Wooden Bones, page 5
He was somewhere at peace.
That was the most amazing thing. For the first time in Pino’s life, he was not filled with self-doubt. He did not feel that creeping anxiety that came from being different. He was not tormented by the relentless desire to be just like others, to not stand out in any way. He did not think about those awkward times when he got to play with other children, when he never knew quite what to say or how to say it.
It was hard to be like other children when you weren’t born the same way they were born, when you were once made of wood instead of flesh.
In any case, he thought of none of that now.
Right now, he just ran.
* * *
In such a state of mind time had no meaning. It could have been minutes or hours, and the only sign that time had passed at all were the trees. Pino was so in a trance that it took him a while before he noticed that they looked healthier.
Gone were the black and withered things, the scorched bark and the branches that turned to ash at the merest touch. In their place were towering pines with reddish bark, trees that would have been impossible to climb because they bore no lower branches at all. Their trunks were as wide around as houses. Their limbs, high above, were a deep, rich green.
The sky peeking through the gaps was no longer gray; it was crimson melting into lavender. Though the light was fading, the fog had dissipated, and so the way ahead actually seemed brighter than before—a dusky light, to be sure, but still easier to see.
Healthy ferns sprang up where rotting ones had been. Leafy vines sprouted between beds of pine needles. Even the smell was different—the moist air full of life.
Pino thought the first tall trees were the biggest he’d ever seen, but then they got taller still. Mountains of wood. They weren’t trees at all. They were like gods. Birds—he heard chirping, something missing before. Gray squirrels scampered out of his way, diving into a thick tangle of ivy. There was even a butterfly—a butterfly, of all things!—fluttering its yellow wings from one blooming white flower to another.
He’d gone from some of the blackest woods to some of the most beautiful in the blink of an eye.
But where was Sapphire Lake?
He’d no more thought this than he passed over a small rise—and saw a hint of blue ahead, peeking at him between the massive trees. Even from a great distance it was an incredibly vibrant shade of blue; as he drew nearer, it only became more so.
When he finally reached its shore, standing in the tall grass lining its banks, it didn’t seem like a lake at all. It seemed like a bit of sky had fallen to Earth.
Hands on his knees, gasping for breath, Pino stood there on the soft bed of grass and absorbed the beauty of the lake. A pair of swans darted from the reeds and swam along the shore, their passing barely ruffling the water.
Papa.
The thought of his papa, still alone and dying in that cave, broke his reverie. Now he needed to find this girl with no arms and no legs. Where would such a girl be? Scanning the shore, he saw not a single living soul, and the thought of searching the perimeter—miles around—drained Pino of what little strength he had left. His legs, still burning, shuddered. He did not even know how much longer he could stand.
“Hey!” he cried.
It might not be the smartest thing to do—maybe the wolves were in this place too, or other hungry predators—but he was desperate.
“Hey!” he shouted again. “Anyone out there? Anyone at all?”
There was no reply. When he’d summoned his breath, he tried again. He went on shouting until his voice failed him, until his throat grew hoarse. Knowing his papa was counting on him, he tried to shake it off and shout anyway, but then his body had finally had enough.
His knees buckled. His legs gave way. He crumpled into the grass, his head and shoulders draped over the bank, one outstretched hand just touching the surface of the water. He expected the water to be cool, but it wasn’t. It was warm.
When the ripples created by his touch had stilled, he saw only his reflection staring back at him—his scratched and bruised face, the red cuts and welts mixed with the layers of dirt and sweat caked on his cheeks. With the dark circles under the eyes, and the skin drawn tight against a gaunt face, it did not even look like the face of a boy.
He was looking at that face when he heard a rustle in the grass.
Seized with panic, thinking the wolves had followed him, he scrambled to his knees and spun to face them. But it wasn’t wolves who’d emerged from the forest.
It was people.
There were at least a dozen of them, men and women alike, tall and slender, all but a few of them with spiky blond hair and eyes as blue as the lake, their pale, freckled skin camouflaged behind clothes fashioned out of their surroundings. Their vests and pants had been woven from the grass. Their body armor—for that’s what the plates strapped to their arms, legs, and chests looked like to Pino—had been constructed using the reddish bark from the giant trees. Even their crossbows were made of the same stuff, making them nearly impossible to see unless they moved them.
Which they were doing.
Raising them up.
Pointing them at Pino.
Fingers tightening on the triggers.
CHAPTER NINE
These people of the woods, they did not have kind faces. Their faces were like their polished granite arrowheads—hard, cruel, and razor sharp. The man in the front had the hardest face of all. He was the oldest of the bunch, his hair more white than blond, his cheekbones so sharp Pino could have pricked his fingers on them. His skin was weathered and bleached. On his left cheek he bore a small scar shaped like a crescent moon.
“You’re trespassing on sacred land,” he said, lowering his crossbow slightly. “The penalty is death.”
“But—but I didn’t know—,” Pino protested.
“Ignorance is no excuse.”
“Wait!”
The man again raised his crossbow. Pino thought about diving into the lake, but he knew the arrows would strike him before he even touched the water. He couldn’t believe the voice in the cave had sent him to the lake only to have him die.
“I’m here to see the girl with no arms and no legs!” he cried.
With his voice still ringing in the open air, Pino closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. He was sure the arrows were going to fly. A few seconds passed, the breeze humming over the water and whispering through the grass.
“What did you say?” the man asked.
Pino swallowed, cracking open his eyes. The woods people were still pointing their crossbows, but now their faces looked more confused than angry. “I said I’m here to see the girl with no arms and no legs,” he repeated.
“How do you know her?” the man demanded. “Who are you? What do you want?”
Pino told them his name and why he’d come. He said he’d been told she could save his papa, who was right this minute dying in a cave, and at this they murmured and exchanged glances.
“Do you know where she is?” he asked hopefully.
Finally the man in front lowered his crossbow. The others quickly followed suit.
“Of course we do,” he said. “You speak of Elendrew, the one with special sight. She is our queen.”
* * *
With the blindfold over his eyes, Pino couldn’t see a single thing. They hadn’t walked long, an hour at most, but he’d already lost his sense of direction. He heard a growing chorus of crickets. He heard water murmuring over polished rocks. He heard the whispers of the woodsfolk, all of whom kept their voices too low for him to make out what they were saying.
Worrying about his papa, he was about to ask how much farther it was when the crunch of pine needles on soft earth changed to the dull thudding of wooden planks. He heard a creak and a thud, like a gate shutting, then someone took his hand and placed it on rough rope.
“Hold this,” a woman instructed.
Before he could ask why, the planks beneath him shuddered, and he grabbed the rope for balance. He heard a rhythmic ticking, like someone banging two sticks together. His stomach dropped suddenly, as if they were moving upward. How could that be?
The ticking went on for some minutes, until the planks shuddered, then fell still. Finally his blindfold was removed.
The sensation of rising had been a correct one; they were high up in the giant trees, so high that when Pino peered over the rope that acted as a rail on the wooden platform where he stood, he could not see the forest floor. It was lost in the labyrinth of leafy green branches and foliage below.
Of all the stories his papa used to tell him at night, none could prepare him for the awesome sight of the city in the trees. At most it might have been only thirty or forty dwellings, each of them no bigger than the cottage Pino and Geppetto used to call home, but what other word could describe such a splendidly constructed place?
Not a village. Not a town. It was a city, all right, a city of rope bridges and thatched roofs, a city of houses half carved into the thick trunks and half built outside them—but so expertly made, with the same bark and pine needles that made up the tree itself, that only the tendrils of smoke rising from their chimneys and the yellow glow from their windows grabbed his attention. Otherwise, his eye would have skipped right past them.
In all his wildest dreams he could not have imagined such a place.
They’d ridden up on some kind of platform, one attached by thick gray ropes to a series of spoked wheels. He was prodded off the platform onto a much bigger platform, one that circled the trunk of a massive tree, a dozen rope bridges leading to the houses around it. The people filed onto the platform, dispersing onto the various bridges. People emerged from the tree houses, people clad in the same woven clothes but not the wooden armor, and waved at them. Even some children. They seemed happy.
Pino marveled at it all, still not quite believing his eyes. “Why did I have to be blindfolded,” he asked, “if you’re letting me see it now?”
The man with the scar on his cheek smirked. “Because you cannot see our home from the ground,” he said. “Come now, Queen Elendrew does not like to be kept waiting.”
“I don’t want to wait either,” Pino said, thinking of his papa. “What’s your name?”
The man pointed at the bridge nearest to them, one that led to what appeared to be the tiniest house of all. “My name’s Olan,” he said, “but I’d save your questions for her. There’s no point in telling you more if she doesn’t believe your story.”
His warning sounded ominous. “What do you mean?” Pino asked.
“I mean, if she doesn’t believe you, your stay here will be too short to bother with names. And I must also tell you that it’s a long way down for departed guests, especially those who don’t get to ride our ropefloat.”
Starting up the rope bridge, feeling the planks sway gently beneath him, Pino didn’t even want to think about falling from such a height.
CHAPTER TEN
The little house at the end of the rope bridge was deceiving to the eye. From the outside it hardly looked big enough to contain a single person, just a simple green door with a pine needle roof, but inside was a very different story.
Inside it was as big as a cathedral.
From the looks of it, most of the trunk of the big tree had been hollowed out, polished smooth, and stained a warm golden hue. The ceiling narrowed to a point high above, higher than any church steeple. He saw a ring of tiny oval openings up there that had been invisible from the outside. Flickering lanterns, low to the floor, encircled the area, leaving the ceiling shrouded in darkness.
Ahead of them, in the middle of the great room, a woman sat on a throne that seemed to rise directly out of the floor—carved from the tree itself, Pino thought. Behind the throne was a dwelling all its own, one Pino had not seen at first because it was made of glass, so clear it was as if the walls weren’t even there. He saw a bed of straw in the glass house. He saw a chair, dressers, cabinets.
Around the woman on the throne dozens of the woodsfolk knelt on blankets made of woven grass, silent and unmoving. The woman herself was just as still.
Or not a woman—a girl, at the tail end of her youth. Olan guided Pino to her, another three men in their wake, and as they approached, Pino got a better look at her in the light from the flickering torches on either side of her. She might have been anywhere from thirteen to nineteen; it was hard to tell because she had such a stern face, and because her billowing white gown made it hard to see her figure.
Yet Pino could see her arms and legs. She definitely had them: slender fingers resting on the arms of the throne, narrow feet in slippers made of white rose petals.
It was an odd thing to be disappointed that someone had arms and legs, but that’s how Pino felt. He had no idea why the man with the scar thought this girl, this Elendrew, was the same person he needed to find.
All of this effort was for nothing.
She did not look like the other woodsfolk. Her hair was long and black, her skin a deep reddish brown, similar to the bark of the trees they called home. Where the woodsfolk were tall and slender, she was shorter and a bit broader. Where they had blue eyes, hers were as black as charred wood.
They had not even stopped walking when she said, “Tell me why you are here, boy.”
Her voice carried up into the shadows. The way she said the words, it was like she was used to being obeyed.
When Pino told her his name, and that he’d come because his papa was dying, she just went on staring at him.
“And why do you think I can help?” she asked.
“I don’t know if you can,” Pino said. “I need to find a girl with no arms and no legs.”
She laughed—a horrible sound, as sharp as a dagger and just as cutting. “Well, you’ve come to the right place. I am Elendrew, and I am the one you seek. Now tell me, who is it that told you I would be here?”
Pino didn’t understand. “But your arms and legs—,” he began.
“Are completely useless,” she finished, grimacing. “Haven’t you noticed how still I am? How I have not moved my hands even so much as a twitch? It’s not because I don’t want to move. It’s because I can’t.”
“Oh,” Pino said.
“Don’t look so relieved,” Elendrew said. “I was born with this curse. Now, what’s wrong with your hand?”
“What?” The question caught Pino by surprise.
“Your right hand,” she said. “Look at it. The first finger—the skin looks funny.”
When Pino held up his right hand, he was alarmed to see that she was right. The very tip of his first finger was . . . different. Instead of pink, it was brown, like a strange callus. But when he rubbed the skin with his thumb, it wasn’t a callus at all. In fact, it wasn’t even skin.
It was wood.
There was no doubt it would have been easy to give in to the panic swelling inside him, but Pino didn’t have time for panic right now. He had to focus on his papa. “I don’t know,” he said, trying to keep the nervousness out of his voice. “I think—I think I burned it back in the fire.”
From how far away she was, Pino didn’t think she could see his finger well enough to know he was lying, but she still stared a long time before replying.
“A funny-looking burn,” she said. “But enough of that for now. Who told you I could help your papa?”
“She didn’t have a name,” Pino said.
“What? What nonsense is this?”
“She was just a voice—a voice in a cave.”
This changed everything. Her icy gaze turned to astonishment. It wasn’t just Elendrew gaping at him either—everyone in the room, those who had brought him to her, those praying on the floor, all of them stared openly at him. It was so quiet he heard the torches hissing like angry serpents.
“What did you say?” she asked.
The severity of her gaze, the sheer intensity of it, made Pino queasy. He swallowed away the lump in his throat. “I said, she was just a—”
“Yes, yes, I heard you,” she snapped. “Where is this cave? How did you come to find it? Tell me exactly.”
Slowly, haltingly, Pino told her as best he could about his journey since they’d left home. He didn’t tell her why they’d fled—nothing about Antoinette, or about how he’d brought her to life—but he told her about their escape from the giant wolves with the red eyes, about how they took refuge in the cave, where he spoke to a voice that danced in blue light.
“I know this cave,” Elendrew said.
“You do?”
“Yes. I was there too, as a very small child. It’s where my mother left me.” Her voice became dreamy, her eyes distant. “Why, you may wonder? I was very young, but I remember how she looked at me. How she could barely stand to look at me. My arms and legs may have looked fine, but they might as well have been missing, for all the good they did. She left me there to die, I imagine, but I heard the voice too. It told me it spoke only to people who were special. It told me if I just stayed calm, someone would come. And so they did. These people, they call themselves the People of the Tall Trees—they came for me, and I have been here ever since. Because I have a way of knowing things that others can’t know, a way of seeing things no one else can see, they made me their queen.”
Pino had never had a mother, but he imagined that it would be even worse to have a mother only to have her abandon you. He felt sorry for Elendrew, but he didn’t know what to say and he didn’t have time to think of something. “My papa—,” he began.
“Yes, yes,” Elendrew said, “we all know of your papa. Tell me, Pino, why are you special?”
“What?”
“The voice in the cave—she speaks only to those who are special. So what makes you special, Pino?”
