Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer: Expanded Edition Read Free

Disappointment felt like toothache. Then she felt a wave of elation instead. And then the commotion began.
    The Maidens turned in a snow-drop flurry. The boys turned their pointed handsome rat faces. The priests who were just starting to spill from the temple door, spilled faster, craning to see.
    Out of Lime Tree came striding a wonderful young man in a sleeveless jacket of wine red, and storm-blue breeches. His hands balanced a pipe, held sideways-on to his lips, but you could not hear it over the crowd’s hubbub. Only—only feel the music of it, that somehow pierced through air and light, bone and blood, and in at the walls of heart and mind.
    His dark red hair blew back from his clear pale forehead, and he was smiling as he piped. Behind him came a flood tide of living creatures, dogs, a skitter of little lizards, a low-flying wing of birds, and a fizzing of insects even, dragonflies, butterflies and bees. There were all the village’s twenty asses too, one with a saddle on it, the rest trailing chewed-through tethers. And there were rats ; the tiny white bounding rats, that somehow—how?—had got out of their cages.
    The sight of the rats, or maybe it was finally the unheard yet experienced glamour of the piping, caused the entire vociferous crowd to break into silence.
    At which, of course, the music became audible.
    But it was not like music anymore. It was like the river, the sky, the country. Like the pulses of the crowd beating, the drums of life itself, and the sun spinning on the blades of space and time. More music than a single piper could produce from the slender reed of a single pipe.
    When suddenly the music stopped, everyone was left floundering, as if cast abruptly out of a great sea. Or as if they had all gone deaf.
    Cleci became aware that the veiled statue of Raur had been carried out of the temple, and was shocked she had not previously noticed. Now Raur sat there on his garlanded stretcher, balanced on the priests’ shoulders, still as everything else. As if he, too, had been entranced by the pipe.
    The Piper lowered the instrument slowly. He looked about. Cleci could not help admiring him for his magnificent poise, assurance and charm with so many hundreds of eyes fixed on him. Then one of the rich men bellowed, and everyone instead looked at him. It was the miller.
    “How,” demanded the miller, choleric in the face, not poised at all, nor very assured, certainly not at all charming. “How did you steal our rats out of their cages?”
    There was a small ripple of bemused agreement, and someone else shouted from the crowd: “And how did he loose my dad’s riding-ass and all?”
    Then a welter of voices. How this, how that. The Piper just waited for them to finish. Which, inevitably, they did. Then the Piper said to the people of Lime Tree, in a voice that carried without shouting: “You try to lock everything up in a cage. Your animals and your hearts. But love will always get out. Love, or hate. Somehow.”
    Cleci shut her eyes. She held the words to her like a precious stone. She did not understand them, but she clung to them. Then she heard the Piper say, “So tell me now. Do I lead you in the dance, or not?”
    And Cleci screamed, at the top of her lungs: “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
    Then clapped her hands to her burning cheeks, opening wide her eyes in horror. But it was all right, for the whole crowd had cried out at exactly the same moment that she had, and the same words. Even the miller had, though he looked perplexed, and he turned immediately to the priests and spoke to them. The priest who was the miller’s son nodded, and stepped forward, raising his hand for attention. He called to the Piper nervously.
    “We’re willing to elect you to play for us, to the honor of Raur. But what will you want paying?”
    “Whatever you think I deserve,” said the Piper.
    “Oh, come now. That’s an invitation to haggle.”
    “Don’t be afraid,” said the Piper. “I won’t ask for anything