The Piper's Promise, page 1
Also in the SISTERS EVER AFTER series
Thornwood
Glass Slippers
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2023 by Leah Cypess
Cover art copyright © 2023 by Maxine Vee
Glass Slippers excerpt text copyright © 2022 by Leah Cypess. Cover art copyright © 2022 by Kelsey Eng.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cypess, Leah, author.
Title: The piper’s promise / Leah Cypess.
Other titles: Pied Piper of Hamelin. English.
Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2023] | Series: Sisters ever after ; book 3 | Audience: Ages 10 and up. | Summary: “The Pied Piper’s little sister Clare is determined to uncover the truth behind her brother’s seemingly cruel actions”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021058636 (print) | LCCN 2021058637 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-593-17891-1 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-593-17893-5 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Fairies—Fiction. | Characters in literature—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.C9972 Pi 2023 (print) | LCC PZ7.C9972 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9780593178935
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Contents
Cover
Also in the Sisters Ever After Series
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from Glass Slippers
About the Author
_143148854_
To David
PROLOGUE
I know what you’ve heard about my brother. That he’s evil. That he’s a liar and a thief. That he has terrible taste in clothing.
That he played his magic pipe and stole the children of Hamelin, leading them to a faraway land where their parents couldn’t follow.
All those things are sort of true, but they’re also not true. Not the way you think they are.
The story of the Pied Piper did happen the way you heard it. The town of Hamelin was infested with rats until a stranger in colorful clothes offered to take care of the problem. His price was high, but the mayor was desperate and agreed.
So the boy took out his pipe and played it, and all the rats were drawn to the sound. He led them to the river and then into the river, and they followed the music to their deaths.
“Sorry!” the mayor said the next day. “Your fee is criminally high. But since I’m so glad to be rid of the rats, I won’t throw you in jail. I’ll simply pay you a fair price and send you on your way.”
He probably thought he was so clever. After all, it wasn’t as if the piper could bring the rats back.
And the piper didn’t. He waited until the next morning, and then he played a different tune on his pipe. This time, it wasn’t rats who came streaming to the music. It was the town’s children, dancing and laughing, pushing and fighting each other in their eagerness to be first.
The Pied Piper led them down the road from Hamelin and right into the side of the mountain, and their parents never saw them again.
That’s how the story ends in every version I’ve heard. Some mention a few children who got left behind because they were deaf or blind or had trouble walking. Others don’t. All agree, however, that the people of Hamelin lost their children forever because they refused to pay the piper.
And that’s how the story should end. That’s the lesson people need to learn: don’t try to cheat one of the fae. It never ends well.
But you haven’t heard about me, have you?
In the story your parents tell, my brother is the villain and the townspeople his innocent victims. Your parents are smart. There’s a good reason they don’t tell you about me.
Because once I walked into Hamelin, the story got a lot more complicated.
The parents were grieving, and their grief was terrible to bear. Both because of the depth and sharpness of their sadness, and because I knew that if anything horrible ever happened to me or Tom, our mother would never grieve for us that way.
I wasn’t sure she would grieve for us at all.
Love is a burden, Tom told me once, that time when I almost got eaten by a sea serpent and our mother laughed as she told the fae court about it. Tom had been the one to save me, and then to hold me tight as I coughed up water. But when I came to him sobbing over our mother’s lack of caring, he had pressed his lips together impatiently. The other side of love is pain.
I saw that pain now as I walked through the shabby gray streets of Hamelin. It leaked from every window in this small, dusty town, glared from every tear-streaked face that watched me pass.
I understood that grief. For weeks now, I had been missing my brother—a constant, empty ache under my heart. I knew how powerful that anguish was, because it had led me to do the unthinkable: to leave the Realms, by myself, and come to the human world to find him.
And I would find him. I would. No matter what had happened to him, no matter what he had done, I would find him and we would be together again.
But I had never imagined that I was going to find this. Not my brother, but the pain he had left behind. And the only thing that made it bearable was the determination I clung to: I can fix this.
I didn’t know for sure if that was true. But I forced myself to believe it, because there was no other way I could have made it down that eerily silent street, up the stairs of the grandest house in town, and into the mayor’s office.
The mayor’s “office” was actually the front room of his house, which says a lot about how often Hamelin’s yearly elections resulted in a change of mayor. Mayor Herman, I’d been told, had been the mayor for over twenty years. It would probably help if someone occasionally ran against him, but since no one ever did, the ballots generally had two choices: Herman Jeremson and Somebody Else, If We Can Find Someone Qualified and Willing, Which Is Unlikely. Written on the ballot, just like that—I’d seen one stuck under a grimy well stone, left over from the last election.
Not the most democratic of places, Hamelin. Not that it would have helped much if it had been.
The mayor’s office reeked of stale tobacco, and his face shone with sweat. He sat upright in his brown leather chair, brow furrowed, as if he was in control of the situation. But I, of all people, could recognize tightly controlled fear. He had been the one who hired my brother as a ratcatcher. He had been the one who refused to pay the exorbitant fee. Any moment now, the people’s grief would turn into anger, and they would remember who was responsible for the tragedy that had overtaken their town.
They would be wrong. My brother had come for their children, and he would have found a way to take them even if Hamelin had a smart and honest mayor.
But nobody knew that except me. And I certainly wasn’t about to tell Mayor Herman.
The mayor looked up as I entered. He drew in his breath, and I wondered if he recognized something in me that reminded him of Tom. If he was remembering the last time a lanky, dark-haired child had walked into his office and offered to solve his problems.
I hoped not. But I had to be careful, just in case.
“Mayor
“Are you?” He sat back, regarding me with sharp blue eyes. “And what payment will you ask in return?”
I had expected either joy or disbelief. I knew then that something was wrong, but I couldn’t think fast enough to change my plan. “No payment. I only want to make sure the children are unharmed. Can you tell me which way they went?”
The mayor leaned forward as if listening. But his eyes flicked to the door behind me.
Too late, I realized what was happening.
I turned, but not fast enough. Two men burst into the room. One had a bristling black beard that stuck straight out from his chin, the other a large, furry mustache that looked like it had been glued crookedly to his face. Before I could move, the man with the mustache had my arms pinned behind my back. I tried to twist free, but the bearded man grabbed my right arm and snapped a thick iron band around my wrist.
After that, the only thing I could do was scream.
I did scream, at the top of my lungs. Of course, no one came to help me. The townspeople were not partial to mysterious strangers right now.
The bearded man stepped away from me. “Should I slap her,” he asked, “to shut her up?”
He sounded like he really wanted to. I gulped, silencing myself.
“Good girl,” the mayor said. He came out from behind his desk and stood in front of me. The mustached man still had my arms pinned behind me and the bearded one glowered at me from beside the mayor. Each was nearly twice my height, but the mayor still made sure to leave several yards between him and me.
It was nice to have a reputation.
It would have been even nicer if I deserved that reputation.
I snarled at the mayor. He flinched, then puffed his chest out. Too late; I had seen the flinch, and so had his hairy-faced henchmen.
“You will get us our children back,” he said. “And I’ll give you nothing in return except your worthless life.”
From the way the bearded man looked at him sideways, I knew the mayor had no intention of giving me that, either.
“Tell us where they are,” the mayor said.
“I don’t know!” I gasped. The iron band on my wrist hurt—not as much as it would have if I was fully fae, but still, it felt like hives were breaking out wherever it touched my skin. “I swear, I don’t know! That’s why I came here, so you could tell me which way they went.”
The bearded man strode forward and struck me in the face, so hard my head snapped to one side.
The mayor opened his mouth as if to object, then closed it. He looked very proper in his fine dark clothes, his trim beard a distinguished blend of gray and white. But when the man raised his hand again, Mayor Herman didn’t tell him to stop.
“Where did you take them?” he demanded.
“I didn’t take them anywhere! Do I look like the Pied Piper to you?”
Which was a foolish question. Of course I did.
I had made a mistake, coming here. I had thought I understood humans better than I did. Tom had warned me about exactly that—Just because we were born human, doesn’t mean we know how to think like them. We’ve lived our whole lives among the fae. I should have paid more attention.
To the fae, Tom and I were nearly identical. They got us mixed up constantly. But humans could tell us apart easily—even Anna, who had trouble telling most people apart. I had once asked her how she did it, and she had burst into laughter and said, “Are you joking? He’s several handsbreadth taller than you!”
But apparently, even to humans, Tom and I looked similar. We were brother and sister. Thin, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, with bony jaws and jutting cheekbones.
“I’m not the piper!” I shouted. “I’m not the one who stole your children!”
“Give us a straight answer,” the man behind me growled.
The mayor motioned him into silence. “Where did you and your brother take our children?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “It was just him.” After a too-long pause, I added, “I’m sorry.”
“I’ve heard,” the mayor said, “that the fae can’t lie. But if you’re human, then you’d be perfectly capable of lying, wouldn’t you?”
The fae work very hard at spreading that rumor. They’re actually quite good at lying. And I, personally, am very good at lying.
But as it happened, I was telling the truth. How to convince the mayor of that, though?
“My brother and I have spent most of our lives in the Faerie Realms,” I said. “The magic of their land has seeped into us—through our skin, our breath, our food. It has made us somewhat fae, even though we were born fully human.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” I said, “that I can lie, but it would cause me great pain. I don’t lie unless I have a good reason to. And I’m not lying now.”
Mayor Herman clasped his hands behind his back and stepped forward diagonally—giving the impression that he was approaching me, while in reality keeping the same distance between us. “Say I believe you. Why did your brother take them?”
“I don’t know why he took them.” My skin had adjusted somewhat to the iron band, so the pain had become a dull, constant itch. It was still distracting, but not quite as much as having my arms held behind my back. “I haven’t seen him in months.”
“Are the children—” His voice caught. “Are they alive?”
I didn’t know the answer to that. I didn’t want to think Tom would actually let innocent children die. Then again, I was having trouble thinking about what he was doing. My mind kept shuddering back from it, as if ignoring it might make it not true.
I gave the mayor an answer anyhow. “They’re alive. I’m sure he hasn’t hurt them.”
The mayor gave me an incredulous look. From his perspective, I suppose, Tom had already hurt them.
“If you don’t know why he took them,” the mayor said, “and you don’t know where they are, how are you planning to get them back?”
“If that’s really what you’re planning,” the bearded man added. This time, he ignored the mayor’s silencing gesture. He was, I could tell, going to hit me again soon, whether the mayor liked it or not.
“I’ll follow him,” I said. “I can go wherever he can. If you show me which way he took the children, I’ll track him down.”
“And when you do catch up to your brother,” the man with the mustache cut in, tightening his grip on my arms, “how do you plan to get the children away from him?”
“I know which spell he used,” I said. “All I need to do is find him and I can break it.”
Like I said: I’m very good at lying.
The truth was, the main thing I wanted from Tom was answers. He probably had a good reason for what he had done; for all I knew, he was saving the children, not stealing them. Once he explained everything to me, I might even end up helping him.
The mayor definitely didn’t need to know that. So I said nothing else until he nodded abruptly and gestured at the man with the mustache.
My wrists were released so suddenly that I stumbled forward. I managed not to fall or to whimper from the pain in my shoulders. I straightened.
“Tell me which way he went,” I said.
The mayor pressed his lips together. I could see that he still didn’t trust me; he wasn’t quite as foolish as I had assumed. Which shouldn’t have surprised me. After all, if the mayor was really such a fool, how had he managed to stay mayor for almost twenty years now?
I knew what Tom would have said to that: Because humans are fools, too. Tom had a habit of forgetting that we were also human.
