The Boy, the Bird and the Coffin Maker

by Matilda Woods

  “Ah, we noticed the fire.” Clara nodded to the line of smoke trailing out of the bedroom upstairs. “You must be very sick.”

  “Positively terminal,” Rosa agreed. “You haven’t lit that fire for thirty years. Would you like us to make you some soup?”

  “No. I’m fi—”

  “We’ll make you some soup,” Clara decided. “What neighbours would we be if we didn’t make you soup?”

  “All right then,” Alberto said with a resigned sigh. It was common knowledge that the Finestra sisters could not cook. They doubled some ingredients, left out others completely and added their own “secret” ingredients that technically weren’t even food.

  “We’ll be back before lunch,” the sisters said, and they bustled off to make Alberto some of their infamous fennel soup.

  CAKES AND SWEETS AND STRAWBERRY JAM

  Despite taking several sips of Rosa and Clara’s soup, Fia got better first. Within days she had recovered from the flight with the lantern and begun to fly in circles around the room. Her beak was a little bent from when she had carried the light, but at least now it matched her wing.

  Alberto continued to burn wood at a furious pace, and a constant plume of smoke billowed from the chimney. Every day that passed the temperature dropped another degree until it was too cold even to snow. Alberto realized that if he had not brought Tito in, he would have died in the same room as his mother.

  When he was not forced to work on a coffin, Alberto spent every moment caring for Tito. Despite his doubts, he did not give up on his quest to save the boy. He kept the fire burning constant and bright, kept the blankets warm and sat beside him all through each night. But no matter what Alberto did, Tito Bonito would not wake up. The old coffin maker would have to try something else.

  Leaving Fia on guard, and one window open so she could fly for help if need be, Alberto went down into town to buy Tito Bonito a treat so sweet it would surely wake him up.

  On the first day, Tito went to Enzo’s bakery.

  “Good morning, Enzo,” he called as he stepped into the warm shop. Steam filled the glass cabinets rising before him. Through the milky mist he could see cream buns, doughnuts bursting with blackberry jam and raisin cakes as big as his fist. In the corner, he spotted the foolish fisherman. Enzo must have let him in during the night so he could escape the cold.

  “Morning, Alberto,” the baker replied with a smile as warm as his shop. He stepped past the sleeping fisherman and approached his friend. “Haven’t seen you for a few days.”

  “Been a bit under the weather.”

  “Ah, so has my wife. I’ll just go and fetch you a fresh loaf.”

  “Actually,” Alberto said as the baker turned around, “I’m not after bread today. I was hoping to buy something sweet.”

  “So you’ve finally found your sweet tooth?” Enzo had a little chuckle. “I knew you’d find it one day. How about a little orange cake?”

  Alberto looked at the small, round cake Enzo was pointing to and shook his head. He didn’t think Tito would like that.

  “Do you have anything sweeter?”

  “Of course. How about a lemon cream pie?”

  Again, Alberto shook his head.

  “Sweeter still?” Enzo said.

  “The sweetest thing you’ve got.”

  Enzo walked behind his glass cabinets, studying each treat in turn. A few times he nodded to himself, but then shook his head. Eventually, he said, “Ah, this is the one. No doubt. You can’t get anything sweeter than this,” and pulled a treat off the highest shelf. He placed it on a piece of parchment paper and presented it to Alberto.

  “What is it?” Alberto asked.

  “A triple cream gateaux with extra layers of custard and butterscotch jam. There’s almost half a bag of sugar in that.”

  “Good,” Alberto said. “I’ll take it.”

  On the second day, when Tito had failed to stir for the triple cream gateaux, Alberto returned to Allora’s main square and studied the shops rising around him. His eyes soon settled on a pink one in the corner. He walked across the square and entered Madame Claudine’s sweet shop.

  “Alberto?” old Madame Claudine said when she saw who had just walked through the door. “Why, I haven’t seen you in here for thirty years. What was it you bought?” She paused for a moment and stared at the ceiling. “Ah. I remember. A chocolate wolf for Anna Marie, a speckled frog for Antonio and a raspberry fish for little Aida.” Her smile turned into a frown. “May those sweet children rest in peace with their dear mother.” After making the sign of the Gods, she bustled closer. “Now, Alberto, what can I do for you today?”

  Alberto took off his frost-laced cap and said, “I’m hoping to buy something sweet.”

  “Then you’ve come to the right place. No sweeter shop in all of Allora. Here, let me show you my wares.”

  Madame Claudine, in her bright, twirling skirts, led Alberto around her shop. She pointed out every sweet that lined the store and told Alberto a little about each one.

  “These are the chocolate wolves that Anna Marie loved so much. They’re our highest seller, especially in summer when all the tourists come from the north. They don’t have wolves up there, you see. The Great Mountains are far too high for them to cross.

  “And these ones here –” She pointed to a barrel full of rainbow, jelly birds “– are called the Birds of Summer. The colour in them will stain your tongue and teeth for two weeks straight.

  “And these,” she said, stopping before a barrel full of green and brown pinwheels, “are peppermint creams. Nothing wakes you up as swift as one of Madame Claudine’s famous peppermint creams.”

  Alberto was sure the peppermint creams would do the trick. But, alas, they did not. And so, for a third day, Alberto made his way down to Allora’s main square. This time he entered the town’s only jammery and asked for the owner’s finest jar of strawberry jam. He’d heard Tito talk several times about how much he loved strawberry jam.

  “Coming right up, Alberto,” jam-maker Cirillo said. He pulled a large jar off the shelf behind him and wrapped it in red ribbon. As he went to hand it over, Alberto held out three copper coins.

  “No, no,” the jam-maker said. “This jar is for free.”

  “But I insist.” Alberto placed the coins on the counter.

  “And I insist even more so,” the jam-maker said. He picked up the coins and stacked them on the lid of jam. Then he held both out towards the coffin maker.

  “But why?” Alberto said. He could not understand.

  “We could only afford spider wood for my mother,” the jam-maker explained. “But you, Alberto, buried her in poplar. I’d give you every jar of jam in my store for free in thanks for that.”

  Alberto had been certain that the strawberry jam would wake Tito up. But, alas, just like the triple cream gateaux and the peppermint creams, it failed to make the boy stir.

  Alberto began to fear he could do nothing to halt Tito’s impending death. He even thought about measuring him for a coffin, but when he had the tape in his hands he couldn’t bring himself to do it. But luckily, twelve days after he carried the boy’s frail body home through the snow, Tito Bonito woke up.

  “Tito!” Alberto cried. He pulled a steaming bowl away from his pale face. “You’re awake!” He could not believe it. He had done it. He had saved Tito Bonito.

  Tito looked up at Alberto and then turned to the bowl. He took a deep breath and spoke his first words in twelve days.

  “Is that chocolate?” he croaked.

  Alberto laughed. “Yes, it is. Chocolate pudding. I made it myself. It was my wife’s recipe. It’s still warm, and there’s cream with it. Would you like some?”

  Alberto helped Tito to sit up. When he was propped against the pillows, he spooned some pudding into his mouth. Tito swallowed. Coughed. Spluttered. And swallowed again.

  “It’s brilliant,” he said with a big, chocolately grin.

  When all the pudding was gone, Fia began to pec
k the bowl clean. In the twelve days Tito had lain still, she had grown bigger and bigger. No longer the size of a sparrow or a magpie, she was now larger than a hawk.

  Tito looked around the room. “Where am I?” he asked.

  “In my house.”

  “I’ve never seen this room before.”

  “That’s because it’s upstairs. This was my children’s room. But, if you would like, it can be your room now. For as long as you want.”

  TITO’S FIRST STORY

  Tito couldn’t believe it. He’d never had his own room before and though his first was filled with things that belonged to other people – dusty books, hand-made dolls and wooden horses – he still thought it was the best room in the whole world.

  While the winter days grew colder and darker, his new home grew warmer and brighter. After eating lots of chocolate pudding, fish stew and a whole bag of peppermint creams, he grew strong enough to walk and within days was exploring every room in the house. He looked under every bed, opened every cupboard and examined every tool in Alberto’s workshop. He only steered clear of one thing: the windows.

  Aware that Tito did not want to be seen (though why, he could not be sure), Alberto warned him of two dangers living next door.

  “You must be careful,” he said one day while Tito was eating breakfast in the kitchen. “Next door live two old sisters called Clara and Rosa who love to gossip. They tell everyone everything, and if they were to learn that you are here the whole town would know by lunchtime.”

  Tito took the warning very seriously. He left his half-eaten porridge on the table and went upstairs to fetch an old sheet. Then he spent the rest of the day tearing it into pieces and placing the cloth over every window.

  As Alberto watched each room in the house grow dark, a bad feeling formed in the pit of his stomach. Tito wasn’t just worried about being seen. He was absolutely terrified. But why?

  Though it only took one extra fireplace to make the whole house warm, Alberto lit them all anyway. Soon, despite all the cloth covering the windows, every room grew bright, and the four chimneys jutting from the roof sent cheerful puffs of smoke into the air, like a signal to another land.

  While Tito refused to let Alberto take him down into the town, he did occasionally sneak out into the garden during the day when Rosa and Clara were out shopping or at night when the gossiping sisters were snoring like two freight trains in their beds. Afterwards, he would sit beside the fire in his room and Alberto would read him a story.

  Before he came to the coffin maker’s house, Tito Bonito had never been read a story. So when it came to choosing his first one, he picked it very carefully. He pulled out every book from his bedroom shelf and studied each one in turn. He examined the drawings on the front, the drawings inside and the strange words that covered both. Then, finally, he made a decision.

  “Can you read me this?” he asked Alberto. He held up a large cloth-bound book with a drawing of a giant mountain on the front.

  “Ah,” Alberto said. “The Story of Isola. That was Anna Marie’s favourite. It’s very long,” he warned Tito. “It will take many nights to read.”

  “That’s OK.” Tito held the book out towards Alberto. “That’s why I chose it.”

  The coffin maker took the book and cleared his throat. “Right,” he said. He put on his reading glasses and, for the first time in thirty years, opened the dusty pages.

  There once lived a famous explorer who was born Giovanni Moretti, but went by the name of Gio. When Gio was a child he would look upon trees no one had ever climbed and climb them. When Gio was a young man he would look upon raging rivers no one had ever crossed and cross them. And when Gio was no longer young but not yet old he would look upon mountains no one had ever scaled and scale them. Gio was the greatest explorer the world had ever seen and his greatest discovery was made at the age of thirty-three.

  The mountain Gio decided to climb on the morning of his thirty-third birthday did not look like much from the ground. But once he reached the peak, its true wonders were revealed.

  Like fog rising on a winter morning, he saw the mountain for what it truly was. On this mountain the trees weren’t made of wood, but silver; the flowers weren’t made of petals, but rubies; and the grass, every blade, was made of emeralds. And in amongst these wonders roamed even more: fish that walked on land, horses that cantered through the air and birds that couldn’t simply fly, but swim.

  Gio looked down upon all of these wonders and tried to think of a name to call the mountain he had just scaled. But before he could, he heard a whisper on the wind and the whisper said this:

  Isola.

  “Isola?” Gio said. “Yes. That is a name. That is the name. That is the name I shall call my mountain.”

  Plucking a ruby flower for proof, Gio returned to the dull world below and began to tell everyone – everywhere – about the wondrous mountain he had found. But even with the proof of a ruby flower, no one believed a word he said.

  “It could not be possible,” men would say when they heard about Gio’s latest adventure.

  “It could not be real,” women would agree when their husbands told them the tale.

  “But it is possible!” Gio would cry when he heard them call him a liar. “But it is real!” he would scream to the crowds that gathered to listen. “I swear it is the truth. Here. See. This map.” He would throw down a piece of parchment and point to a cross in the middle. “That is it. That is the magical mountain: the magical mountain of Isola.”

  Most did not believe a single word Gio said.

  “The ravings of a mad man,” they all agreed with a nod of their heads.

  But some, just a few, looked upon this map and began to wonder if maybe the magic Gio spoke of was not false but real. And so, within a moon of Gio finding Isola Mountain, a small group of men, armed with a map, set out to find it for themselves.

  Having reached the end of the story’s first chapter, Alberto closed the book and took off his glasses.

  “Can you read some more?” Tito asked. He hadn’t moved an inch during the story and Fia hadn’t either. She’d listened so closely her tail feathers had singed on the fire.

  “Not tonight, Tito. I’m feeling quite tired.”

  “Then tomorrow?”

  “All right. I’ll read you the next chapter then.”

  “And the next day?” Tito asked as he helped Alberto return the book to its shelf. “Can you read us another chapter then?”

  “I’ll read you one every night. On and on until we’ve read the whole story. Now, Tito Bonito, it’s time for all of us to get to bed.”

  “Alberto’s house is looking warm,” Clara said as she peered out the window. The sound of a giant mackerel throwing tiles off the roof had pulled her wide awake. Unable to fall back asleep, she’d taken to staring down Allora Lane, searching for the scent of gossip. “Look at all that smoke.” Four trails rose out of the coffin maker’s house.

  Rosa, who had woken to the sight of that same mackerel crashing into her fireplace, hurried over to see. “Why do you think they’re all burning?” she whispered.

  “Maybe he’s cold or—” Clara gasped and her eyes widened with horror. “Oh no,” she said.

  “What is it?” Rosa asked.

  “You don’t think…”

  “Think what?” As usual, Rosa was one thought behind her older sister.

  “You don’t think he’s started to burn the bodies, do you?”

  Rosa gasped even louder than Clara. Then she poked her head outside and spent the rest of the night trying to catch a glimpse of what the coffin maker was up to.

  THE MAN WHO STOLE THREE APPLES

  Tito had been living at Alberto’s house for two weeks when they finished the frame for the mayor’s coffin and began work on the first cluster of cherubs that would adorn the lid.

  “That’s very good, Tito,” Alberto remarked as he watched the boy carve feathers into a wooden wing. Tito’s small hands made the work easy. But it wa
sn’t just that. Tito had a way with the wood that some people were just born with. It was like his heart knew how to shape it and his hands did all the work. Even Alberto’s own son, Antonio, had not been able to work wood like that. “I bet you’d make a wonderful blacksmith too. Maybe you could have some lessons with old master Luca down in the forge?”

  At the suggestion Tito’s hand slipped and he scraped a deep mark right across the cherub’s right cheek.

  “Don’t worry,” Alberto said when he saw Tito’s shaking hands. “It was only an idea. You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to.”

  Tito’s hands began to still. He looked up from the coffin and said, “I’d rather just stay here.”

  “Are you sure?” Alberto asked. “There are many wonderful things out there.” He motioned towards the window and the wide world that existed beyond.

  Tito shook his head and turned his attention back to the mayor’s coffin. He adjusted his grip on the chisel and began to carve another feather into the cherub’s scarred wing.

  Alberto returned to the cherub he had been carving, but his eyes did not leave Tito. Though he had been looking after the boy for weeks he still knew hardly anything about him. Tito was like a puzzle he desperately wanted to solve. But how can you solve a puzzle when so many pieces are missing? Hoping to discover one today, Alberto cautiously asked the boy another question.

  “Tito,” he said. “Why don’t you want to leave the house? Are you frightened of something? Please,” Alberto said when Tito didn’t reply. “Please tell me the truth. Maybe I can help.”

  Tito looked up from the coffin and studied Alberto. Seeing something he liked, he said, “I don’t want to leave because then I might be seen.”

  “By who?” Alberto asked.

  “Everyone.”

  “What’s so bad about that?”

  Tito paused for a moment, like he wasn’t going to answer. But then he did. “People talk about what they see, and if they talk about me he might hear. Then he’ll come to get me.”