And so they sleep beneath the hill, the children of Hamelin.
Like Arthur, carried away from death by sorcerous means.
Like Arthur, a cautionary tale:
"Do not promise what you cannot pay," they tell us from their stony beds, or so we assume.
What they do not tell us is that the Piper knew full well that the Elders of Hamelin would not pay.
Why did he only appear to the town that would not pay him?
Because the fathers and mothers of any other would not have been ungrateful,
and had he worked his wonders anywhere else, the balance could not have been struck.
For what the Piper did not tell is that he did not, could not drown the rats.
The rats passed into their own part of Underhill
to sleep away the ages,
to rest up for the greater plagues to come.
When their slumber ends, so too the children of Hamelin's,
and in that hour of greatest need, then the rats can be beaten.
And so the Piper recruited his Children's Crusade,
and so, for now, they sleep.
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