Amor Fati: A Pinocchio Retelling

Each prisoner of Mangiafuoco’s tyranny were rid of their chains, choosing how to live their own lives afterward. Adone felt the beginning of this great unfolding, being at the heart of it right alongside Pinocchio. Under the rainbow of lights beaming from the stained-glass windows, both felt ever closer to the source of the music that moved the universe. As they walked towards the doors, the echoes of Durante’s music helped soothe the pain of his ripped arm while sealing the wound. Although it still ached with fresh pain, its throbbing would be dimmed with every word that came out of Pinocchio’s mouth. As he steeped himself in his turquoise eyes, Adone was unable to fathom how just one individual can redefine another so radically and so beautifully. 

In the middle of the cathedral, Pinocchio’s strings grew taut and froze him in place. With confusion and compassion, Adone asked what was wrong without even registering that he did so. But his words stirred no reaction in the doll, who continued to stare at him with excessive guilt in his eyes. All the excitement he had in seeing him transformed into terror. 

Without a second thought, Adone went down on one knee and, out of instinct, tried to hold both of Pinocchio’s shoulders, but only placed his right hand there and stretched his forearm-deprived limb. In the realization of the action, a dagger of pain plunged itself through him, twisting to remind him of what he had just gone through. But there was a fire whispering through his veins that blurred his perceptions, blinding him of most of what had happened a moment ago. Iridescent tears began to roll from Pinocchio’s eyes as he looked at the victim of his actions. 

“I’m…” 

Melancholy made his little voice shimmer like a violin’s cry, squeezing Adone’s heart dry. A series of teary mumbling sparkled out of his throat like a murmuring river. He wiped his thumb over Pinocchio’s tears, feeling its icy grace penetrate his gloves and skin. A smile decorated his lips the more he saw the part of himself buried in the shadow of his own heart now blossoming under the colorful lights from the stained-glass windows. Just before he wrapped his arm around the doll for another embrace, Pinocchio stretched his arms out to maintain a distance, looking down the entire time. Shiveringly, he managed to find the strength to string the right words together. 

“If… If I didn’t save those two, then the fire wouldn't have happened. Everything would have gone well and you wouldn’t be hurt. I’m so sorry.” 

Adone pulled him closer to his chest, unmoved by what he said. Naturally, it took him a while to process it, but when he did, a bright and bubbly laugh fluttered out of him and filled the entire cathedral with a divine joy. He caressed the doll’s back and held him close as he cried into his shoulder, wrapping himself around Pinocchio like the vast blue sky over the earth and captured all his cold tears. 

“If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have done what I could have done. So maybe it was meant to happen, and maybe I should thank you.” 

“But your arm-” 

“The loss of my arm is nothing.”

He embraced him tighter in proportion to Pinocchio’s, his smile growing wider the more tears he felt sinking through his shirt. The rage of the battle made his nerves hum like the strings of a lute, soothing his soul with the sweet silence of their contact. Even the wound throbbed with a soothing pain, still attached to the memory of what it once was. He still felt that arm wrap around Pinocchio’s wooden body and he swore that he could feel the linen of his little shirt with that same arm. But the more he tried to feel it, the more the illusion faded and the tighter the embrace. When Pinocchio eventually loosened his hold on him, he got up and stroked the back of the wooden boy’s head as they walked out of the cathedral.  

A rush of energy poured out of him, evaporating the moment he walked foot outside. He was grateful that it was quiet out, perhaps because it was the morning at its youngest. The bright glow of the sun singed the night from the sky. Before it engulfed the heavens in a pale blue, he wanted to get to the outskirts of the city where his caravan lay. As he walked the silent streets of the city, he realized that he could have gone to another room if he went through the dungeons again. Just the thought of that place alone made him perish the idea, giving him more motivation to locate his caravan. He didn’t mind the strange looks he received from passersby because he understood how little they understood upon seeing a one-armed man walking with a doll. Judging from their eyes, he saw himself through them to see that it was an invalid walking with his doll for support. Yet the doll seemed too extravagant in comparison to the bloody half-arm and bloodstained, sandy attire which was already an obscene oddity in itself, making their confused expressions more understandable. But in his delirium, nothing else mattered other than the familiar comfort of his caravan. It was only when he walked on the stones for a while that he realized that some bells on the edge of his cape scraped against them, sparkling with light noises with each step he took. He steeped himself in the lullaby of the bells before heading over the large field of grass, feeling the orange sunbeams caress his sweaty and blood-smeared face.

His blurry vision noticed the outline of a dreadfully familiar person. In his conscious effort to free himself from the wicked illusion, he understood its reality even clearer. He leant on the side of it between the wheels wearing black from head to toe, standing out from the glossy red with gold rims. Adone heard with sharp clarity the leather he wore crack as his head slowly turned towards him. The crow mask he wore and their impenetrably black lenses pierced and dismantled Adone, acquainting him with his own vulnerabilities. As he got closer, he could feel a smile forming beyond the mask which covered his entire face. He also realized just how tall he was. 

Adone opened his mouth, but only a breath that cracked his lungs like glass whispered out. In such proximity to a place he knew he could rest, his body already adjusted itself to the circumstances, losing its soothing hum and casting it into the fires of his unconcealed pain. Nearly collapsing to the floor, the man in black swung his arms and caught Adone by the shoulders. Pinocchio noticed the impossible speed of such a large individual and stepped back, unsure if he was also working for Mangiafuoco like the guardsman. 

“I’m not dead yet, so don’t turn me into one of those cadavers you study just yet.” 

A warm chuckle hummed from the man as he put Adone’s arm around his shoulder, holding him gently but firmly. 

“That’s a shame.” 

Pinocchio felt the air between them shift from cold danger to a brotherly warmth, feeling at ease in the presence of the stranger. In the deepest depths of the man’s voice, however, the wooden boy noticed a disturbing crackle which trailed every word he pronounced. Something of an impenetrably black shadow haunted his mannerisms, transfiguring him into one great mystery he couldn’t fully accept. But the man’s superior height and strength easily guided the wounded harlequin to the entrance of his caravan, but instead of opening the door with Adone’s key, the man in black searched in his pockets. 

“Your little rat cave of a room won’t provide enough room for us. And besides, I’m feeling nostalgic.” 

A cylindrical music box shimmered in his black gloved hand with the serpentine creature wrapped around it absorbing most of the light. Having limited options, the man pushed the end of music box's crank on his hip and carefully wound it up. 

“Are… you sure that you can use that?” Adone asked, his adrenaline fading away. 

“I’ll have more equipment there to help you. And also some good quality bedding your poor lands can’t even dream of.” 

A weak chuckle dripped out of Adone’s mouth, paired with a drop of blood. Out of instinct, he wanted to wipe it off, but in that motion he raised his severed arm and was struck with lightning down his spine. The man noticed the violent change in his music and tried to soothe him with his own music. 

“There there.” His raspy voice, while soothing Adone, made the doll even more uneasy. Just when he felt like the most useless creature in existence, the man walked back and turned to face the wooden boy when he finished winding the melody. Instead of greeting the wooden boy, he passively studied him as if he were a creation of a nature to be marveled. But there was no glimpse of wonder in his cold gaze, and the absence of any kind of spark made Pinocchio even more disturbed in his presence. Just before he turned, Pinocchio swore that he felt a profound pity from the man, a pity he himself couldn’t fully grasp. Yet the darkness of the pity illuminated the darkness that surrounded his wooden heart, offering him a share of wisdom alongside terror. 

“Your friend here will be fine, don’t worry.” 

They slowly made it up the stairs and upon entering the door, Pinocchio was unable to process the change that just occurred. The interior of the caravan was now radically larger than even the caravan itself, and much brighter. When all three of them entered, Pinocchio took the time to look around him in amazement while the man in black seated Adone on a bed full of pillows and blankets of a strange, asymmetrical design that was painfully similar to his outfit in essence. Walls full of colorful bottles with colorful contents lined shelves, capturing Pinocchio’s attention with ease. Adone’s sharp hisses of pain pulled his attention away and pulled Pinocchio closer to him as well. 

“Move.” 

The man’s voice was heavy with callousness as he loomed over the doll to tend to Adone’s wounds. With ease, he lifted his entire body from the cushioned couch and carried him to the barren seat in the middle of the spacious room.  

“You’ll get blood all over it. Let’s fix you up a bit before anything else happens.” 

The man in black shushed him gently as Adone grit his teeth to withhold a howl of pain. Blood sputtered from between his teeth and rolled down the corner of his mouth which the man quickly wiped away with a tissue he had near the seat. But the longer he tended to him, the worse the pain seemed to be. Twitching turned into thrashing as Adone’s body grew weaker and succumbed to the trauma it received, turning the once numbed pain into an infernal reality that burned every corner of his being. It came to a point where he nearly fainted from the pain of his body and his ghost, remembering all that happened and reliving the brutal beating of soul and flesh. Unable to think of any other way to help him for the time being, he thought it best to resort to using a large, circular music box he got from a locked drawer and placed it on the desk near Adone’s head after winding it. Three notes later and Adone’s roars turned into moans as he got swallowed by silence. In harmony with the void, the eerie melody continued which managed to emphasize the silence in spite of its act of breaking it. 

“He will be fine,” the man said after a few seconds, “he just needs to rest thoroughly. This melody will do wonders to him.” 

The man in black slowly began to strip his clothes by cutting it with a small curved dagger he concealed in his waist. 

“My name is Haruki, by the way. Haruki Kurobane. I’m from the thalassic lands, but I assume that you have no idea what I mean by that.” 

Pinocchio shook his head before realizing that the man couldn’t see him. Yet there was something that told him that Haruki did in spite of being focused on Adone’s state of being. Sensitive to the inner music of others, it was hard for the wooden boy to feel completely at ease in the presence of Haruki’s overwhelmingly mysterious melody. There was a peculiar sense of familiarity in the mystery that Pinocchio slowly warmed up to. 

“Could you also be a doll like me, perhaps?” 

Haruki suddenly stopped to turn for a moment, let out a laugh and then continued to treat Adone while shaking his head. Pinocchio kicked his feet up as he sat on the large cushioned seat, seeing Haruki at work. 

“No, although it would make a lot more sense if I were to be one.” 

Pinocchio raised his white eyebrow in confusion, stupefied by the mystery he just awakened. Before he was able to question him about it, he asked a question of his own. 

“And how long have you been in this wonderful little world?” 

His inability to interpret his sarcasm made it appear as another form of mystery, he answered with truthful innocence. 

“I… actually do not know,” Pinocchio admitted, unable to grasp the amount of time that has passed from his sudden thrownness into the world to his time in the circus. Whatever memories he could find evaporated as quickly as they entered his mind’s sight, his life sparkling like sun glitter on the waters of his lived experiences. There was so much he didn’t fathom and so much he wished to understand from what he had seen. But so much of it was buried in a chaotic dance and dark depths he couldn’t access, but only knew that they existed. The idea alone of raw, unfiltered existence whirling all around him and all within him aroused a sharp sense of nausea in him. 

The man in black respected the ingenuity of Adone as he replaced the bloody make-shift tourniquet he made around his open elbow with a solid belt he tightened around the coagulated viscera. He glanced in the doll’s direction and tried to position himself in a way that obscured Pinocchio’s line of sight. Some pieces of the cloth were still attached to the congealed blood. As Adone was asleep, Haruki took the opportunity to gently but forcefully rip the cloth out of his skin and crack the crystals of blood that formed there, making way for new red rivers. He got another cloth and soaked it in vinegar before lightly pressing it over the entire wound until the cloth turned dark and filthy. Afterwards, he wrapped it up in clean bandages again. His eyes traveled to the rest of his body and saw the diamond-shaped scars over every part of his body, hard with blood and full of mystery. 

Pinocchio also started to notice them after Haruki moved away, coming closer without saying a word. The doll observed the bruised and battered Adone from the other side of the table, unable to make a sound as his eyes traveled from his purple ribs to his scarred face and body.

“He just needs a lot of rest to recover. A lot.” 

He looked over the valley of scars to see a profound worry stain his face. 

“But he will be fine,” he replied to the silent question, “all he needs is some rest and music, like I said.” 

“Is there any music that will do his dreams good?” 

A hum of confusion echoed from his crow mask. But he continued to clean the dried blood from his skin with religious grace. 

“He’d occasionally comment on how his dreams were wicked again or cruel again. When we had long days, we would sleep in random places together. I’d hear him groan in his sleep which sounded like echoes of him being trapped and tortured in his own head. Are there no music boxes for wicked dreams?” 

After he asked this question, Pinocchio noticed a strange shift in himself. The explicit seeking for an answer to help Adone turned implicit for his own gain. The cricket in his head also noticed this change, uneasy with uncertainty. With his interest both inward and outward, Celso was unable to read the doll’s mind as clearly as he used to. But the use of deception, even in such a subtle form, awakened the first blossoms of humanity inside the doll. 

Haruki looked around the room, scanning all of the closed drawers and bottles lying around as if he was able to see through them. After a quick cursory glance around the office, he continued cleaning the blood off of Adone and took small music boxes out of a little chest, placing it on a stand next to his bed. Before he placed it, Pinocchio observed how he moved the music boxes over Adone’s broken ribs and internal wounds, winding them only when the larger one played a specific note so as to create a richer harmony with each one. The ethereal ritual seemed to work instantly by making Adone’s breathing a bit more gentle. 

“He’ll be in a sleep so deep that he won’t even remember that he was ever asleep. But what kind of dreams have you been having?” 

It took the wooden boy a few seconds to process how he both dodged the question and answered with another question. As he was processing it, his mind already provided Haruki with answers. Without his consent, his ghost flickered and flashed with a thousand images that sputtered from his subconscious, threatening to overthrow whatever structures that held him in place. A cluster of eyes, wings, flowers and blades together with a myriad of other nonsensical things flowed through the foreground of his mind. With one breath out, Pinocchio expelled the horde of horrors scintillating through him. 

“I… It’s hard to remember most of them. I just see… a burst of thoughts. Some of them I can sculpt and mold into ideas, but others are unmalleable, untouchable even. All I can do is see them roll by like ocean waves.” 

The man in black took a seat text to the doll, leaning forward with his fingers laced and his beaked mask aimed in Pinocchio’s direction. 

“Do you know what an ocean is? Have you ever seen it?” 

Pinocchio stopped swinging his legs and fell into silence, assaulted by an illumination he didn’t expect to witness. The taste of the salty air was so clear to him that he didn’t even question it, let alone the whispery lullaby of the lapping waves and the way they caressed his feet on the shore. A baptism of nature’s beauty purified his ghost of any uncertainty, but Haruki’s works ripped him away from the structure he thought he had. 

“I… I know about a great body of water. One of the performers’ rooms was like that, with a bridge suspended on it that reached the edge of the horizon. But how do I know how the sand feels?”

“Dolls like you aren’t a natural product of nature, yet you can be called the most natural thing in nature. There’s something pleasant about experiencing all those things without prior bodily sensations. Most dolls I know have lost their minds upon entering the world. After their first few dreams, they try to dismantle themselves because they can’t handle the violent surge of energy that their dreams breathe into them. They realize that their incorporeality far outweighs their corporeal designs and can’t help but feel like they need to shatter in order to breathe. But you seem to be holding up quite well.” 

Hope sparkled in Pinocchio’s turquoise eyes amidst the chaos of meaninglessness. He looked at the large man’s face with an expression full of wonder. He almost made out his eyes in the dark lenses of his crow mask, shimmering like night-hewn gems. 

“Do you know others like me?” 

They maintained eye contact for a long period of time, one frozen with a sweet lie and the other with a bitter truth. Haruki’s eyes drifted to the other side of the room and latched onto the door, thinking of a way to reply without blemishing his heart. 

“Only fairy tales.” 

The silence stung the back of Haruki’s head, so he forced himself to continue. 

“Those stories I know of dolls losing their minds are from unknown sources. But… There are some dolls that are still present that are just as intelligent as you, with more experience than you. Sadly, I don’t know where they reside or how many are left, but I know that they are exceptionally rare. They shine like black stars, hidden but felt. But it is probably best that you don’t find any of them.”

“Why?” 

Haruki bit his lips upon hearing Pinocchio’s innocent inquiry, tired of trying to protect him from the world. 

“They prefer their own company.” he simply replied as dryly as possible. “But Adone’s company is much better for you. He’s a good man, despite what he tells himself.” 

The slow rise and fall of Adone’s chest were like caresses to Pinocchio’s troubled heart, each one instilling a sense of ease. It was hard for him to imagine that that gruelling fight happened only just a few moments ago, for it already felt like a distant memory to him. The rage and rapture of the fight, which illuminated the echo of Pinocchio’s own soul, continued to be a muffled echo once again. But seeing that part of him in full bloom inspired a sublime horror in his heart, unfolding secrets he wished remained in the shadows of his psyche. Just like his wicked dreams, he suppressed them and made them disappear like waves. The ocean of his psyche which stretched far beyond the horizon of awareness haunted him continuously.” 

“How do you stop it?” Pinocchio asked sincerely. “How do you stop your mind from bursting with such terrible things? It feels like there’s this, this, this wild river that constantly streams through me that I can’t seem to stop. Every sparkle on its surface is a new and different idea, together with the droplets that compose the river. There’s just… so much that it feels infinite. Infinitely suffocating, too. How are people at ease with such a heavy torrent rushing through them?” 

The doll looked askance at the man in black as he noticed his chest bubbling with repressed laughter. It eventually spilled out of him and blossomed in the silence in rhythm to a river’s murmuring. Pinocchio’s cogs had trouble rolling as he heard his laugh burn the silence, nearly freezing and scraping his insides as it infused deep but obscure despair in him. 

“Well, wooden boy, that incandescent and effervescent wildfire you describe is what all of us ensouled creatures need to deal with. But how? Well, we simply forget that part of us. We go with the flow of things and hide from it by distracting ourselves from ourselves with ourselves. You, like all of us, are afraid of that thing. Understandably so. The best advice I can give you is just to embrace it for what it is without letting it define you. You are always more than your nightmares, your anxieties, your worries, your ambitions. Don’t be tethered to it and torture yourself with it.” 

His gaze remained fixed to the floor, sliding over to the checkered scars all across Adone’s body. There was a disturbing satisfaction to be found in the crude symmetry of his cicatrices. There was also a harrowing echo Pinocchio perceived with clarity which came from Adone, hearing clearly the screams of his heart that stained his flesh. Haruki noticed how pensive Pinocchio’s gaze was, so they both studied Adone’s scars. 

“That is why I am more involved with the visceral than the cerebral. Plenty think that the psychic is beyond the material and devalue the flesh. They are wrong. It's the material that is of most impotence, and the mental bleeds from matter. Nature itself gives birth to its own mysteries, and it is through the real and the tangible where one can find its grace at its most ripe. So don’t get too lost in that torrent you just described, alright? Explore the idiosyncrasies of life and never forget about the graspable origin of all those ungraspable things.” 

The doll slowly nodded his head, producing a soft click with each nod. Haruki was still able to tell that it didn’t lighten the weight in his head, but only added onto it. At least it was a weight that would eventually give rise to a lightness of spirit, the man told himself. Even he himself was so steeped in thought that he didn’t notice Pinocchio getting out of the couch and walking around Adone’s bed. He only realized that when he was directly next to Adone, analyzing the extent of the wounds he received from the circus. 

Amidst the vitality radiating from his musculature, there were still shadows of death illuminating all the cracks of his heart and laying them bare on his flesh. Even all those parts which signaled life silently hinted at a holy death, as if those flowers of life were merely there to decorate the end. Some of his scars were already patched up by the miraculous strength of his body. In the serene rhythm of his breathing, Pinocchio noticed an overflowing source of verdure. Its ethereal echoes trickled out of every part of asymmetrical symmetry, engulfing the doll with a foreign feeling of home. It quickly transformed into a warm, all-embracing light that annihilated the discomfort he felt on the earth. An opposing force snuffed out the light to thrust him into a deeper darkness, nearly making him trip and fall on the floor as he stepped back from Adone. 

In the peak of sensitivity, Pinocchio was even able to notice Haruki smiling behind his mask. The more time he spent with the doll, the more his interest was piqued. He presumed that he, too, noticed the supernatural force buried in his flesh and felt a strange kinship with it. As he studied the confused expression on the wooden boy’s face and the smallest hint of that ethereal energy, he wondered how he could bring the two together and show the doll his true nature. 

“What is your name?” 

“Pinocchio,” he replied with a hint of hesitation in his voice. 

“Great,” Haruki said with another smile the wooden boy was slightly disturbed by. He got up from the sofa and took a blanket which was tucked away in the corner of some of its pillows. 

“It is still early in the day, but whenever you feel the need to rest, feel free to do so here.” 

Haruki’s heart became warmed for a moment by seeing the light blossom on Pinocchio’s face. Yet it was warmed just as quickly as it grew cold and hardened again, remembering the rules of his business. After quickly cleaning some blood, removing the tourniquet and replacing some bandages, he scanned the large office, remembering to give a spare key to Pinocchio. 

“Press this music box on the frame of the door and it will unlock in a few seconds.” 

Pinocchio moved the coin-shaped music box around, seeing the edge of it as a winder in the shape of a toothed cog. As it was the size of his palm, he easily placed it in his pocket. When he lifted his head to see him, he was already by the door. 

“I will visit here and there to take care of him when necessary. Take care.” 

While there was an immense sense of hope growing in his chest, a dark shadow clouded his vision of the future at the sight of Adone’s condition. But he allowed the hope to conquer whatever anxieties that threatened to weaken his spirits. Sleepy himself, he made his way to the sofa and pulled the blanket over him, humming a melody Adone used to sing to himself whenever he was warming himself up to something. He immersed himself in the silence of Adone and his melodic prayer to him, enjoying the blossom at the end of the bloody thorns.