Wooden Bones (4 page)

A pair of red-glowing eyes flared in the shadows ahead of them. Grew brighter. Pino cast around for another stone, but then another pair of eyes appeared. A second growl joined the first. Then a third pair of eyes blinked open, and the growling became a rumbling chorus. Soon dozens of red eyes spotted the way ahead, like a wall of angry fireflies.

No amount of stones would be enough.

They had to run.

Which was what they did—turning and sprinting in the opposite direction. The thunderous growling gave Geppetto a jolt of new life. At first he limped, holding his shoulder, but
then he seemed to forget all about his wound and ran with the swiftness of a much younger man, grabbing Pino's hand and tugging him along. Pino had never seen him run so fast.

Behind them the growling gave way to snarling, and to the angry footsteps of dozens of hungry pursuers.

Geppetto dropped their bags, hoping that would satisfy the wolves, but they ignored them. When Pino stumbled, Geppetto swept him up in his arms. They swerved around rotting stumps and leaped over foggy ravines. Glancing over Geppetto's shoulder, Pino had a clear view of the pursuing pack of wolves—their red eyes dancing up and down over the uneven terrain, their ragged fur bristling in the wind, their misshapen bodies flitting in and out of the shadows.

They were gaining.

One trailing jaw snapped at Geppetto's heel, narrowly missing. Another lunged for Pino's hand, clamping down on the air just inches from Pino's fingers. Another few seconds and the whole pack would swarm over them—and then suddenly Pino was sailing into the air, having been hurled upward by Geppetto.

A tree.

He sailed into a tree—or what was left of a tree, a massive old oak that had been blackened by a fire, its scorched limbs bearing not a single leaf. It stood in a ring of other blackened and withered oaks, the biggest of the bunch, its creaky limbs bent and twisted in every possible angle, as if it had been searching in its dying days for light it could never find. Pino just managed to grab the crumbling lower limb, scrambling up, pieces of bark raining below.

Geppetto was only an instant behind. He wrapped both arms around the limb and began to heave himself up next to Pino.

Before Geppetto could pull himself to safety, a wolf lunged in the air—and clamped its jaws around Geppetto's pant leg.

The weight of the snarling beast tugged Geppetto down. He was slipping. Pino grabbed his papa by his shirt, leaning backward against the trunk of the tree. Even with his added weight, the wolf was winning, Geppetto's grip beginning to give. If Pino didn't let go, they would both go down.

But he wasn't letting go.

Not ever.

Another wolf lunged and bit into Geppetto's legs, and this time the teeth found flesh. Geppetto cried out. But in the process the second wolf bumped the first, causing it to swing like a pendulum, and the added force tore Geppetto's pants. There was a great rip and both wolves sailed clear.

Pino took advantage of the moment to pull his papa to safety—an instant before another pair of snapping jaws sailed past the place where Geppetto's foot had been.

They scrambled up the limb on hands and knees, Geppetto wincing at his wounded ankle. It was such a wide trunk that they could sit shoulder to shoulder against it, their knees pressed to their stomachs, their feet resting where the branch met the trunk and the flaking black wood was thickest.

The furious wolves lunged and snapped their jaws, white teeth flashing just above the limb, but none could reach them. For the moment they were safe.

This thought had no more occurred to Pino then one of the wolves got a new idea. Instead of trying to attack Geppetto and Pino, it attacked the dying tree—leaping against it and springing away with all four paws. Pino had no idea why it would do this, until he heard a terrible sound.

The creak of protest from the old oak.

Another wolf did the same. Then another. This would have had little effect on a big, healthy oak, but it was too much for a dying one. The tree groaned. A steady procession of wolves, rabid with desire, pummeled the charred trunk. There was the sound of crackling wood. The oak swayed.

Leaned.

Tipped.

Geppetto hugged Pino around the shoulder, pulling him close. Pino looked to his papa for comfort, but Geppetto had gritted his teeth and pressed his eyes shut.

The tree began to fall.

F
or the briefest of moments Pino himself gave up. Like his papa, he closed his eyes and resigned himself to their fate, for there seemed no way out of their terrible predicament. The tree would fall, and if they managed to survive that part of it, the wolves wouldn't let them live for long.

Then, in the rush of wind through his hair, Pino was struck with an idea. And this time it was he who spoke the name of Geppetto's long-lost wife.

“Antoinette,” he whispered.

Somehow he'd given her life—not the real woman, of course, but the thing he'd fashioned out of wood scraps and horsehair. Somehow he'd performed a miracle, breathing life into a lifeless puppet, giving strength to something that had lacked any will of its own. Not a life like theirs, surely, but
some
kind of life, so why couldn't he do it now? Why couldn't he do it when it mattered most?

The problem was he didn't know how.

As the falling tree picked up speed, Geppetto clutched him tightly. Opening his eyes, Pino repeated the same thought again and again in his mind:
Come alive! Come alive! Come alive!

Still the tree fell, the dark forest resounding with the wrenching and crackling of the old trunk; dirt clouded the air
like ash; withered roots sprang from the ground like frightened worms. Down it went. Down to its doom. All that Pino could think—even while he continued wishing ardently for the tree to come alive—was how this was all his fault.

If he hadn't been born, none of this would have happened.

It was a terrible feeling—guilt and rage and regret all mixed into one, wrapped in a blanket of empathy for the only person he'd ever loved. He didn't care about himself. He just didn't want his papa to die.

At the last moment, when Pino saw the ravenous red eyes of the wolves rising to greet them, something quite extraordinary happened.

The tree took a step.

It took a step in the same way that
anyone
would take a step if someone gave him a push from behind—a lunging step that prevented it from falling. A hop onto one foot. A stumble with all the weight on one knee.

Instead of one solid trunk below, there were now two—half had split off and formed a blackened leg on which the tree rested.

There was more creaking and crackling. Pino felt a terrible shudder ripple through the trunk, and for a moment he feared that the decaying wood would not bear the weight of the tree and they would still go down. But then a second leg ripped from the ground, muddy earth exploding around them, and stepped beside the first. The old oak straightened. The leafless limbs, a cloud of bent and warped twigs that snapped at the slightest touch, coalesced and merged into what resembled two black, sinewy arms.

This development only further enraged the wolves. Snapping and slashing in their fury, they lunged at the tree. Their claws ripped through crumbling bark; their teeth broke
off chunks of disintegrating branches. The air was a haze of black—a blur of oily fur and plumes of bark bits. Red eyes streaked the haze.

The old oak fought back, swinging wildly at its attackers with its bulky arms. Though the tree was slow, occasionally a swing made contact, and a howling wolf went spinning through the air. Bits of branches and bark went spinning right along with it.

Pino and Geppetto held fast to each other and the trunk. Though the tree was fighting valiantly, Pino knew it would only be a matter of time before the wolves won the battle. There were just too many of them and the tree was in such bad shape for it to turn out any other way.

As long as they stayed.

That was Pino's sudden realization. Since the tree now had legs, it didn't
have
to remain in the same spot, did it? He leaned close to the trunk, lips brushing against the gritty bark.

“Run,” he whispered.

The tree went on fighting, flailing at the wolves. The wolves had figured out how to time their leaps to avoid the slow-moving arms—splitting themselves into two groups, one side distracting the tree while the other lunged.

“Run,” Pino said again.

This time the tree heeded his command. When the wolves leaped again, instead of swatting them, the tree leaned out of the way and let the wolves fly past. The tree turned west, where the forest grew darker, and took a step. Then another. Then it was running, one thunderous footstep at a time.

Riding atop this charging monstrosity reminded Pino of the stories his papa sometimes read him, stories about brown-skinned people in hot deserts in faraway lands. As he gripped
the tree's trunk, holding on for dear life, Pino imagined that riding piggyback on the charging tree must be much like riding an elephant in those stories. It was so big and powerful that you were completely at its mercy.

Unfortunately, the wolves wouldn't be so easily detoured. They quickly fell into pursuit, snapping at the tree's root-entwined heels.

Bits of bark broke free and spiraled in the tree's wake, swirling into the fog that blanketed the forest floor. As it lumbered, the tree swung at the wolves, warding them off, but the wolves were much better at running than the tree. If anything, they had a greater advantage during a chase than when the tree was standing still.

Worse, as the path before them grew darker, it also thickened—the dying trees were closer together, the shriveled branches extended farther into their path. The charging tree plowed through crackling walls of wood, many of its own branches breaking free. More than once Pino had to duck to avoid being whacked in the face.

Each booming footstep echoed through the forest. The ground tilted; they were descending. It was so hard to peer ahead in the gloom that Pino didn't see the steep ravine—at least a hundred-foot drop to a creek filled with jagged rocks—until they were right on top of it.

“Stop!” he cried.

But it was too late. The tree, never breaking stride, jumped. The wolves jumped after it. For a few seconds all footsteps were silent, and there was no sound but the faint whistle of wind through withered branches and wet fur. The creek beneath them shimmered through the fog like a blade under a thin white sheet.

The fog was so thick, and the light so poor, that Pino couldn't even see the other side—until the tree's root-wrapped foot boomed into the dirt. A second boom followed, and then the tree was running again. Dozens of galloping paws followed.

There was no time even to breathe a sigh of relief, for the wolves immediately resumed their attack.

It didn't seem possible, but the trees on this side of the ravine were even blacker and uglier than the ones on the other side. They closed tight around them, forming a tunnel, the dry bark woven like snake skins. The tunnel narrowed until finally all the shadowy gaps between the branches disappeared—they'd reached a wooden wall.

The tree smashed through it.

As it did, it lost half its remaining branches. The other side was quite a bit different: a cliff face of shiny black rock, and at the base of that cliff a deep darkness that must be the mouth to a cave.

It was the darkest cave Pino had ever seen.

Until he saw that cave, he had never known something could be so dark. It was as if light itself was turned aside when it reached the cave, barred entry like an unwelcome guest. Even looking at the cave, Pino felt afraid. It was not big enough for the tree, but it would be more than big enough for people, if anyone was dumb enough to venture inside.

The tree had unwittingly trapped itself, blocked on one side by the cliff and the other side by the dense wall of dying trees. The only way out was the way it had come in, and the wolves must have realized this, for they staged all their attacks while shrewdly guarding the passage out.

One after another the wolves propelled themselves at the tree, attacking in a frenzied storm, not giving the tree a chance to defend itself. While the tree whacked one wolf away, another five tore it asunder. There wasn't much left of it—just the hint of a charred skeleton, wolves tearing at its legs, gripping on to its arms. The extra weight made it stumble backward.

As the dark mouth in the cliff face loomed, Pino saw their opportunity. Remain, and they would surely die. Jump, and they had a chance. They could take refuge in the cave. Who knew what lay within, but whatever it was, it had to be better than holding fast to a tree that wasn't going to be a tree much longer.

“Jump!” he yelled.

There was no time to say more, but fortunately Geppetto recognized what Pino meant. When the tree was leaning far back, only a few feet from the lip of the cave, they both jumped. Pino landed hard on smooth black rock but managed to roll to his feet. Geppetto, with his gimpy ankle, did not fare as well; he crumpled into a ball, crying out in pain.

Sensing easy prey, the wolves came at them, but the tree focused its remaining strength on protecting them, batting away each snarling attacker. Pino scrambled to his papa and helped him to his feet.

As they limped into the cave, Pino glanced over his shoulder. The spectacle that he saw made his heart heavy. The tree was swinging and flailing and smashing everything around it, but there were just too many sharp claws and jagged teeth. The red eyes glowed hotter with rage; the snarling and growling grew deafening as the end was at hand. What remained of the tree disintegrated in front of Pino's
very eyes, an explosion of splintering wood that turned the tree into something else.

Something that
had been
rather than something that
was
.

His heart felt heavy because it was the second time Pino had given something life only to watch it be destroyed.