The Brixen Witch (12 page)

The music seemed to have the same effect on others. Rudi could see faces in every window as his neighbors strained to hear where the music might be coming from.

The question was answered presently, for around a corner came the fiddler in his drab cloak and threadbare hat. A gust of wind caught the cloak as he walked, revealing his patchy shirt of red and yellow and faded blue. The unearthly melody flowed behind him on the air as he strode through the village square.

“Is that scoundrel still here?” came a voice behind Rudi. It belonged to Marco, who stood with a pickax on his shoulder.

“Apparently so,” said another voice. It was Otto, and he carried a shovel. “We thought you might want some company up there,” he said to Rudi, and he cocked his head toward the Berg. Beside him, Marco gave a nod.

Relief and gratitude flooded through Rudi, and he nodded back.

At that moment, from every direction, there came a series of muffled shrieks and cries. A moment later, every door on the square flew open, and every window swung outward, and from every house came the rats.

They leapt over the thresholds; they scuttled
down from the thatch. They came spilling out of woodpiles, and they sprang from every shed.They tumbled through the square, from out of every alley and lane. And then they all stopped, as if to listen. Some even rose on their hind legs, twitching their ears and whiskers. Then, as if the hundreds of creatures had suddenly become a single living thing, every rat turned and ran in the same direction. In the direction of the music.

“Toward the footbridge!” someone called, and Rudi saw that it was true. He followed the streaming rats, as did the other villagers. He turned a corner and watched the fiddler stride away to the end of the lane and across the footbridge. The rats followed him as if they were enchanted.

Well, they
are
enchanted, Rudi thought. And then he had another fearful realization. The witch’s servant was fulfilling his end of the bargain without waiting for Rudi to produce the coin. The evil stranger was demonstrating his power, not just over the rats but over the whole village. If there had been any question before, there was none now: The witch had indeed granted fearsome power to her servant, and together they held sway over all of Brixen. There could be only one way out, and Rudi had only three days.

“What just happened?” asked Mistress Tanner, who stood in the lane with all the others, blinking the mist out of her eyes. They watched the rats stream after the fiddler, up the path that crossed the meadow, until they disappeared over a rise.

“Eeek!” came a small voice. Susanna Louisa clutched her mother’s skirts as one furry straggler scurried past her feet and over the bridge, after the others. Then the town was left silent except for the tumbling stream and the fading music of the fiddle.

And then a great cheer arose. The grown-ups whooped, and the children danced, and they all embraced each other and threw their caps into the air.

Rudi felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see his mother blinking tears from her eyes. Or perhaps it was the rain.

“They’re gone!” Mama said. “Bless us, I think they’re really gone.” And she hugged him, and wiped her eyes, and Rudi had not the heart to tell her what a dubious blessing it was.

Papa stood beside her. “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it myself.” Then he turned to Rudi and handed him a shovel and his best hunting knife. “Oma tells me you’re going on an … excursion. I wish I could join you, but your Mama and the cows need looking after.” He reached out, ready to
ruffle Rudi’s hair, but then he stopped. Instead, he held out his hand. “Good luck, son.”

Rudi lifted his chin, and he shook his father’s strong hand, but he could meet his gaze for only a moment, lest he embarrass himself with the sniffle that threatened to escape. He busied himself lashing the knife in its sheath to his belt.

The mayor came bustling over, his mustache quivering. “Well, now. Say what you will about that stranger, but he does work quickly.”

“And we’d better do likewise,” muttered Otto to his companions. “If it’s a golden guilder the witch wants, then let’s go find it.”

Marco stepped up and clapped Rudi on the back. “Anyone with the nerve to steal the witch’s gold is all right in my book. Besides, I damned well won’t pay that thief a single penny from my own pocket. Lead the way up the mountain, boy.”

AND SO RUDI led Marco and Otto up the mountain. As they climbed, the rain sputtered and stopped, and the day grew warm.

The fiddler had led the rats this way. The path was pocked with a thousand tiny paw prints, where it hadn’t been swept smooth by a thousand scaly tails.

Rudi shuddered, and was grateful for his companions. Marco had the brawn of three men, if not quite the brains of one. Otto looked nearly as soft as the dough he kneaded, but he was an experienced traveler, and he knew the mountain well. Together they would find the coin. They
must
find the coin.

They lost the fiddler’s trail when they entered the shade of the forest, but Rudi had no desire
to follow the fiddler. When the time came, Rudi knew, the fiddler would come to him.

Before long, Rudi led Marco and Otto out of the forest and into the clearing, where the path continued up and around the treeline toward the high meadow. As he had done the last time he’d been there, those many months before, Rudi stopped and surveyed the view. In one direction he could see all the way to the valley below and to the village, which lay nestled between green hills. In the other direction, the Berg loomed closer than ever, black and cold, even in the heat of July.

“Here,” announced Rudi. “Here is where I climbed up.” And he pointed straight up the mountain, across the slope of loose rock, where he’d had his misadventure.

Otto shaded his eyes and craned his neck. “Why didn’t you go that way?” He pointed to the right, where the trail was clear and safe, curving back and forth across the slope and up to the high meadow.

Marco burst out in a laugh. “Let me understand this. Hunters and cowherds and travelers have trodden these paths, and worn them bare, day after day, year upon year, for perhaps a thousand years? And then one day
you
come along and decide you know a better way.” He shook his head, and his laugh became an exasperated sigh. “I’m beginning to think I was wrong about you, boy.”

Rudi’s face grew hot. He deserved that. He’d been proud and foolhardy, and ever since, he’d paid for it. He tried to maintain his dignity.

“All right, it was a mistake. But what’s done is done. We need to retrace my steps and find where I slipped, so we know where to look for the coin.”

“That won’t be easy,” said Otto, surveying the field of scree. “Last winter’s snows would have piled up and shifted the gravel. Any footprints you might have left will be gone by now.”

Rudi knew Otto was right. For all the world, it looked as if not a soul had set foot on that field of rock since the day it was set down by the hand of God. He needed something else. A landmark of some sort.

Rudi looked around and tried to get his bearings. He studied every boulder for a clue that might jog his memory. But every rock looked just like every other rock. He inspected the trees at the base of the field of scree, to see if he’d left any gash or scar when he’d crashed to a stop. But he found not a mark. It was as if he’d never been there.

Rudi swallowed a groan of despair. He could not be defeated already. The stakes were too high.

“Well?” said Marco. “Where did you fall, then?”

Rudi could only shrug and scratch his head.

Marco snorted. “This field must be more than an acre in size. How are we supposed to sift through
an acre of rock to find a coin the size of a chestnut?”

Otto held up his hands. “Let’s be sensible about this. Rudi, what else do you remember about that day?”

Rudi tried to think. “I know I was on this slope, and when I slipped, the trees stopped me. And I dropped the coin just before I hit the trees.”

Otto pointed. “So it must be somewhere near the trees.” He walked away from Rudi, using long measured strides, and counted his steps. He stopped at the far end of the thin stand of trees. “And the trees span twenty paces. So we start searching here. Twenty paces across and perhaps five paces upslope. Agreed?”

Rudi sighed and nodded in relief. A plan.

Marco nodded as well. “It’ll have to do. Each of you start at one end, and I’ll take the middle.” And he raised his pickax, ready to make the first strike.

“Wait!” said Rudi. “While you search, you must also listen. The coin sings.”

Marco and Otto blinked at him.

Rudi shrugged. “It’s enchanted. It wants to be found. Its music sounds something like that fiddle music we heard.”

“Well, strike me deaf and blind,” declared Marco. “What have I signed up for?”

Then he swung his pickax, and Otto and Rudi scraped with their shovels, and the mountain
echoed with the clang of metal on rock. If the coin was sleeping there, Rudi thought, this noise would surely awaken it. Or at least, he fervently hoped so.

Hours passed, and hope faded, for Rudi heard no singing, and he saw no glint of metal. The sun dropped lower in the sky, until it slid behind the peak of the Berg and cast the field of loose rock into shadow. Still, the coin was not found. The search party had no choice but to go home and try again the next day.