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

you can’t give me.”
    And he smiled that smile that was only fourteen years of age, and his eyes were several centuries old.
    One of the priests squeaked, and Cleci saw the white rats from the temple cages had also somehow got free. There were about fifty of them, and they were scampering through the priests’ robes and over their toes, to get near the Piper.
    “Raur himself, it seems has chosen you, pre-payment or not,” said one of the older priests, and his face had relaxed. A slow warm sigh passed over the crowd, and at that moment the rim of the sun dazzled right up over the temple roof.
    * * * *
    They carried Raur along every street, through every alley, across every square. By the doors and the bannered windows. Beneath arches, where ribbons and flowers danced with them. Round the two wells. Up the stairs. Not a treading place of Lime Tree was left untrod. The priests strode over it, and the men walked, and the Maidens and the women danced. The boys banged their tabors and the priestesses shook bells. And before them all, the Piper went, neither striding nor dancing nor walking, but something of all three. And the pipe sang like the voice of the day, like the voice of the earth itself.
    By noon they came to the big square where the meat was roasting and the bread popping crisply out of the ovens. No one was tired. Somehow their feet kept tapping or making little dance steps. Then the jars of wine were brought. Even the Maidens drank the wine. A furry rat came and sat on Cleci’s arm, and she fed it, loving the way it held discs of pastry in its paws, nibbling the food like a squirrel.
    Birds lay thick as strange summer snow on the ledges and roofs. Dogs played chase and battle over each other’s backs. Lizards basked fearlessly. No one quarreled. The baker allowed the butcher should have the best cut of the meat. The butcher insisted the baker should have it. The miller’s daughter said to Cleci, shyly, “You are much prettier than any other girl here.” And she made Cleci take her own waist ribbon of blue silk, three inches broad, and quite flawless.
    Then they went on, and the pipe, which somehow had never ceased to play—or had they only imagined it had not, for of course the Piper would have stopped playing to eat and drink too—soared up like a golden bird, and all the golden birds soared after it.
    The sun lay on the streets in shining coins. Cleci ran dancing, hand in hand with the Miller’s daughter and the baker’s daughter.
    * * * *
    When the Procession broke from the town and saw the fields, stretching like yellow forests away into the blue sky, they laughed for gladness. It was all so exotic, and so new to them. Though they had seen these things every day of their lives, they saw them now for the first time.
    They danced through the fields, garlanded with sunlight. Now the priests were dancing too, though all the marble weight of Raur was on their shoulders. Wild flowers were painted on the wheat. The Maidens brushed them with their fingers, but did not tear them up. Cleci touched the blossom in her hair, and her eyes filled with tears because she knew that, though it died, the blossom forgave her for plucking it without need. And she looked back for her mother in the great shimmering, dancing crowd that seemed to have been spangled with gold dust. When Cleci could not see the washerwoman, instead she called to her from inside her head: I love you. I do. And she visualized her mother’s tired, irritable face smoothing out, as it had never really been smoothed since the day Cleci’s father died. But then the dance whirled even individual caring from her mind.
    Of all the paths among the fields that might be trodden, they did not miss one with their treading. They crossed the river, and the far fields were loud with their music and voices. And then they went up to the terraces where the vines bloomed in soft crimson rust, and the Piper led them between the stocks.
    Baskets of sweets, of