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Show 55 a flute, but when I was little, I'd often watched Sister Agatha make me whistles out of reeds that grew alongside a pond near the convent. Carving a flute shouldn't be much different, I thought, except it would need more holes than a whistle. I even knew that I would want a piece of good hard ash, and ash trees grew along rivers. The Hamel is a narrow tributary which flows into the Weser south of Hamelin, and I made my way toward it. When I came to the bank, I searched till I found a grove of ash and cut off a few branches of the right thickness. The knife wasn't very strong, so I nicked my fingers and scarred the tree trying to get the branches loose. Sitting on a fallen log among the close-growing weeds next to » the water, I peeled thin green curls of bark from the stick I'd chosen until it was clean. Then I began to carve, but my fingers were so clumsy that when at last I had been able to bore out a sorry-looking flute, I couldn't get any sounds at all to come out of it. Discouraged, I looked at the sun and decided it was time to go back to town. All day I had been wanting to be with Gast, and wondering if it was right to be his friend again, yet at the same time feeling reluctant to join him for whatever kind of celebration waited. But there was no place except Hamelin for me to go, and I had nothing else to do with myself, and I was so tired that I didn't want to think about all the doubts that had been picking at the edges of my mind like rats' teeth. Before I left I took off my clothes, waded into the Hamel, and washed myself all over. The water was cold and woke me up somewhat. After I dressed carefully again, I bent over a still spot next to the |