The Wooden Prince

by John Claude Bemis

  Pinocchio let go. He landed in the dust. Geppetto grunted as he smacked Pinocchio’s hard wooden chest. “Stay still,” Geppetto said.

  When the last carriage of the mechanipillar had marched over them, Geppetto said, “Quick, into the trees.”

  Pinocchio dashed after Geppetto. His feet did not completely cooperate, causing him to take one half step and another that bounced him sideways. When they were in the woods, Geppetto said, “I’ll have to repair your feet properly.”

  “Thank you, Master,” Pinocchio said. “That would be…incorrigible.”

  Geppetto chuckled. “I’ll explain to you later what that word really means.”

  The mechanipillar disappeared around a bend. “Come,” he said. “We should go. But listen out! We don’t want to encounter any airmen or half-beasts.”

  Geppetto led them through the woods. When they reached the edge, Pinocchio gasped at the commanding view of the countryside. Golden-umber hills rose and fell, spiked occasionally by dark cypress trees and dotted with olive groves. He had never seen anything quite so lovely.

  Pinocchio spied a dozen or more distant houses spread around the landscape. “Do people live out here?”

  “Yes,” Geppetto said, marching with long-legged steps. “Farmers, mostly.”

  “Don’t they fear the half-beasts?”

  “To live out here, one guards his estate with automa. Not little servants like you, but large sentry automa like the ones that protect San Baldovino. Come along.”

  Pinocchio stumbled in the seven-league boots but managed to keep up.

  “Look at that one!” He pointed down the hill toward an elegant villa surrounded by high stone walls.

  “That’s where we’re headed,” Geppetto said.

  “Is that your wife’s house?”

  Geppetto nodded.

  “Why don’t you live with her?”

  “She was killed,” Geppetto said, his hand reflexively touching a jeweled pin on his shirt. “Along with my son.”

  “Oh,” Pinocchio said. “Is that what happened to Don Antonio’s automa?”

  Geppetto frowned. “I did not kill Otto. Automa cannot die. They only stop functioning.”

  “But didn’t your wife and son stop functioning when they were killed?”

  “It’s not the same,” Geppetto said. “My family was once living. Otto was never truly alive.”

  As Pinocchio puzzled over this while they walked, he noticed Geppetto watching him. Pinocchio gave him a smile.

  Geppetto sighed. “I’ve never had such a conversation with an automa. I can see this is hard for you to understand, Pinocchio. Whatever Prester John has done to you, it must make you feel like you’re alive. But you were constructed, just like Otto and the sentries of those estates out there. No matter how curiously you function, you aren’t alive.”

  “But what was the potion you made for Don Antonio?” Pinocchio asked, shuffling to keep step with his master. “He said it would give him more life. You made that from Otto’s fantom, didn’t you?”

  Geppetto began chuckling. “You’re perceptive, lad. I’ll give you that. The fantom is one of alchemy’s great discoveries. It can be transmuted into an elixir, and that elixir can extend life for a human. Extend, mind you. It cannot create life. Nor can it resurrect the dead or offer immortality. Only Prester John is blessed with eternal youth. A fantom, you see, does not make an automa living, any more than the donkey that pulls the cart makes the cart alive.”

  Pinocchio scratched his head. He’d seen his master do this before and liked how it looked. Maybe it would help him think better.

  “Let me explain it this way,” Geppetto said. “Alchemy, in its simplest form, is the ability to transform one thing into another. To transmute, as it’s called. It all has to do with macrocosmic and microcosmic correspondences and the manipulation of elemental forces—”

  Pinocchio’s eyes began to lose focus.

  Geppetto gave a pondering stroke to his mustache as he walked, and Pinocchio wished he had a mustache too.

  “I’ll see if I can make it simpler,” Geppetto said. “The elemental races of Abaton possess magic that can manipulate the forces of this world. Gnomes have power over earth, stone, and metal, sylphs over air, djinn over fire. And undines over water. We human alchemists don’t have true magical powers of our own. But unlike elementals, we are capable of integrating the different powers of elementals into alchemical inventions and wondrous technology. This is what makes alchemy different from Abatonian magic.

  “If an alchemist wanted metal that was as light as a feather—say, for an airman’s armor—he would work with a gnome and a sylph. By integrating their elemental powers over metal and air, using transmutation, as we alchemists call it, armor could be created that’s essentially weightless. It’s not quite that easy, but that’s the basic idea. A gnome and sylph could not make that armor without a human alchemist. Nor could they make a miraculous device like you, Pinocchio.

  “But you see, there is one thing that alchemists can’t transmute. Ourselves. The living are different, Pinocchio. We are not wood and metal. We have flesh. Flesh is the transmutation of the spirit into physical form. It makes us special. It makes life special and, above all things, precious and valuable. Not something to be taken lightly.”

  Pinocchio nodded, though he wasn’t at all certain he understood. What Geppetto said seemed true enough. Humans—and animals, even—weren’t made of any earthly material. They were different. But he couldn’t help feeling that he was not a device. He was something more, wasn’t he?

  They reached the walls of the estate. Weeds grew thick, although clearly it had been a grand place at one time. Geppetto led them to a gate, where a sentry, as big as a boulder, lay scorched in the courtyard, its armor torn open like it was nothing more than tin.

  “Did half-beasts do this?” Pinocchio asked.

  “Certainly not,” Geppetto said. “It would take imperial Flying Lions to bring down a sentry that size. Now stay quiet until we know we’re safe.”

  He walked past the fallen sentry and looked around the overgrown courtyard before cautiously approaching the doorway of the villa. It was open, hanging on its hinges. Musket-ball pits speckled the plaster around the frame.

  A creak came from inside. Geppetto crouched. Not knowing what to do when one was about to be ambushed by half-beast outlaws, Pinocchio stood perfectly still, his eyes wide. He realized this reaction probably wasn’t the best defense.

  A small coppery-black form shot out from the doorway and landed on Geppetto’s arm.

  “Maestro,” Geppetto exhaled.

  “It’s empty,” the cricket said. “But vandals have taken all the finery.”

  “It’s of no consequence,” Geppetto said. “Let’s get inside.”

  The interior of the villa was in worse shape than the outside. Chunks of plaster had fallen from the walls. What little furniture remained had been broken. A rug that was blackened with blood lay pushed into a corner.

  “Master, I don’t understand,” Pinocchio said. “Who killed your family?”

  A dark expression grew over Geppetto’s face. “The doge had them murdered, along with all the servants.” He stared, his jaw tense. “I…haven’t been back here since I first arrived in San Baldovino.”

  “I thought you said life was valuable. Why would the doge do this to them?” Pinocchio felt a strange tingling through his gears, sending little prickles down to his feet. He badly wanted to start walking anywhere, as long as it was away from the villa. “I don’t like this place, Master. Why are we here?”

  “I need to repair your burned-off toes, lad. And to see if there is any gold still hidden. We’ll need it, if we are to get to Venice.”

  “Venice!” Maestro chirped. “Why would we want to go there?”

  “To rescue Prester John,” Geppetto said. “He must have sent Pinocchio to tell me he’d been captured. We have to help him. I owe him that much.”

  “Impossible!” Maestro
said.

  “It is if we don’t try,” Geppetto said. “Besides, we’ll never be safe staying in the empire. Don’t you want to go back to Abaton?”

  “Of course!”

  Geppetto started up the stairs. “Then our only hope lies in Prester John.”

  The villa was much bigger than Don Antonio’s mansion and full of room after room that surely had been grand before being sacked. In the back of a library on the top floor—books seemed to be one of the few things the vandals hadn’t taken—Geppetto took down a thick volume and blew off the dust. He plucked a hair from his head, placed it inside the book, and stuck it back on the shelf.

  The bookcase swung open, revealing a room hidden behind.

  Pinocchio smiled with wonderment.

  “You’re easy to impress,” Maestro said, fluttering from Geppetto’s shoulder into the dark.

  Geppetto found matches in a drawer and lit a candelabrum. The secret room had tables covered with curious brass devices and strangely shaped crucibles and flasks. Shelves were lined with glass jars, racks of tools, elaborate sets of scales, and other scientific instruments.

  “What is this place?” Pinocchio asked.

  “My laboratory,” Geppetto said, opening the front of a small furnace that sat in the middle of the room. A salamander wriggled from the ashes and snapped its jaws at Geppetto.

  “Somebody’s hungry,” Maestro said.

  “Pinocchio, fetch some of the furniture,” Geppetto ordered. “We’ll need it broken up in bite-size portions.”

  When Pinocchio returned with an armload of chair legs, he found Geppetto tearing pages out of one of his books and feeding them to the salamander, which was already glowing fiery red. Pinocchio began breaking the chair legs, the springwork in his arms winding noisily as he splintered the hard wood into smaller and smaller pieces.

  “Is this where you worked?” he asked, handing Geppetto a few chunks of wood.

  “When I was home, which wasn’t very often.” Geppetto tossed a piece of wood to the salamander. As the creature ate, flames erupted along its back. “When I was appointed as the doge’s high alchemist, Cornelia decided to move from Venice back here to her parents’ estate. On my infrequent returns home, I found it hard to leave my work behind.”

  His mind seemed to wander, until the salamander snapped at his finger. “I spent too many hours in this room. Too many hours I should have spent with them.”

  Pinocchio looked at Maestro, perched on the stem of a beaker. The cricket’s antennae drooped.

  “Why should you have spent more time with them?” Pinocchio asked.

  Geppetto blinked. “Because I loved them. They were more important than any foolish experiments. But I didn’t see that then. I was ambitious. I was proud of my post. It took the loss of what I truly loved to teach me that.”

  “But, Master, I still don’t understand why the doge would kill your family.”

  Maestro rattled his black wings against his shell. “Can’t you hush your incessant questioning?”

  “It’s all right, Maestro. The wood,” Geppetto reminded Pinocchio.

  Pinocchio quickly snapped off a few more pieces.

  As Geppetto fed the salamander, he said, “The doge’s only son, Prince Ignazio, was killed driving out a band of half-beasts that were threatening Rome. With Ignazio dead and the half-beast outlaws wreaking havoc, the doge feared his empire would not be safe after his eventual death. The doge wanted his son back. He loved Ignazio, of course, but more so, he needed his son to rule. He knew of only one way.”

  Geppetto paused, lost in thought, and Pinocchio struggled to not be impatient.

  “Prester John of Abaton possesses many wonders. Venice would not be the mighty empire it is today if it weren’t for the gifts and magic he’s shared with the world. But Prester John has many Abatonian wonders that the humanlands have never seen. Wondrous and mysterious objects. Among them is the Ancientmost Pearl.”

  “What is that?” Pinocchio asked.

  “Even we Abatonians don’t know for sure,” Maestro said. “No Abatonians have ever seen the Ancientmost Pearl, except for maybe the prester’s wives and his children.”

  “Whatever the Ancientmost Pearl is,” Geppetto continued, “all agree it is the source of Prester John’s immortality, for he has been alive for centuries. And some say the Pearl has the power of resurrection. That is why the doge ordered me to steal it.”

  “You?” Pinocchio’s eyes widened. “Did you?”

  “No,” Geppetto said. “But I was in a difficult position, Pinocchio. Prester John wanted to end the enslavement of his people living in the Venetian Empire, so he urged the doge to send an ambassador to Abaton to discuss a solution. He had not allowed a human visitor for many years—decades, even. The doge was not going to pass up this opportunity. He gave me explicit instructions to appease Prester John and do whatever it took to steal the prester’s Pearl of Immortality.”

  “So what did you do?” Pinocchio asked, then worried he was being impatient.

  Geppetto was so lost in his story, he didn’t seem to notice. “Only Prester John can guide a ship past the sea monster that guards Abaton, so I met him in Arabia and we made the long voyage aboard one of his vessels. When we at last arrived, and I saw his glorious garden palace, the Moonlit Court…what a wonder! I thought I was in Eden—”

  Maestro groaned.

  Geppetto gave a wave of apology to the cricket before turning back to Pinocchio. “The prester was like no one I’ve ever met. Eyes like golden sunshine. He is like a living god among his people. The races of Abaton consider him their father.”

  “Is he really their father?” Pinocchio said.

  “Obviously not mine,” Maestro said. “His Immortal Lordship does have children of his own. But remember: He’s lived an eternity. He’s had countless wives and fathered countless children.”

  “Whom he’s had to watch grow old and die over the years,” Geppetto said. “I think it is hard for him. Prester John is a being both ancient and powerful. But he is not able to share his gift of immortality with any of his family. Because of this, I don’t think he’s very close to his children. He loves them, as he loves all his subjects. As a good king should. But most of all, he loves Abaton.”

  Geppetto absently fed the salamander more wood. “Abaton is the most remarkable place in the world, Pinocchio. I realized right away how I admired the prester for being willing to share the magic of his land with humans. I couldn’t allow Abaton to be corrupted by the doge. So I confessed to Prester John what the doge had asked of me, how I had come as nothing better than a common thief. I half expected to be imprisoned. To my surprise, Prester John was not angry with me.”

  “That’s good,” Maestro said. “His Immortal Lordship can be a bit…intimidating at times.”

  “No, in fact, Prester John seemed quite moved by the tragic news of the doge’s son,” Geppetto continued. “Maybe it was because Prince Ignazio died at the hands of chimera—even Venetian half-beasts are of Abatonian descent, after all. Or maybe it was because the prester had seen so many of his own children die. Prester John wouldn’t give me the Ancientmost Pearl, of course, but he didn’t want to send me to the doge empty-handed. He believed the doge would be reasonable.”

  “Insanity,” Maestro grumbled.

  Geppetto nodded. “So he sent me back to Venice bearing three gifts—gifts that he hoped would pave the way for negotiations by easing the doge’s grief over his dead son.”

  Maestro flicked his antennae. “That’s how I wound up in this wasteland.”

  “You were one of the gifts?” Pinocchio asked.

  “Maestro, as you know, was Prester John’s official court musician,” Geppetto said.

  “It was supposed to be a great honor that Prester John was giving me to that tone-deaf imbecile,” Maestro chirped.

  “The other gifts were equally generous,” Geppetto said. “I brought back a gilded sword to lay as a blessing on Prince Ignazio’s tomb, and an enchantm
ent for the dogaressa that would allow her to bear a son. But the doge was not satisfied. I had failed to bring him the Pearl. He flew into a rage.”

  “I’m sure he would have squashed me flat if you hadn’t attacked him with that sword,” Maestro said.

  “You attacked the doge?” Pinocchio gasped. He hadn’t taken his master for a warrior.

  “I had little choice,” Geppetto said.

  “He cut off the doge’s hand,” Maestro added, with a flick of his antennae.

  Pinocchio stared in disbelief at Geppetto.

  “It was my only hope of escape,” Geppetto said. “I managed to get out of the Fortezza, and with the help of some of my elemental assistants, I escaped from Venice.”

  Geppetto touched the pin on his shirt. Pinocchio hadn’t paid much attention to the pin before, but he now saw that it was a jeweled rose. Absently, Geppetto’s fingers traced the edges as he whispered, “I knew I would eventually have to face the doge’s retribution, but I never imagined that he would exact his revenge on my poor Cornelia and Alberto….”

  Pinocchio wondered if the jeweled pin had belonged to Geppetto’s wife. He could see the pain in Geppetto’s face, and it sent a strange prickling through his gears. He wished there were a way to fix his master, a way to take the hurt from his chiseled face.

  “Come on, Pinocchio,” Maestro said. “We need to let Geppetto work if he is to make new feet for you.”

  Geppetto sat, lost in thought a moment, before blinking at them. “Yes,” he said, taking down a bellows from the wall. “It shouldn’t take long. Don’t go far.”

  Pinocchio reluctantly followed Maestro from the laboratory. As they wandered down the hallway, Pinocchio said, “Maestro, isn’t there a way to help Master feel better?”

  Maestro fluttered from wall to doorknob. “It’s a terrible tragedy. But all living creatures feel pain at the loss of those they love. It can’t be helped, Pinocchio. It’s part of life.”

  Pinocchio stumbled on his boots. “Then I’m glad I’m not alive.”

  They wandered through room after room, but anything of interest had long been taken. At last they sat by a window on the fourth floor, looking down on an overgrown garden. The roses had turned spindly and lost their flowers. There was a brick walkway in the shape of a circular labyrinth, now overtaken by dandelions. At the far end of the garden, against the outer wall, Pinocchio spied two broken rectangular slabs.