CAST:
• Maestro Giuseppe
• Twinoakkio
• Staccato
Maestro Giuseppe applauds as Staccato’s song puts money into his hat. The little plant girl takes her leafy hem and curtsies as she thanks the passing strangers.
“Look, Papa! Two of the coins are gold! One for each of us,” she jokes.
But Maestro Giuseppe makes a serious smile. “You keep them both. I will take the coppers.”
The birch leshy excitedly inserts each coin into the coin slot within her cleavage. They clatter in the empty compartment in her little belly.
“Your turn, Brother,” she says to a wooden boy, “and then we perform our duet, ‘Crowdpleaser!’”
Twinoakkio shucks his fist in a hurdy-gurdy arc. “Nothing I’d rather do, Sis!” The oaken construct rustles Staccato’s leafy scalp.
He tappity-taps on the sidewalk to the delight of young moms and their children.
I got some strings
For play’n’ around
I need no fret
To make sweet sound
I’ll tell sweet lies
So my nose grows
My nose makes a sweet bow!
Sure enough, the nose grows from Twinoakkio’s lie—which in this case, is lying about lying, as he spoke the truth: his nose really is a bow extension and his left forearm is hollowed as a violin.
Twinoakkio need only stretch the strings from his left shoulder to the hooks on his fingernails. Though he cannot bring his fingers to his twiggy wooden bicep (which acts as the violin’s ‘neck’) as a human violinist would, the construct can instead move his fingers to adjust the exposed length of each string, producing the same result!
And so the wooden boy takes his bow in hand and dances into the street, playing and trilling,
Tra, la,
Fa-la, la, la,
Fla-la, la-la, la, l—
CRASH!
A speeding horsedrawn carriage smashes Twinoakkio to splinters! It does not stop!
Staccato runs into the street, cradling gears and bark and a piece of wood with lips on it in her arms. “Brother,” she wails as sap trickles down her cheeks. “Papa…”
She is protected from meeting her brother’s fate by the gathering crowd of women and children. The few wagons that pass move slowly, some riders rubbernecking at the spectacle of a wooden girl mourning what’s left of a wooden boy.
The sibling act is no more. And Maestro Giuseppe is getting old. Staccato offers to stay with him until the end, “And you and Brother will be in paradise together, Papa.”
The Maestro shakes his head.
The truth about constructs and their souls—or lack thereof—is crushing. “My soul will be reunited with my beloved wife, Daughter. You, too, have a soul. A past life, and a present one.
“Do not waste it tending to me in my final hours, dear child…”
The leshy child does not obey. She sits on the edge of Giuseppe’s death bed, crossing her left leg over her right. Piano keys are built into her left thigh. Raising her leg raises the octave, and on her right forearm is another set of keys for the low notes.
She plays softly, sweetly… until she is the only soul in the house.
