[This story was written for the
750 Word Project 2025
. What follows is exactly 750 words.]
It was a lovely piece of wood. A deep brown colour, with a grain so fine it was almost invisible, and when the carpenter rapped her knuckles on it, it gave a sound like a bell.
The merchant who sold it to her claimed it came from a faraway land, under the hot sun. It had travelled here by caravan, boat and cart to finally end up in the carpenter's shop.
She knew what she was going to carve from it. Her husband had died young, unable to give her children, and she was lonely.
For a year and a day she nursed the wood into shape. She carved the limb joints, smoothed the round edges, worked the wood with all the love she had in her. She etched the features and the lines of muscle. And when she was done, she painted the face: two bold eyes and full red lips.
Her neighbours scoffed at her. This was no child, they said. This was a puppet.
But the carpenter ignored them. Had she not laboured long and hard? Had she not brought it into the world with a mother's love?
The night that her son was finished, she dressed him in a nightshirt and laid him in her bed. The carpenter's house was only small, and there had never been any need for a second bed.
She joined him, pleased with herself, comforted by her son's presence beside her. Still, she felt there was something missing.
Through a crack in the curtains she spied the full moon looking down at her.
"Moon," she said, "you are a woman. You understand how a woman needs love. Please, bring my son to life, if only at night so my neighbours do not see."
Perhaps the moon heard her. When it turned its gaze onto the hard form beside the carpenter, something happened. With a creak and a groan, the wood came to life. The bold eyes opened, the full red lips parted. The arms and legs trembled and moved.
As the carpenter looked on in amazement, it spoke. "Mother," he said. "I am your hardwood son. Will you not greet me?"
