’ve been kidnapped!”
Naturally, this confirmed something others had begun to suspect. As Percival continued to search haplessly for his beautiful wife, he overheard more and more outraged whispers moving through the colony.
“Where are we anyway?”
“I don’t remember planning a holiday?”
“What do you remember last?”
What Percival remembered was not much help. The last memory he could recall was sitting with his wife in their little den. She had been talking about the prospects of moving to a different kingdom—something about there being too much pillaging in their current glen. As Percival remembered it, he had been giving quite sensible reasons as to why packing up everything due to a mild case of barbarism was an unnecessary overreaction.
Myra had been upset with Percival, holding her paws up to her ears, shaking her head and repeating to herself something like, “I won’t hear it, Percy. I just won’t.”
“Why would you want to leave our little den?” Percival remembered asking. “Why, this is where I fell in love with you, after all.”
But Myra had kept on shaking her head, paws over her ears.
And then… then there came the most intoxicating sound. Percival couldn’t quite understand what the sound had even been, just that it had been musical, and sweet, and soft.
“The last thing I remember is music!” a nearby rat called out.
“Yes! Yes! That music!”
“Who was playing it then?”
“A witch, that’s who!”
Percival pulled up short, just shy of the cliff’s drop. Hardly anyone was even listening to his desperate pleas for Myra. Now, almost every rat in the colony was trying to explain what they had done after the music had started. Only, this wasn’t quite so easy to answer.
“Well… well, I heard the music…” one stoic rat was murmuring.
“And then?” chorused an eager assembly of smaller rats.
“Then… then it all sort of gets a bit fuzzy. I don’t remember walking here, that’s for sure.”
Weakly, Percival squeaked, “I really must find my Myra.”
The other rats widely ignored Percival. Apparently no one else was missing their wife, or their husband for that matter. All of the colony appeared to be accounted for, save for one, Myra, wife of Percival.
“I remember everything!” croaked a wizened old rat from the highest point of the escarpment.
Even though he was still frightened, Percival couldn’t possibly ignore this. Neither could the colony, which all turned and perked up their little pink ears to the elderly rat’s creaking voice.
“I’ve seen this all once before,” he rasped. “It’s no witch. No, not a warlock either. It’s the Piper!”
“Of course!” shouted a nearby rat. “A Piper! Why didn’t I think of that… But… What is a Piper exactly?”
“He’s a vicious little man,” the elderly rat murmured, a darkness passing behind his beady eyes. “He’s a greedy man who strikes up nasty deals with other awful men. He promises to rid the town of vermin. Yes, yes… he dares to call us vermin! He collects a tidy sum of gold, and he uses his instrument of death to lure us out of our homes. I remember the last massacre all too well.”
“What was it like?” the rat cherubs urged.
“I will say only that we are very lucky. We have found ourselves on the edge of this cliff, but you just thank the gods that we weren’t led right over it. The last time… we weren’t so lucky.”
“So it’s the damned Piper’s fault!” the rats agreed. “We ought to go back and give him a piece of our mind.”
“If only it were so easy,” the elderly rat mused. “The instrument of death makes revenge impossible. There’s no way to get close. There’s no telling how far he led us away from our home.”
“No!” Percival moaned. “But I have to get back to my Myra!”
All the rat heads turned to face Percival, who looked suddenly very bashful. The elderly rat was the only one who looked sympathetic, and for this, Percival was thankful.
The old rat shuddered, “My truest condolences. But I’m afraid it is not possible.”
Percival was undeterred, still feeling awfully guilty that his last words to Myra were so callous.
“Well, the Piper can’t have gotten far away,” he said. “Maybe Myra is hiding with him.”
Before the others could protest, Percival was pelting down the cliffside trail, whiskers streaming behind him. Coaxing him onward was the faint, yet distinct scent of Myra—of clovers and warm acorn tea.
“So I must be on the right track!” Percival muttered.
The path along the cliff eventually wound its way to a seaside cove. Along a rocky beach, cold, dark waves lapped up against slick pebbles. Percival’s heart jumped as he spotted a skiff bobbing on the tide. At its helm stood the Piper: a pallid little man in a pointed, emerald-green hat. Even from a distance, Percival could spot a silver instrument hanging loosely from his neck. But to Percival’s shock and elation, sitting on the gunwale, paws folded neatly in her lap, was a little grey rat with the most beautiful incisors.
“Myra!” Percival cried, but she could not hear him.
Percival flattened himself behind a boulder, his mind racing. Obviously, Myra was bewitched, and charging in would only leave him enchanted too. He scanned the shore, seeing only a cluster of shells, a length of tarry rope, and an old, rusted fishhook.
“Of course!”
Frantically, Percival fastened the rope to the hook, threaded a shell on the end, and with a grunt, whirled it upward. The rope whistled through the air, arcing toward the skiff, and at last, snagged the Piper’s pipe.
There was a satisfying snap as the silver pipe broke free. Percival huffed and puffed, reeling the pipe through the waves like a shining, silver fish, until it landed squarely in his paws.
The Piper spun, outraged. “What have you done?”
But Percival had already leapt from behind the rock, pipe clamped between his teeth. Landing on the gunwale, he squeaked to Myra, “Time to go, dearest!”
She blinked the spell from her perfect black eyes and squealed, “Percy?”
“No time! Hold on!”
Percival thrust the pipe into Myra’s paws, then together they pushed it between the skiff’s ruddy planks. At once, seawater spurted through the widening crack. The Piper howled as his boat listed sideways.
While the greedy man panicked, trying to plug the hole with his tiny, pointed boot, Percival showed Myra the rope and they shimmied up together. They tumbled onto the beach just as the skiff pitched forward and sank, the Piper cursing down into the brine.
By the time they returned to the cliff, the colony was applauding.
“You killed him! And you threw his pipe away?”
Percival shrugged modestly, first to the crowd, then to Myra.
“I suppose it wasn’t impossible.”
The elder rat cleared his throat. “You’ve made yourself an enemy of the Piper. He has many friends in this kingdom.”
Percival glanced at Myra, whose tail twirled lightly. “Then we might just have to move. Isn’t that right, my darling?”
Author Bio
Jagger van Vliet is, above all else, a Dadaist. Jagger was born in Maine and currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts. They are pursuing an MA in Writing and Publishing at Emerson College, where they also write novels, short fiction, poetry, and various editorials. Jagger is the author of a published novella, “TABU.” Additional work can be found in Stork Magazine, Five Cent Sound, and Concrete Literary Magazine, among other publications. Presently, they are the Editorial Director of Index Fashion Magazine. Jagger’s writing concerns the grotesque, the strange, or the ineluctably necessary (which are all the same thing).
Instagram: @jaggervanvliet
Writing Portfolio: https://sites.google.com/view/jaggervanvliet/home?authuser=0
