Free Green Monkey Dreams by Isobelle Carmody

of the first time the Piper had summoned their people to the road. Then, it was said, he had walked before them, tall in a coat of many colours, a long silver pipe held between his fingers and set to his lips. He had led them, piping all the while, working his ancient magic to bring together road and land and Great Blue above, so that they might cross to Evermore.
    â€˜But how do we know it is true?’ Sim had asked when he had grown old enough to understand the gaps in the old stories. ‘I mean, if all of our people went with the Piper to Evermore, why are some of us here still?’
    Not all had gone, he had been told sadly. The sick and the halt and some mams fearing for their younglings had stopped their ears with wads of grass and stayed behind. Some had stayed out of doubt and others out of fear of discovering nothing, for it was said those who set their paws upon the road were bound to it forever. Without the Piper’s magic to bring together earth and the Great Blue, the road ran on endlessly.
    Someone else told him everyone had taken to the road when the Piper piped, for his music had been irresistible, not just a command but a wooing. But many had fallen by the way, for the road was a test – long and hard, requiring endurance and faith. No one had been allowed time to rest and there had been no water and very little food along the way. Some had given up and turned back. It was said by all that the magic required to bring the road to the Great Blue, so they could cross, drained the land and the Piper himself so that the road could only be held together for a certain time. Hence the fear of falling behind, that they would miss the way to Evermore and be bound to the road for eternity.
    There was another story that said the earth was not bound to the Great Blue, but that the Piper had spun a bridge of sunlight and water between one and the other. The bridge had been all but transparent. When the moment came, some could not bring themselves to step onto it. Others missed out when they arrived too late, for the bridge lasted only as long as the last note held.
    â€˜When you see the bridge of colour and light in the sky, it is the Piper’s sign that he will return for those of us who failed the first time. It is his promise, written in the Great Blue.’
    Sim had heard all the stories.
    â€˜How do you know he will come again?’ he had asked his mam before she died.
    She had smiled a weary smile. ‘He left one behind – the Prophet – who travelled among the ones who had not gone and told us what the Piper had told him: that he would not ever come again, but that he would send his song to bring us to the place where the land will meet with the Great Blue. And a way will open to Evermore where there is no hunger or sickness or fear or pain, and where there will be a celebration to end all celebrations, as our people are reunited with the Ones Who Went Before.’
    His mam had died that night, and he had wept and hoped she had found her way to Evermore, for he had then believed that death was the only real way to go beyond the Great Blue. He had believed that, right up to the moment the Song swelled into the air, filling his veins and his sinews with sweet fire.
    That had been many days ago. Days beyond counting. Days and nights of running and stumbling and of the song woven into the air, calling and pulling at his soul. At all of their souls. Even poor Sorah with his crippled paw. And Kora whose face Sim’s eyes had been resting on at that very moment, and who seemed to change before his eyes. The hard aggression and the ambition had dissolved into a kind of light that reminded him of the milky dusks where everything was uncertain and half-formed, fraught with possibilities.
    Sim stole another look at her, knowing that whatever she said to comfort Rill, she was not tired. The pace was nothing to Kora the Bold, who could have been running alongside the other frontrunners.