7 Sleepwalking

7. SLEEPWALKING It was the dead of night. Nothing stirred in Dull-on-Sea. Matilda had fallen asleep listening to her recording of Nugget's fiddle, which played on a loop from the phone at her bedside. Arthur Poppycock had fallen asleep too, after polishing off a large glass of rum and a jam doughnut. He had barely slept when the rats were infesting the harbor, but since the Pirate Piper had woven his magic throughout the town, he felt much

more relaxed. He liked Dull-on-Sea to be rat-free, and now there were probably fewer rats in Dull-on-Sea than there had ever been. So Arthur didn't see the shabby old ship return to the harbor. He didn't see the shadowy figure emerge from its deck, his threadbare tailcoat flapping behind him. And Arthur didn't see the same figure raise a pipe to his lips or hear the tunes that slipped from that pipe, drifting on the sea breeze and worming their way into children's bedrooms all over town. When the soft melodies of the pipe reached their ears,

the children sat up in their beds. They put on their bathrobes and slippers and ambled out of their rooms. But they weren't awake. They were bewitched by the Pirate Piper's music. The pipe's music controlled them, drew them to the center of town, across lawns and flower beds. Bathed in the orange light of streetlamps, they passed locked-up shops and sleepwalked through deserted parks. But Matilda hadn't budged. She was fast asleep in her own bed, serenaded by the screeches of Nugget's fiddle.

The Pirate Piper was playing his pipe on the bandstand by the waterfront. He had been there for almost an hour and was now surrounded by hundreds of children with mucky feet or mud-stained slippers. No children had arrived for quite some time, so, believing every child in Dull- on-Sea was present, the piper stepped down from the bandstand and made his way along the waterfront toward the coast road, a long line of children following obediently behind. Captain Horatio Rattus smiled— as much as he could smile while still playing his pipe— and led the children down the rickety wooden steps to Contraband Cove,

weaving down the cliff face and onto the windswept beach. But the piper hadn't noticed a dark feline shape blending with the shadows, skipping silently between the pools of darkness, and watching his every move.

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