Wooden Bones, page 2
Then they were both standing, nearly eye to eye, and Geppetto fell.
He landed hard on his backside, but his gaze never wavered from the puppet looming over him. Pino went to him, but Geppetto spoke as if he didn’t even know the boy was there.
“Antoinette,” he whispered.
The puppet’s mouth moved up and down, creaking as it swiveled on its hinges, but no other sound came out. Outside thunder boomed repeatedly across the valley, sounding to Pino much like a mallet pounding on a hollow log.
CHAPTER THREE
After that Geppetto did not speak again of destroying Pino’s creation. He also never called it Antoinette, referring to it only as the puppet.
“Get that puppet out of my workshop,” he’d say, or “Lock the puppet in the storeroom, Pino, I hear a wagon coming.” He never looked at it when he said this. In fact, he seldom looked at it at all.
Pino begged forgiveness, but his papa told him what was done was done, and that they’d just have to see what came of it.
The puppet followed them as they went about their business, strutting and stumbling like a toddler learning to walk. It moved its mouth often, but it never spoke. Sometimes it gestured wildly with its hands, but these movements never seemed to amount to anything. It was as if the puppet felt the need to speak but had nothing to say.
When Geppetto locked it in the storeroom at night or when they had visitors, it stared at them sadly but did not resist.
Sometimes during the night Pino woke to his papa quietly sobbing. Pino never said anything, but he always had a hard time sleeping after that. He’d lie there gazing into the darkness, wondering if the puppet could hear the sound of his papa’s suffering. He wondered if it would even care.
This went on for several weeks, until finally they had to go into town. Geppetto was grumpier than usual, saying he just couldn’t put it off any longer. They were low on supplies.
He shoved the puppet in its closet. For once he looked it squarely in the face, pointing his rough finger just inches from the puppet’s polished nose.
“Stay in here,” he said. “If a customer comes while we are gone, make no sound. No one must know of your presence. Do you understand? Do you know how important this is?”
The puppet’s wooden eyelids slid shut and open, but otherwise it made no response.
“Nod your head!” Geppetto said. “Do something to show me you hear me!”
Still the puppet only gaped stupidly. Geppetto slammed the door. He locked it and shoved the key into his pocket, then seized Pino’s hand and tugged him out the door.
The sky was the color of a dull knife. Their breath fogged in the morning air. They’d been without a horse since their old mare died in the summer, so they had to walk. Pino was gasping for breath by the time the town came in sight.
When Geppetto saw that it was busy in town, with lots of wagons filling the streets and people milling on the boardwalks, he clenched down even harder on Pino’s hand.
Geppetto was usually quite talkative with the store owner and the other customers, but this time he merely shoved the items they needed into the leather satchels they’d brought—a pound of flour, a half dozen eggs, a loaf of cheese, and some milk. Although he had less than a third of what he usually bought, he was already heading to the counter. Usually Pino asked for some licorice, but he didn’t dare today.
Unfortunately, they had the bad luck to get behind Signora Moretti, the old widow who was deaf in one ear. Her deafness hadn’t impaired her love of gossip, however, and she was regaling the portly shopkeeper with news about the blacksmith’s excessive drinking.
Despite Geppetto’s crowding behind her and clearing his throat, she went on jabbering in her high-pitched voice, punctuated by the occasional squeal of laughter.
“Excuse me . . . ,” Geppetto began.
Before he could say more, there was a great commotion outside, people along the boardwalk shrieking and shouting and crying out in surprise.
Pino was watching Papa, and he saw the wood-carver’s face turn as white as the flour they were intending to buy.
Signora Moretti and the shopkeeper bustled immediately to the window, as did the others in the store. Everyone in town must have been doing the same, because there was the thumping and pounding of many footsteps on the boardwalk. Geppetto didn’t move. Pino was desperate to see what was out there, but his papa had hold of him like a shackle.
“Oh my word,” Signora Moretti said, a hand fluttering to her throat. “What—what is she?”
Geppetto’s face fell, his white hair falling across his eyes like a curtain. He shook his head from side to side, then looked sadly at his boy.
“We have to move now,” he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
While everyone’s attention was diverted, Geppetto and Pino left the proper amount of money on the shopkeeper’s counter and squeezed out the doorway. Geppetto sneaked behind the murmuring crowd that lined the boardwalk. Pino hurried after him, his satchel thudding against his back.
He caught only a glimpse of Antoinette over the wall of people, a bit of horsehair and wooden cheek. She wouldn’t have seen them except that a barber standing in his doorway noticed them.
“Signore Geppetto!” the lanky man in a white apron cried, waving his razor in a way that made Pino nervous. “Signore Geppetto, is that woman your doing?”
“It’s not a woman!” Geppetto shot back. “It’s just a thing! It’s made out of wood!”
When he spoke, the crowd shifted and turned, and for a brief moment the puppet had a clear view of them.
It stared with its dull black eyes, then immediately lurched in their direction.
Geppetto hurried even faster, racing out of town, the puppet stumbling after them like a drunk. Pino heard the whispering of the townsfolk until they passed around the first bend.
Pino begged Geppetto to slow down, but he wouldn’t even answer. They put some distance between themselves and the puppet, and soon it was out of sight.
When they reached their cottage, Pino slumped to the floor, wheezing and panting. Sweat blurred his eyes. He’d never felt his heart beat so hard.
“Pack—pack some clothes for both us,” Geppetto said, diving into the closet and pulling out two large sheepskin packs. “I will get whatever tools we can carry.”
“But, Papa—”
“Do it!”
This sharp retort brought tears to Pino’s eyes, but he fought them back. This was all his doing, so there could be no crying now.
While Papa hustled out to the workshop with one of the bags, Pino packed the other bag full of as many clothes as it would fit, leaving a little room for the food they’d just bought at the store, as well as the bread, fruit, and dried meat they still had left in their cupboard. He heard clinking and clanking from the workshop.
Only a few minutes later his papa returned. The pack slung over his shoulder bulged as if it might rip apart.
“What do you have there?” Geppetto said, glancing into Pino’s bag. “You got us food—good boy. Now we should—wait, one thing more. I can’t leave it.”
He returned to their room and retrieved the box that contained his portrait of Antoinette. He started to put the yellowed paper into his bag, then he seemed to think better of it, folding it into quarters and stuffing it into his pant pocket.
Then he returned to the front door. He was reaching for the knob when it turned on its own and the door swung open. Standing before them was the puppet. If not for its blinking eyes, it could have been a statue.
“You!” Geppetto cried. “How dare you come back here. Do you know what you’ve done? Do you . . . do you . . .”
His words trailed off, for he was looking over its shoulder at the road.
Pino saw the same thing as his papa: Down at the far end, just where the road bent around the corner into a grove of oaks, a crowd was fast approaching.
The dirt was still glazed with the morning frost. First it looked like just a few people, but they kept coming, dozens of them—men, women, young, and old. They filled the road like a river, flowing steadily in their direction. At first it seemed to Pino that some of them carried staffs. It was only when he looked closer that he saw that they were rifles.
Geppetto yanked the puppet into the cottage. “Get my pistol,” he said.
Pino obeyed. When he returned with it, he found Geppetto shoving the puppet in the closet. Unfortunately, the doorjamb had been badly splintered during the puppet’s escape, and the door wouldn’t stay shut.
Cursing, Papa kicked the door a few times, then took a chair from the kitchen and braced it under the knob. By this time Pino could hear the chattering crowd. Geppetto took his pistol to the window, peering beyond the edge of a curtain. When Pino went to join him, Geppetto held up his hand.
“Stay back,” he said.
The crowd grew louder; it was only now that Pino could hear the anger in the voices. Geppetto watched for a moment, then set his jaw and stepped to the door.
“No, Papa!” Pino said.
Geppetto made a motion for Pino to remain, then went outside.
Pino caught only a glimpse of the amassing storm of people, a flurry of pale faces and fogging breaths. Eyes glimmered in the frigid air, the sun glinting on shiny black barrels. Before the door shut, Pino saw that the crowd wrapped most of the way around their cottage.
“Hold there!” Geppetto cried.
There was a murmur of discontent. The closet door rattled, making Pino jump. He hurried over to it, leaning his back against the door.
“We’ve come for the truth!” a man shouted. It was a familiar voice, and then Pino realized it was the town’s barber. “Did you create that puppet, Signore Geppetto?”
There was a moment’s pause, and then Geppetto answered in a quiet voice. “Yes, I did.”
Another murmur rose from the crowd, this one more excited than angry. Pino did not understand why his papa would lie.
“But it was a grave mistake,” Geppetto said. “It can’t be done again.”
“Liar!” a woman shouted.
“Go home!” Geppetto cried. “Go home and forget all this nonsense!”
“Don’t be greedy, wood-carver!” another man said. “We just want our loved ones back!”
“It can’t be! Go away!”
Later Pino would have a hard time remembering exactly how it started. There was lots of shouting back and forth. Someone fired a gun. Perhaps it was Geppetto, firing into the sky to try to scare them off, or perhaps someone in the crowd twitched a trigger finger by mistake, but then lots of bullets were flying.
Windows smashed and the glass rained down all around them. Geppetto fired back, aiming high, but then a bullet sliced into his shoulder.
He cried out in agony and slumped to the floor, pressing his hand against the blood blooming on his shirt.
“Papa!” Pino cried, rushing to him.
They crouched on the floor beneath the window. Bullets still plowed into the cottage, smashing glasses in the cupboard and a vase on the table.
A flaming torch sailed through a broken window and immediately set fire to their rug. Then another sailed through and landed on the table. Smoke filled the room, stinging their eyes and choking their lungs.
“What’re we going to do?” Pino said.
Geppetto looked at him. For the first time in his short life Pino saw that the man who had made him, the man who had fashioned him out of wood and given him life, did not always have the answer. Before he had much time to think about it, the closet door banged open and the puppet lurched into the hazy room, stopping when it saw them, oblivious to the flaming carpet beneath its feet.
“Move!” Geppetto said. “Don’t just stand there, Antoinette!”
But it was too late. Pino had made her out of old wood, the kind that has had months to dry and become rich food for a hungry fire.
The flames exploded up her legs, lighting her dress as if it were newspaper. Only when she was completely engulfed did she seem to realize what was happening, and then she ran around in circles, flapping flaming arms.
It was at that moment that Pino realized a way to escape. With the walls burning and crackling all around him, and bullets still flying, he lunged for the door. He threw it open, staying out of sight of the crowd.
“Pino!” Geppetto said. “No!”
“Antoinette!” Pino shouted. “Go to the well! It’ll put out the fire!”
For a moment Pino didn’t think it would work. The flaming puppet continued its mad pirouettes.
But then it stopped, looked at Pino with its black eyes encased in shimmering flames, and ran for the door. As soon as the dull thuds of its feet reached the deck, the sight of the puppet—fully afire, lurching crazily, waving its arms—had the effect Pino wanted.
A woman screamed. Then another. The gunshots stopped, and then there were the sounds of people fleeing. “A monster! A monster!” the people cried.
“Let’s go, Papa!” Pino said.
They grabbed their bags and fled out the door, using the cover of the smoke and the crowd’s hysteria to escape to the forest unnoticed.
Geppetto’s right arm was as red as if he’d dipped it in a barrel of paint. Before disappearing into the trees, Pino took one last glance back at the mayhem surrounding what had been the only home he had ever known—the flaming roof of their cottage, the smoky outlines of people fleeing, and the shrieks and screams rising up from the townsfolk who had once been Geppetto’s loyal customers.
The last thing Pino saw, before they vanished into the forest, was the flaming puppet of Antoinette running in circles in front of the cottage, grasping at the air as if she were trying to hug someone who wasn’t there.
CHAPTER FIVE
All their running took Geppetto and Pino deep into the woods surrounding their home. If you’ve ever been truly frightened—not just startled or surprised, like you might feel when someone pops out of a closet as a sort of joke, but truly frightened—then you know exactly how Pino felt in that moment.
You know what it’s like to be so scared that your heart is a loud drum in your ears; to be so scared that every snap of a twig and every moving shadow is your enemy; to be so scared that your mind itself feels like it’s on fire.
Run! They’re coming! They’re going to get us!
Those were the only thoughts going through Pino’s mind. If he’d been paying attention, he never would have chosen to flee into the dark woods—and certainly not the woods that lay to the west, which were the darkest of all. The canopy of trees thickened until nearly all the morning light was squeezed from the world and the way ahead was steeped in shadows. It wasn’t long before the sound of their burning cottage was left far behind, replaced by an eerie silence that was broken only by the snap of twigs from their footsteps or by their own haggard breathing.
The air cooled, moisture beading on their faces. A wispy fog curled around mossy stumps and pooled in shallow ravines. The trees—they began to look less healthy. Some were bent and stooped like old men. Others looked withered, sporting few leaves.
They ran still farther, and the trees were not only bent and withered, but blackened and charred as well. A great fire had obviously swept through the woods long ago—one that had burned so deeply that the forest had still not recovered.
It was a dead and lonely place.
Finally Geppetto collapsed on a bed of half-rotted ferns, gasping for breath. He pressed a hand against his wound and clenched his teeth. The blood dripped between his fingers and smeared the wet leaves.
“Papa!” Pino cried.
“It’s—it’s all right, boy,” Geppetto said. His cheeks were so pale that they made Pino think of the whitest elm. “Just—just need to rest . . . a moment . . .”
“But they’re coming!”
Geppetto shook his head. “No. Not here. They won’t come in here.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . because we’re in the bad woods, boy. People—people don’t go in here. Not ever.”
He tried to say more but then lost the words in a fit coughing. Pino glanced behind them. With his heart still pounding in his ears, he wouldn’t have been able to hear people coming even if they were, but he didn’t see anyone. At least not with any certainty. The tapestry of shadows in their wake made it seem as if there were both hundreds of people crouching back there—and no one at all.
When he looked back at Geppetto, he was alarmed that his papa’s eyes were closed.
“Papa?” he said.
Geppetto remained motionless. Pino tried to speak again, but his throat tightened and choked off the sound. Could he have lost his papa already? It was not fair, not fair at all. Other boys and girls got to be with their papas for many years. Pino could not lose him. He wouldn’t know what to do. He wouldn’t know how to take care of himself.
Papa might be gruff and moody at times, but he was a good papa. On the slow days he would often take Pino fishing at the pond. He always made Pino’s tea just the way he liked it, with extra lemon. And during thunderstorms he never complained when Pino crawled into bed with him, not even once. He was a good papa.
Pino didn’t want to lose him.
He didn’t want to be alone.
Cautiously, afraid of what he was going to find, he touched the side of Geppetto’s face. He was afraid the flesh was going to be as cold as a winter stone, but it wasn’t. It was still warm. He held his fingers over Geppetto’s open mouth . . . waiting . . . hoping . . . and felt a breath.
“Papa?” Pino said. “Papa, can you hear me?”
Geppetto murmured. It was hardly any sound at all, only the slight movement of air through the throat, but it made Pino’s heart leap for joy. He hugged him, not even caring that the blood would seep into his own clothes.
“Papa, Papa!”
“So very . . . tired . . .”
“You must wake up, Papa. We can’t stay here.”
“Tired . . .”
It took enormous effort, but Pino shifted Geppetto to a sitting position. It was like trying to pull up a sack of potatoes; his papa didn’t have any strength of his own. His head drooped to the side, the white hair falling in front of his face.
