Wooden Bones (16 page)

Pino bent to her dimpled cheek, his lips brushing against an ear that felt no different from a real one.

“Now,” he whispered.

She bumbled forward. The crowd was so still and silent that even the soft padding of her tiny slippers on the dirt could be heard by all. When she reached the scaffold, Serro, his
cheeks glistening with his tears, reached down and pulled her into his arms.

“Oh, my Bianca,” he said, “oh, my dear Bianca. You've come back to us.”

His wife scrambled over to them, fell, then scooted on hands and knees until she was part of their embrace. She kissed the puppet's head, and for a long while, before Pino spoke, the only sounds were the joyful sobs of a father and a mother who had been reunited with their long-lost child.

“Now let my papa go,” Pino said, loud enough for all to hear. “Keep your promise.”

They went on hugging and kissing the puppet as if they hadn't heard. Pino sensed the uniformed men all around him now, towering over him like the mountains.

“Let him go!” Pino shouted.

This finally seemed to get to Serro, who nodded and wiped his eyes with his sleeves. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course. You have earned . . . have earned . . . wait. Wait, now.” He leaned in, peering at the puppet's cheek, then reacted by pointing at a place where his own tears had streaked the puppet's face. “What's that? That's not flesh! That's—that's wood under there!”

Pino could not see the flaw from his distance, but he had no doubt that the paint he had so carefully applied had been partially washed away. It was, after all, only paint.

“I—I can fix—,” Pino began.

“Why isn't she speaking?” Serro said. “She should be calling us Mama and Papa! Instead she only stares!”

“She can't talk,” Pino admitted.

The mother was still clutching the puppet and sobbing, but Serro staggered to his feet, swaying like a drunken man.

“I want my Bianca!” Serro said. “I want her as she was!”

Pino shook his head.

“But you're a real boy!” Serro shouted. “You're just as real as the rest of us. Make her like us too!”

“I can't,” Pino said.

Now the rage was returning to the crowd, seeping in from the sides like water pouring into a pit. There was angry chatter, and then someone shouted, “Hang them!”

Geppetto, who had watched this all unfold from his place on the trapdoor, the noose still around his neck, shouted, “No! Please, not my boy!”

“If I can't have one like him,” Serro said, “then no one can! Bring him up here!”

The uniformed men seized Pino's arms and dragged him to the scaffold. They hoisted him up, and then one of the men up there grabbed him and brought him to the mayor.

“Please!” Geppetto cried. “Please, don't—”

The man holding Geppetto's arm slapped him hard across the face. He staggered, dazed.

“Well, Pinocchio?” Serro said. “Do you have anything to say for yourself? You are complicit in the murder of the innocent woman as well, and now you must be punished for it.”

Pino swallowed. He forced himself to muster the words, because this was something he had to say. “This is your last chance,” he said. “Let my papa go . . . or else.”

Most of the crowd laughed, as did the mayor.

“Or else?” he said. “Or else what?”

Pino looked over at the crowd, raising his voice so that no one could mistake his words. “If you don't want to be hurt,” he warned, “you must go now.”

This time the laughter was louder. Whether it was Pino's
warning, or simply that they did not want to witness the hanging of a boy, however, many people did leave—the teacher with her class, many mothers and their children, the priests, some of the elderly. Much to Pino's disappointment, though, many remained, and those who did looked at him with renewed hate. Pino wondered why there was so much cruelness in this town.

“I've changed my mind!” Serro said gleefully. “Let the boy hang first!”

“No!” Geppetto cried.

The noose was removed, and it took two men to do it, tussling with Geppetto as they dragged him, screaming, away from the trapdoor. One of the men grabbed Pino.

“Wait,” a small voice said, so small that Pino thought perhaps a miracle had happened and it was the puppet speaking after all.

But when he looked, he saw that it was the mother, gazing up at Serro with a face red from crying. “Wait,” she said, “don't do this. He's only a boy.”

“No, he's not,” Serro said. “He's—he's something wicked.”

“We have our Bianca. Let them go.”

“She's not Bianca!”

“Yes she is! She's our daughter. Look at her! She's come back to us. She—”

“Silence!” Serro cried.

He seized Pino's arm himself and positioned him on the trapdoor, then slipped the noose over his neck. It felt as coarse as bark.

With the noose sufficiently tight, the mayor signaled to a man at the far end who stood by a lever. When the man reached for the lever, Pino knew that he had to act. He'd given these people every chance to do what was right.

He formed his lips into an O and blew as hard as he could. Whistling was not something he'd ever done well before now, but he'd been practicing all week, and the sound was clear and penetrating. He whistled with all his heart—whistled just the way his papa had told him to whistle when he wanted help. It was a sound that could be heard all over town.

The mayor, the crowd, the man with the lever—everyone froze. As the whistle faded, Pino looked at Geppetto, whose own anguish only deepened. Still restrained by the uniformed men, he reached feebly for Pino.

“What nonsense is this?” Serro said. “Are you . . .”

He trailed off because another sound had filled the square. It was a dull thudding, a clopping that echoed off the bricks, a clacking that repeated itself many times.

It was the sound of wooden footsteps.

A woman screamed before Pino saw them, and then another, and then there was screaming from all around. The crowd stampeded in all directions. Pino finally saw them: dozens upon dozens of wooden puppets marching into the town square from every direction.

They were crude, these things, these monsters that Pino had formed from whatever he could find. They were made of broom handles and desk drawers and roof shingles. They were made of toy boats and bedposts and soup bowls. They had not been made to bring someone's loved one back from the dead, or to allow a crippled person to walk, or to give a scarred woman a chance to see her beauty again.

In fact, there was no beauty in these puppets at all, and yet they had been made with the greatest amount of love a wood-carver could bring to his work. They had been made with only one purpose in mind—to cause as much panic in those they
encountered as possible. And that they did. They did it as well as it could be done. They swung their bulky arms and kicked their bulky feet, and people fled in fear. It was the first time Pino had created something that had done exactly as he had intended it to do.

Serro finally came to his senses enough to shout at the man with the lever. “Pull it!”

The man hesitated, then shook his head and ran, stumbling down into the fleeing mass of bodies.

Cursing, Serro started for the lever, but then he cried out in surprise. The puppet of the mayor's daughter had bitten into his ankle, and her jaw was as strong as a metal trap, just as Pino had made it to be.

Serro beat and flailed at the puppet to no avail, and then his sobbing wife threw herself on him. They rolled off the scaffold, directly into the path of the wooden monstrosities marching their way. What became of them Pino never knew, because he felt the noose lift from around his neck and someone tug his hand in the opposite direction.

“Come, son,” Geppetto said.

He turned and saw his papa's face, and it was not relief or anger that he saw there, but something else altogether. He didn't understand. In the melee no one tried to stop them from fleeing—and Pino directed his papa to the big ships down by the docks. Planning for this moment, he had already booked passage on a great vessel that was leaving shortly.

They did not stop running. They did not look back. They ran until they'd reached the big ship with its big sails, until they'd scurried up the gangplank and stood with their hands on the rails, gasping for breath. They couldn't have timed their escape better, for within minutes the ropes were tossed aboard,
the sails were unfurled, and the big ship tilted and rocked as it churned the waters, heading out to sea.

As the land slowly receded, the mountains shrinking before him, Pino turned to Geppetto. Again there was this strange look in Geppetto's eyes.

“What is it, Papa?” he asked.

“It's nothing,” Geppetto said. “You're just . . .” Then he looked down and pointed with amazement at Pino's gloved hands. In all the action, the cloth had been ripped, and the skin visible underneath wasn't wood—it was flesh. “My word!” he exclaimed.

Pino ripped off what remained of the gloves and pulled up both sleeves. Sure enough, there was no part of him that was not flesh as real as flesh could be. “But why?” he said. “I used my gift! And I—I did something terrible.”

Geppetto clapped his son on the shoulder. “Do you think what you did was wrong?”

Pino considered. “No,” he replied. “Awful, yes. But . . . not wrong.”

“Would you do it again?”

Pino tried to hold the tears back, but it was difficult. He did not like doing something awful, even when he had no choice. “If I had to, Papa. Only if I had to.”

Geppetto made no effort to hold back his own tears. “Oh, my dear boy.
That
is what I was going to tell you a moment ago—why I look at you so differently now. You're just not my little Pino anymore. I already see in you the man you will become.”

“But I'll never be a real man!” Pino protested. “I'm not even a real boy! I'll always be different. I know that now.”

“Yes, yes, exactly!” Geppetto said. “Don't you see? I was
wrong too. You weren't turning into wood because you were using your gift. You were turning into wood because you were trying to be something you weren't. Whether you are like other boys or not, what does it matter, so long as you accept yourself the way you are? You can be different
and
real, Pino. You can be both.”

It was then, watching the land vanish into the mist that crowded the shores, that Pino finally understood. He understood because he remembered what the voice in the cave had told him.

As long as you are true to yourself, your heart will never harden, and the future is yours to shape
.

It made him smile, thinking this, and he didn't care if it was a real boy's smile or not. It was just a smile and it was good. He took his papa's hand, and together they turned, the wind blowing back their hair, the sun bright in their eyes, and squinted at all the ocean that lay before them. Somewhere beyond that ocean their new home awaited. Pino couldn't see it yet, but he knew it was out there.

He was ready for it.

S
COTT
W
ILLIAM
C
ARTER
's first novel,
The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys
, was hailed by
Publishers Weekly
as a “touching and impressive debut.” His short stories have appeared in dozens of popular magazines and anthologies. He lives in Oregon with his wife, two children, and thousands of imaginary friends. Read more about his books for younger readers at rymadoon.com.

ALSO BY SCOTT WILLIAM CARTER

The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys

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