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
