Noah Barleywater Runs Away (20 page)

He was really very lucky, he decided. Some people had no happy memories at all; he had eight years with his mother and eighteen with his father. Not bad, all things considered.

He climbed out of bed and stepped across to
the desk that stood on the other side of the room.
That’s a surprise
, he thought, seeing his chisel sitting on the corner of the desk, for he was sure he had left it downstairs in his workshop the night before.
Did Dad bring it up here in the night?

A tap on the door made him turn round, and a moment later his father came in to wish him a happy birthday. There were presents from Auntie Joan, Cousin Mark, Uncle Teddy, and a rather surprising envelope too.

‘Who’s this from?’ asked Noah, holding it in his hands and staring at it as if it was a time bomb that might go off at any moment.

‘I don’t know,’ said his father. ‘It arrived by special delivery first thing. You’ll have to open it to find out.’

Noah slipped his finger under the seal and lifted out a long document, which he scanned quickly before opening his eyes wide and going back to read it carefully from the start.

‘What is it?’ asked his father, and Noah simply shook his head and handed it across.

‘I think you’ll need to read this for yourself,’ he said.

The following day, Noah Barleywater collected the keys to Pinocchio’s Toy Shop and made his way towards the village. His father had wanted to accompany him but he said no, not today, he wanted to go there on his own. It had been ten long
years since he had last been inside, and it astonished him to remember that day when he was a child and had arrived in the village to meet the master craftsman, and the number of strange occurrences that had taken place. He had promised to come back and visit the old man again, but somehow, once he got home, the memory of that day had seemed to dissolve in his mind until it almost disappeared. In fact, he almost never thought of it again in all the years in between, not even when he told his father that he wanted to learn more about woodwork and carving, and had organized an area of the basement where he taught himself all the rudimentary secrets of planing and shaving, chipping and cutting, painting and designing – all the things that went into making toys of his own. He’d become very good at it too, and sold them at spring festivals and the various market days around the town.

In fact, it wasn’t until the letter arrived on the morning of his eighteenth birthday telling him he would inherit the entire place, lock, stock and barrel, that all those memories came flooding back. There was one proviso on the inheritance though: that he reopen the shop and continue to trade in wooden toys and puppets. No plastic, no metal, just wood.

‘Well, I can do that,’ he said, thrilled by this unexpected gift, for it had been his intention to make a career as a toymaker anyway, and here was
the perfect place to get started.

The shop was locked when he arrived, and he put the key in the door, opening it slowly, thinking that he had better oil the creak. He glanced up, and the bell gave a deep sigh and then an exaggerated ring, and he smiled at it, thinking he was going to have to have a word with it about its attitude. He wasn’t surprised to find that, inside, the floor and counter tops were covered in dust.

Well, nothing that a good spring clean won’t fix
, he thought to himself, and set about taking all the old toys and puppets off the shelves and storing them neatly in the back room while he began the process of restoring the shop to its former glory and beginning his new life as a master toymaker.

He spent the rest of his days there, of course, happy and cheerful, working with wood and chisel and plane. A life filled with joy, as all lives should be. And unlike his predecessor, he never made a toy that didn’t sell, for, quite soon, Pinocchio’s Toy Shop – he kept the name – became one of the most successful businesses in a fifty-three-mile radius. Indeed, the only puppets that were never taken off the shelves over the years were that curious cast of characters that the old man’s poppa, Geppetto, had carved and who he had introduced him to on the day they had first met: Mrs Shields, Mr Wickle, the Prince, Mr Quaker, Dr Wings … all of them went undisturbed. No customer ever picked them up. No visitor ever even glanced in their direction. It was
almost as if they didn’t see them at all. But Noah kept them there as a memento, because they belonged to a day he didn’t want to forget ever again.

In fact, everything the old man had left behind was still present in the shop on the morning that Noah arrived, and he cared for and looked after every piece as if it was made of gold. Except for
one
thing, that is, which Noah didn’t even notice when he first stepped inside.

A single wooden puppet that had sat on the counter gathering dust throughout those ten long years before the inheritance became his.

A puppet of a boy, with straight, neat legs, jointed at the knees, and a smooth cylindrical body.

It was sitting there when Noah first entered the shop. He left the door wide open as he surveyed his new home, allowing anyone to step inside, or run out.

And when he turned round again –

As if by magic –

Pinocchio’s puppet –

Had disappeared.

Many thanks to David Fickling, Bella Pearson, Simon Trewin, Jane Willis, and the teams at Random House Children’s Books and United Agents for all their advice and encouragement.

And to Con, for constant love and support.

John Boyne

John Boyne was born in Ireland in 1971. He is the author of seven previous novels, including the international bestsellers
Mutiny on the Bounty, The House of Special Purpose
and
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
, which won two Irish Book Awards, topped the
New York Times
Bestseller List and was turned into a Miramax feature film. His books are published in over forty languages. He lives and writes in Dublin.

www.johnboyne.com