Wooden Bones (10 page)

“But, my queen,” Olan said, rising shakily, “if only you would have told—”

“I
did
tell you, old fool! How many times did I complain of being tired? How many times did I say it would be nice to have some time alone? But what did you do? You ignored me! You even made me sleep in a room with glass walls, so that I was
never
free from your incessant whining! I—never—had—one—minute's—PEACE!”

She screamed, all of her control gone, and marched around in a circle like a mad person, punching and kicking at the air as if she were fighting someone they couldn't see. Then she stopped at her wooden chair and seized it, lifting it high in the air as if it weighed nothing at all.

With one great heave she tossed the chair at Olan. He ducked out of the way, but her strength was such that the chair sailed far past him, into the open air, and then smashed into one of the rope bridges leading to the central platform—instantly smashing it into two.

There were people on that bridge, and Pino watched them scramble to either side as the two pieces of the bridge fell. Most made it to the platforms, but a few didn't, and Pino cringed, as he expected them to fall to their death. Fortunately, these woodsfolk were accustomed to living high among the trees, and they managed to twist their arms around the rope railings, saving themselves.

For a few seconds nobody moved, then chaos broke out among the people. There was a stampede. Olan, a pleading look on his face, approached Elendrew, but she hurled him away. He barely avoided plummeting off the edge, clinging on to the platform with his fingernails.

Elendrew's rage was only growing. She shrieked and she screamed. She snarled and she spit. Anyone who came at her, she flung aside. She ripped up the planks and shot them through the air. One of the planks shot through a window, smashing into a lantern, and then a fire leaped out and engulfed the dwelling. The fire swept along the bridges and jumped from one house to the next, and soon the whole city in the trees was ablaze.

Smoke choked the air. There was such a crush of bodies that Pino had a hard time finding Geppetto—just frantic people bumping up against him, their faces full of panic, and it was all he could do to keep from getting trampled. Everyone was fleeing to their dwellings, and within seconds people were diving off the rope bridges with white bundles attached to their backs.

The people didn't plummet long before their bundles opened and hundreds of whirling feathers spread behind them, slowing their descent. The opening of the chutes sounded like gunshots, but this was followed by the steady buzz of the spinning feathers. Up high the air looked like it was filled with hundreds of puffy white dandelion seeds. The featherwings swooped and banked to avoid the maze of branches.

Elendrew herself was lost in the haze of gray smoke, but her rampage continued unabated. Wooden planks shot through the air like missiles. Finally a rough hand seized Pino by the shoulder. It was Geppetto.

“Papa!” he said, coughing, waving away the smoke. “I'm so sorry! I didn't know she—”

“No time for that, son,” he said. “Let's head for the ropefloat.”

But they managed only a few steps in that direction before they saw the ropefloat already descending, packed to the hilt with woodsfolk.

Now what would they do? They needed featherwings, obviously, but would there be any to spare? It had never been part of Pino's plan that
everyone
would want to leave the city at the same time.

A small hand grasped his own. Before he could even see who it was, the person jerked him backward along the bridge. As they wove through the throngs of people, he got a glimpse of a girl's blond hair and yellow dress.

“Aki?” he said.

“This way!” she said.

She led them across a series of rope bridges, all around them people shouting and screaming. Geppetto, unable to keep up, stumbled, and both Pino and Aki helped him. His
cane, however, rolled off the edge and disappeared. Another bridge not far away, fortunately with no people, collapsed and crushed a dwelling below—the people escaping with their featherwings just an instant before their home exploded in a blizzard of wood and pine needles.

Through the plumes of smoke they could hear Elendrew's incomprehensible shouts.

When they arrived at another dwelling, a small one on a thinner trunk, a bald man with sad eyes swept Aki up in his arms. Behind them flames encroached upon the bridge leading to their home. There was no going back now.

“My child!” the man exclaimed. “Where have you been? We must go now!”

She wriggled out of his embrace. “I needed to help them, Father!”

They followed her inside. The whole dwelling was one tiny room with one bed, the floor blanketed with plush purple leaves. She groped under the bed.

“I'll get us the featherwings!” she said.

“We can't take one of yours!” Pino protested.

“It's okay! We have an extra. It was . . . it was Mother's.” She returned with three white packs, one of which she handed to Geppetto. “One should be okay. Pino's not too heavy. I wish I had two.”

Aki's father grabbed a pack and slipped the straps over his shoulders, then quickly helped Aki do the same. He started for the door with his daughter, then, seeing Geppetto struggle with his own pack, hurriedly helped him slip it over his shoulders.

“Tighten those two straps and then pull the third one when you're in open air,” he said. “Good luck!”

Then he grabbed Aki and rushed out the door. A shimmering wall of fire was halfway across the bridge. They couldn't see anything beyond it but plumes of smoke.

“Good-bye, Pino!” Aki said. “Maybe I'll see you . . .”

The rest of her parting words were lost as she and her father leaped over the side. Pino heard two pops and then the zipping of their feathers twirling through the air. He wished he could have told her he was sorry.

With the two chest straps fastened, Geppetto tried to pick up Pino, but he was too weak. Pino pushed him instead out the door. The smoke billowed into the dwelling, scorching his throat. There was nothing out there—in front of them or below—but a pulsing gray cloud.

They groped until they found the rope railing.

“You climb over first!” Pino said, coughing.

“Not without you!” Geppetto said.

“I'll climb over next! Then we'll jump together!”

Reluctantly Geppetto climbed over the rail, holding fast to it as he teetered on the edge of the planks. Fire crackled through the pine needle roof. Most of the platform was ablaze, and Pino felt the heat pulsing the air like a living thing, hot on his cheeks and his neck. All around them burning wood crackled and hissed.

Pino scrambled over the rope next to Geppetto. He reached for him, stretching to grab hold of Geppetto's shirt—and then suddenly, before his grasping fingers could find purchase, the rope railing snapped and gave way.

And they both fell.

F
or a few terrible seconds Pino fell alone through a gray world—a haze of smoke and ash that burned in his lungs and seared his eyes. Through teary vision he could not see Geppetto. He could not see the ground. He could not see the dwelling where they'd stood or even the tree. He saw only shifting gray vapors, making him wonder if he'd already died.

His papa had told him about dying. He'd told him people were here and then they weren't. But he'd never told him what the people who died saw. Maybe this was it. Maybe they went to a gray place.

The moment lasted only a few heartbeats, and then he burst from the smoke and plummeted in open air.

He coughed and blinked away the tears in his eyes. Not far away, just beyond his grasp, Geppetto also fell—on his back, looking up at Pino with astonishment, his clothes fluttering. Pino could not reach him. Even worse, their descent seemed to be drifting them farther apart.

“Pino!” Geppetto cried.

They fell past white clouds of featherwings, woodsfolk in their slow drift to the ground. They fell through webs of branches, some that came dangerously close. They fell through wisps of fog. They fell faster and faster, the cool air
numbing cheeks and ears, and Pino knew it was only a matter of time before they reached the ground.

Without featherwings of his own, he'd never survive. Geppetto was so far away. He had his hand on the strap that would release the featherwings, but he wasn't pulling it.

By shifting his body, leaning this way or that, Pino realized he could slightly alter the course of his fall. It was tricky, because too much leaning sent him spinning, but if he tilted just right, he angled toward Geppetto. He stretched out his arms. His papa stretched out in return. They were only inches away.

Then a thick tree branch appeared out of the mist, directly in their path.

At the last second Pino jerked backward, the branch grazing his nose. Geppetto, who hadn't reacted as quickly, wasn't nearly as lucky: The branch thumped his shoulder, sending him flying in another direction. The gap between them grew.

Out of the mist Pino finally saw the ground rising to meet them, a black mouth opening to swallow them whole.

“Pull the strap!” he cried.

“No!” Geppetto shouted back.

“Pull it!”

Geppetto shook his head and attempted to adjust his fall, bobbling, slowly drifting toward Pino. The ground was so close. Pino tucked in his arms and legs and leaned forward, slicing through the air like a blade. He was moving so fast that he knew there was a chance he'd fly right past Geppetto, but there was no time.

They fell past the last of the branches. The long trunks of the giant trees loomed around them. The ground was so close Pino could now see individual leaves and mossy green stones.

Pino realized at the last moment that he hadn't aimed well enough—he was going to fly right past Geppetto.

He twisted, stretching his arm as far as it would go, reaching out his hand.

Geppetto grasped for him. They streaked past each other. Pino saw his papa's anguished face.

Then—with a last stretch—Geppetto grabbed his finger. Not just any finger. The first finger of his right hand, the one turning into wood. Geppetto grabbed tight, and just for a moment Pino saw the startled look on Geppetto's face.

Then Geppetto pulled them together. Pino hugged both arms and both legs around his papa's body and closed his eyes, sure that it was too late, that they were going to hit the ground.

The strap was pulled.

There was a fluttering whirl as the feathers shot out of the pack, jerking them backward, gravity tugging at their feet. Pino felt his stomach drop and Geppetto's arms pressing into his back.

Then, as the featherwings did what they were intended to do, Pino and Geppetto soared through the forest.

*  *  *

It was either the speed of their fall or the sudden breeze that swirled from below, but their featherwings carried them much farther than Pino had expected. He'd been waiting with his eyes closed for the bone-jarring impact seconds after the featherwings opened, but when that didn't happen, he opened his eyes.

They swooped over the forest floor like an ungainly bird, dodging the massive trunks. Down here, in the thick forest, it was darker than up high. Craning his neck, Pino saw Geppetto working the braided cords that led into the whirling
feathers above them, tugging one way, then the other.

Up high there had been few birds, but now many birds fluttered out of the trees at their approach. The trunks passed in a blur. They lost altitude, the ground, littered with leaves and pine needles, getting ever closer to Pino's feet.

Finally, as they were about to touch ground, Geppetto yanked back on the cords, trying to slow their speed. It was nearly perfectly done—Pino was impressed at how well his papa used the featherwings, having never used them before—but Geppetto still collapsed with a painful cry when all their weight came down on his knees.

Pino rolled off of him, spitting out a mouthful of dirt, and immediately sprang back to his papa. The featherwings floated over their heads, still tugging at the straps attached to his shoulders.

“Papa!” Pino said.

“I'm—I'm all right, boy,” Geppetto said, holding one of his knees, his face screwed up in pain. “Just . . . help me undo this.”

It took a bit of work, but Pino managed to get the straps of the featherwings off Geppetto's shoulders. The featherwings, buoyed by a bit of breeze, floated some distance away until they were snagged by a thorny yellow bush. Pino helped a wincing Geppetto rise to a sitting position. There was no one else around. The breeze that had carried them to this place must have carried the other featherwings somewhere else.

“Whew,” Geppetto said, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. “When we landed, it was like I was carrying a house.” Then he looked at Pino with concern. “Let me see your hand, Pino.”

Pino's right hand was slightly behind him, just out of
Geppetto's sight. He didn't move. “It's okay, Papa. It's—it's better now.”

“Let me see it.”

“It was just, um, covered with some tree sap.”

“Pino—”

“We should get up, Papa. We should—”

Before Pino could react, Geppetto seized Pino's right hand and jerked it into plain sight. When he got a good look at it, he shook his head in befuddlement. But then he touched it, and his befuddlement changed first to astonishment, then dismay, then anguish.

“It's okay, Papa,” Pino insisted. “It'll get better.”

“When did this happen?”

“I don't know. After the cave.”

“How?”

Pino felt tears springing into his eyes, and he forced them back. “I don't know, Papa. I don't know.”

“Oh, boy, don't get upset. I'm just trying to understand.”

“I didn't wish for it. It just happened.”