The Piper

The Pied Piper found it hard to believe that after all these centuries, he was viewed with distrust, even horror. All he did was play songs and children followed him into the hills to run and play, and create.

What we do in this lifetime vibrates though out eternity, he explained. They asked him what "eternity" meant, and every time he explained it, their young, fresh, eager souls would laugh and smile endlessly with delight. This is just the beginning! They shouted to each other.

So, every song we sing and every dance we do, vibrates forever and ever? The Piper nodded and they went skipping and jumping. One boy told The Piper, his mother told him he would go to hell and burn, for dancing in front of the fireplace. The Piper's eyes filled with tears. A girl told him her father came into her room at night, and did things to her, that didn't feel good. The Piper sobbed.

The Piper thought to himself, I will take the blame for the dark things people think I do, after the children follow me into the forest, if it will keep these inhuman things from happening to any more children.

People wondered what happened to all the missing children. They speculated The Piper was a Satanist, a cannibal, a pedopile. The Piper didn't know what these words meant, they sounded negative, and he found out they were indeed very negative. He wanted to hold a town hall and tell the residents of Hammelin that he would rather kill himself, than have people think this about him. But, suicide seemed like a negative thing that would vibrate in eternity.

A little girl found a sick puppy one day and asked The Piper if they could help him. The Piper nodded, and he and all the children sang and danced for three straight days, until the puppy could lift himself off the ground and eventually run and play with the children. One little boy confessed that his father drowned a burlap sack of kittens on the farm where he lived before he came to the forest with The Piper. They both wep and sang and wept again, along with the boy's painful memories of that day.

One day, a brother and a sister encountered their parents in the woods, while forging for wild black berries. The children cried and embraced their parents. The children promised they would return home with them. They didn't get a chance to say goodbye to The Piper and the other children as they followed their parents home. Their father stressed there was no magic in this world, the children cried, they knew first hand this wasn't true, as they remembered their countless encounters with fairies in the forest. The siblings vowed to each other, then and there, as the family rested in silence near a rotting tree stump, that they wouldn't let the idea of eternity become dull and dark. They watched a colony of insects make good use of the rotting stump, until their parents pulled them away.

The Piper knew the brother and sister were gone for all-time, but he fiercely played his pipes, so they might hear him, and remember what they learned there. They did hear his music and started humming and singing along as they made their way back to the farm, back to what was sometimes dark and dull, but there were always rainbows and other forms of light to behold.

When they finally got home, there was a double-rainbow surrounding their farm as The Piper whispered, Best of luck to you ad yours, my sweets. You are welcome back anytime you need to dream.