The Wooden Prince (31 page)

Marching off into the cavernous dark set their group on edge. While Pinocchio was fascinated by the enormity of this underworld, he couldn't help but feel a creepy tingling along his spine at the thought that a band of castaway dirt-born savages might be waiting to capture them. He held his sword at the ready.

A dozen or so of Gragl's barnacle people led the way. Pinocchio was glad for the light shining from the shells fixed to their heads, but it only made him more aware of the vast darkness surrounding them.

“What do you see ahead?” Maestro whispered from his shoulder.

“Nothing,” Pinocchio said. “Absolutely nothing.”

He soon gave up trying to spy any features or to figure out how long had they traveled. There was no way to measure time except by their footsteps, too innumerable to track. The journey felt like days. They paused on occasion to eat and drink and pushed on until they staggered with weariness.

Gragl assured Pinocchio and the others that her people would keep watch while they slept. If sleep was anything for the others like it was for Pinocchio, then it was a miserable sleep filled with dreams of black floods and mountainous, devouring teeth. Waking with no dawn was disconcerting, and they resumed their journey grumbling and sullen.

Later Gragl said, “We are nearing the dirt-born settlements. We must travel quietly and with no light so that we won't be found. We trade with them, so they will not harm my people. But if they found you…”

When the lights of the scattered settlements came into view, Pinocchio saw that they were built from pieces of wrecked ships and scavenged items. Each was like a small fortress, towering and walled and glowing from within with orange, oily light.

The landscape was irregular, rising and falling with strange mounds. Gragl navigated them along a twisty path through the shadowy features, past the settlements, until at last Pinocchio saw empty darkness ahead. He thought it odd that he was actually glad for the dark again.

Pinocchio whispered to Gragl, “Are these the only settlements?”

“No,” Gragl replied. “Just the nearest to the mouth, and the only ones I have visited. I hear there are more, deeper in Mother. They say there are even dirt-born cities.”

Pinocchio was trying to wrap his head around this when Sop hissed, “Someone is coming!”

Over to one side, from the last of the settlements they had yet to pass, bobbing lights approached. They weren't the dim green of the barnacle people's luminescent mussels, but yellow, flickering lights that looked like oil lanterns.

Gragl pulled Pinocchio's hand. “It is a band of dirt-born. There is no telling whether they are attacking another settlement or trading. These savages are friends one day and enemies the next.”

Mezmer stepped closer to Lazuli, spear raised, ready to defend the princess as a good knight should. Lazuli, with her sword out, didn't seem to need much defending, but she clearly didn't have the heart to tell the chivalrous fox otherwise.

“What should we do?” Pinocchio asked.

Gragl pointed to the darkness ahead. “Hurry that way! Stay hidden. We will distract them.”

Voices were growing nearer. Gragl rushed off with her people to intercept the dirt-born before they discovered Pinocchio and the others.

“Come on,” Sop said. “I can see well enough.”

Once they were on the far side of one of the mounds, they crouched together and waited. Pinocchio hated not being able to know what was happening to Gragl. He tried to listen, but the sounds were too faint.

“I'm going up on this mound to see what's going on,” Pinocchio said.

“Gragl told us to stay hidden,” Lazuli said.

“I will be,” Pinocchio said, pulling the chameleon cloak around him.

He leaped to the top of the slimy mound on the seven-league boots and knelt down. He could see the cluster of green lights from the barnacle people as they spoke with the dirt-born. The dirt-born looked like warriors. They wore a strange assortment of armor cobbled from pieces of timber and bones and carried an array of crude weapons.

Maestro chirped quietly from his shoulder, “Gragl and her people don't look in danger. I think—”

A horn sounded, echoing across the stomachscape, followed by raucous cries and war whoops. Pinocchio turned toward the sound and saw another group of dirt-born sweeping out from behind mounds and charging the party talking to the barnacle people.

“What's going on?” Sop hissed up to Pinocchio.

Pinocchio went cold. The two groups were about to battle. He and his friends were trapped in between them. He jumped from the mound, nearly colliding with Mezmer. “Quick! They're coming our way.”

Mezmer spun her spear. “Glorious battle!”

“No!” Pinocchio said, giving her a shove. “There are too many.”

They ran, winding through the maze of mounds in a frantic race to escape the charging hordes. But in the dark, Pinocchio soon found he was separated from the others. Where were they?

He rounded a mound and spied Lazuli ahead. She had obviously also lost the others. The bloodthirsty shouts of dirt-born were coming from behind the next mound. They were about to get caught.

Just as a trio of warriors came around, Pinocchio leaped at Lazuli, knocking her to the ground. He threw his chameleon cloak over them.

“Be quiet!” he whispered.

The sound of heavy feet passed inches from them. Once they were gone, he pulled the cloak off and tugged Lazuli to her feet.

“Thanks,” she said. “Where are the others?”

“Don't know,” he said. “Keep going. And stay close!”

The screams and clamor of battle grew behind them. He and Lazuli ran until they found themselves away from the mounds, away from the lights of the settlements, and in a flatter portion of the stomachscape that sloped down into empty darkness.

Pinocchio looked back toward the now-distant sound of battle. He hoped the others hadn't gotten caught. A flickering yellow light came toward them. Pinocchio and Lazuli drew their swords in unison.

But it wasn't a dirt-born's lantern. It was Cinnabar's hand, encased in a thin flame. Mezmer and Sop stumbled after him, panting for breath.

“Princess Lazuli, forgive me!” Mezmer said. “I swore to protect you and—”

“It's all right,” Lazuli said, brushing away her apologies. “What happened to Gragl?”

“No idea.”

“We have to go back for her,” Pinocchio said.

Cinnabar stood in his path. “Are you mad? We'll get chopped to pieces by those savages. She'll catch up to us.”

But as they waited and the distant sound of battle finally went quiet, Gragl and her people never came.

“What are we going to do?” Maestro chirped.

“We have to wait for her,” Pinocchio said.

“What if she doesn't come?” the cricket asked. “What if she's…well, you know.”

Sop flicked his feline ears. “Dead? I doubt it. Those crusties are tough. But they do seem a bit jittery. Might have scattered in panic at the battle.”

“Or headed back to the safety of their caves,” Cinnabar said.

“She wouldn't leave us,” Pinocchio said.

“Then where is she?”

Pinocchio looked into the darkness ahead. He had no answer. He was worried for Gragl, but he was also worried that they were now lost in the vast emptiness of the Deep One.

“We can't just stay here,” Lazuli said. “We have to reach Father.”

“How will we find him? We don't know where to go.”

Lazuli pulled out the Hunter's Glass. “It showed us Master Geppetto before. Let's see if it works again.”

They all huddled around Lazuli, peering at the glass ball illuminated by Cinnabar's hand. Lazuli closed her eyes. A moment later a single point of light formed, then wound its way around the surface of the glass until it stopped on one side.

Lazuli opened her eyes, and they all stared out into the darkness ahead.

“That way,” Cinnabar said with a satisfied smile.

As they headed off, Lazuli didn't put away the Hunter's Glass, and a puzzled look formed on her face.

“What's the matter?” Pinocchio asked, walking beside her.

“Well, the glass seemed broken when I was trying to find my father. But it works when I search for Master Geppetto.”

“Then try it for your father again,” Pinocchio said.

The others stopped while Lazuli held the orb and closed her eyes. The Hunter's Glass began flickering, before the entire globe swelled with light.

“It's not pointing anywhere,” Sop said. “Broken?”

“But it can't be,” Lazuli replied. “It just worked when I thought of Master Geppetto's jeweled rose pin.”

“So you focus on an object and not the person, Your Highness?” Mezmer asked.

“That's how it works,” Lazuli replied. “The Hunter's Glass locates objects, not people. Before Pinocchio changed, Master Geppetto was able to use it to locate him, because Pinocchio was an automa.”

Pinocchio felt his face go hot. He didn't like thinking that he hadn't always been a person.

“But if I try to use it for Pinocchio now…” She closed her eyes. The Hunter's Glass remained dark. “See,” she said, opening her eyes. “But if I visualize his boots…” She closed her eyes again.

Lights speckled across the surface of the Hunter's Glass before filling it completely with bright light.

“Oh!” she said. “I thought it would just point to him. But that was the same as…”

Something cold crept over Pinocchio. He didn't yet understand why, but he knew there was something strange at work here.

“Princess Lazuli,” Maestro began tentatively. “Why did it get so bright when you thought of Pinocchio's boots?”

Lazuli's brow furrowed as she thought. “Maybe…because they're so close, because Pinocchio is right here.”

“But it did the same thing when you visualized His Immortal Lordship, didn't it?” Cinnabar said edgily.

An electric tension seemed to pass through them all. Pinocchio felt dizzy with panic, although he couldn't say why.

“But I wasn't visualizing my father,” Lazuli whispered.

Her eyes grew wide and glowed as bright as Pinocchio had ever seen them. She stared at him in disbelief.

“What were you visualizing when you were looking for your father?” Pinocchio asked.

Lazuli seemed to have to force herself to speak. “No…it can't be.”

“What?” Pinocchio asked.

Lazuli hurriedly closed her eyes and murmured, “If I visualize Father's crown…” A single point of light traced its way from the top to the same side of the Hunter's Glass that had pointed to Geppetto.

Lazuli stared at it and then closed her eyes once more. This time the globe sparked all over before growing bright.

“What of your father's did you just visualize?” Mezmer asked.

Lazuli was trembling. “The Ancientmost Pearl,” she whispered. “I have been searching for my father all along by visualizing the Ancientmost Pearl.”

Cinnabar pointed at the glowing orb in Lazuli's hand. “But that would mean, Your Highness, that the Ancientmost Pearl is right here.”

“And not with His Immortal Lordship,” Maestro added.

“I know,” Lazuli said.

“But where is it?” Pinocchio asked. Even as the words came out of his mouth, the realization dawned on him.

“It's inside me,” he said.

Lazuli gave the slightest nod, as if she wished more than anything it weren't true.

“How can that be?” Mezmer gasped.

“When Father was captured by the doge,” Lazuli said, “he hid the Ancientmost Pearl inside Pinocchio. To keep it safe. It's the Ancientmost Pearl that's brought Pinocchio to life.”

Maestro rattled his wings wildly. “But I saw what was inside Pinocchio. It was only a pinecone!”

“Father must have transformed it with a glamour to look that way,” Lazuli answered, “in case someone managed to open Pinocchio up.”

“But he also put a charm on me so I would protect the Pearl,” Pinocchio said. “Lazuli, does that mean your father didn't send me to Geppetto so I could be his son?”

Lazuli clearly knew the answer as well as Pinocchio, but she couldn't bring herself to admit this terrible truth.

Cinnabar, however, had no problem saying it. “His Immortal Lordship was only using you as a hiding place, puppet. He sent the Ancientmost Pearl with you, because Geppetto was the only human in the empire he could trust. And Prester John hasn't been dying because the doge shackled him in lead. He's been dying because he no longer has the Pearl of Immortality.”

The words were like stabs in Pinocchio's heart.

“And now,” Cinnabar continued, “we have to return the Pearl to His Immortal Lordship before it's too late.”

“But what will happen to me?” Pinocchio asked.

Mezmer put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my darling boy…”

“You'll return to the way you're supposed to be,” Cinnabar snapped. “Back to being an automa.”

“I…I don't want to be an automa again,” he said. “I want to be alive. I want to be with my father.”

Cinnabar showed a mouthful of fangs. “It doesn't matter what you want, you detestable pu—”

“SHUT UP!” Lazuli shrieked.

Cinnabar flinched. “But Your Highness—”

Lazuli struggled to compose herself, but her distress only seemed to mount as she put her trembling hands to her temples and looked around, wild-eyed. “Just…just be quiet, Cinnabar, until we figure this out!”

“There's nothing to figure out, Your Highness,” Cinnabar said, crouching submissively. “We've nearly reached your father. We've brought the Ancientmost Pearl to him. We can save His Immortal Lordship and he can free us from the Deep One so we can return to Abaton. It's that simple.”

“It's not that simple,” Lazuli uttered. “Not for Pinocchio.”