Heel toe, heel toe, click, smack, heel toe.
“Is it your turn?”
“No, yours.”
A golden curl brushed across his hand.
Bien jolted out of his dream, wincing as he knocked his elbow against the bedpost. A bruise had formed, now a nasty shade of purple-green.
“Bruises are pooled blood under the skin,” he thought as he rubbed it.
It brought back the memory less than seven hours old, as if it was a video playing in his head.
He saw the stocky build of Mark Cruz leering towards him.
“Is that you, queer?” Mark’s voice echoed in his ears, as if the sound waves were in slow motion.
“Run,” he told his legs, “Run as fast as you can,” yet his feet remained motionless. He was trapped, a deer in the headlights.
Mark’s fist hit his stomach, and he kneeled over, winded and gasping for breath, flailing his arms for support, then, his whole body came crashing down, the first to hit the ground was his elbow.
Humorous, the bone was called, according to his science teacher. He found that name incredibly ironic.
Bien had an uncanny knack for getting into scrapes. He was a twelve-year-old, short, round boy with bifocal spectacles which he was blind as a bat without.
His mother somehow bought all the wrong clothes, and constantly forgot to make haircutting appointments, giving him an off-putting, uncoordinated look.
He wasn’t smart enough to fit in with the orchestra, chess club, math team kids, but too un-cool to find a niche elsewhere.
Also, his family lived in an old country house that was five miles away from their nearest neighbor, which made having any potential friends over inconvenient.
Having these daily playground battle wounds was a burden to which he had grown accustomed.
******************************************************************
Bien heard a noise. Not the nighttime ear ringing he got from time to time which his mother believed was a result from being boxed on the ears a time too many, but a warm, soft, woody, melodious sound.
It came from the gravelly, narrow, winding country road in front of his house.
Bien swung out of his bed to gaze out the window. The music sounded as if it was nearing, growing louder, and even more entrancing.
A note of melancholy swelled to a crescendo, then, dissipated into the breeze with a diminuendo.
Out the window, Bien saw a curious sight.
A slender adult leader with raven hair and glistening alabaster skin which reflected the full moon’s light was playing a set of rich, nut-brown pipes.
Behind him, in single file, was an infinite line of spectral children, their long, pale fingers grabbing the air, every movement so chaotic, yet so beautifully harmonious.
Dancing in perfect rhythm to the piper, their feet, many bare, promenaded across the road as a long note seeped with vibrato.
Heel toe, heel toe, click, smack, heel toe.
A leg, an arm, and an ear were halfway out Bien’s ground-floor window.
The pipes now struck a chord with the sorrowful, organic quality of the nightingale’s song. He was out the window.
Heel toe, heel toe, click, smack, heel toe, his feet tapped metrically against the ground.
Some children wore floor-length nightshifts with their curling rags encircling their heads like eternal halos; others donned simple farm boy’s shirts, grass stained from yesterday’s chores.
Still others wore cartooned cotton Barbie or Batman apparel; some were dressed like Bien, with plaid flannels and a T-shirt.
Bien’s feet, stuck in the rhythm of the moonlight piper, for once, had no trouble leading im where he wanted to go.
Heel toe, heel toe, click, smack, heel toe.
He was barely ten yards behind the piper’s trail, and the song, now with an accelerando, broke into a jig. His feet hit the ground with a vigor and joy he never thought possible as he crept to the back of the line.
“Is it your turn?” asked a girl with golden ringlets whose periwinkle eyes had an amount of lust so unnatural in her youthful face.
“No, yours,” answered a lanky farm boy.
Her fangs flashed out in an instant. Bien tried to flee, tried to escape, as he ad wanted to thousand times before, but he was trapped, a deer in the headlights.
She pounced on top of him, puncturing his jugular.
As he lay in fear, he felt his mind un-focusing, and moaned. ”Drink,” she poke, “suck from me.”
Again, Bien moaned, a lightening bolt shiver shuddered down his spine.
A large, scrawny black dog appeared in his peripheral vision; he heard the cooing of an owl.
The world was no longer in color, but in only drab shades of grey.
Yet, the music grew more and more sweet.
Dulce, dulce, dulce, the musical phrase seemed to chant.
Just as his feet had been compelled to dance before, his lips began to pulse metrically to the music.
At first they reached her neck hesitantly, but soon he fed with the greedy readiness of a suckling infant.
He sucked so vigorously he had to gasp to catch his breath. The pain vanished. The life fluid filled his body with warmth down to his soles.
In time with the music, he bent up at waist, grasping the hand of the girl who had given him another life.
Now, the children danced in pairs as the piper played a bittersweet folk dance. Although Bien’s glasses were still placed on his nightstand a mile away, his vision was crisp and clear, and he felt as if a dimension existed that he had never seen before.
Behind a cornfield, a trailer appeared with a window peeking around the bend. A little girl clutched her doll, eyes widely full of splendor.
Bien’s feet kept in rhythm: heel toe, heel toe, lick, smack, heel toe. The little girl’s feet began in rhythm: heel toe, heel toe, click, smack, heel toe.
“Is it your turn?” Bien asked, staring at her periwinkle eyes, quizzically, flashing his pearly fangs.
“No, yours,” a golden curl sorrowfully brushed across his hand. And so they danced in the moonlight…
Heel toe, heel toe, click, smack, heel toe…
*********************