The woodcarver

 Alberto the woodcarver never rushed his work. His shop, nestled in the crooked heart of the old town, smelled of cedar and patience. Customers came with requests, portraits of loved ones, faces they longed to see emerge from the grain. Some brought sketches; others carried only descriptions. But Alberto never carved from memory alone. He waited.  

"Come back in three days," he would say, running his fingers along the raw block of wood. "Let me meet them first."  

People thought it was superstition, or perhaps a craftsman's pride. But Alberto knew the truth: the wood held whispers. A face was not just lines and angles, it was the way light clung to a brow, the tension in a jaw, the quiet weight of a life lived. He had to *listen*.  

One morning, a woman named Clara arrived, clutching a faded photograph of her late father. "I want to remember him exactly like this," she said. Alberto studied the image, a stern man, stiff in his Sunday suit, but he felt nothing. Still, he took the commission.  

For two days, his chisel hesitated. The wood resisted. That night, frustrated, he set the half-formed carving aside and stepped into the moonlit square. There, by the fountain, he saw a man humming, tossing breadcrumbs to pigeons. The man turned, and it was him. The same face as in the photograph, but alive: eyes crinkled with laughter, shoulders loose, a man who loved small, quiet joys.  

Alberto rushed back to his workshop. By dawn, the portrait was finished. It was not the stern figure from the photo, but the man from the square, caught mid-chuckle, a pigeon perched on his outstretched hand.  

When Clara returned, she gasped. Then she wept. "I had forgotten," she whispered, touching the carving. "This is how he really was."  

Alberto only nodded. He had not made the portrait. He had simply borne witness and the wood, as always, had told the truth.