‘It’s wonderful,’ said the boy, reaching a hand down and tracing the lines of the carving with his fingers. The puppet on the top of the box seemed like a very cheerful fellow. He had a long, cylindrical body and a pointed cap on his head. His legs were remarkably skinny and he didn’t look as if he could stand on them for very long without collapsing entirely.
‘You’d be surprised,’ said the old man, as if he could read the boy’s mind. ‘If you use a very old tree to carve the puppets, then the wood is so strong it can last for an eternity if it’s treated right. That puppet could probably run to the ends of the earth and back and it would only need a fresh coat of varnish at the end of it.’
‘If you didn’t make the box,’ asked Noah, ‘then who did?’
‘My father,’ replied the old man. ‘A long time ago now. I haven’t looked inside it for many years. There are a lot of memories in there, and sometimes it can be quite difficult to face the mementoes of the past. Even to glance at them can make you very sad. Or regretful.’
All this only served to make Noah even more intrigued by the contents of the box and he looked down at it, biting his lip, then looked up again, desperate to know what was inside.
‘Can I open it?’ he asked after a moment, deciding that the simplest thing was to ask the question straight out. ‘Can I see what’s inside?’
The old man opened his mouth to reply but then looked away, his expression confused, as if he wasn’t sure whether he wanted his box of memories to be released to the world. Not wanting to disturb his host while he was deciding, Noah didn’t say a word until the old man looked back and smiled, nodding his head a little as he did so.
‘If you like,’ he said quietly. ‘Only take a care with what you find in there. Those things are very precious to me.’
Noah nodded enthusiastically and reached down to lift the box onto the table before him. He noticed now that the sides displayed carvings of the same puppet that was depicted on the top, surrounded by foreign-looking buildings that he was sure he had seen in his geography books at school. One of them looked a bit like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, another like the Colosseum in Rome. He placed both hands at the sides of the lid and raised it carefully, holding his breath as he did so, convinced he was going to find something extraordinary inside.
But to his great disappointment, all it contained was more puppets.
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ asked the old man. ‘Is there something wrong?’
‘Well, I thought there might be photographs perhaps,’ said Noah. ‘I quite like photographs. Or old letters. But it’s just more puppets. Like the ones downstairs. They’re very nice, of course,’ he added, not wanting to sound rude as he picked one out and examined it carefully. ‘Only I thought there might be something different in here, that’s all.’
‘Ah, but these are very different,’ replied the old man, smiling at him. ‘The puppets downstairs, well, they were all carved by me. But these are the last remaining puppets that my father carved. They’re very precious to me. Like the great tree outside, they put me in mind of him. They’re all I have left of him.’
‘Well, they are very interesting, I suppose,’ said Noah, growing a little more intrigued now. ‘But don’t you want to put them downstairs with all the other ones?’
‘No, I couldn’t do that,’ said the old man. ‘My father wouldn’t have wanted it. Each one tells a story, you see. A very particular story. So they have to be kept together.’
‘Well, I like stories,’ said Noah with a smile as he selected one at random, a rather portly puppet of a woman with a series of chins and a furious expression on her face. ‘What does this one tell?’
‘Ah, that’s Mrs Shields,’ said the old man with a laugh. ‘My first teacher.’
‘You keep a puppet of your teacher?’ asked Noah, raising an eyebrow in surprise. ‘You must have liked school very much then.’
‘Some of it,’ replied the old man. ‘Although it wasn’t my idea to go at all. It was Poppa’s. My father, I should say. But that’s another story. I’m sure you’re not interested in how I got here.’
‘Oh, but I am,’ said Noah quickly.
‘Really?’ asked the old man, his face lighting up. ‘Well, all right then. But I’ll keep it brief. And where should I start? That’s the question. Back in the forest, I suppose.’ He thought about it for a moment and then nodded quickly, as if he was sure that this was a sensible idea. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Back in the forest.’
Chapter Seven
Mrs Shields’ Puppet
It was my father, Poppa (said the old man), who decided that we should leave our comfortable cottage at the edge of the forest and move deeper into the woodlands. The trees there were so old, they provided much better material for the toys and puppets he carved every day, and he liked the idea of a new beginning too. That year, life had changed so much for us that when we heard of the village – a little past the first, just further on from the second – we thought it sounded like a perfect place to begin our new life.
I was only eight years old at the time, but I hadn’t lived a conventional life so far. I had a mischievous quality, you see, not unusual in boys my age, and a history of finding myself in the centre of terrible scrapes. I always seemed to end up meeting unusual people who wanted to lead me into harm’s way. I was the type of boy who could be walking down the road to pick up a bottle of milk and find myself transported to a carnival by a cruel kidnapper, or working as a servant for a man who wished me nothing but ill. Every time I released myself from one of these exploits I would make a promise to Poppa that I would never allow myself to be sidetracked again, but every time I made this promise, sooner or later I would break it. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s who I was and I can’t pretend otherwise.
But when I turned eight I decided that I was going to try to be a good boy, and to mark this change in my fortunes, Poppa thought it a good idea to begin our lives over in a place where no one knew either of us.
‘After everything that’s happened,’ Poppa told me as he explained his plan, ‘I think a change is exactly what we both need. We can start afresh.’
And so one morning, before the sun rose, before the dogs woke, before the dew stopped falling on the fields, we made the journey through the forest, not stopping to talk to anyone along the way, and only came to a halt when we reached this village.
Poppa asked me whether it felt like home, and I didn’t have to think about it for long. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I think it does.’
The first person we met was a young donkey who had been disturbed by our arrival while eating the grass that ran along the village street, and once he had swallowed a few last mouthfuls, he ambled over to say hello.
‘Thinking of moving here, are you?’ asked the donkey, who looked pleased to see that a boy of around his own age might be living nearby, someone who might take him for the occasional ride across the nearby fields. ‘I can highly recommend it. Hee-haw! I’ve lived here with my herd since I was born. There’s about a dozen of us but I’m the best one if you’re ever looking for a little gallop. I run faster. I’d never let you fall off. And I’m a better conversationalist too. Hee-haw! I don’t suppose you have any sausages on you at all, do you?’