Wooden Bones by Scott William Carter Page B

could quite pin down why it was happening, they decided it would probably be best if Pino didn’t use his special gift unless it was absolutely necessary for their survival. Since his finger had been fine for months, Geppetto reasoned the problem must have had something to do with Pino’s newfound talent. What else could it be?
    The forest darkened considerably, the air growing heavy and moist. They debated whether to seek out the woodsfolk again but in the end decided they were probably better off striking out on their own. They expected a good deal of anger would be directed at Pino for enabling Elendrew to destroy their city in the trees, so there was no sense chancinga confrontation. Geppetto was quite insistent about it.
    â€œBut I helped her,” Pino said. “I helped her walk. I just don’t understand why she wasn’t happy.”
    Geppetto shook his head sadly. “Some people can never be happy, Pino. They’re always going to see what they don’t have rather than what they do. You could have given her the gift of flight, and she would have complained about the size of her wings. And she went bad long ago, I think. Anger will do that to you. When your heart is full of rage all the time, eventually there’s no room for anything else.”
    Pino considered this a moment. “The woodsfolk . . . do you think what they did was wrong?”
    â€œRight, wrong, who’s to say? I think they thought what they did was right. Sometimes right and wrong depends on who’s saying it.”
    â€œBut they loved her,” Pino insisted. “They really did love her.”
    â€œYes, I think so. But no matter how much they loved Elendrew, it wouldn’t have changed anything for her. The problem was she didn’t love herself.” He sighed. “Anyway, I think we’d better push on. We’re on the other side of the bad woods now. Maybe we can just survive on our own. We’ll head west—toward the mountains.”
    It made Pino sad, thinking he’d never see Aki again, but he supposed he deserved it. Once again he’d tried to use his gift to help someone, and it had only turned out badly. He didn’t need his papa to tell him not to use his gift. He’d decided all on his own that he’d never bring anything made of wood to life for as long as he lived—only bad things came of it.
    Besides, real human boys couldn’t do it, so why should he? If he wanted to be just like other boys, then he at least needed to act like them.
    Within minutes Pino felt raindrops on his cheeks, and not long after that the trickle turned into a torrential downpour. They hid in the hollow of an old stump. By the time the storm had passed, it was dusk, so they bedded down there for the night. They were hungry and wet, and though the mossy ground inside the stump was soft, it also smelled bad.
    If this was how it was going to be, Pino didn’t think much of his papa’s plan to strike out on their own.
    The next morning was better. The sun pierced the trees, their path dappled with golden shadows. Birds sang merrily. They soon came to a trickling brook, where Geppetto used a makeshift net from a leafy branch to ensnare some shimmering, pink-scaled fish. The fish were tiny, not much bigger than Pino’s pinkie finger, but they were also plentiful. After cooking them over a roaring fire—Geppetto showed him how to start one using dry twigs and some stones—they didn’t taste bad either. If nothing else, their stomachs were full.
    For the next few weeks the two of them traveled through the forest, Geppetto slowly gaining his strength, Pino learning how to fish and hunt. With some sharpened sticks they were able to kill some rabbits and even once a deer, and they spiced up these meals with roots and berries that Geppetto taught him were fine to eat. It was a wonderful time for Pino, just being with his papa.
    Besides how to survive in the