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Excerpts

It was not the soothing notes of a lullaby that lured the children from their beds, but it was a song nonetheless. Their parents never heard it, for the tune had not been intended for them.

It was a song played for children; and when they heard it, the children came.

Half-asleep and barefoot, still in their nightshirts, the children climbed from their beds and through windows that had been opened, unknowingly, to let in the cool breezes of evening.

They walked, entranced, down winding lanes that converged into a single path that none of them had ever seen before, but that had always been there.

It had many names, for it was only ever walked by children, and children have a fondness for naming things. But each child, as they passed, knew it for what it truly was -- the Road to Paradise. They knew this, because the song they heard told them so.

The notes of the music seemed to emanate from all around them, played everywhere and nowhere all at once, and the music maker, when they glimpsed him in the twilight air, seemed to change shape in time with the music.

His flickering, ghostlike form was sometimes a grown-up, and other times a child like themselves. And sometimes he seemed not to be human at all. The music told them his name: the King of Crickets. And none of them could resist the song he played.

None, save for one.

She had been cautioned that one day the King of Crickets would come, and that unless she was prepared, she would not be able to resist his song. No children could, unless they were crippled, and could not follow, or were unable to hear the tune and fall under its spell.

The beeswax she put into her ears, as the dream had told her to do, kept out enough of the music for her to resist its lure -- but not so completely that she couldn't feel the desire, nor hold back the tears that streamed onto her pillow as she finally slept, still dreaming of Paradise.

For some children, the path ended at a great mountain face that split open to embrace them, and closed as they passed through. For others, it ended at a great precipice, which they stepped over, willingly, because the song told them they could fly. But for most, it led them to the Men of Iron, and the great ships that departed with the dawn.

In the light of morning, the path would again vanish, but it would have a new name: the Sorrow Road.

As they awoke to find the beds of their sons and daughters empty, the mothers and fathers in the towns and villages would feel bewilderment, then fear, and then terror. And they would name the path with their cries.

But it was too late. Much, much too late.