by David Almond
Joe sniffed and shivered. His ears were alert to the night. He trembled, heart fluttered, muscles twitched. What had he almost heard, what had he almost seen roaming the wasteland further downhill, further away from the light? He crouched and watched. Nothing. Behind him, the crowd in the tent clapped and jeered. He imagined Hackenschmidt lapping blood from meat in his locked cage. He imagined Corinna spinning, spinning, spinning. He imagined Stanny dreaming of the panther. He imagined his mum in the Booze Bin, selling cigarettes and cheap lager to Cody's crew.
“Spirits of the air and earth,” he breathed, “protect us all tonight.”
He twitched again. What roamed the wasteland, further out into the dark? He peered. Nothing.
Also by david almond
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Counting Stars
The Fire-Eaters
For Maggie Noach
The tiger padded through the night. Joe Maloney smelt it, the hot, sour breath, the stench of its pelt. The odor crept through the streets, through his open window and into his dreams. He felt the animal wildness on his tongue, in his nostrils. The tiger moved as if it knew him, as if it was drawn to him. Joe heard its footpads on the stairs. He heard its long slow breath, the distant sighing in its lungs, the rattle in its throat. It came inside. It filled the bedroom. The huge head hung over him. The glittering cruel eyes stared into him. The hot tongue, harsh as sandpaper, licked his arm. The mouth was wide open, the curved teeth were poised to close on him. He prepared to die. Then someone somewhere called:
“Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!”
And it was gone.
At the window he made a funnel of his hands and peered out. There it was, loping away beneath the orange streetlights on the pale pavement between the pale houses. Longer than a man, taller than a boy. “Tiger!” he gasped, and it paused and swung its head to search him out. “Tiger!” he whispered, as its eyes steadied and it gazed up at him.
“Tiger!” someone called, and he saw the man—a huge dark figure in the shadows of the Cut. “Tiger!”
Before it turned again, the tiger watched the boy. Stars glittered in its eyes. It drew Joe Maloney into itself. Then it turned again and loped on toward the Cut. Hips and shoulders rocked. Tail swung. It returned to the dark figure waiting there, and they left his sight, left the village, went into the deeper night outside.
One
All that night, Joe Maloney sweated, twisted and turned. He dreamed that engines roared and lights blazed. Men yelled, children screamed, dogs yelped. Metal hammered on metal. He dreamed that the surface of the earth was lifted and hung from great hooks in the sky. Beneath it, shapeless beasts danced in the dark. Then he lay dead still. Easy breath, easy heart. He smelt sawdust, canvas, animal sweat, animal dung. Gentle noises, creakings and flappings. He felt something fingering his skull, felt someone whispering his name. He was about to wake up in some new place.
“Joe!” yelled his mum. “Joseph!”
He opened his eyes: just his bedroom, pale sunlight filtering through thin curtains, childhood drawings taped to the walls, his clothes in a heap on the floor. He sniffed the air, trying to smell the tiger again.
“Joe!” she called. “Come on, son, will you?”
He slithered from the tangled bed, picked up his clothes and dressed himself. He dragged on his heavy boots. He sniffed, listened, narrowed his eyes.
“Joe!”
In the bathroom, he splashed water onto himself, then leaned close to the mirror, inspected his pale face, his tangled hair, his one green eye, his one brown eye. He touched his skin. He hadn't changed. He was still just Joe Maloney.
“Joseph!”
He went down into the kitchen. She was at the table, pouring orange juice. She shook her head and clicked her tongue. She tugged his shirt square on his shoulders. She fastened the laces of his boots. “Joe Maloney. What you like?”
He grinned.
“L-like me,” he said.
She cuffed him gently on the shoulder.
“Like you. And you're going to need me to get you up and get you dressed all your life?”
He grinned again.
“Yes.”
He buttered some toast and chewed it. She smiled, and smoothed his hair with her fingers and palms.
“I had a d-dream,” Joe said.
“Now there's a change.”
“There was…”
She shook her head, but she leaned toward him, about to listen.
“There was…?” she said.
Joe rubbed his eyes and blinked. He looked out of the window and gasped. The summit of a blue tent stood high over the rooftops at the village's edge.
“What's that?”
“Eh?”
“L-look, Mum.”
He jabbed the air. A blue tent, a blue paler than the morning sky. A great blue tent that trembled slightly in the morning breeze.
“What?” she said.
“There, look, Mum.”
She narrowed her eyes and peered.
“Tent,” he said. “A tent.”
“Oh…Aye. Now where might that come from?”
They gazed at it together, the slope of blue rising from the dusty red rooftops.
“Fancy that,” she said. “A circus or something, eh? Last time a circus came to Helmouth was in…” She shrugged. “Before our time, I reckon.”
Joe shoved a piece of toast into his mouth. She put her arm around him as he prepared to go out.
“Now, then, Joseph Maloney,” she said.
He lowered his eyes, then turned them to her.
“You know what I'm going to say, don't you?”
“Yes, Mum.”
“You make sure you get into school today. OK?”
“OK, Mum.”
She kissed him.
“Don't want that rotten Wag Man coming round again, do I?”
“No, Mum.”
“You. What a lad. Sometimes wonder what I brought into the world. How can a lad be so lovely and so much trouble? Can you answer me that?”
“No, Mum.”
“No, Mum. Come on, then, give us a kiss.”
She took him to the door, watched him walk through the garden to the front gate. She raised her finger as he turned to wave. “Be sure, now,” she said.
“Yes, Mum,” he said, then hurried toward the Cut.
Two
He rocked on his skinny legs. He dragged the heels of his ungainly boots. He hesitated, sighed, and gathered his strength before he moved through the Cut. Some of Cody's crew were already there, where it opened to the wasteland. Mac Bly, Geordie Carr, Jug Matthews, Goldie Wills, cigarettes fuming in their fists. Joe lowered his eyes as he passed through. They elbowed him, stuck out their feet to trip him.
“Only Maloney,” they sang softly, “lalalalaaaaa!”
“Look. The freaks is come,” hissed Plug. He pointed at the tent.
“You'll feel at home today, Maloney.”
“Only Maloney, lalalalaaaaahahahaha!”
“You've got to try standing up to them,” his mother had said. But he didn't know how to look at them, never mind how to speak to them. He kept his head down as he made his way through.
He wiped the spit off his cheek with his cuff. He moved away from them across the wasteland, toward the great blue tent.
Their voices followed him: directed now at the circus.
“Clear off, scum! Clear off, Gyppo scum! Take your tent somewhere else! Ahhahahaha!”
More kids were on the wasteland, younger kids, singles and little groups, spread out in a broad circle, watching.
A massive poster was draped across the tent:
HACKENSCHMIDT'S CIRCUS
! The FINAL Tour !
! Your FINAL Chance !
! NEVER to be seen AGAIN !
Beyond the tent were ancient cars and trucks and caravans.
He heard his name spoken, turned to find Stanny Mole coming up behind him.
“Heard it coming in the night,” said Stanny. “Thought there was a war or something starting.”
Joe nodded.
“But it's just a stupid old circus,” said Stanny. “Come on, let's take off.”
Joe thought of his mum and he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Got to go in today.”
But he didn't move. He looked at the tent and the wasteland beyond it and he knew this would be yet another day he didn't go to school.
A thin pale man in a goatee beard came out of the tent. A bunch of little dogs in silver skirts danced around him. He gave out leaflets that offered half-price tickets for the first night.
“Look at the state of him,” said Stanny. “Look at the state of it all. Come on, Joe, eh?”
The man came toward the boys. He winked and reached out and poked Joe in the ribs.
“Hello, you,” he said.
He turned his mouth down to make a sad face, then turned it up to make a happy face.
“Hello,” he said again.
He reached out to poke him again, but Stanny pulled Joe back.
“Leave him alone,” he said. “Come on, Joe. Stop dreaming.”
They started to move away, but Joe stopped again.
There was a girl in the doorway of the tent. She was small and dark-haired, same age as the boys. She had a grubby raincoat on, fastened tightly at the waist, and black tights and silver slippers. She held the canvas to one side. Behind her the air in the tent was a dusky blue. She met Joe's eyes and smiled and held the doorway further open.
Stanny spat.
“Come on,” he said. “Let's take off before anybody sees.”
“Aye… aye.”
“What you staring at?”
“Nothing.”
Joe couldn't take his eyes from her. He'd seen her before. He was sure he'd seen her before.
Stanny tugged his arm.
“She's just a Gyppo circus lass.”
Joe stood his ground.
“H-hang on,” he said.
Stanny tugged him harder.
“Come on, Joe. Come on, man.”
And Joe turned his eyes away, and headed downhill with Stanny, across the wasteland, away from Helmouth.
Three
Helmouth. It was called a village, but was just a place at the city's edge, before the wasteland started. A mess of new houses and old houses and cracked pavements and roads. The Stag's Head with graffiti sprayed on its walls. A boarded-up KwikSave. A Ladbrokes and the Chip Plaice and Kurl Up & Dye. The Booze Bin, where Joe's mother worked. They kept saying there'd be great things coming—a swimming pool, a leisure center, a shopping center, a new housing development. But it was like Helmouth had been left behind, like it had been forgotten about. Men had been seen there, looking through theodolites and marking the earth with posts and tape. Bulldozers once came and ripped the earth open and shoved it into heaps. But they all just went away again. Nothing happened. In Helmouth, everything just came to nothing.
As Joe and Stanny walked, larks kept rising. They dashed from the grass and spiraled into the sky. They hung there, nearly out of sight, singing and singing. Joe raised his head, gazed at them, heard them singing in the sky and singing in his heart.
“Listen,” he whispered.
“Joe,” said Stanny Mole.
“L-listen to them all, Stanny.”
He put his finger to his lips. Stanny spat.
“We're going away again this weekend. Me and Joff. You could come with us, Joe. Joe?”
But Joe's attention was lost in the sky.
“Joe!” Stanny said. “I wonder why I bother with you. Joe!”
He yanked Joe's arm, pulled him from his dreams, walked on.
The land out here was filled with familiar names, names that had been passed down from children to children to children. They grew out of old stories, lethal games, awful discoveries. The Field of Skulls, the Ratty Paddocks, the Lostleg Railway, the Blood Pond, Adder Lane.
“Five o'clock tomorrow morning,” said Stanny. “Come with us, Joe. Just imagine it.”
Joe stared to where Stanny pointed. A mile away, there was the motorway where the traffic droned in a haze of fumes and sunlight. Beyond it, the earth turned upward again, to the Silver Forest, the Golden Hills, the Black Bone Crags reaching to the sky.
“We'll walk all day,” Stanny said. “Way past all this. We'll walk to where it's wild, really really wild. We'll have our combat gear on. Knives and catapults and snares in our pockets. We'll kill something for lunch. We'll strip a tree to make the shelter. We'll light a fire. Joff'll drink and talk about his army days and we'll listen to the night. There's nowt like it, Joe.”
“Aye?”
“You've never been there, have you?”
“No.”
It was true. He'd never been. But he often walked as far as the motorway and gazed through the noise and the traffic to the enticing land beyond. And he often walked there in his dreams. Sometimes he walked in his dreams with Stanny through the Silver Forest. Sometimes he walked with his mum. More and more often, he walked with a stranger, a girl. He could never see her clearly, but she walked quickly and eagerly at his side.
“And you've never even been away from home for a whole night,” said Stanny. “Have you?”
Joe shook his head. Never.
“Well, then. 'Bout time you started. You've got to start toughening up, Joe. You've got to…”
Stanny spat and cursed. Joe was staring toward the distant densely packed trees, to the tracks like pencil lines heading for the hilltops, to the purple heather and the black rocks and the streams like threads of silver. He tilted his head, narrowed his eyes, gazed into the sky. And there they were, the creatures he'd known since he was small, the beasts that wheeled in the empty air above the Black Bone Crags. He turned to his friend, saw that Stanny saw nothing. He kicked the earth. The words he spoke stumbled on his tongue.
“Wh-why d'you want to go there with J-Joff?” he said.
“Joff? You come and you'll see.”
“Once we s-said we'd go out there together. Just you and—”
“That was ages back. We were kids. We did nowt about it.” He glared. “And some of us grew up, Joe.”
He picked up two fist-sized stones and started lifting them up and down toward his shoulders. He shoved them into Joe's hands.
“Look, you do it. Get your muscles working.”
They flopped from Joe's hands back to the ground.
“What you like?” said Stanny.
He turned away. He spat.
“Come with me and Joff. He'll make a man of you.”
Joe stared at the horizon again. Even though he couldn't name them, he saw what flew there in the day. He knew what prowled on the earth there in his dreams. He walked on, and shivered at the thought of going there with Joff.
Four
Joff. Redness in the whites of his eyes, snakeskin tattoo around his throat, two gold teeth, shaved head, muscles. Once at Stanny's house, Joe saw him stick a safety pin through the flesh on his forearm and close the clasp. He grinned. Then he got another pin and stuck it in his other arm and grinned again. Stanny said there were other things he did, other ways of showing that pain was nothing. He knew how to spit kerosene out of his mouth and breathe fire. He knew how to hold his breath underwater till you were sure he must die. He was tough. He knew how to survive. If Joe spent some time with him he'd see it all, he'd learn it all.
One afternoon Joe had come home and Joff was at the kitchen door, leaning on the frame, one foot on the step. He caught Joe in his arms as he came around the corner of the house and lifted him to his chest.
“Hello, son,” he said, and Joe caught his fiery smoky breath. “Nice time at school, then?”
Joff let him go. Joe hurried in to his mum, who stood against the kitchen table. She put her arm around him.
Joff grinned at them. His gold teeth flashed.
“You got a lovely mum, son,” he said. He winked. “You know that, don't you, lucky lad?”
Joe felt his mum's heavy breathing, the thudding of her heart.
“Go on, Joff,” she said. “Go away now, please. Please. Don't come again.”
Joff just stood with his arms folded and a sweet smile on his face as he cast his eyes across her. Then he licked his lips.
“Put a word in for me, son,” he said, as he went away. “ 'Cos you got a lovely tasty mum.”
That night Joe's head was filled with Joff. Son, he kept on saying. Son. Joe dreamed of being a baby. He saw Joff inside the house with his arm around his mum. Joff leaned over him and grinned and simpered and reached down to tickle him. Joe woke gasping in the darkness. Was this a memory or just a dream? He went across the landing to his mum and climbed into bed beside her.
“Mum,” he whispered. “Mum.”
She moved to make space for him and slept on.
“M-Mum.”
“Shhhhhhh.”
“Mum. Was J-Joff my d-da—”
She came slowly out of sleep.
“Your dad?”
“I dreamed…”
“Oh, Joe, it's just a dream. You know who your dad was. A daft bonny lad that ran the Tilt-a-Whirl in the fair and your mother was a daft young lass. And you know I'm sorry about how you came but I'll never be sorry about you.”
“Not J—”
“Oh, Joe.” She sat up and stroked his hair and the moonlight shone in her eyes. “Not Joff. Never Joff, no matter how many times he sniffs around.” She smiled. “You and your dreams. Come on. Calm down.”
She sang a song from his early days.
“If I were a little bird, high up in the sky,
This is how I'd flap my wings and fly, fly, fly.
If I were a cat, I'd sit by the fireplace …
This is how I'd use my paws to wash my face …
“You were the loveliest thing I ever saw, tiny bonny baby lying at my side. I knew from your very first cry that you'd feel things more than any other, be scared more than any other, be overjoyed more than any other. I knew you wouldn't have an easy ride.” She smiled and shook her head and drew him closer. “But your heart is filled with strength and goodness, Joe Maloney. You'll find your way.”