The Magician's Vow: A Retelling of The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Part I - Chapter XII: Lion & Lamb

I do not know what to think. Father always told me to give everyone I come across the benefit of the doubt. If he were here, he would tell me to either believe that Kislingbury and his men have simply gone mad, or that I have. Are they all infected with a new sickness, or has the plague begun developing new symptoms in its victims? Am I going mad? Could it be that due to my lack of rest, food, and energy, that I hallucinated the entire meeting? Is it possible that my entire life since Lorelle's contraction of the plague has simply been a play act? Am I a marionette in this twisting game of puppets?

Or are Kislingbury and his men simply trying to save their own skins and hoard more money?

I do not know what to believe.

But I know that I am feeling. A fountain of overflowing emotions are bubbling out of my cracked open chest. But what exactly has my head spinning? Is disappointment coiling around my heard? Sadness? Anger? Right now, I feel as if every emotion from indifference down to horror has been infiltrating my mind and my heart and the very core of my being... Emotions are powerful things.

What will I do with mine?

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Even Phantom's warm body did nothing to heat Eugene's. The wind in his face and the sun slowly making its way down from its perch, all Eugene could think about was what he had come to think of as "his final chance". He had thought about "final chances" a lot over the past few weeks, but this was the first time that complete failure or life-saving success was just barely on the other side. While options might have been scarce before, time had been at least a willing partner. Now, time had grown tired and left. Lorelle was fading quickly. In fact, she could have already crumpled into dust. 

The thought ran Eugene's blood cold. He had to know.

He pulled Phantom up to a stop and swung himself down from the stallion's high back. His boots hit the dirty path with a thud and dust flew out from beneath his soles. The trees bordering the forest road barred the wind from entering too much but even the slight breeze chilled Eugene's skin. and the sun's rays --only barely making it through the leafy over-drape warmed the skin it hit. The combination of cold and heat agitated Eugene's nerves: his eyes twitched and his fingers would not cease fidgeting. 

With Phantom at his back and the northward road stretched out before him. Eugene held up his hands, palms parallel with the sides of his head. He took a deep breath, did his best to calm his frazzled nerves and opened his mouth.

"Fac me unum cum amore mea," he said, his voice shaking slightly.

A golden string of glow emerged from the centre of his palms, and similarly to the winds of music back in London, they danced forward, slithering through the air, before entering Eugene's ears. There was a slightly tingling of the skin at the contact, but it quickly changed to a comforting warmth. As the strand continued to come out of his hands, Eugene could feel the glow slowly burrow its way down his body separating and growing until every inch of his body was warm and filled, like an internal blanket that hugged him from the inside-out. 

As the glow faded from his hands, he suddenly felt aware that he did not simply feel his own emotions or think his own thoughts or feel his own surroundings. It was as if his mind, his heart, and his body had been divided in two, one side acting normally, and the other, somehow connecting with Lorelle even across the distance and picking up all her thoughts, her feelings, and her environment and in some way transmitting them back to him. But the division was not even clear cut or discernible. It was subtle, like strands of cloth woven together, creating a bond so strong that pulling it in either direction would do absolutely nothing to it.