The Wooden Prince

by John Claude Bemis

  Gragl pointed to the darkness ahead. “Hurry that way! Stay hidden. We will distract them.”

  Voices were growing nearer. Gragl rushed off with her people to intercept the dirt-born before they discovered Pinocchio and the others.

  “Come on,” Sop said. “I can see well enough.”

  Once they were on the far side of one of the mounds, they crouched together and waited. Pinocchio hated not being able to know what was happening to Gragl. He tried to listen, but the sounds were too faint.

  “I’m going up on this mound to see what’s going on,” Pinocchio said.

  “Gragl told us to stay hidden,” Lazuli said.

  “I will be,” Pinocchio said, pulling the chameleon cloak around him.

  He leaped to the top of the slimy mound on the seven-league boots and knelt down. He could see the cluster of green lights from the barnacle people as they spoke with the dirt-born. The dirt-born looked like warriors. They wore a strange assortment of armor cobbled from pieces of timber and bones and carried an array of crude weapons.

  Maestro chirped quietly from his shoulder, “Gragl and her people don’t look in danger. I think—”

  A horn sounded, echoing across the stomachscape, followed by raucous cries and war whoops. Pinocchio turned toward the sound and saw another group of dirt-born sweeping out from behind mounds and charging the party talking to the barnacle people.

  “What’s going on?” Sop hissed up to Pinocchio.

  Pinocchio went cold. The two groups were about to battle. He and his friends were trapped in between them. He jumped from the mound, nearly colliding with Mezmer. “Quick! They’re coming our way.”

  Mezmer spun her spear. “Glorious battle!”

  “No!” Pinocchio said, giving her a shove. “There are too many.”

  They ran, winding through the maze of mounds in a frantic race to escape the charging hordes. But in the dark, Pinocchio soon found he was separated from the others. Where were they?

  He rounded a mound and spied Lazuli ahead. She had obviously also lost the others. The bloodthirsty shouts of dirt-born were coming from behind the next mound. They were about to get caught.

  Just as a trio of warriors came around, Pinocchio leaped at Lazuli, knocking her to the ground. He threw his chameleon cloak over them.

  “Be quiet!” he whispered.

  The sound of heavy feet passed inches from them. Once they were gone, he pulled the cloak off and tugged Lazuli to her feet.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Where are the others?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Keep going. And stay close!”

  The screams and clamor of battle grew behind them. He and Lazuli ran until they found themselves away from the mounds, away from the lights of the settlements, and in a flatter portion of the stomachscape that sloped down into empty darkness.

  Pinocchio looked back toward the now-distant sound of battle. He hoped the others hadn’t gotten caught. A flickering yellow light came toward them. Pinocchio and Lazuli drew their swords in unison.

  But it wasn’t a dirt-born’s lantern. It was Cinnabar’s hand, encased in a thin flame. Mezmer and Sop stumbled after him, panting for breath.

  “Princess Lazuli, forgive me!” Mezmer said. “I swore to protect you and—”

  “It’s all right,” Lazuli said, brushing away her apologies. “What happened to Gragl?”

  “No idea.”

  “We have to go back for her,” Pinocchio said.

  Cinnabar stood in his path. “Are you mad? We’ll get chopped to pieces by those savages. She’ll catch up to us.”

  But as they waited and the distant sound of battle finally went quiet, Gragl and her people never came.

  “What are we going to do?” Maestro chirped.

  “We have to wait for her,” Pinocchio said.

  “What if she doesn’t come?” the cricket asked. “What if she’s…well, you know.”

  Sop flicked his feline ears. “Dead? I doubt it. Those crusties are tough. But they do seem a bit jittery. Might have scattered in panic at the battle.”

  “Or headed back to the safety of their caves,” Cinnabar said.

  “She wouldn’t leave us,” Pinocchio said.

  “Then where is she?”

  Pinocchio looked into the darkness ahead. He had no answer. He was worried for Gragl, but he was also worried that they were now lost in the vast emptiness of the Deep One.

  “We can’t just stay here,” Lazuli said. “We have to reach Father.”

  “How will we find him? We don’t know where to go.”

  Lazuli pulled out the Hunter’s Glass. “It showed us Master Geppetto before. Let’s see if it works again.”

  They all huddled around Lazuli, peering at the glass ball illuminated by Cinnabar’s hand. Lazuli closed her eyes. A moment later a single point of light formed, then wound its way around the surface of the glass until it stopped on one side.

  Lazuli opened her eyes, and they all stared out into the darkness ahead.

  “That way,” Cinnabar said with a satisfied smile.

  As they headed off, Lazuli didn’t put away the Hunter’s Glass, and a puzzled look formed on her face.

  “What’s the matter?” Pinocchio asked, walking beside her.

  “Well, the glass seemed broken when I was trying to find my father. But it works when I search for Master Geppetto.”

  “Then try it for your father again,” Pinocchio said.

  The others stopped while Lazuli held the orb and closed her eyes. The Hunter’s Glass began flickering, before the entire globe swelled with light.

  “It’s not pointing anywhere,” Sop said. “Broken?”

  “But it can’t be,” Lazuli replied. “It just worked when I thought of Master Geppetto’s jeweled rose pin.”

  “So you focus on an object and not the person, Your Highness?” Mezmer asked.

  “That’s how it works,” Lazuli replied. “The Hunter’s Glass locates objects, not people. Before Pinocchio changed, Master Geppetto was able to use it to locate him, because Pinocchio was an automa.”

  Pinocchio felt his face go hot. He didn’t like thinking that he hadn’t always been a person.

  “But if I try to use it for Pinocchio now…” She closed her eyes. The Hunter’s Glass remained dark. “See,” she said, opening her eyes. “But if I visualize his boots…” She closed her eyes again.

  Lights speckled across the surface of the Hunter’s Glass before filling it completely with bright light.

  “Oh!” she said. “I thought it would just point to him. But that was the same as…”

  Something cold crept over Pinocchio. He didn’t yet understand why, but he knew there was something strange at work here.

  “Princess Lazuli,” Maestro began tentatively. “Why did it get so bright when you thought of Pinocchio’s boots?”

  Lazuli’s brow furrowed as she thought. “Maybe…because they’re so close, because Pinocchio is right here.”

  “But it did the same thing when you visualized His Immortal Lordship, didn’t it?” Cinnabar said edgily.

  An electric tension seemed to pass through them all. Pinocchio felt dizzy with panic, although he couldn’t say why.

  “But I wasn’t visualizing my father,” Lazuli whispered.

  Her eyes grew wide and glowed as bright as Pinocchio had ever seen them. She stared at him in disbelief.

  “What were you visualizing when you were looking for your father?” Pinocchio asked.

  Lazuli seemed to have to force herself to speak. “No…it can’t be.”

  “What?” Pinocchio asked.

  Lazuli hurriedly closed her eyes and murmured, “If I visualize Father’s crown…” A single point of light traced its way from the top to the same side of the Hunter’s Glass that had pointed to Geppetto.

  Lazuli stared at it and then closed her eyes once more. This time the globe sparked all over before growing bright.

  “What of your father’s did you just visualize?”
Mezmer asked.

  Lazuli was trembling. “The Ancientmost Pearl,” she whispered. “I have been searching for my father all along by visualizing the Ancientmost Pearl.”

  Cinnabar pointed at the glowing orb in Lazuli’s hand. “But that would mean, Your Highness, that the Ancientmost Pearl is right here.”

  “And not with His Immortal Lordship,” Maestro added.

  “I know,” Lazuli said.

  “But where is it?” Pinocchio asked. Even as the words came out of his mouth, the realization dawned on him.

  “It’s inside me,” he said.

  Lazuli gave the slightest nod, as if she wished more than anything it weren’t true.

  “How can that be?” Mezmer gasped.

  “When Father was captured by the doge,” Lazuli said, “he hid the Ancientmost Pearl inside Pinocchio. To keep it safe. It’s the Ancientmost Pearl that’s brought Pinocchio to life.”

  Maestro rattled his wings wildly. “But I saw what was inside Pinocchio. It was only a pinecone!”

  “Father must have transformed it with a glamour to look that way,” Lazuli answered, “in case someone managed to open Pinocchio up.”

  “But he also put a charm on me so I would protect the Pearl,” Pinocchio said. “Lazuli, does that mean your father didn’t send me to Geppetto so I could be his son?”

  Lazuli clearly knew the answer as well as Pinocchio, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit this terrible truth.

  Cinnabar, however, had no problem saying it. “His Immortal Lordship was only using you as a hiding place, puppet. He sent the Ancientmost Pearl with you, because Geppetto was the only human in the empire he could trust. And Prester John hasn’t been dying because the doge shackled him in lead. He’s been dying because he no longer has the Pearl of Immortality.”

  The words were like stabs in Pinocchio’s heart.

  “And now,” Cinnabar continued, “we have to return the Pearl to His Immortal Lordship before it’s too late.”

  “But what will happen to me?” Pinocchio asked.

  Mezmer put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my darling boy…”

  “You’ll return to the way you’re supposed to be,” Cinnabar snapped. “Back to being an automa.”

  “I…I don’t want to be an automa again,” he said. “I want to be alive. I want to be with my father.”

  Cinnabar showed a mouthful of fangs. “It doesn’t matter what you want, you detestable pu—”

  “SHUT UP!” Lazuli shrieked.

  Cinnabar flinched. “But Your Highness—”

  Lazuli struggled to compose herself, but her distress only seemed to mount as she put her trembling hands to her temples and looked around, wild-eyed. “Just…just be quiet, Cinnabar, until we figure this out!”

  “There’s nothing to figure out, Your Highness,” Cinnabar said, crouching submissively. “We’ve nearly reached your father. We’ve brought the Ancientmost Pearl to him. We can save His Immortal Lordship and he can free us from the Deep One so we can return to Abaton. It’s that simple.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Lazuli uttered. “Not for Pinocchio.”

  Pinocchio took a shuddering breath. “Yes, it is.”

  He knew what he had to do. He hated it more than anything. Hated it with a white-hot fury. He wished with every trembling molecule of his body that he didn’t have to do this. But there was only one way now to save his father. There was only one way for them all to reach Abaton.

  Pinocchio pointed into the darkness. “We came here to save them. They’re that way. Let’s go.”

  Pinocchio walked in stony silence. Mezmer looped her furry arm through his and walked by his side. Sop slumped along behind them, as melancholy as Pinocchio had ever seen the cat. In front, Lazuli walked beside Cinnabar, the djinni lighting their path with the handful of flame. Lazuli looked back from time to time at Pinocchio, casting her dimly lit, bleary eyes toward him and seeming to want to say something, but unable to find the words.

  She didn’t need to say anything. He understood.

  Pinocchio was struck by a memory now, back when he was in Geppetto’s wife’s villa and Maestro was trying to explain about Geppetto’s grief. The cricket had told him how all the living feel pain at the loss of what they love. It can’t be helped, Pinocchio, Maestro had said. It’s part of life. Pinocchio remembered how he had told Maestro that he was glad he wasn’t alive.

  Now he wasn’t sure what he felt.

  Being alive was full of such joy. But would it have been better if he’d never had to feel the heartbreak of leaving Wiq or the terror of battle in Al Mi’raj’s theater or missing his father so desperately, even if it meant never having all the happy moments too? He couldn’t say. Right now it just felt so unfair. So cruel that he had to give up living when he finally knew what it meant to be alive. And although they weren’t saying it, Pinocchio knew that Maestro and Mezmer, Lazuli, and Sop were thinking the same thing.

  Step by terrible step, they journeyed farther into the Deep One. Each step brought them inevitably closer to Prester John, closer to the dreadful moment when he would have to give back what rightfully belonged to the king of Abaton. Pinocchio tried not to think about it as they trudged on.

  A distant light appeared that seemed higher than the marshy floor, as if it was hovering in the darkness.

  “How do we know it’s not another dirt-born settlement?” Sop asked.

  “The Hunter’s Glass shows my father up there,” Lazuli said. “But we’ll be cautious.”

  As they drew closer, Pinocchio could tell they weren’t reaching cliffs like the barnacle people’s homes or the crude fortresses of the dirt-born. Whatever lay ahead was towering up from the flatness.

  “What is that, Sop?” Mezmer asked. “Your eye is the best.”

  “Bones,” the cat said. “It looks like bones.”

  The others were reluctant to believe this—until they reached the structure. The bleached bones were enormous. The skeleton of a whale, or several whales, or possibly some other enormous leviathan of a creature that hadn’t been too large for the Deep One to swallow whole, formed a tower, rising up to a massive skull crowning the top. Light flickered from within the hollow eye sockets far overhead.

  Cinnabar cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Prester John! Are you here?”

  A silhouette appeared at one of the eyes. “Who is down there?” a voice called.

  Pinocchio knew that voice! It felt like it had been ages, but he would recognize his father’s voice anywhere, that gruff but rich, warm voice.

  “Father!” he shouted.

  All the fear and anguish that had filled up inside him drained away. He had finally found his father. Pinocchio’s heart swelled with gladness that at least they would be reunited, even if it wasn’t to last.

  “Father!” he cried, running as fast as his legs would carry him. “Father, it’s your son Pinocchio! I’ve found you, Father!”

  He sprang halfway up the tower of bones on his seven-league boots—Father!—then climbed hand over hand, ascending with ferocious urgency—Father!—knowing the others must be following, but he couldn’t wait for them, not when he was so close, not when he was nearly there. Father! He had to see him, had to know that he was truly all right.

  When he reached the skull, Pinocchio rushed into the lofty domed interior. Geppetto stared at him, openmouthed. Even as Pinocchio flung his arms around him, his father looked down, disbelieving.

  “No! Why have you come here?” Geppetto gasped.

  “To save you,” Pinocchio replied.

  Geppetto’s mouth trembled. His eyes searched Pinocchio’s face with wonderment. Then he clasped Pinocchio by the arms and pulled him tight against his chest. “My boy. My boy. How I longed to see you again. But not here. Not in this place. But oh…look at you!” He let him go and stared. “You are…No, you’re not…Are you…?”

  “I’m no longer an automa,” Pinocchio said. He turned around and pointed to the back of his neck, where th
e keyhole mark was all that showed from his former self. Then he spun around and pulled back the collar of his shirt to show the smooth flesh of his chest. “I’m human like you now! I’m alive, Father.”

  “I can see,” Geppetto said. But his smile faded as his gaze drifted over to the figure resting on the far side of the skull chamber.

  Bundled in a heavy cloak and propped upon a makeshift bed of vertebrae and blankets, Prester John was an ashen husk of a man. He wore a delicate golden crown, but dark gray skin clung to the bones of his bald head. If it hadn’t been for the brightness of his eyes, Pinocchio would have believed him dead.

  As the others reached the top, one by one, Mezmer, Sop, and Cinnabar fell to their knees reverently. Last to appear was Lazuli. She ran to her father but stopped short a few paces, giving an awkward curtsy.

  “Your Majesty,” Lazuli breathed. “My…my lord.”

  Prester John wheezed a few moments before saying, “Who is that? Who is there?”

  “It is me, Lazuli. Your daughter.”

  “Lazuli,” he said. “Yes, you are my daughter. I thought you were dead. I thought I had lost you, child.”

  Geppetto was staring, amazed, at Lazuli. She gave him a little smile and then slowly approached her father, taking his shriveled hand. “I’m here, my lord.”

  Pinocchio was happy for Lazuli, glad that, like him, she’d been reunited with her father. He smiled at his father, but Geppetto was looking back with worry.

  Cinnabar stood suddenly. “Your Immortal Lordship, we have brought you the Ancientmost Pearl. You hid it from the doge in this automa. The Pearl has been safe and now we have delivered it to you.”

  Prester John winced. “Who are you, djinni?”

  “Cinnabar, my lord. I am one of your subjects, freed now by your daughter from the vile humanlands of the Venetian Empire. My companions and I are here to return your powers and accompany you to Abaton.”

  “No,” Prester John wheezed.

  Cinnabar blinked. “But…my lord. I did not serve the empire willingly. I was enslaved, and now I serve you—”

  “I do not wish to be served anymore,” Prester John said. “Too long have I ruled. I have returned to the Mother. Here I will remain until my death.”