Dance with the Piper

She smoothed the midnight blue fabric of her skirts, heart pounding, as she looked in the mirror. She'd allowed the maid to weave silver ribbons into her hair, which had been braided and pinned into a coronet. With the sparkling mask of midnight lace, she looked like a fairytale princess.

This might be a fairytale, but she was no princess. She took a deep breath, and, squaring her shoulders, strode down the hall to the ballroom.

It wasn't until she stepped through the grand doors that she heard the music.

The music. It swirled around her, calling her, drawing her in until she was swept up by the dance.

This wasn't the low, intoxicating call the piper had used to cleanse her home, nor the furious summoning with which he'd stolen her son. Nor even the plaintive melody she'd heard the night before, as he'd played for himself before the fire.

No, this was…

Joy.

Pure, unrestrained joy.

She let it carry her away, spinning and swirling between the other dancers. Some had partners; others, like her, danced alone. How long had it been since she'd felt so free? Since she'd let go of everything that pressed on her, and just...been?

Then she was in his arms.

Her breath caught as she looked up into those green-brown eyes, half-hidden by an emerald-and-gold mask. No sign of the cruel smile he so often wore. He held her gaze, unblinking, as they twirled around the room. Everything around them faded.

She blinked, and they were outside. A night breeze caressed her skin, but her shiver wasn't from the cold. The music faded to a low murmur as he drew her down the steps of the terrace.

They stopped beneath a large tree dripping with mossy vines. A sweet fragrance hung in the air, like lemons and honey, so strong she could almost taste it.

He placed a finger beneath her chin, drawing her face up.

"I have dreamt of stars," he said, his voice melodic as the music that followed them. "I have dreamt of oceans and mountains and countless untold wonders. But none of it, none of it compares to the look in your eyes tonight."

She couldn't breathe as he stepped closer, his gaze fixed on her lips. Those sensitive ears must have heard her heart thundering, because his mouth quirked up at the corner. He ran a thumb across her bottom lip, then leaned in.

His kiss was everything she'd dreamed it would be. Soft and hard, demanding and yielding. It made her want to laugh and cry. A beautiful paradox, like his music.

She never wanted it to end.

The Great Red Spot. The most famous storm in the galaxy--no, the entire universe. She watched it through the window, the brick-red clouds swirling beneath them. Years of study had brought her to this moment, and now it was actually happening. Her breath caught in her throat.

Her partner looked over and grinned at her. “Buckle up.”

She grinned back. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.” He pressed a button on the screen before him. “Mission control, this is Regina I, beginning our descent into the atmosphere.” The hundreds of millions of miles between them made it impossible to communicate live with mission control, but their reports would be received. Earth was watching, and soon everyone would know what they said here.

As they slipped into the outer layer of the atmosphere, she jerked back against her seat. With Jupiter’s gravity nearly three times that of earth, even their reinforced ship couldn’t entirely protect them from the mounting pressure.

A haze of orange soon covered the window, darkening as they descended. Bits of slag passed by, molten remains purged from the shell of the ship. The heat inside the capsule rose, and she caught her breath. No matter how many times she reentered earth’s atmosphere, memories of past disasters always plagued her. And this was a new planet. Uncharted territory. The slightest miscalculation in the rocket’s construction could mean their deaths.

The engineers knew their work, though, and they passed into the planet--not onto, but into, as no solid surface waited below. The red haze in the window diminished slightly, and the temperature in the ship began to cool. She glanced down at the sensors that tracked their location and let out a gasp.

They’d done it.

Decades of work had finally culminated in this moment. The first man and woman on--or rather, in--Jupiter. Right in the center of the Great Red Spot.

Her partner took her hand and squeezed it. Tight. She met his gaze, noting tears in his eyes, and returned it with a watery smile of her own.

She looked back out the window. As a child she’d dreamed of this moment, of flying through the Great Red Spot. Some part of her had always doubted that dream would become a reality, but here she was.

It was strangely peaceful. They held steady in the eye of the storm, where the raging winds died down. Miles away, the brown clouds blew in their strange, counterclockwise rotation. She could hear them roaring like a freight train over the hum of the ship.

And now she would speak the first words on Jupiter. She pressed a button on the controls and took a deep breath.

“For thousands of years, mankind has watched this body inhabit our sky,” she said. “Today, we do the impossible and join its journey. Today, we become the stars.”

You’d think that by now I’d be used to wake-ups from a spiteful octopus, but apparently that’s the sort of thing one never gets used to. I far preferred coffee to the cold touch of his long blue appendages as he climbed up the ladder into his own bed.

I glared at my bunkmate as I climbed out of bed. He wasn’t technically an octopus—more like a distant cousin of one—but he had all the requisite characteristics. Eight arms (legs? tentacles?), a giant head, and three hearts. Supposedly. I’d never seen Utvotnuk express any sort of emotion that might indicate that he had even one heart, let alone three.

The worst part about bunking with Utvotnuk wasn’t the early wakeups. Since he worked nights in engineering, and I worked mornings on the bridge, the daily sleep disruption was inevitable. No, the worst thing about sharing a room with him was the smell.

Unlike his Terran cousins, Utvotnuk’s species wasn’t water-dwelling, but that hadn’t changed their diet. He subsisted solely on fish. Shellfish were preferred, though he had no objection to other forms of fish. Oh, and did I mention he ate them raw? Every morning, he sat there in his bunk above mine, crunching on the catch of the day.

His meal this morning was a crab-like creature. I couldn’t remember the name of it, but I was pretty sure it came from his home planet. It had been the first thing I saw when I woke up. This massive purple thing, its claws dangling only inches from my face. The odor of salt and sulfur filled the room, worse than his usual fare.

Words couldn’t describe how badly I needed coffee, but we’d run out a week ago. How long until our next supply run? Glancing at the calendar on the wall, I saw we still had two weeks left before we would reach Alpha Centauri.

I groaned, rubbing my face as I listened to Utvotnuk’s crunching and slurping. As soon as we finished this tour, I was putting in for a transfer.

The wind rustles the prairie grass, and I hear a voice. Come to us, it seems to say. Come to us.

“Who’s there?” I stand, raising my rifle.

It’s quiet for so long, I begin to think I imagined it. My wife and son are already sleeping in the wagon. I should join them, before my mind creates more phantoms on the open prairie.

As I turn back to the fire, I catch sight of my son. He’s standing outside the wagon, staring out over the field. His long white nightshirt gives him an ethereal look.

“Jack?” I call out, setting my rifle down. “Something wrong?”

He doesn’t look at me. His head tilts to one side, and he takes a step toward the tall grass.

“Jack?”

He takes another step. He’s right on the edge of the prairie. A sense of foreboding fills me, and I call out to him again. “Jack!”

A shape rises up out of the grass—no, not out of the grass. The shape is the grass. It grows, forming a monstrous shape, a gaping maw, just feet from my son.

“JACK!” I run toward him.

The grass-monster lunges, and my son is swallowed up before my eyes.

***

Come to us. 

The call is familiar to me now, after so many years. No one else dares come so near, but I built my home on the edge of the prairie.

I’m waiting for Jack.

I watch in the early morning light as a rabbit inches closer toward the field. She’s right on the edge, now, unsuspecting of the danger.

In a flash, the grass rises up, forming a mouth. It swallows the rabbit, then settles back into the harmless image of a spring prairie.

I shake my head. Aren’t animals supposed to have an instinct that warns them when predators are near?

Sinking back into my rocking chair, I let my thoughts drift back to the night the prairie swallowed Jack. I tried to follow him, but the grass formed an impenetrable wall. I pounded at it, screaming, until my hands were bloody and my voice was gone.

Now here I sit, thirty years later. My wife gave up hope long ago. I don’t think she ever believed me that the prairie had taken him. Not really.

Something rustles in the prairie, and I sit up straight, suddenly alert. A figure rises, and this time, it’s not the grass that forms a shape.

It’s a dark-haired man, not old yet but no longer young. His hair is long and shaggy, his clothes woven from dry grass. A beard covers most of his face, but those eyes—I can’t see the color at this distance, but I recognize the shape. I see them in the mirror every day.

I run toward him. Choking on a sob, I meet him at the edge of the field, wrapping him in a tight embrace. He hugs me back, hesitantly.

“It’s me,” I say through my tears. “It’s me, Jack. It’s Papa.”