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The Piper comes to call once every year.
He appears on the kingdom's rocky shore on the darkest one of each winter's mornings, though there's never been one single true and honest witness to his landing there. Some claim to have seen him cross the sea while seated tall on the back of a whale, or piping in a little boat that's pulled by fish all under harness, but nobody believes them when they say such silly things. He may be the devil in a long, motley coat, but they're all plumb sure that he's just hidden his devilish sailboat.
He appears on the coast and he walks inland with his coat pulled tight against the kingdom's ice and wind and snow. All the queen's subjects know him, of course, by the red and the yellow of that motley coat; it's faded down now with age and wear, and when he comes it's always caked in mud about his ankles from his walk. He's just as dirty as any traveller is when he arrives there at the castle gates, but they don't make him wait, not even for an instant. They usher him inside, all anxious and fraught. After all, they know what he did one day not even all that very long ago in Hamelin. They know what mischief it is that his pipe can do.
When he comes, the queen is always waiting for him, just as she is today. She's on her throne, all poised and ready. He steps into the hall.
"Emeline," the Piper says, and doffs his piebald cap but nothing more. He's the only one who never bows to her, and he never has. She's never asked him for it, perhaps because she wonders what its price would be.
Some suspect the Piper could appear there in the city, bold as brass, fresh from the air, should it only please him and his magic pipe. Some believe he'd pipe them all straight down to hell had he not made the deal he made, once upon a time, so long ago. But only the queen knows the truth of it, and of it not a word has ever passed her lips.
"You're here," says the queen, and she smiles. She reaches out her hand. "I've missed you."
The Piper's fingers close on hers. "I've missed you too," he says.
---
When Princess Emeline was born, everybody said she was the picture of perfection. It was difficult to say, of course, if they all meant it very truly or if they said the words in their anxiety to please their king, but by all accounts she was a very lovely newborn baby girl.
When Emeline was nearly three years old, all pretty flaxen ringlets and wide azure blue eyes, there was an accident there in the castle while they slept. Her mother died in the fire that sprang up in the night so quickly from a dropped oil lamp, just a misstep, just a mishap, and Emeline herself was badly burned. Everybody said how lucky it was that she'd survived, that it was providence itself. As she grew up, however, she learned that nobody believed those words at all. She remembers that look on every face that she ever saw, the pity and the fear, the sharp disgust. It was even on her father's face, every now and then. He loved her in spite of her scars, not including them.
Emeline grew into a curious girl quite quickly, at quite a young age. She gave her governess the slip each afternoon for years, so very regularly that the poor old woman despaired of ever keeping her found for much more than an hour, and she roamed the castle's many wings and many floors alone. She roamed the grounds, the lawns and the gardens with their thick, thorny roses and tall, wild trees, the stables where the horses whinnied when she'd pet their noses, the kennels where her father's hunting dogs were fed with chunks of raw red meat, all snapping teeth and wagging tails. Sometimes, she'd slip out into the streets, though people always knew her by her face. She learned that even as their princess, as the only child of their ageing king, people still felt pity for her, for the twisting scars that marked her face. They said she must've been born wicked, to be scarred that way, or else her mother was, but she didn't mind. Not all that much, at least.
Sometimes, she'd slip away in the night long after dark and tiptoe down the corridor outside her room, past tapestries and over carpets, past windows with drawn curtains that stood three times her height or more. She'd slip past guardsmen in the shadows in her chilly stocking feet, her shoes held tight one in each hand, and she'd climb the stairs she knew that she was not supposed to climb. The stone wasn't sound, they said, it was weakened from the burning; one day it would all tumble down, and it might just take her with it. She didn't mind taking that chance, she thought, because the fire was just an excuse to keep her out. They all thought she'd be afraid of it. She's never been afraid.
Naturally, years came and went, and along through time came the time for her to marry. Her father met her suitors one by one, wrote long letters to kings in far-off kingdoms, solicited advice that was never from her though she tried hard to tell him and at the end of the day - or rather the year - at last the decision was made. They chose her a husband with a fine, handsome face and a wide, pleasing smile, a prince, fourth son of a king, the very best of the best of any who'd have her. They said she was cursed, so the list was short. And when he arrived, he didn't even know their language and he showed no great intent to learn; Emeline, however, had long ago learned his, from servants and from townsfolk and at least a little from her exasperated governess. Emeline was never silly, was always quick; folk credited her scars for that, like beauty ever dulled a wit or lack thereof could sharpen it.
And behind closed doors, betrothed at last, Prince Oskar stared at his fiancée's scars quite openly. She eyed him in return, and felt quite taken with how uncomfortable that made his pretty, vain face look.
"My father told me she was beautiful," the prince muttered to his aide, doubtless thinking that she couldn't understand a word he said. "He lied."
"I believe she was a beauty early in her childhood, my lord," the aide said in return.
"Tell the king to make her pretty again before another month ends, or I'll go home," said the petulant prince. "Let him see who'd have her if not me. Perhaps a merchant's son. Perhaps a baker's."
The aide looked at her; she scowled back. "We'll try," the aide said, with a frown. He didn't seem quite full of hope and Emeline thought perhaps a merchant's son might indeed do well instead. She knew a few. They had much finer manners than this so-called prince.
In preparation for the wedding day, per Prince Oskar's ultimatum, they tried everything that they could think of and then some other things besides. Doctors came from far and wide and they poked her and they prodded her, this way and then that. Makeup artists tried their hand with foul concoctions that succeeded well in turning her stomach but could not, of course, make her face anew. There had always seemed to be a notion, just a whisper on the wind, that Princess Emeline should be dissatisfied with how she looked, that although she was a princess, rich and royal, she should be unhappy with her lot in life. Still, Emeline didn't feel unhappy when she sat herself down in her room to think about it, and she could not convince herself she was. She'd never really known her mother. She could not recall what it was like to live her life without her scars. She didn't think she even minded that she had to marry, only that she had to marry him.
In the end, they settled on a heavy veil, and told the prince perhaps they'd all forget his wife was ugly underneath it when he ruled the kingdom. The silly prince remained unmoved by this and so prepared to leave, and Emeline, then just sixteen, found she wouldn't miss him, not a jot.
But then came a man in a motley coat with a pipe upon which his fingers idly played, as if the instrument longed for his lips quite of itself. They knew him, of course. He'd killed five hundred rats and mice in Hamelin, then robbed them of their children, too, when they refused to pay his price, what they'd agreed. The courtiers quaked. Their king was desperate. He'd see his daughter marry well before he died, he said, and see the kingdom in the proper hands because of it.
"I'll make your daughter pretty if you'll just agree my terms," the Piper said. "Though I warn you; it can't be done without a little pain, at least."
"Anything," the king replied, with not one moment's hesitation. "Just name your price; we'll pay it gladly."
The Piper's eyes then lit upon the princess and he smiled at her quite an odd little smile. "For one week each year, I'll teach her my trade," the Piper said, with a nod in her direction, and his gaze never flinched away. "Emeline will be my new apprentice. She'll learn to play the magic pipe."
The king agreed to the Piper's strange terms; the bargain was thus struck.
---
The Piper comes to call once every year, and up they go into the tower where all the stones are cracked and scorched. He knows what happened there. She didn't have to say a word.
"Lesson fourteen," the Piper says this time.
He takes up his pipe and she reaches for hers, the one she made in lesson five to replace what she was lent in lesson one. And when they play, it's a strange duet that nobody but them should hear. He's taught her well. She knows her art. It's her thirtieth year, the fourteenth since they met, and one day soon her apprenticeship will be complete. He says there's very little more he has to teach; she thinks he finished years ago.
Emeline recalls the night she changed with crystal clarity: the very first time she heard him play, all the people in the room but her were terrified. She remembers the tune that the Piper played, every sharp, every flat, every cadence from its start to end. She remembers how he stroked back her hair before they began and then told her low beneath his breath that he was sorry: there was no way to soothe her mind and change her body all at once.
"I understand," she said, quite grave, and bade the servants bind her hands lest she strike out. Then they all left the room post haste and he began to play his strange, enchanting tune.
Her bones twitched deep within her; her muscles jumped and clenched; her eyes rolled in dizzying circles; her skin began to dance. She couldn't say how long it was that the melody continued but she screamed and she screamed till her throat was hoarse and yet the pipe and the Piper played on. But then the music stopped and she lay still at last, breathless then and aching in exhaustion. She opened her eyes. In the Piper's hands where the pipe had been was a big, round glass and she saw herself. She was perfect. She cried, warm tears on smooth cheeks. The Piper smiled and bowed his head to kiss her brow goodbye.
"I'll see you in a year," he said. "And then we'll have our lesson one."
When Princess Emeline was wed, everybody said she was the picture of perfection. It was not difficult to say, of course, if they all meant it very truly for the girl had truly been transformed; she was Helen, she was Salomé, she was a goddess brought to life. By all accounts she was quite all the things a princess really ought to be, at last.
When Princess Emeline was wed, her husband smiled and took her hand in front of God. Her father was pleased, but she was not.
What followed then for a too-long year was petty aggravations day and night. Her governess departed then as Emeline, her charge, was of late become a woman and was, as expected, not remained a child. They said their goodbyes on the castle steps and then Emeline returned inside; she returned to her book but Oskar took it from her hands and closed it with a snap. He didn't have to say a word. She understood. Her petty wedded aggravations had begun.
Her husband is not a wholly idle man but his pursuits were then the hunt, and her father's good wine, and her. She sat by his side at the table in the hall each night and ate her food and watched him drink and she didn't truly mind the way it felt when he took off her clothes and they found the bed. She just closed her eyes and thought of someone else instead, with swarthy skin and light, loose hair, with a motley coat and a tune in her head.
And then when a year was passed, the Piper came in his piebald coat with his pipe at his waist. And though Prince Oskar cast objections to the ultimate fulfilment of the deal that they'd made, the king stood firm: they would pay their debt, for honour and not only for tall tales of Hamelin. Emeline stood and took the Piper's hand, the one whose fingers didn't wander the holes of his pipe like a thing possessed, and she wondered then if he weren't just that: possessed, or perhaps possessing. And not an hour later, she understood.
With lesson one came her first pipe and from that day forth, her fingers have strayed. From that day forth, her fingers have played. And after lesson one, all the petty aggravations of her life there ceased; after lesson one, a pipe has never left her side. When the Piper left when the week was out, she showed them her skill, showed what he'd taught.
They were terrified. She smiled.
---
These days, through the year, she pipes away the rats and mice, empties wasps' nests, gathers farmers' missing sheep. She finds lost children and she clears the woods of wolves, drives out weevils, saves their corn. She's beloved, but still she's sometimes feared.
When her father passed on, once Prince Oskar was king, Princess Emeline took the throne beside him as his queen. As they were crowned, he looked at her sidelong and smiled, every trace of his vanity gone, tamped down, put out. As they were crowned, the Piper looked at her across the room and smiled. His fingers played at his pipe, just as hers did. He'd barely aged a day and nor had she, since lesson four.
These days, through the year, she pipes away the rats and mice and when she returns to the castle she sits on the throne at her husband's side and she speaks for them both whenever speaking's required. She often charms her subjects first and foremost with her pretty face, of course, but when there's discord all she does is pat at the pipe that hangs at her waist and all the men will quail. They don't want the queen's music singing in their minds. They'd rather make peace than take the risk. They'd rather shake each other's hand and compromise. She's ended wars before they've started, where her father fought for years.
"Lesson fourteen," the Piper says, and they play their strange duet. These days, she doesn't scream at all when she begins to change. These days, she doesn't even flinch. Then they put down their pipes and find each other and he puts his nimble fingers on her scars. She smiles. When he makes love to her, it's her he sees; he doesn't even flinch.
Sometimes they talk of her leaving with him when he leaves that place to see where it is he goes, and sometimes he talks like he might stay instead and tells her all about the things he's done that would terrify the people if they knew. He kisses her, pressed skin to skin, but they both know she's never even asked his name, that all she knows is what he's volunteered and it's not much. Perhaps he's the devil like her people say he is, or perhaps it's nothing so very wild. She doesn't ask herself which would be the greater disappointment.
"Will you come back every year?" she asks instead, and he nods his head.
"I always will."
"And where do you go when you're not here? Are there others like me?"
"There's no one like you, Emeline," he says, and he shakes his head no. She can almost hear the tune his fingers play against her thigh. Almost. She wonders if he can feel hers at his back.
They'll make love till dawn, like they always do, then they'll sleep and they'll eat and they'll play all day till dusk or more.
She looks forward to his visits. When he calls her beautiful, it's not the perfect face he sees.
---
When Princess Emeline was seventeen, the Piper came for her first lesson. She reached out her hand and he took it in his, and they climbed to the top of the fire-cracked old tower. There they sat down in the ashes on his long motley coat, by paths of every-growing footprints that she'd left there across the years.
"Lesson one," said the Piper, before she even had an instrument to play upon, with a twinkle in his eye. "Let them all believe that it's the pipe that does the magic."
"But why do that?" said Emeline, who'd always had to understand, who'd read every book her father owned.
The Piper smiled. "They burn witches here," he said, and leaned in close. "Did your mother really drop a lamp?"
She understood. She understands.
"Stay here with me this time," says Emeline in bed tonight, while the Piper's fingers trace her scars.
"Perhaps I will," he replies, in his timeless voice, as he watches her with timeless eyes. And, perhaps, he will. Perhaps there's more he has to teach, and perhaps there's not. Perhaps, she thinks, he loves her just because she wants him to. Perhaps, she thinks, she's finally surpassed the master. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
As she closes her eyes, there's one thing she knows surely: if he's the devil, then she's in his thrall; if he's not, then he's in hers. She finds she doesn't much care which it is. For one week every year, the Piper wants her as she is.
And even when she puts away her pipe, her kingdom has peace just because she wills it.