Legend CXLV – The Piper of the Gray Alley

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In the city of Grayford, where the roofs hung like weary shoulders over the alleys and evening always came a little earlier than elsewhere, there was a tale of a wanderer who desired neither bed nor bread, but only footsteps. He wore a coat of threadbare night, and beneath his hood, a face that resembled a moon of bones more than a human one. People called him the Piper, but no one knew who had first given him that name, for he never introduced himself. When the lanterns were lit and the smoke from the chimneys crept across the cobblestones like old cats, he appeared at the city gate and began to play a strange instrument that looked like a leather sack with bony tubes. The melody was neither joyful nor sorrowful, but something else entirely, a sound reminiscent of doors slowly closing. Those who heard it felt a tugging in their legs, as if their feet wanted to continue walking without their owner. And so it happened that on some nights a small procession formed behind him: craftsmen, maids, a few sleepy children, even the old judge with the crooked back. They followed him silently through the streets, past the fountains where the sky slept, and no one asked where he was going, as if everyone knew that questions were unnecessary here. The baker, Alva, said she had seen the piper close his eyes while playing, even though no light dwelt in his sockets anymore, and yet he seemed to be listening to a second music, one that only he could hear. A young blacksmith once tried to stop him because his wife was among the procession, but his hands slipped through her coat as if through cold smoke, and he understood that some paths cannot be met with brute force. The procession always led to the old marketplace, where a fountain stood whose water had tasted salty for years, even though there was no sea nearby. There the music ended, the piper bowed almost imperceptibly, and the people returned as if awakening from a shared dream. No one was missing, no one was hurt, yet in the morning many felt a strange emptiness, as if someone had taken a word from within them. The priest explained that the piper was a messenger of penance, but the innkeeper said he was merely a weary Death who enjoyed company. Once, however, a boy named Miro followed him farther than the others, out to the edge of town, where the fields lay like dark blankets. There he saw the piper sit down and take small pebbles from his pocket, each bearing a name, some new, some so old the letters barely breathed. He laid them side by side like game pieces and played a piece for each, brief as a sigh. Miro understood that the piper was not leading, but accompanying, and that the procession was nothing more than a final stroll for those who would soon depart. Out of fear, he kept silent about it, but his hair turned gray early that year.