A complete sense of mystery and wonder ignited a roaring flame inside of Pinocchio. After that fateful night, Adone started working meticulously to find ways to execute his plan of escape, this time with the help of Pinocchio. In the silence of his room, a million thoughts blossomed with voices, each one competing against the other in a battle for recognition. The lanterns hanging from the ceiling of his caravan swayed as he struck his fist against the desk, staring at a paper as blank as his thoughts. All the hope and excitement he wished to manifest into reality remained chained in his ghost, nearly boiling and burning from the intensity. But in the vapors of his frustration, a glimpse of beauty was found. The mental chaos produced a serene dance of elements in his mind which he was still not able to fully grasp. Being in its presence, however, was enough for him to see that he was close to something glorious. The periphery of paradise taunted his limits, teasing his senses to hunger for its majesty.

  He folded his arms one over the other, using them as a pillow for his weary head. Adone decided to let the thoughts move like rivers through his ghost, laced around one another so as to be locked in combat with each other’s flow. Where those thoughts even arose evaded his perceptions. Each stream came from different dimensions in a space he couldn’t even fully comprehend, but he felt its influence roaring with his skull. It became so furious that even his body couldn’t handle the forces. He grabbed his skull as if it was about to burst open, staring out his window which only showed him his own ragged features. Tired of the unruly nature of his mind, he exited his caravan.

  The night gently caressed his skin with a touch that was just the right coldness to ease him. Fireflies danced to the melody of the crickets in the fields, in equilibrium with everything around them. Observing the peace of the night, the harmonies it sang with its many singers, made Adone long to be as harmonious as it all within. Yet something in his ghost wouldn’t allow that. The copious amount of coagulated blood formed knifelike crystals over the scars, piercing them forever open, forever aflame with feeling. But on nights like this, he could ignore the fire’s wrath and relish in the sweetness of the cold.

  No matter how wonderful the clockwork of nature flowed, the shadow of his dreams would loom over every part of it, staining the whole in a dull gray from time to time. In there, all was infused with a richness not found in his waking life. The verdure of his dreams was far more viridescent than any blade of grass he came across. But even in his dreams, the most horrific tendencies also arose. Caught between the horrors and harmonies of the heart, Adone found himself split in two, bound into one broken whole through the dried blood nestled in the cracks of his soul.

  In the face of all that he has seen and all that he ever felt, there was always the foreign presence of something which paradoxically felt wholly familiar to him. Under the light of the moon and the stars, that same presence descended upon him, wrapping its arms around his shoulders. Its lips drew closer to his ear, and its azure locks flowed down like the milky way over his shoulder.

  Its voice, rich with femininity, whispered directly into his soul in a myriad of tongues. All the stars in the sky breathed through his lungs, vocalizing as they participated in the music of her divine speech. Nestled in the nexus of all his dreams, she appeared before him. Her appearance would always escape his sight, but her existence would weave itself into his awareness through all his faculties, reminding him that she was real beyond all other realities. In the contrast between bloodshed and beauty, her presence made sense of all opposites, uniting them into one complete tapestry of life. With reverence, he let his nerves catch fire and blaze as he tried to understand her wisdom, raging through his veins as if the rivers of the earth too caught fire and boiled throughout his being. As her voice faded into the ether and her touch slowly lost its warmth, he was able to put into simple words what she conveyed to him using the language of life.

  “Find yourself in me…” was one of the final things she told him before disappearing into the night, dying its parts in the beauty of the whole. Full of inspiration, he rushed back into his caravan and took out a notebook from his drawer instead. Its leather body groaned as Adone pried it open, immediately getting a feather and ink to jot down all the ideas flowing through him and onto the page. Black stars bled on the yellowish pages as some of its blood scattered on the edges of his messy writings. In the rush of inspiration, he felt her hand holding his as his thoughts bled onto the page, seeing the blood of beauty rushing before his eyes. Life’s veins, liberated from the static veins of flesh, moved as freely as particles of dust dancing in sunbeams. Spirit surged through his flesh, taking shape in the scribbling on the old notebook. A narrative etched deeply in his heart dyed the script whose content lapped like ocean waves on the shore of reality, revealing secrets he himself was unaware of until they appeared before him. The lonely stars in his ghost blossomed into heavenly flowers as the roots of his mind wove into the story, nurturing the script and himself.

  The next day, the entire group was told that they were going to perform in the grand theater; a large and lavish room for only the rich and wealthy to enjoy tasteful plays from well-known playwrights. To everyone’s surprise, the harlequin showed Mangiafuoco a script he wrote that would be to the taste of the pompous audience.

  While he leafed through the pages, Adone broke out in a nervous sweat, insecure about every word he saw Mangiafuoco’s eyes glance over. When he read through the script in his mind, the harlequin was confident that the higher class would enjoy the raw drama radiating from every scene of the play. The large man quickly saw money and fame in every word the harlequin wrote and went along with his script. As the director as well as writer, Adone had full control of the performance and guided everyone to the best of his abilities to give the audience a spectacle they wouldn’t dare to scoff at.

  In between one of the many rehearsals, he tried to convince the player of the pedrolino to join him in escaping, but that only elicited a furious response out of him. After that, he didn’t bother to convince the others. Even without engaging in the topic with them, by simply mentioning other subjects, he was able to infer that they would be against his absurd plan. So in between most of the rehearsals, he educated Pinocchio on the workings of Mangiafuoco’s strings and how to cut them loose. Adone paced around the dressing room as the wooden boy spun himself around in a spinning chair.

  “From the moment one signs a contract to him, on paper or in heart, they’re immediately bound to him and the group he has made. There is no physical way of escaping that accursed spell, so we need to cut the strings loose by killing Mangiafuoco. I put him as a simple but vital character for the play, so he can’t leave even if he wanted to, for it would risk the quality of the play, and he wouldn’t dare to miss out on any riches. Even if he was shot in both legs, he’d still crawl to scrape up whatever he finds that is of value. His death means the severance of our strings and our freedom, so while he acts as if he’s sleeping, I’ll give him real poison to consume instead of a fake one. I’ll conceal the horrible taste and smell and make him drink every last drop until his eyes bleed and his skin turns blue. The plan is perfect! Perfect!”

  One day, as Pinocchio rehearsed his lines until his cogs cried, he saw the image of a woman in his ornate mirror who peered at him with a stare so piercing that one of the wires within him got caught in a family of cogs. Unrhythmic clacking jumped in the halls as the wooden boy wandered around to find someone who could fix his now malfunctioning leg. Sadly, he stumbled upon the worst person he could’ve encountered. Fire laced Mangiafuoco’s eyes as he looking at the helpless wooden boy who sheepishly asked him for some help. Heavy hands lifted him up, giving him a closer look of the frustration on his face. “A puppet with a malfunction is a pile of trash! How am I supposed to gain anything from rubbish?!” he roared, throwing Pinocchio to the wall “Fix yourself before I chop you up and turn you into firewood, boy!” Mangiafuoco roared before storming away.

  A darkness seeped into his cognition, threatening the shattering of his innocence, but he perished the thought before it had the chance to consume him. All that he thought he could do was try to stand up and walk on to keep searching for help. Celso the cricket immediately attempted to help him, but he couldn’t seem to realign the wires back in their places. His chirping and the crunching of disorganized cogs invaded the stillness of the seemingly endless hallway to the point where Pinocchio swore he heard the sounds coming from another place.

  Gentle hums rang through the halls, flowing out of one of the distant rooms. A soft feminine voice fluttered like sunkissed dust, drowning out the chaotic noise of pain. Vigor engulfed his determination, possessing him to dash towards the singing to the best of his encumbered abilities. His wooden body landed on the door where he proceeded to knock on while calling out to see if anyone was there. Suddenly, the door opened and his body collapsed to the room’s floor.

  After that second fall, his body didn’t allow him to get up and went into a restful sleep, letting his frayed nerves rest for a bit. The semipermeable veil severing dream from reality was thin, incorporating spaces in his memories which morphed his cognitions to accommodate for such terrains with the reality of a wholly other space. Feeling as though he was falling despite being glued to the ground, Pinocchio’s mind fell through untouchable skies, falling ever further into an endless blue. Celso’s delicate hands that twisted and pulled at his strings and cogs were felt even in his dream. The machinations of his mind orchestrated a glimpse into the fractured essence of time, forging the surroundings into that of a nightmarescape.

  A large fox with a third eye sat atop a mountain of broken toys of different designs and traits, but all appeared equal in destruction. Mountain ranges of gigantic dolls lined the horizons and the surroundings, like splotches of black ink on a crimson canvas. When the glowing fox spoke, its words roared through Pinocchio’s dream and reality, breaking the foundations of his being’s most trustworthy aspects. Five moons shone with the color of gold, appearing like five golden coins clinging to the bloodstained heavens above the beast. Five tongues slithered out of its rows of teeth to vocalize terrible omens as another pair of eyes opened below its normal pair, mirroring the five moons over its abominable head.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “All of your dreams will perish in the Land of Toys. You will carry no hope, no love, no will and no pride when you enter these lands. The only thing that you will be carrying is rotting flesh that will fester between your dark machinations in a foul attempt to be what no one can ever be, for one cannot be what never was. Search for the five golden coins and witness the birth of an accursed miracle.”

  The five golden moons melted, dipping like wax over its head. When they landed on its head, the radiant honey changed its property and fell faster down its face, turning a bright red when it fell from its eyes like bloody tears. A dark red fell on its sharp claws, with the sound of it dripping into the puddle around its paws rousing the doll into the orderly realm of the real.

  As the dream’s wild elements evaporated to reveal the structure of reality, a lady with turquoise hair planted a kiss on Pinocchio's lukewarm forehead. The horrors of the realm he visited washed away in the revelation of her presence. Her beauty shined so brightly that it dispelled the darkness which clung to his spirit incurred from the dream’s wrath. But to his dismay, she vanished as quickly as the dream ravished him, leaving him alone to ponder and wonder what just transpired inside and outside of him. Through all of the terror and confusion, a foreign force took a hold of his blank will which behooved him to continue doing as he was doing and to go along with the plans of the harlequin, even if they were seen as immoral according to Celso’s wisdom.

  Walking back to his room, he glanced at the door of the room that Mangiafuoco was in. His cogs screeched and forcefully grinded against one another, smothering his moral compass with blind hatred for him. He took a deep breath out and decompressed any stiffness to remind himself of hope in an act of rebellion against the unknown burden he bore. The fox’ laughter echoed in his clockwork heart, causing his spirits to tremble in fear and anticipation.

  As the sun sank into the horizon and the stars revealed themselves, Pinocchio hungered for something he couldn’t quite understand. The only part of it he understood was that it must be satisfied or else it would possess his ghost ad nauseum. Sleep never came to him easily, primarily due to his own reticence towards it. The idea of suffering to something completely outside of him that eliminated most of his abilities scared him, that paired with the possibility of summoning all the monsters from the dark corners of his mind to crawl into his consciousness. But instead of that, he encountered a worse fate. The monsters in his mind shrunk away from the presence of the ghostly fox whose laugh still rang through his mind. Imprisoned in his own psyche by the torment of the fox, he decided to properly listen to it instead of blindly running away from its cries.

  Its strange laughter revealed to his mind a myriad of shapes, as if all the tiniest particles before him blossomed into new realities. He let in frolic in the meadows of his mind, each of its tails curling like smoke over the flora. All five of its eyes individually scoured the area as it moved with languid grace around the flowers, not hurting a single blade of grass. The giant fox wandered through his ghost, trying to understand its scent as it meticulously studied all the little elements playing in his mind. Eventually, it located something between a beautiful bundle of flowers, using its giant paw to lift the soul and expose what hid beneath it. As it did that, Pinocchio discovered the cause of his discomfort and restlessness. He quickly changed out of his sleeping clothes and put on a red tunic, rushing out of his room and into the night.

  Under the stars, everything else appeared to be so small, but not insignificant. In fact, every little living thing around him was made more beautiful by its microscopic nature in comparison to the universe around him. Its significance increased the smaller it seemed in comparison to the things beyond the sun, the moon and the stars. And the strange feeling bubbling inside of him finally came known through the fox’ aid, which he liked to think was another perfect piece in the cosmic clockwork. But even when he understood it, he didn’t know whether or not to entertain the thought. His only solution was to explore the caravan where he found the two prisoners once more and see if he should go through with it or not.

  Just like the first time he found them, Pinocchio climbed the wheel and tried to peer through the window to see if they were still there. Moonlight filtered through the parted curtains, throwing moonbeams on the tired faces of the two prisoners. Their clothes were cleaner, including the bloody blindfold around the woman’s eyes. Judging from the fact that both were wearing the same foreign clothes, Pinocchio deduced that some kind of musical manipulation helped take away the blood and dirt. There was only silence in that caravan, giving Pinocchio more time to think about what he wished to do.

  The moment the inspiration to free them struck him, he walked around the caravan only to find the giant lock on the door. In spite of his simple mechanisms, his urge to rescue them was too great for him. Possessed by the fox’ laugher, Pinocchio wrapped his small wooden hands around the long lock and began to pull it away from each other with the meager hope of breaking it.

  “Did you hear that?” the woman asked, turning her head to gauge where the sound was coming from. The man could only muster the energy to look up and scoff, far too tired for anything else other than bitterness.

  “I’m being serious. Listen closely.”

  The man even held his breath to hear what she was talking about. In the deathly silence, he was able to hear a very light tapping, only understanding it to be the sound of metal a few seconds later.

  “What is that?” He asked mostly to himself. He also tilted his head to try and understand what it was and why it was so close.

  A loud echo surged through his head. It was not the sense of danger that he heard, but one of comfort despite him receiving it as something uncomfortable. The longer it lasted, the more he felt the power of the spirit of the fox enshrined in his heart. It grew the more sound he heard until there was the sound of metal shattering. He wanted to tell the woman to not be alarmed, but even he didn’t know how to feel. The two remained quiet as if they were asleep as they heard the creak of the door opening and the cold night air sink into their bones.

  “I’m not here to hurt you.” Pinocchio said in a gentle voice. His youthful tone immediately eased their spirits, but only for a bit. “Are you two okay?”

  “Close the damn door.”

  “Kon, be nice! He seems friendly.”

  “How can you know?”

  “She’s right.” Pinocchio said as he inspected the state of the two. The man known as Kon still didn’t have a replacement for his right leg. The light of the moon made his amber eyes twinkle, sprinkling them with stars once he began to smile.

  “Who on earth are you anyway?”

  Pinocchio averted his gaze, unable to find the right words to give a response. Looking at his turquoise eyes, Kon could tell that he made him uncomfortable.

  “You don't have to answer that, but I just want you to know that you’re not the only one. There are plenty of dolls like you where we are from. They are praised and given respect, unlike here in these parts.”

  “They are?” Pinocchio asked as he went to loosen the woman’s ropes first.

  “They sure are.” She said, “and they are made with the utmost care, just like you.”

  The wooden boy paused for a second.

  “How can you tell?”

  “You think just because my eyes are gone that my sense of greatness is gone? Nonsense. The music tells me what it needs to, with or without my sight.”

  The moment she was free from her bonds, she immediately went towards Kon like a magnet, touching his right thigh.

  “Does it still hurt?”

  Pinocchio went around his chair to untie him as well. The wooden boy felt the radiation of his melancholy sting his clockwork heart.

  “It’s fine.” He said with a bitter hiss. The moment he was untied, he wrapped his arms around hers, with her doing the exact same.

  “I’m sorry, Sachi.”

  “No need.”

  She wrapped her arms around Kon’s body, cradling him in her arms.

  “Thank you so much. What is your name?” Sachi asked.

  “Pinocchio.”

  A beatific smile decorated her lips as Kon studied his turquoise eyes. He was unable to understand what he was feeling when he felt the presence of the fox in Pinocchio’s heart, feeling a sense of brotherliness from the stranger.

  “We need to leave before anyone finds us, but thank you so much. We are in your debt.”

  “Wait,” Pinocchio quickly said. “Just… don’t be mad at the one who did this to you. It was never his choice. He was only following orders.”

  A darkness passed over Kon’s face, unable to be washed away until he took a deep breath to calm his nerves.

  “Things like this happen. Don’t worry.” Kon said with a lugubrious tone.

  Sachi stealthily ran with Kon in her arms, into the dark of the forest. Pinocchio sat on the steps of the caravan’s entrance to see them getting swallowed up by shadows. His heart felt lighter as the prison of ice around it melted away. He studied his wooden hands to look for any damages, only to see that the lock was the only thing that got damaged. The power still surged through his body, hissing in his ears. What had happened before came to him like the memory of a dream, disconnecting that experience with the experience he was currently in. The fox faded into curls of smoke, bejeweling his mind with the dewdrops from its ever present haze.