Well, I suppose we will have to begin at the beginning. I will do so in the best way an old man can.
Once upon a time, there was a young lad. His parents both passed due to a weariness of spirit. They left him in the hands of a local orphanage. The keepers had been kind enough. But, when coins and donations from the local churches decreased the children’s lunches were the first to grow skimpy.
They were smaller and needed less… He’d once heard the headmistress saying. It had made a kind of sense in the young lads’ mind.
Someone as big as Miss Haveryum probably did need more food each meal than all of them combined. She and the master of the house never ate around the orphans, so not one of them could say for certain.
Nevertheless, rain or shine the children spent their days sharing meals, swapping stories, mending old bedsheets, and doing chores. On days there were none the assistant village tutor would stop in and teach them lessons.
It was days like these that the lad and his peers loved most.
Mostly, because the assistant tutor was the wisest, and best humored man they’d ever met. It was impossible for his good nature not to rub off on all the contents of the ophanage, so much so that in the day or so following his visits, the Master of the house could be heard whistling and the Misses was prone to offering a plate of left over cookies she’d made for the kind scholar.
She didn’t realize he’d offered the children the plate she would bring heaping, and she never seemed to question when he’d leave with the plater licked clean. For such a slender gentleman, he sure loved his cookies as far as she was concerned and each time she would bring a bigger platter of cookies within reason. Until instead of sharing cookies between themselves, each was allowed to take two and even pocket one for later.
It was their little inside joke, and the household was better for it.
Jasper became the orphans’ favorite part of the week.
The lessons he taught were capable of captivating and carrying each wayward child into a different world. One of wonder that left them asking questions over all matters of green and living things.
Now, the little lad who lost his parents to weariness watched the beloved tutor tirelessly. Trying to figure out where his answers to everything came from. After a while, he started to witness a pattern, Jasper would pause, close his eyes take a breath, and do what he called, reflect. He said this was the magic equation for everything, the best way to place pieces together internally and work things out for the benefit of everyone around.
For some reason, that lesson above all of them had stuck. This is why I am writing it down and passing it along to you my dear replacement. This pattern took root, defining in a big way, the little mites life from that moment on…
As you might have guessed by now my dear posterity… The little lad’s name is Geppetto Jokko, and he is me.
Time passed and the boy grew into an adolescent. He and his peers were allotted Before Jasper was swept away by the opportunity he had left Geppe in the capable hands of the village blacksmith, who’d taught him for a time until realizing he may be better used as a craftsman of something less… molten metal and swinging iron hammers. By the next morning, poor Geppe was replaced at the forge with a ruddier boy named Tom. Yes, the same Tom still running it to this day.
To make this short and sweet, Geppe was found to be more useful at collecting what others stopped seeing as useful. He and a few of the less skilled children spent the next month collecting garbage from sewer and gutter drains. They even went as far as to leave potato sacks for villagers who wanted to get in on the movement of keeping their streets clean. The boys and girls tasked with garbage duty began drawing their own kind of attention.
The Headmaster and mistress were blown away by the effect of their orphans wandering the streets collecting what no one else wanted. Donations skyrocketed, from perishable food items to purses and pouches full of real gold. and just like that, one mans trash became anothers’ treasure…
What had first been a punishment for the children less skilled, became the most important operation the orphanage had ever been a part of… as well as the unknown key necessary to unlocking a new level of union within the community.
It wasn’t until a few weeks in that the occupants really started to see results. The high tensions naturally lowered as the scenery grew cleaner and cleaner. Since no one wanted to discuss the trash problem their beloved town had developed it had turned into a full blown pandemic of disgarded waste.
The orphans had been a happy accidental solution for the city council, and after a unanimous vote, it was established that the orphans not needed for specific apprenticeships would be devoted to community cleanup long term. The master and mistress had made an entire presentation on boosting awareness and allowing the public to see their donations as not only necessary but as something of payment for cleaning up their messes. The children tending to them shouldn’t go hungry, they’d said…
In the end, a few took to the gig better than others. Alan, Skip, and Larkin sprang up and quickly became town mascots ringing in huge amounts of new clothing, bedding, food. Things the master and mistress were forced to allow the children to keep, not suggesting they wouldn’t have and maybe would have sold it instead to build future security… but…
The upgrade made the pairs charade totally worth it to the rest of the children. They cheered them on, treating the duo like little kings.
As much as Geppe wanted to help, he just couldn’t get into it. He’d pick up trash here and there but his thoughts were often off with the books or newest stories he’d read. He’d get lost in the clouds and next thing he’d know, he was sitting at the edge of the brook babbling through the city, just listening, watching and unwittingly counting the different types of fish and green life passing through his viewpoint.
At the time he didn’t realize it, but he was taking in more than the birds and the bees of his surroundings. It was funny what the townsfolk would say out loud when surrounded by others of their preferred crowd.
No one ever pays attention to the fly on the wall. In this instance, Geppe would use the villager’s tendency to reduce little things to his advantage. He started to hear the internal workings of the homes surrounding them.
His daydreaming ways lasted until one day, one of the children pointed a finger toward him at the dinner table and cried out that he’d done nothing all day. She pointed out that she’d followed him for the afternoon and found that when it came time to dispose of the potato sacks into the insinerator at the butchershop… he hadn’t even collected a single full bag.
The accusation had turned little Geppe red in the face, and the worst part was. Everything his accuser had said was true. He had wandered the streets, he hadn’t collected any amount of trash… But he’d never thought of what he’d been doing as nothing. In his mind, until that very moment, Geppe had thought of himself as going through quite a lot of somethings. Too many to think of one by one, but in fairness, not many of them had revolved around what he’d set out to do…
He had closed his mouth without a defense. That night the master and mistress sent him to bed after punishing him thoroughly on every level available. Being sure to let he and the others know his lesson was for any other lazy naughty child to learn.
Over the next few days, Geppes motivation to pick up the towns garbage was renewed. The whipping he’d received had left bruises that rubbed against his pants to remind him of why it was important.
He had an example to set. If the towns’ people saw lazy children what would motivate them to offer donations? Nothing!
To this day, and to the end of his life, the headmasters voice still rings through his head. I’m sure of it.
Hopefully by then it’s more of a whisper than a scolding.
At any rate, after three days of a piece of bread for each meal, eaten alone in the upstairs barracks they shared for a room. Geppe had an epiphany. It came to him after he’d been pulled away from the cleaning crew yet again for being seen only once taking a break. With all eyes watching it was impossible not to be seen and each little one was set on picking. The competition had turned them against one another. Each wanting to be seen as more useful or helpful than the other. Each gathering special presents from the master and head mistress when they were mentioned by name with such and such donation…
For three days Geppe watched from the windows while scrubbing the frames.
It was three days of fine-tooth comb cleaning, seam by seam. Window, wall, or wooden flooring.
The small boy grew restless while the other children ventured out to their various apprenticeships he was stuck doing the same old thing they’d all done since the beginning. Cleaning, cooking, washing bedding, squeezing bedding, hanging bedding to dry rain or shine…
It was around this Time Geppe started to realize what it meant to be an orphan. He spent this timeout reflecting on the ways he might improve. Be more likeable…
More like Skip, Alan, and DeWard…
After three days of analyzing the town below his window perch, he came to a few conclusions as to why he couldn’t seem to fit well with anything.
Three days of growing angry with himself for caring more for clouds than gathering trash… then realizing it wasn’t just about the trash because even when he had picked up trash people had still treated him like he was someone who picked up their trash… It wasn’t about the service rendered, because even though he’d been of service, the town-folk acted as though it had been paid for, through their donations.
In fact, the ones who paid more, had been more likely to toss their trash recklessly and anywhere they pleased under the impression they were offering an orphan work…
The more Geppe pondered these things the more he realized how messed up society surrounding his little stony outcropping truly was. As he scrubbed more and more vigorously at each section his brush was met with, Geppe cleaned with more gusto, deciding once and for all that no matter what, he would never become like everyone else.
He’d be like Jasper had been. He came out of that upper room a changed lad. From that day on, the little orphan boy applied himself to everything he put his mind to. Destined to do whatever it took to learn to teach the unreachables like himself. He’d learn to prove that his kind was valuable after all, even if it meant running about town yippying over trash snatched up.
Maddock my good lad. I want to thank you for allowing me to teach you over the years. I hope it’s led to a grand partnership and eventually my seeing you take hold of the operation, that is when I am good and ready to give over those reins. Now, if you are reading this I will assume that time has come… OR… the worst little monsters you’ve ever witnessed have been unleashed. If the former is true, congratulations, you are now the proud owner of an enchanting workspace.
I hope it serves you well and in return, I would ask that you maintain the chest I warned you about. It is your responsibility to never allow what’s in there, to get out into the town, ever again. Which leads me to the latter, if ever a time comes while the fire chest is in your possession that it’s opened. I will refer you to my good friend at the heart of the forest. She will provide you further instructions.
To find Gemima Willowbee follow the creek into the forest until it stops. You’ll know the place when you see it.
God Speed…”
The boy holding the scroll wiped a tear from his eye. He stared at the familiar handwriting, taking in the barely readable scratch he’d spent so many years learning to decipher. Maddock folded the long piece of parchment up like a map and tucked it gently into his pocket.
His eyes danced in the candle light as he took in the carnage. “This is all my fault…” He mumbled.
The once charming workshop had been torn to pieces. The dark curtains were ripped to pieces, the clothing on his mentors back was all but thinly laced ribbon. The skin beneath reflected a similar slashing pattern and all were the same color as the pool gathering beneath the stools four legs.
Amid the wreckage, one item remained untouched by any sort of violence. The smoldering trunk he spent so many days curious over, lie wide open, void of its contents.
“I should have listened.” He choked back more tears as his gleaming eyes landed restlessly on the motionless silhouette captured in the dancing flame. The master woodsmith was slumped unnaturally forward on his favorite carving stool. His head rested sideways exposing a glazed distant stare. The same unflinching expression posed over the toymaker