by Lisa DeSelm
He licks his cracked lips and flutters his fingers lightly against my arm. I sense he is trying to comfort me, to stave off the harshness of what will come next.
“The power of the spell, it has … a price.”
I wait, my breath trapped in my lungs, a gust of air drawn into a blacksmith’s bellows.
“You must know … you are worth any price, to me.”
I cannot breathe. My tears spill freely. He’s quiet a moment, garnering strength, and my pulse pounds so loudly in my ears I fear I will not be able to hear what he says next.
“She told me, the tree woman, that when you awoke, I too would be forever changed.”
A great wheeze shatters his words to pieces. I wait for the coughing to stop, for him to continue to form the truth I am so afraid to hear.
Suddenly, my father’s rasping voice is drowned out not by his cough but by the jarring clang of bells. Loud, discordant peals of bell-song flood through the open window, unleashed like the braying of hunting dogs onto the sleeping city.
I sit up and rush to the window. Hasty lights flicker on in lamps and upper windows all across my narrow view. The deep gongs of bells from the church and the many towers of Wolfspire Hall roll across the night air for what feels like an eternity, soon joined by confused cries. These aren’t melodic bells calling us to services or heralding a feast day. Not in the dead of night.
The frantic drumming of footsteps up the back stair signals the arrival of Bran. He stands in the doorway, out of breath, eyes like golden torches.
“What is it? The bells?”
“The Margrave,” Bran says, his lips narrowing to a hard line. “There are criers in the streets. The Margrave is dead.”
My mouth drops open.
“They say the duke has announced a period of mourning for the city.”
“Of course he has,” I mutter, turning back to the window and the oppressive ardor of the bells, which have not let up.
Nan was right. Change is coming. I just saw the Margrave earlier today; he didn’t have a chance to proclaim who would take the seat at Wolfspire Hall after him. What will become of the proclamation about his heir? I haven’t yet had the chance to tell Papa what the Margrave said about his two sons.
“Is Gep sleeping?”
“No one could sleep in this bedlam.”
“No, Piro, I mean …” Bran’s voice fades away.
I turn back to my father. His eyes are closed and I know right away because his hands are finally still. His chest has ceased its valiant labor. What no tea or medicine or moonlight could bring him, death has. He is at peace.
I will never get to hear the rest of his story, to know what it was that I cost him, beyond a few drops of blood and some harvested wood. The Margrave has taken even that away from me.
Something in me begins to sink, like a stone cast into a well, and I drop to my knees at his bedside. All I can feel is the drowning, the bottomless depths surrounding a stone hurtling through water. There is no ground here, not anymore.
The bells toll on, and in my heart, I know they are not just signaling the end of the old Margrave of Tavia. They are also singing the end of Gephardt Leiter, the puppetmaster.
CHAPTER 12
BRAN SAT WITH ME AFTER PAPA DIED, LONG AFTER THE BELLS faded, the dawn still ringing with their echoes. He wrapped me in his arms and I cried until I was hollow, my eyes soaking the front of his shirt. When I finally came downstairs, I could only feel grateful not to be alone to do the things one must do to say goodbye.
Benito alerts the church cleric about my father’s passing and later that day, a rough wooden coffin is delivered to Curio. I despair at having to release Papa to such a simple box, the same provided for every poor soul when their time comes—unless their family opts for one of Nan’s special funerary urns—but I haven’t the time nor the wood to make him the casket he deserves. If I had my way, I would bury him in something intricately carved and beautifully constructed. Something befitting a woodworker and puppetmaster such as he.
We wash and dress my father in his best suit of clothes, arranging him carefully in the plain chest he will rest in from now on. It’s strangely like dressing one of the Margrave’s wooden men, his body having quickly become a stiff mimic of its former self. It doesn’t bother me quite as much as I might have thought to see him this way. It’s obvious he isn’t really in there anymore, in that brittle, shrinking frame.
The Sorens arrive at noon, bringing food, even though it has been growing ever more precious, especially for their large family. The rest of the Maker’s Guild comes too, bearing gifts. One by one, down in the workshop behind the storefront, they tuck items around Papa that he would have cherished.
From Tiffin’s forge, a long carpenter’s nail, as thick as a man’s finger, on whose head is branded a woodland scene of tiny trees.
“Tiff,” I gasp, running my fingers along the miniature design. “It’s beautiful. How did you manage it?”
He shrugs shyly. “Something new I’ve been trying. Gep gave me the idea for it.”
From Nan comes a small pot of jam; she crafted both the container and the goods. She makes each of us dip a spoon in and taste a bite before she tucks the small vessel into one of his suit pockets. “It was Gep’s favorite.” She sniffs.
With the sour-sweet tang of currants on our tongues, we watch Fonso place a little doll into my father’s other pocket. Her glass-jointed arms and legs betray that she’s a puppet,.
“I just thought—” His voice breaks. “I thought the puppetmaster, he might like to have a little reminder of his work with him. I know it’s not as good as he would’ve done, but …”
“It’s wonderful, Fonso. He would have loved it,” I assure him through my tears. And he would have. It’s exquisite.
From Anke and Emmitt, a restored pocket watch, polished and refitted with a sturdy brass chain that Anke coils lovingly on my father’s chest.
I realize that in the hurry of preparations, along with the chaos of the Margrave’s passing, I haven’t yet shared the news of what the Margrave had been planning, the possibility of Emmitt being named to the margraviate.
I try to bring it up, but Anke instantly shushes me and tells me not to even think about such things until I’ve had time to mourn my father. Tears fill my eyes afresh for Emmitt, for he’s just lost a father, too. However broken and misguided the Margrave had been, he was his father, nonetheless.
From Bran and the tailor come a handkerchief of fine linen, with embroidered threads outlining the sign that hangs outside of Curio, bearing its name.
After the handkerchief is safely tucked in Papa’s hand, I stand at the head of the box, realizing that I have nothing prepared to add. I don’t have anything special to give him. Panic and embarrassment well up in the corners of my eyes, until Bran, seeing my distress, speaks up.
“Piro, I wondered if you might send some of his favorite tools with him, that is, if you can spare them?”
Relief floods in, and I nod. Of course my father should have some of his favorite tools buried with him. It’s only right. The workshop is respectfully silent as I walk around to the various workbenches, looking over every hammer and chisel and saw. A thousand memories cling to each tool like particles of dust.
I finally select a chisel with a handle worn smooth and glossy, and his favorite carving blade. Reverently, I set one in each hand, feeling a sense of rightness, knowing he will be near to some things he loved even if he cannot be near to us.
Though it is not a common practice in Tavia, and we never discussed it—neither of us ever imagined a future where he didn’t exist—I firmly insist that my father be buried out in the woods. He should be laid in a hallowed space at the foot of the old trees, instead of in the small churchyard that lies in the shadow of Wolfspire Hall. I may not be able to give him a beautiful casket, but I can return him to a place where he felt at home.
Late that afternoon, through a haze of villagers already wearing black to make a show
of respect for the Margrave, Burl dutifully pulls the old wood-hauling wagon carrying the coffin behind him. It’s as if he understands his task; one last trip to the wood with the puppetmaster. Bran rides in the wagon with me, and the rest of our small procession follows behind.
Tears parade down my face at the sight of so many people lining the streets to watch us pass; their heads are bowed, their eyes are wet. Women swipe at their cheeks with work-stained aprons and children run alongside the wagon, tiny legs pumping, gifts for the departing puppetmaster clutched tightly in small fists. I make Bran stop several times, as the candlemaker’s twins and others dash up to bestow their treasures on the lifeless box where the puppetmaster lies.
One child hands me a beautiful marionette I haven’t seen for years, a two-foot-tall lumberjack with a mighty six-inch axe, hanging by his strings from a cross-hatched control. Then comes a jovial clown, whose carved head and hands are attached to a cloth body that pops down into a cone anchored to a long wooden peg. A few toss their offerings into the wagon, as if throwing flower petals. As we proceed through the streets, the air rains with wooden tops and intricate ring-puzzles, small carved animals, wooden blocks and an odd sling-shot or two.
I couldn’t have chosen a better monument to my father than things he made that so many children loved. The fall air is cold, but it warms me to think of all the little hands bringing him gifts; hands willing to sacrifice beloved toys to honor the puppetmaster.
We bury my father in a grove of trees where few but he and I have tread. Simple, sincere words are said by the local church cleric, Vincenzo Greco, as is Tavian custom. Vincenzo is widely known to be overly fond of drink, and his broad face is bestowed with a blazing red nose and cheeks. In the moment, I don’t mind the cleric’s bumbling reputation, for he seems both very kind and sorrowful enough. My father and I didn’t often grace the worn pews of the Tavian church in the village. We found our sanctuary in the wood, among the pillars of trees, below the grand cathedral of their branched canopy. The chorus of the trees is more beautiful to me than any choir, though their voices drop somber and low now as they sense my pain.
I will hardly remember anyone’s words today anyway, for the great trees seem to swallow them up as soon as they are uttered. They disappear like mist into the soft wail of wind and birdsong.
The tailor tearfully says a few words about the beauty and masterwork of creation that I know my father would have loved. Then, beneath the pillars of this sacred place, I drop a handful of sawdust scraped from the floor of the workshop over the mound of freshly churned dirt. The puppetmaster, my father, is gone.
Ashes to ashes, wood to sawdust. We all must return to the soil at some point. Wooden or not, our roots begin and end here.
“Not yet, sister,” the lindens whisper reassuringly. “It is not your turn to return to the earth yet. You must return to life.”
Leaning back against the trunk nearest to me, I let its rough skin and solidness bolster me, drawing from its strength while the rest lay their gifts on my father’s grave. With him gone, I am alone now, save for the voices of the trees; my last living connection to what made me. Like the only mother’s voice I’ve known, they hang their heads with me and cry.
Nan stays with me at Curio that night.
“Don’t worry, Piro.” She interrupts my numb contemplation from where she is curled up on a pallet on the floor of my room. I’ve been quiet for a long time, buried with the covers up to my chin. “We’ll see you through this. Your father is gone, but his work remains. You remain.” Even in grief, Nan never skirts around things. The potter always deals solely in raw materials and truths.
“The makers are still here,” she continues. “Tavia will stand, though Margraves may come and go. What was it that Gep would say, when he was frustrated at not finding enough good wood in a season, or when a marionette didn’t turn out the way he’d envisioned?”
I can barely say the words aloud, but I eke them out anyways, knowing she wants me to humor her. “A maker will always prevail.”
“Yes. We will find a way to prevail. But that will be a task best suited to tomorrow. Tonight you must rest.”
“’Night, Nanette.”
She falls silent again, until uttering her final thoughts. “I will miss the puppetmaster more than I can say. He always knew just what to say to keep me going when I was in a slump. He always knew when I was struggling to make something and not getting it quite right.”
He did. He could see it in their eyes, just as he could always see it in mine. “A maker will always prevail,” he would entreat them, as if the words made it so. When Gephardt Leiter spoke them, you believed it did.
My mind refuses to be quieted by the fact that it’s night. I hear the muffled shuffling of Bran next door, tinkering with his clocks, but I don’t dare risk opening the cupboard to see him with Nan here. The cupboard is still a secret, between Bran and me. Sometimes the secrets we keep, like the lumpy bundle of splinters hidden beneath my pillow, are what holds us together when we feel broken.
Sleep doesn’t come tip-toeing in until hours later.
The next day I find myself facing the prospect of running Curio entirely on my own. After Nan departs for her studio, needing to tend her kiln, I tidy my father’s room, change his bedding, sweep the floor, and keep the rest of his things just as he left them. Thanks to Gita, our small kitchen is already sparkling. I trudge downstairs to the workshop, and am immediately plunged into reverence at the way the morning light filters through the windows in glittering, dust-mote swirled rays of gold. It’s as beautiful as light through a stained-glass visage in a church.
Unfortunately, the daylight also illuminates the fact that I have let things get a bit out of hand down here in the last weeks. With my father in the Keep, and then ill at home, it was all I could do to finish the wooden soldiers and the saboteur. I’d no time for keeping things in order.
So instead of unlocking the shop and pulling back our curtains, as I would normally do in a morning, I keep the front door closed. And I begin to clean. I gather up all the tools I’ve left scattered about. I sharpen all our blades and chisels, enjoying the repetitive song of metal rasping against whetstone. I catalogue all our paints and lacquers, stacking them neatly in rainbow rows the chromatist herself would surely be proud of.
I spend hours brushing away sawdust and wood chips from the work tables and floor. When I have filled a huge coal-bin’s worth of scraps, I slam the lid, satisfied I have enough to burn in the stove to keep me going for a few weeks. Every surface is paint splattered and worn, notched and nicked many times over, but it’s cleared of the old dust and ready to be put to use again.
Like any great maker, my father did not have just one piece on his mind at a time. When orders from the Margrave started coming in, he had to suspend the other projects he was working on; it’s over these that I linger, remembering. One is an elaborate wooden box, which looks like a traditional jewelry case for valuables on the outside but opens to reveal that the only way to get to the contents is to solve a series of intricate puzzles. As each puzzle is deciphered, a new layer or drawer springs away, revealing the next puzzle and so on, until finally you reach the heart of it: a small nested compartment where a lady might slip a necklace or a gentleman some treasured coins.
I never had Papa’s mind for creating puzzles or games, so I dust the box and set it to the side. Perhaps Bran, with his inclination for fitting cogs and gears together, will enjoy taking up the challenge someday.
There are several marionettes still in process, sketches of half-done faces in Papa’s broad hand that I carefully lay upon a shelf. Maybe someday I will pick up where he left off, and finish the characters he’d only just begun to flesh out.
By the time I finish putting the workshop back in order, the sun is low in the sky, and I look around, feeling satisfied at having cared for the place that has given me so much. But my heart can’t ignore the sense that something is missing. Someone. Papa was as much a part of Cur
io as the very walls, the beams holding us all up and keeping us together.
Later that night, I curl up in my father’s room and contemplate the moon from his window. My gaze falls on the high scaffolding reinforcing the town hall’s tower; light flickers from inside the clock tower. Emmitt, the only other person I know who has just lost a father. How awful that my father died the same day as the Margrave, nearly at the same hour. Death comes in threes, the old saying goes. Who else is death lying in wait for, I wonder?
Perhaps Emmitt wouldn’t mind some company.
CHAPTER 13
FINDING MY WAY TO THE RATHAUS ISN’T DIFFICULT, EVEN IN the dark, for I know Tavia’s lanes as well as I know the wood. The old building isn’t used much for its original purpose any longer; it used to be a forum to bring disagreements and concerns to light in a public assembly. That’s a rare occurrence now. In recent years, the Margrave has taken to making grand proclamations from the front steps, under the glockenspiel, and has set up an office of taxation and tariffs within.
I find the back door leading to the staircase inside the glockenspiel’s tower closed but unlocked. Noises drift from above; the tight, chinking sound of ratcheting and the song of a hammer—familiar sounds. I follow the narrow staircase around and around, up its twisted skeleton.
The ancient staircase, barely wide enough to fit my small person, spits me out onto a rickety landing where I can hear but not see Emmitt, another level above, muttering to himself. The stair disappears and from this floor up to the high eaves there are only ladders rising up to give access to the two tiers of the glockenspiel, whose lower mechanisms and large figurines remain frozen on their carousel. Swallows and doves flutter and snuffle from where they’ve made nests anchored on the high beams crisscrossing the tower.
Up here, closer than I’ve ever seen them, the creatures bound to the rotating wheelbase of the glockenspiel look even more garish and gruesome. The wolves’ muzzles are blackened with age, the silhouetted bodies of farmers and soldiers wear grim portraits of rage and conquest. The shadows in the corners of the tower feel vacuous; beckoning from them are tall piles of old figurines long replaced, a forgotten tangle of broken limbs and bodies lying where they were tossed. Thick cobwebs drape from the layered apparatus like so many strings on the underside of a tapestry, not yet scissored off by the weaver.