Wooden Bones (15 page)

“In prison! You would treat me like a common criminal?”

Serro made a
tsk-tsk
sound. “Come now, it won't be that
bad. Unlike the poor wretches who have been there lately, you, at least, will be well fed. And I hope I don't have to remind you that you were seen killing that poor, unfortunate woman earlier today. You will have to be tried for such a crime.”

“It wasn't a woman!” Geppetto cried. “It was nothing but—but—but—
wooden bones
!”

“Well, that will be for the law to decide. Of course, I am a friend of the judge, and I think I can get him to waive the charge . . . so long as you do the work I ask, of course.”

Geppetto, red faced, sputtered, “But—but I need my tools!”

“My men will bring whatever you need. Pack your things.”

“But we can't just leave the shop unattended! We have customers . . . work that needs to be done. . ..”

“It will be waiting for you when you return.”

“Do you have no heart at all, signore?”

Finally Pino saw an ever so slight softening in Serro's eyes, and when the man spoke, his voice was tinged with the same sadness that often touched his papa's voice when he was having his worst days. “I want you to know that I am not a cruel man,” Serro said. “Circumstances have forced me to be this way. I will tell you what I will do. I will leave your son to tend to your business in your absence—I'm sure, learning from you, he's become quite the wood-carver himself.”

“Thank you,” Geppetto said.

“But,” Serro warned, leveling his plump finger at Pino, “you will be there in a week when he finishes his work, boy. I will invite the whole town! There is a scaffold in the town square, and everyone will watch in amazement as my daughter walks into my wife's waiting arms. You must be there, boy, as
a testament to your papa's character. If not, I doubt the judge will rule in his favor.”

“But what if it doesn't work?” Pino asked.

“Of course it will work,” Serro said. “Is your papa not the finest wood-carver in all the world?”

“Yes.”

Serro smiled his cruel smile again. “I thought so. But if for some reason it doesn't work, well, you know that the scaffold has another purpose. Why, it was used only a week ago to hang a man who'd murdered his wife.”

*  *  *

Pino held his emotions in check the whole time Geppetto was packing, not wanting to show even the slightest hint of weakness in front of Mayor Serro. And except for a bit of mist that clouded his vision as Geppetto was being driven away in the wagon, he managed to stay strong.

It was only when he returned to the cottage and found the note on the floor—where his papa must have tossed it as he was being led outside, bags in hand—that Pino finally lost his control. In a hurried scrawl the note read, “Flee! Otherwise he will kill us both, no matter what he says! And make no puppets—not for him, not for anyone! Love always, Papa.”

He wept for hours after reading that note.

Finally, though, when the first light of dawn was seeping into the eastern horizon, he calmed down enough to think about the situation more clearly. He knew that Geppetto was right. The safest thing for him to do was to leave.

But what would happen to his papa?

He stood at the window and looked at the gray light spilling onto the ocean. The rippling waves made him think of the concentric circles found inside the stump of a fallen tree. He
remembered how his papa had told him that those circles were a way to mark the passing of time, to know how old a tree was.

If Geppetto was to have any chance at all, it would be up to Pino. But how? He knew that creating a puppet of Serro's daughter—and he'd gotten a good enough look at that painting to know he could do it—was explicitly against his papa's wishes. So many bad things had happened because he had used his gift, and the worst of all was that he was losing his chance at being a real boy.

But was that really so terrible?

Pino had not lived a long time, but he felt like an old tree already. He felt like an old tree that was always trying to be some other kind of tree, like he was a pine when everybody else was an oak. In that moment, gazing at the rippling waves, he decided to stop trying to be a different kind of tree. He didn't know
what
kind of tree he was—there might be only one of him in the world—but whatever he was, he was just going to be that kind of tree and stop pretending.

Most importantly, he wasn't going to let his papa be killed, even if it meant Pino would turn completely back into wood.

The question was, would Serro keep his word?

W
hen the day finally came, Pino worked right up until the very last moment, arriving at the town square when Mayor Serro was already speaking to the crowd.

During the week Pino had done his best to keep normal business going, working on his special project only at night, but with each passing day more customers were interested in only one thing: how they, too, could bring their departed loved ones back to life in puppet form. With each passing day, as he told them all no, they left more and more angry.

“Remember,” Pino whispered to the child-size puppet walking next to him, its face hidden by a straw bonnet, its blue cotton dress covered with a gray shawl several sizes too large for it, “keep your head down and don't do anything until I say so.”

They edged their way into the back of the crowd, Pino keeping a firm hand on the puppet's arm. Because the puppet was the size of a toddler, no one noticed its awkward, shuffling walk.

The town square overflowed with people, packed elbow to elbow between the tall brick buildings and leaning out all the windows. There were old people with canes and children on their fathers' shoulders. There was a priest in his black robes, a butcher in a spotted white apron, a schoolteacher with a
dozen rosy-cheeked children in tow. A tremor of excitement ran through them all.

The sky was clear, and the sun shone so brightly that Pino had to veil his eyes to get a view of the scaffold. It was difficult to see over the old woman in front of him, but Pino got a glimpse of Mayor Serro strutting on the stage. He was dressed in the same dark suit as before, except now he wore a black top hat.

“And over here to my right,” Serro was saying, his voice reedy and high but easily projecting to the farthest reaches of the crowd, “hidden under this black veil, up until this moment seen only by the master wood-carver himself, is what you have all been waiting for. In moments you will see my daughter walk amongst us again.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd.

There were several people on the scaffold, seated on wooden chairs. There was indeed a child-size thing, body hidden completely by a thin black veil that draped it head to foot like a burial shroud. Next to the puppet was Geppetto, eyes downcast and hands clasped limply in his lap. On either side of him and the veiled puppet were the same two uniformed policemen who had accompanied Serro a week earlier, each clutching a rifle to his chest. Last, sitting on a chair far from the others, was what appeared to be another puppet—this one a woman in a black dress, her long white hair as fine as spider silk.

This was what Pino thought, because her skin was so pale, her body so still and frozen, her eyes so distant and vacant, that he didn't think it possible she was made out of flesh and blood. But then, as Serro went on talking about how wonderful the town was, how they would soon be famous for what they were about to see, an instant of anguish flashed across her face.

Then Pino knew: This was Serro's wife.

Towering over the scaffold, its shadow slicing the middle of the crowd like a sword, was the inverted L-shaped post where so many men and women had hanged until their bodies finally grew still and lifeless. When the mayor droned on for too long, the crowd began to grumble and shuffle. In addition to the two armed men on the scaffold, Pino counted another dozen dressed just like them scattered in the crowd.

“Now then,” Serro said, “for the moment you have all been waiting for. Signore Geppetto, will you please remove the veil.”

Geppetto stared at the wooden planks beneath him as if he wasn't aware that anyone else was there. The crowd fell deathly silent. The only sound was the cawing of a seabird passing overhead.

“Signore Geppetto?” Serro said, this time with more edge.

Pino wouldn't have thought it possible that his papa could slump any lower, but he did, his shoulders sagging. Without rising or even looking up, he took hold of the veil from below and gave it a feeble tug.

That was all it took. The veil slipped to the planks.

The crowd gasped. Even Pino felt his own breath catch in his throat, for the puppet—no, the child—next to his papa was an incredible likeness of the mayor's daughter, right down to the cowlick in her red hair and the daisies in her blue cotton dress. Not only had her features been carved and smoothed to perfection, her skin had been painted the exact same rosy pink.

It was a masterpiece, and for just a moment Pino forgot their perilous circumstances and felt a swelling of pride for his papa. Even Serro's wife turned to look, her eyes softening.

“Well done, sir!” Serro cried, clapping his hands. “Now, my dear Bianca, rise. Rise and come to your papa.”

The puppet didn't move, just as Pino knew it wouldn't. The crowd rumbled with discontent.

“Signore?” Serro said.

Geppetto, still not looking up, let forth with a great sigh. “I told you, what you want is impossible.”

Serro's jaw turned rigid. “Make her walk,” he said.

“It can't be.”

“Make her walk!”

The mayor's shout echoed off the brick walls. Geppetto looked up, his eyes as dead as those of his creation, but he said nothing. Serro was trembling so much Pino could see it even from where he stood. Then Pino felt it—the crowd turning, the mood shifting, the air thickening with disappointment and bitterness and rage. Serro pointed his finger at Geppetto as if it were the barrel of a gun.

“Listen carefully, wood-carver,” he said, “you will make my daughter live again . . . or you will be punished for your crimes.”

Pino waited, watching not Serro, Geppetto, or anyone else on the scaffold, but instead the crowd. He waited to see how they reacted. It was the one thing he needed to know.

When the crowd's reaction finally came, it came with all the force of a gale wind. The shouts and cheers crashed over Pino, raining down on him from all directions, coming from both old and young, from both men and women. He looked at their angry faces and saw not the faces of human beings, or even puppets, but the faces of the monsters that had darkened his dreams ever since his papa had been taken from him.

This reaction seemed to fill Serro with new zeal. “Well, wood-carver?” he said. “What will it be?”

Geppetto shook his head. “I have done everything I can do.”

Serro paused, like a storm cloud gathering itself for a
bolt of lightning. “Then . . . you . . . will . . .
hang
!”

The crowd erupted with feverish applause and shouts of glee. Serro signaled to one of his men at the edge of the scaffold, who then climbed the steps with a noose in hand. Seeing this, the crowd cheered, the lust for violence pulsing through it like a heartbeat.

When the man reached the top step, Pino knew he could wait no longer.

“Wait!” he cried.

His voice was swallowed in the cacophony of rage. He tried again, and only the few people around him reacted, turning his way. The man with the rope, who'd already tied it to the top beam, was affixing the noose around Geppetto's neck. Pino pushed his own child puppet forward, forcing his way to the scaffold. The man with the rope prodded Geppetto to stand. Some large, sweaty men blocked Pino's way, and try as he might, he couldn't get through.

Papa was guided to a trapdoor in the center of the scaffold.

“You are hanged today,” Serro said, “for murdering the innocent woman who came upon our town. If you have any last words—”

“Wait!”

The crowd, wanting to hear the mayor's remarks, had finally quieted enough for Pino to be heard. Serro searched the crowd. The people between Pino and the scaffold parted, forming an open path directly from him to the mayor. It also provided everyone up there with a clear view of Pino, including his papa.

“No!” Geppetto cried. “No, my boy! Run! Run now!”

“Ah, yes,” Serro said, “the famous Pinocchio. I'd almost forgotten about you. Well, you're just in time. You, too, will hang for your father's crimes.”

He signaled to the uniformed men on the outskirts of the crowd, who started immediately for him.

“No!” Geppetto cried. He tried to run toward Pino, but one of the men held him in place. “He's—he's done nothing!”

Serro didn't answer. He was squinting at the puppet standing next to Pino. “Who's that with you, boy?”

Pino had thought long and hard about what he would say in this moment, but now words deserted him. So instead he did the only thing he could do.

As the men were almost upon him, he reached out to the little puppet with his gloved hands and snatched off the bonnet and the shawl.

Gasps spread through the crowd. Serro stared with bulging eyes, and at the far end of the scaffold a strangled moan escaped the throat of his wife, who was staring at the girl in the blue dress as intensely as her husband.

For there was no question that this, indeed, was their beloved Bianca. If Geppetto's puppet had been a masterpiece, then Pino's creation was something unparalleled in the history of wood carving—a work of genius so real, so lifelike, that even standing inches away, no one in the town square that day would ever be able to look back and say this was not a real little girl. For Pino had softened the wood so that it was as pliable as flesh, found the perfect red silk for her hair, and polished the blue glass of her eyes so they shined like sapphires.