I was always a humble man who never really liked to brag about my musical powers, but I had a traveling family to feed and when I heard about a wealthy town on the banks of a great river that was infested with nothing but rats, I couldn’t help but travel to the location to see for myself the horror. My wife and daughter had begged of me not to go, for they felt that something terrible would happen to me, but I had simply held up my flute and gave my wife a wink. People knew how I could control those who heard my music to a degree; as someone grew older, their resistance to my music seemed to increase, and I was fine with this. I didn’t like playing to control.

“What will you do, though?” My wife had asked the moment I stepped out the door and and turned to the mountains that separated the traveling cart I lived in and the wealthy town that had the rats.

“Simply put, I music the rats out of town for money.” I grinned, “I heard the people of this town are not only wealthy, but honest folks. I think we might just move there one day, should the fancy strike either of you to settle down.” My wife rolled her eyes and had an exasperated look upon her face.

“Don’t bleed them of their wealth and you might be fine. I worry about you, hun.” With that, I bid my wife and child a good week (for I felt that it would be about that long before I get to meet them again) and with my flute in hand, set off for the town. The closer and closer I got to the town, the more and more I began to smell something foul. At first, I had thought that maybe it might have been the trash that was dumped into the waters- they had done so in Italy and the waters were foul – but as I began to near the town I saw the corpses of thousands upon thousands of cats.

I grimaced and wondered why no one had bothered to clean up the rotting corpses, but I suppose that ‘to each their own’ is a rather vague way of telling someone off and allowing someone to be as lazy as they wanted. The smell of the rotting cats should have been the first clue I had to just how horrendous the town was going to be and to just how bad the ‘rat problem’ they had was going to be. Still, the promise of being able to make people happy and get some money for my family was promising enough to help me keep going.

Putting my doubts aside, I managed to get myself to the mayor’s house and talk to the man about the town’s problem and my solution. The mayor, obviously disbelieving that my claim of music was true, offered to increase request reward of one thousand florins by nearly ten fold and told me that if I could rid the town of rats, he would name me a town hero. I agreed to this, and during that same night I made my way through the stink-ridden town and played my flute through the streets, the sweet lullabic-notes wafting through the air. I slowly made my way to a nearby river where I noticed a disturbing sight of the yellow-red waters. Pushing it to the back of my mind and vowing to talk to the mayor in the morning, I kept playing my flute. Slowly, but surely, the rats I was trying to lure began to come to me and, without command, the rats began to drown themselves in the filthy river. I kept playing until my lungs hurts and the rats finally stopped arriving. By that time, the sun was already starting to peek up behind the hills surrounding the towns.

When I managed to get myself present before the mayor, I was aghast at the refusal of my payment for having rid the town or the rats.

“I never recall having agreed to such an outrageous sum.” The mayor’s booming (and shrill) voice was echoing off the stone walls of the meeting hall and a sort of senate was sitting in a circle on the ground while a raised platform with a single cushion on it. “You should be lucky if we agree to even pay you a hundred florins.”

“I asked a reward of a thousand florins for aiding this town of it’s problems of rats.” I huffed and clutched the flute that hung around my neck loosely in anger. “You informed me that if I could clear the rats out, you’d pay me ninety thousand florins.” I left off the part about being named town hero. I could do without being labeled as such, as nice as it would be. “I was under the impression that the people of this town were honest folks.”

“I am an honest folk,” the mayor lied, “I refuse, on bases of the betterment of the town, to waste such good florins when I could use them to better the town.” This caught me, and in my mind flashed images of everything I had seen since I had crossed the mountains and saw the fields of rotting dead cats.

“The betterment of this town?” I growled out and had to resist pulling out my flute and playing it horribly just to get pleasure out of seeing everyone wince in pain at the tones. “What about the dead cats outside town? What about the poor people who are starving? What about the yellow-red rivers that you draw all the drinking water from? You call that ‘betterment’?” I was already regretting ever wanting to help the people.

Honest people my high-end quarters.

The mayor huffed at this and the people in the senate began to whisper. “The dead cats are to keep the demons away from this town. There are no starving people in this village and the rivers are perfectly fine.” The mayor growled out with his eyes flashing a cold gaze to me. “Here I was thinking about giving you a payment of two hundred florins, but now?” The mayor crossed his arms, pointed his nose upwards with a slight tilt, and huffed. “Get out of my town before I get the town to lynch you. I won’t stand for you insulting our sacred traditions.” I didn’t get to put in a single word edge-wise as people started to throw objects and insults towards me. Rushing out of the ‘community center’ sort of building, I ran into a few of the local children who were grinning up at me.

“We saw what you did. Mind helping us out a bit?” A child who couldn’t have been more than five asked me with hopeful eyes. “Mama and Papa wouldn’t mind it if a piper went and took us away. Can you use your music and take us away from this wretched place as revenge?” Being as angry as I was, and as sympathetic as I was to the starving-looking children, I nodded and began to work out some of the details of what was going to happen.

When we finished everything, it was decided that I’d play my music during the night and lead everyone through the mountains. From there, I’d let the children do as they wished and go back to my family with a small collection of florins that the children would give me for helping them. A few of the children would work together to spread the word amongst the young ones and rally everyone together. If the children wanted to leave, then they would get up during the night and leave with the ‘kind piper’. Everyone won, in the end.

Only, I didn’t consider that a ward to keep a demon out also kept demons in.

By the time we had gotten to the mountains path, I dropped the music and bowed a little bit and moved over so the children could go onwards. I was trying to be polite, a gentleman, if you would, but when a couple of the children started to laugh in a cold and heartless manner, I felt myself become paralyzed and the next thing I knew, the reverberating laugh that sent chills down my spine stopped and everything was black.

I never got to know what happened to me, or know of story a limping child who stayed behind told the parents of the children I had taken to the mountains, so future generations would only tell the story of who a piper had gotten rid of the rats in the village and then took the children to a mountain that swallowed them whole.