Pinocchio

Once upon a time, in a small workshop in a little Italian village, there lived an old woodcarver named Geppetto. He had warm brown eyes, a white apron, and curly white eyebrows that danced on his forehead when he laughed — which, despite his loneliness, he tried to do as often as possible. He had no family and no children, only his tools and his wooden creations, and he talked to them as though they could talk back.

One winter evening, a neighboring carpenter brought him a peculiar piece of wood — a piece that had been causing trouble: it laughed, it cried, and whenever anyone touched it, it complained that it hurt. The carpenter wanted nothing more to do with it. Geppetto took it home gladly.

That very night, by the light of his fire, Geppetto began to carve. He shaped a head, then a nose — and as he carved the nose, it began to grow. He trimmed it down, but it grew again, longer than before. He trimmed it again. It grew. He chipped and smoothed and shaped through the night, and by morning, though the nose was longer than he liked, the puppet was done: a boy puppet with bright painted eyes, a jaunty carved cap, a little green jacket, and the longest nose in the village.

Geppetto named him Pinocchio.

He had barely finished saying the name when Pinocchio blinked his painted eyes — and they moved. He opened his carved mouth — and he spoke. "Good morning, Father," he said.

Geppetto wept with happiness. He had wished, so many nights by his cold fire, for a child to call his own. He taught Pinocchio to walk, and Pinocchio ran around the workshop knocking things over and laughing. Geppetto sold his own winter coat to buy Pinocchio a reading primer so he could go to school.

But on the very first morning, on the way to school, Pinocchio heard the sounds of music and followed them to a puppet theater. He sold his primer to buy a ticket. Inside, he saw wooden marionettes dancing on a stage, and they saw him too — the only puppet in the world who moved without strings — and they called out to him and he leaped onto the stage and danced with them.

The theater master was furious. He had a fearsome black beard and a voice like thunder, and he seized Pinocchio and threatened to burn him as firewood. But when Pinocchio wept and cried for his poor father who had sold his coat in the cold, the theater master's heart softened. He gave Pinocchio five gold pieces and told him to go straight home.

But on the road, Pinocchio met a lame Fox and a blind Cat, who flattered him and told him that if he planted his gold pieces in the Field of Miracles, they would grow overnight into thousands of gold coins. Pinocchio hesitated. A small blue fairy had warned him — the spirit of a little girl with turquoise hair who lived in the forest. "Go home to your father," she told him. "Don't trust the Fox and the Cat."

But Pinocchio wanted more gold for Geppetto. He followed the Fox and the Cat.

The Fox and the Cat robbed him in the night, taking his five coins. Pinocchio was left hanging from a tree by his neck, and might have died there if the Blue Fairy had not sent servants to cut him down. She nursed him back to health in her little house in the forest.

"Where is your gold?" she asked.

Pinocchio lied. "I lost it," he said. And as he said it, his nose grew an inch longer. He told another lie. The nose grew another inch. He told a third — and the nose grew so long it filled the room and pressed against the walls.

The Blue Fairy laughed gently. "Your nose grows every time you tell a lie," she said. "Remember that." Thousands of woodpeckers flew in at the window and pecked the nose back to its proper size, and Pinocchio promised to be good.

But Pinocchio kept getting into trouble. He was tricked again by the same Fox and Cat, arrested by enormous carabinieri, chased by farmers, eaten briefly by a terrible serpent whose eyes glowed like lanterns, and finally lured by a boy named Lampwick to a magical land called Toyland, where children played all day and never went to school.

"In Toyland," said Lampwick, "there are no lessons and no work and no teachers. Every day is a holiday." This sounded wonderful to Pinocchio, and he went. For five months he played in Toyland without a single thought. But one morning he woke up and found his ears had grown long and pointed. He looked in the mirror and let out a cry of horror: he was growing donkey's ears — and then a tail — and his hands were becoming hooves. In Toyland, every lazy boy who refused to learn and work was slowly, helplessly, turned into a donkey.

And so it happened to Pinocchio. He was sold to a circus, then to a tannery, and then fell into the sea and was swallowed by an enormous shark — and in the darkness of the shark's belly, he found, by the light of a tiny candle, a small old man sitting at a table.

It was Geppetto.

The old man had built himself a little boat and gone to sea to search for Pinocchio, and had been swallowed by the very same shark while doing so. He had been living in its belly for two years, surviving on fish the shark swallowed, growing thin and pale. When Pinocchio saw him, he threw his wooden arms around his father and held him tightly, and this time no lie could have escaped him even if he had wanted one — his heart was too full.

Together they escaped through the shark's open mouth during a bout of sneezing, and swam ashore. Pinocchio carried Geppetto — who was too weak to walk — on his back across fields and hills until they reached a small cottage. A kindly snail brought them food. Pinocchio found work weaving baskets and carrying water and did it willingly, without complaint, for the sake of his father.

One night he dreamed of the Blue Fairy, who told him: "You have shown that you can be generous, honest, and hardworking. You have earned your reward."

When Pinocchio opened his eyes in the morning, he was no longer made of wood. He had round, soft cheeks, brown hair, and real hands that trembled as he held them up to the light. He was a real boy at last. And sitting at the table, looking younger and healthier than he had in years, was Geppetto — smiling at his son with all the happiness a father's face can hold.