The Boy, the Bird and the Coffin Maker

by Matilda Woods

  “Come, Tito. Quickly.”

  In silence, Alberto, Tito and Fia crept downstairs and into the workshop. Two unfinished coffins lay inside. Alberto couldn’t hide Tito inside the mayor’s coffin – he would get suspicious if his own was closed – so he led Tito to another.

  “Quick, Tito. Get inside, and take Fia with you. Make sure she doesn’t chirp. Can you do that?”

  With a nod as short and sharp as he was, Tito crawled on to the bench and into the coffin maker’s coffin.

  “Don’t worry,” Alberto said as he pulled the lid over the top. A long shadow fell, like a setting sun, over Tito’s small body. “I’ll come back. I promise.”

  Alberto closed the lid and nailed his coffin shut.

  “Sorry about the wait,” Alberto said when he finally opened the door. “I was working on a coffin.”

  “In your pyjamas?” Mr Bonito asked.

  “Yes, well, I couldn’t sleep.”

  “We heard hammering,” one of the men said.

  Alberto recognized the voice. He searched the shadowed faces before him. To his surprise, he saw his childhood friend, Enzo. Beside him stood his apprentice, Santos.

  “Just closing one up,” he said sadly. “So…” He turned back to Mr Bonito. “What can I do for you? Has someone died?”

  “Of course not,” Mr Bonito said. “We’re here about the toy.”

  “Oh,” Alberto said. “That was nothing. Just a misunderstanding.”

  “I think you misunderstand me, Coffin Maker,” Mr Bonito said. “I have not come here to listen to you speak. I have come here to search your house for my stolen son. Now, step aside or these two men can hold you down while I search.”

  “Of course.” Alberto stepped back so all four men could enter.

  “Sorry about this,” Enzo whispered as he walked past. “The mayor roped me and Santos in while we were closing the store. Ordered us to come or he’d lock down the shop for ever.”

  They searched the kitchen first. Everything looked in order, but as they turned to leave Mr Bonito spotted two bowls drying beside the basin.

  “Hang on,” he said, coming to a stop. “I recognize the pattern on those bowls.” He picked one up and held it closer. “It is the same as the bowl I found in the cottage.”

  A triumphant gleam shone in Mr Bonito’s eyes. Alberto feared it was all over, but then his oldest friend spoke.

  “Why, I recognize them too,” Enzo lied. “I have the same set. Do you, Mister Mayor?”

  “Of course not! They’re far too common for me. I get mine ordered in from France.”

  “Si, si. Common indeed,” Enzo said. “Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if half the town owned bowls like those.”

  Mr Bonito growled in frustration. He dropped the bowl into the basin where it smashed into twenty pieces. Then he turned towards the stairs and climbed up to Alberto’s room.

  Alberto did not think they would find any sign of Tito in his own room, but then he saw Tito’s nightcap lying on the floor. It must have fallen off when he tried to peer out the window. With horror, he realized he was still wearing his own.

  “Ah,” Enzo said. “I, too, keep a spare nightcap in my room.” He picked up the material and placed it in Alberto’s hand before the others could notice its small size.

  “I think all is in order here,” the mayor said with a smart nod. “Shall we move on to the next room?”

  Dread slowed Alberto’s feet as he followed the four men into Tito’s room. Though he had time to hide Tito, he hadn’t had time to hide any of his things.

  Tito’s room smelled of milk and chocolate. The sheets on his bed were ruffled, toys littered the floor and ashes filled the fireplace.

  “It was cold this last winter past,” Enzo said, nodding to the cinders. “We lit every fireplace in the house, even the rooms we kept closed.”

  “And what about all of these toys and that lantern?” Mr Bonito snapped. He was starting to suspect the man who had come to help him search was not helping at all. “What excuse is there for a floor full of toys and a bright lantern beside the bed?”

  Enzo searched for a lie. When he failed to find one, Mr Bonito turned to Alberto.

  “How do you explain all of this? Is there a special guest staying in this home? A friendly little ghost living in this room?”

  “I, er…” Alberto fumbled for a lie. In desperation words tumbled from his mouth. They came so quickly he did not know what they were until he spoke them. “I used to have a son, Mr Bonito. Just like you. Only I do not have to search for him. For my son died many years ago. I know, for I made his coffin myself.”

  Mr Bonito stifled a yawn. He had not come to listen to this old man’s story.

  “Lately,” Alberto continued, before Mr Bonito could interrupt, “your presence in the town and all this talk of your son has opened old wounds: wounds that I have kept bandaged for thirty years. Three decades have I kept this door closed, but lately my thoughts and memories have led me to open it back up. Now, some nights, to my shame, I imagine they are still here with me. Antonio, playing with his toys.” Alberto nodded to the wooden train set covering the floor. “Aida, playing with her dolls.” He nodded to the dolls in the cupboard that Tito had barely touched. “And Anna Marie reading her books.” He nodded to the open book resting by Tito’s bed. It was the one about Isola.

  “I blush to admit that I also leave their things lying about the house. So then, when I am tired and walk into a room, I suddenly light up because in my tiredness I forget the past and believe they are still here. My devilish Antonio, my wise Anna Marie and my sweet Aida have just left the room, and if I go upstairs I will find them lying asleep in their beds.”

  The room fell silent. Three of the men stood with their heads down, but one, Mr Bonito, kept his up. He kept scanning the room hoping for a sign, proof, that it was his son living in this room and not the ghost of someone else’s. But he could not find one.

  “Come on,” Mr Bonito snapped. “We have yet to search the workshop.”

  Alberto’s legs felt like lead as he followed Mr Bonito, Enzo, Santos and the mayor down the stairs. When they reached the workshop, Mr Bonito began to search through Alberto’s things. He threw aside all of Alberto’s tools, kicked away stacks of wood and peered into the mayor’s coffin. Then his eyes fell upon the one that had just been nailed shut.

  “Master Umberto Romano,” Alberto said, nodding to his own coffin. “Poplar wood. Seventy-one by twenty-five inches.”

  Even though Enzo and Santos had watched Master Romano’s coffin – Maple, 76 × 18 – be lowered into the ground two weeks before, neither said a thing. Luckily, the mayor had not bothered to attend that funeral so he was oblivious to the lie.

  “Well, go on.” Mr Bonito nodded towards the coffin. “Open it.”

  “But…” Alberto searched for another lie. He had told more lies tonight than all other nights of his life put together. “But I can’t,” he finally said.

  Mr Bonito stepped closer to Alberto and reached towards the pocket that held his gun. “Can’t or won’t?” he said softly.

  Alberto gulped and looked to Enzo for help. But the baker looked as lost as he did.

  “You see…” Alberto said. “I can’t open it because – because…”

  Mr Bonito was losing what little patience he possessed. He took a step away from Alberto and reached for a hammer so he could open the coffin himself. But just as he was about to prise the first nail free, Alberto thought of something that just might work.

  “We can’t open it because I’m not entirely sure what killed Master Romano. However just before I closed the coffin, I noticed a mark. A purple one, behind his ear.”

  On the other side of the workshop, the mayor’s face paled.

  “Out,” he said, already heading towards the door. “Out!” he screamed as he tripped over a saw that Mr Bonito had thrown on the floor. “Everyone out!”

  “Pull yourself together, Mayor,” Mr Bonito yelled, “and order thi
s man to open this coffin!”

  “Are you crazy?” the mayor blustered. He hauled himself to his feet and took another step towards the door. “We can’t open that. We’ll catch what he caught. We’ll be dead within days.”

  Mr Bonito looked ready to object. But then the mayor threatened him with an order – “I order you to leave this house immediately or I’ll lock you away for three and twenty years” – and he decided it would be best to go. He glanced around the room one final time, his eyes lingering on Alberto and the closed coffin beside him. Then, he reluctantly followed the mayor into the hall.

  Alberto saw them off from his front door. He waited for all four men to disappear down the lane before returning to his workshop.

  “Tito?” he whispered. “It is safe.”

  He picked up a hammer and began to prise his coffin open.

  THE COFFIN THAT COST MORE THAN A HOUSE

  It may have been safe inside Alberto’s house, but outside was more dangerous than ever. When it came to potential gossip the Finestra sisters were like hawks to mice. They had not missed the bright lights outside Alberto’s house, and by the next morning they had formed a story that soon spread throughout the town.

  “They thought the coffin maker had the missing child. It’s true,” Clara said to Enzo as they bought their daily loaf of bread. “But he didn’t. He was just pretending he still had his own.”

  “Or so he says,” Rosa added with a knowing nod.

  “Now I’m sure there’s no truth in that,” Enzo said as he handed Rosa the oldest, crustiest loaf he could find. “After all, they didn’t find him, did they?”

  “Just because they didn’t find him doesn’t mean he isn’t there.”

  “Well, I was there,” Enzo said, “and every inch of that house was searched and not a single sign of a boy was found.”

  Enzo had hoped his words would put an end to all the gossip, but it made the sisters gossip even louder. Not only that, they gossiped about him as well. Apparently, or so Rosa and Clara believed, Enzo was helping Alberto hide the missing boy until Mr Bonito increased the reward to two hundred golden coins. Then they could hand him over and claim one hundred each.

  News of Mr Bonito’s reward had spread and now tourists didn’t only come to see the flying fish but to spot the stolen boy. Rumours swirled, gossip grew and every day a stream of people walked to the top of Allora Hill. There hadn’t been a procession that long since the mayor’s golden oak was carried up.

  With so many people clamouring outside, Tito did not dare leave the house. Even his late-night trips to the graveyard stopped. He could not go into the garden either. So enthralled with this gift of gossip living next door and the promise of a bucket full of gold if their rumour proved true, the Finestra sisters no longer pressed their ears to the fence but climbed up and looked over the top. One day Rosa even fell in. Alberto heard the crash all the way from his workshop. Tito did too. He jumped like a startled hare and dived behind the mayor’s monstrous coffin.

  Now locked off from the outside world completely, Tito threw himself into another world: the magical world of Isola where horses raced through the air and the pebbled shores were made of chocolate. He had reread the story so many times that the pages were fading and some had even fallen out.

  While Tito read each chapter over and over again, Fia would sit on his shoulder watching. For weeks she had refused to leave his side, like she too could hear the rumours whispered in the town and understood the danger that Tito was now in.

  Tito spent so much time reading that he barely found time to help Alberto work on the mayor’s coffin. By now most of the cherubs were carved, but they still had to embed jewels into the wood.

  So while Tito escaped into the imaginary world of Isola, Alberto pressed ruby after ruby into the wings of butterflies, sapphire after sapphire into the eyes of angels and diamond after diamond into the hair of cherubs. He had only encrusted eight out of eighty motifs when he realized the mayor’s coffin was now worth more than his own house.

  Tito never complained about being inside, but sometimes Alberto caught him peering through the cloth on the kitchen window as children ran past, playing in the lane. Tito was missing the real world, and Fia, perched restlessly on his shoulder, was missing it too.

  TITO LOSES A FRIEND

  Death came to Alberto’s house not with a knock this time but a wail, and what a horrible wail it was.

  “Master Alberto!” cried a woman in the earliest hour of the morning. “Master Alberto!” she cried again.

  With eyes full of sleep, Alberto made his way downstairs and opened the door to Clara Finestra. She was wailing so loudly her breath made a wind that swirled her dressing gown round and round. The moment she saw the coffin maker, she threw herself upon him and said:

  “Please, Master Alberto. Please. You must come and help. It’s my sister. I think Rosa’s dead.”

  And dead Rosa Finestra most definitely was. Alberto could find no signs of life as she lay alone in her cold bed.

  By the time Alberto carried her into his workshop, half the lights in the town were on and little inky heads peered up towards the top of the hill. It was too dark for them to see what was happening, but Clara ensured they all heard.

  “My sister,” she cried as she followed Alberto into his house. “My sister,” she wailed like a banshee. “Oh, my sister,” she sobbed. “Dead!” she screamed. “Dead in her bed!”

  After sixty-three years of spreading nasty gossip, Miss Rosa Finestra became the subject of gossip herself.

  “It was enteritis,” a woman told Enzo one morning while she ordered a cake. “It’s true. Clara Finestra told me herself. Been sick for weeks, rolling about in her bed. Couldn’t even get up to go to the toilet.”

  “It was a growth deep inside her head,” said another. “Had been growing bigger for years and years. That’s why she said such silly things. Finally grew so big her brain stopped thinking altogether and she just dropped dead in the street.”

  But one rumour was spoken far more than any else.

  “It was her sister,” the townsfolk whispered as her coffin – rosewood, 65 × 29 inches – was lowered into the ground. “Clara poisoned her just to get inside the coffin maker’s house. She wanted to search for the stolen boy herself and claim the full reward. She always hated sharing things with her little sister.”

  But despite all the gossip, nobody heard a word from Clara. After Rosa’s death, she grew strangely quiet. She hardly ever left the house and on the rare occasions when she hobbled down into the town alone, she refused to say a thing.

  After Rosa’s death, Clara Finestra was not the only thing in Allora to fall silent.

  “The sea is calming,” said Enzo one day when Alberto went to fetch his daily loaf of bread.

  “The beast sleeps,” Madame Claudine intoned when Alberto bought a bag of chocolate wolves for Tito. “The water’s so still even the fish aren’t jumping.”

  This last bit of news sent the townsfolk of Allora into a panic. No one could remember a time when the waters off Allora had stilled, nor a time when the fish had chosen to swim instead of fly.

  “It’s not natural,” murmured men in the tavern.

  “What will we feed our children?” wailed women in the streets.

  Only one man in all of Allora seemed happy with this change in the weather.

  “A tuna for a silver!” yelled the foolish fisherman as he raced up from the rocky shore. For the first time in eighteen years he had caught a fish using a line instead of a bucket. And, also for the first time in eighteen years, there were people willing to pay for it.

  With no waves crashing below, an eerie silence fell over Allora, pierced only by the foolish fisherman screaming that he had reeled in another fish. Tito was forced to keep quieter than ever, but Fia started to grow loud.

  Two days after the water stilled, she sat by the window in Tito’s room and screeched – “Twrp! Twrp! Twrp!” – over and over again. Tito tried to hush her w
ith food and pats, but she kept on crying out. The next morning when he opened the shutters she let out a great cry and flew outside. She soared and dived across the sea for hours, and when she returned she brought them a gift.

  “Look, Alberto,” Tito whispered as he raced into his workshop. A giant tuna squirmed in his arms.

  “Why, you’ve caught a tunny!” Alberto cried. “I haven’t caught one of them in forty years.”

  “No,” Tito said. “I didn’t catch it. Fia did.”

  After that, Fia flew out of Tito’s window every morning and returned late in the evening with a new fish squirming in her mouth. She would fly down the stairs, land in a salty puddle on the kitchen table and present Tito and Alberto with their dinner.

  With each flight Fia took, her wings grew straighter and stronger. She did not fly in circles so tight, and sometimes Tito swore he saw her flying in a straight line. She flew further and further out to sea until one day she went so far that Tito lost sight of her. In the evening, she did not come back.

  TITO’S TELESCOPE

  Tito sat beside his window and looked out across the calm sea. He had been sitting there for two weeks, waiting for Fia to return. He’d even made a telescope out of paper to help him search. He’d learned about them in one of the books Alberto had used to teach him how to read. But it was no use. Fia wasn’t there.

  A quiet knock on the door interrupted the silence. Tito turned around, but only for a moment. He knew who it would be: Alberto bringing some type of treat to tempt him downstairs to eat. But it wouldn’t work. No matter what it was. He wasn’t going to eat a thing until Fia returned.

  “Tito?” Alberto called softly from the hall. “May I come in? I’ve brought you some pudding. It’s chocolate. Your favourite.”

  At the word “chocolate” Tito’s empty stomach rumbled and his mouth began to water. But he wouldn’t give in.

  “No thanks,” he said.

  “Please, Tito,” Alberto pleaded. “You must eat something.”