by David Almond
“Yes,” said Joe.
“You'll refresh the world, you and my Corinna.”
He turned his eyes to the trapeze.
“You went up there, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Brave boy.”
He sighed again. His breath fell across Joe's face. They stood together, the huge man, the scrawny boy, the lithe girl. They stood in the blue shade, in deep silence, just the sighing of breath, distant drone of traffic, the shifting of the tent.
“Listen to it,” whispered Hackenschmidt at last. “The lovely gentle sound of canvas between the world in here and the world out there. Do you think it's lovely, Joe?”
“Yes.”
They gazed toward the ancient faded galaxy. They breathed the blue air and the dust.
“Soon,” said Hackenschmidt, “the tent will be gone. Everything that has happened in here…”He flicked his fingers at the air. “Gone, just like that.”
Great sadness crossed his face.
“We have been so beautiful, Joe. Even me, even ugly Hackenschmidt. So beautiful.”
He smiled, and was silent for a long time, and Joe watched him, and relaxed, and knew that once again he had found a stranger who was also familiar.
“I don't have many words,” said Hackenschmidt. “I grunt and growl and howl. My body has been my expression all these years.”
Silence again. Hackenschmidt lowered his eyes.
“Step onto my hands,” he whispered.
He knelt and spread his two hands flat before Joe's feet.
“Go on,” said Hackenschmidt. “Step onto them. Stand still. Trust me, Joe.”
Joe stepped forward and stood on the great palms.
“Imagine you're part of me,” said Hackenschmidt. “Imagine you grew out of me.”
Joe breathed deeply as Hackenschmidt lifted him. He tottered, and he reached out to Hackenschmidt's shoulders, but the hands beneath his feet tilted and shifted to keep him in balance.
“Trust me,” said Hackenschmidt.
Joe relaxed. He rose higher. He felt how Hackenschmidt responded to him, supported him, understood him. Hackenschmidt lowered him again, set him on the floor again.
“We'll let no harm come to you,” he said.
Joe breathed calmly.
“The tiger came for you,” said Hackenschmidt.
“Yes.”
“Did you see me as well? In the darkness, between the houses and the wasteland. Did you see me there?”
Joe spun back into his dream. He stood at the window, stared out at the massive figure in the Cut.
“Did you hear me?” said Hackenschmidt. “Tiger! Tiger!”
“Yes,” said Joe. “I thought I was as-asleep, but…”
“Me too. I snuffled and snored through it all, Joe Maloney. You saw Hackenschmidt, but there was no Hackenschmidt. Hackenschmidt was in his dreams.”
Joe sighed. He closed his eyes. He brought to mind the tiger, the glittering eyes, the hot, sour breath, the harsh tongue, the great curved teeth. He looked at Hackenschmidt, at Corinna.
“I…I saw you. I saw the t-tiger.”
“Yes. Hackenschmidt was in the dream of Joe Maloney. Joe Maloney was in the dream of Hackenschmidt. The tiger was the one that prowled between us, the thing that crossed from dream to dream. The tiger was the one that found you out and brought you to me. You understand?” Hackenschmidt shook his head. “Me neither, Joe.”
Joe couldn't go on with this. He floundered. His head reeled. He closed his eyes. Skylarks burst out singing deep inside. He dreamed of being lifted from the sawdust ring, soaring through the galaxy, hanging far off in the endless blue of sky. He felt Hackenschmidt's great hands cradling his head, felt the great thumbs stroking his brow, heard the low whisper.
“Joe. Joe. Joe.”
“Where you gone?” Corinna said gently.
He came back down to earth.
Hackenschmidt held him.
“You've come home, Joe,” he breathed. “That tiger's gone out prowling many nights, through all the wastelands and little towns we've been these past few years. Night after night I've dreamed him finding nothing, nobody. He's prowled through simple total darkness, seen by no one. Till now. Till you.”
He smiled.
“The tiger brought you home, Joe. I'm so happy that we found you. Now show me what you did.”
“Eh?”
“Climb up again. Jump again. Go on.”
“Go on, Joe,” said Corinna. “We think he was mebbe a flier in another life, Hackenschmidt. We think mebbe he and me was together.”
“Yes. That's possible. That would explain a great deal.” He held Joe's shoulders. “You don't remember it, though?”
“N-no.”
“Ah, well. Go on up.”
Joe climbed. Hackenschmidt held the ladder tight beneath him. He climbed through the net, to the platform. Stood there, clinging to the pole. Stared into the empty air that could do no harm. Tried to imagine a world with the tent gone, just empty air going on forever and forever. Could not imagine it. Closed his eyes and the tiger came, with its stench, its growl. Closed his eyes and the voice of Hackenschmidt came.
“We need a boy with the heart of a tiger. We need a hero. We need you, Joe.”
Joe teetered.
“Now jump!” called Hackenschmidt. “Go on, Joe Maloney. Jump!”
He jumped. He jumped as if he jumped away from all his fears, all his confusions, as if he jumped into a world that he had searched for in all his days and nights of wandering the wasteland. He reached into the air as if nothing would ever stop him, as if he'd go on jumping forevermore.
The net sighed and creaked. Joe rolled to the edge. There was only Corinna below. No Hackenschmidt, as if he'd never been there at all.
Eight
Corinna giggled as she pulled Joe's clumsy boots onto her feet and stood up and did an awkward dance in them.
“When I was little,” she said, “he taped silver slippers round my feet. ‘Dance, dance, dance,’ he said. I could barely walk. My first memory—standing here, his voice going, ‘Dance, dance, dance.’ ”
“Hackenschmidt?”
“Hackenschmidt.”
They sat on the low wooden wall around the ring. Sunlight through the canvas walls intensified. Far-off traffic din. Vague bitter chanting from outside.
“He used to lift me up and throw me through the air. He flipped me into somersaults and cartwheels. He held metal bars and told me to jump up and swing from them. Hoops to dive through, ropes to climb, rings to swing from. All the time: ‘Corinna, Corinna, do it, Corinna. Now this. Now this. Jump for this, Corinna. Dive over this. Be graceful as the swallow, brave as the tiger, strong as the bear…'It was him that turned me into what I am.”
“Not your m—?”
She shook her head.
“I remember her standing at the tent door, standing still and silent and looking in at us. But mostly it's just me and Hackenschmidt.” She shrugged. “Mebbe she lost interest straightaway, once she saw I wasn't good enough.”
“But you're br—”
“Brilliant! I wish…”
She toed the dust with her bare feet.
“When you were little here in Helmouth, I was little in this tent, traveling and traveling. D'you think something linked us even then?”
“Eh?”
“There was always something missing. I could feel myself yearning for something. Like Nanty said—for a twin, mebbe. Somebody to be with that was like myself. You must've felt that, Joe.”
Joe nodded.
“Yes. I f-felt that.”
“This hasn't just happened,” she said. “We know each other from…”
“L-long long ago.”
She toed the sawdust. A potbellied pig shoved in through the door and wandered toward them.
“Hello, Little Fatty,” she said, and the pig snuffled and grunted.
“We had the unicorns then, when I was small,” she said.
“Unicorns?”
“You saw them on Nanty Solo's wall. They were secret.”
She reached out to the pig and let it nuzzle her fingers. Joe thought of his own unicorns. He'd known them since he too was small. He'd seen them in his dreams, roaming the Silver Forest.
“We couldn't let them out,” she said. “They used to wander about in here, jump on the seats, scamper about the ring. Lovely things, just like you, Little Fatty.”
“Where did you g—?”
“Get them from?” She shrugged. “Oh, they were lovely, but not real. They were white goats from Andalucía. When they were still babies, Hacken-schmidt took out their two horn buds and replaced just one at the middle of their brows.”
The pig licked and Corinna giggled.
“And they gr—?” said Joe.
“You saw them. They grew like the single horns of unicorns. Some of them were all twisted but a couple grew straight out just like they should. No teeth, Fatty! They were going to be an act. They were something to stop the circus going from bad to worse. But the cruelty people found out. So we kept them hidden. Sweet as angels. Fatty!”
Joe looked around him, imagined gentle unicorns scampering there, heard their bleats and whimpers. Things that weren't supposed to be, things that lived just in dreams and stories. The pig nuzzled his little feet.
“Fatty!” laughed Corinna. She smiled at Joe. “There were tales that some circus somewhere had done it to children—put horn buds into the brows of babies to turn them into fauns. We had a clown once that said he'd seen them—the fauns—performing in a village in Romania.”
Fauns. Joe knew these as well. Half beast, half human, glimpsed as they crossed the shadows between the trees.
“Sometimes I dream that Hackenschmidt did it to me,” she said. “I wake up touching my brow, and expect to find horns there.”
She drew her hair back.
“See anything?”
Joe looked. He shook his head. He touched her brow tenderly with his fingers. Nothing, just smooth unbroken speckled skin stretched across her skull.
“Nothing,” he said.
“He put the unicorns down a couple of years back,” she went on. “Drowned them. Said it was better that way. They were out of place in this harsh world. Mebbe their spirits would find somewhere better if he freed them.” She stroked the pig. “Mebbe there's a little lovely world close by that's filled with unicorns and fauns. What d'you think, Fatty?”
The pig licked, grunted and nuzzled her.
“Aye,” she said. “And with little fat pigs as well.” And she stepped up, arched her body, spun in cartwheels round the ring, while Joe closed his eyes, and fingered his brow, feeling for scars and ridges and lumps. He dreamed of horns growing there, dreamed of being a creature in another world close by, or of living in someone else's dream or story. This is me, he thought, a half-beast, half-human thing, a thing that can sprout horns or fur or feathers.
Corinna came to rest in front of him.
“Deep in the circus there's a secret heart,” she said.
Joe stared.
“Secret?”
“In the circus, and in yourself. That's what we're moving toward.”
Joe just stared again.
“We're moving toward your secret heart. I have to take you to it. That's why the tiger came.”
Joe kept staring at her.
“We'll need you all night, Joe. Can you stay all night?”
Nine
The kids at the Cut moved across the entrance to block the path. They held tins of lager loosely in their fists. They tilted their heads to the side and breathed out plumes of smoke. Mac Bly threw his arms about as if in panic. George Carr screamed about the tigers coming. Jug Matthews whistled at Corinna's legs and scoffed at her boots.
“Lock your kids up quick!” said Goldie Wills. “The freaks is out.”
Joe and Corinna kept on walking. They sidled through the group, through the shoving shoulders and jutting elbows. Voices whispered in contempt. Eyes leered and challenged. Scents of alcohol, tobacco smoke, dope. The song was sung, soft and threatening,
“Only Maloney, lalalala…”
The words were coarse and cruel:
“In with the Gyppos now, Maloney? In with the wasters and wanderers and tramps and thieves? Found your proper place, eh? Only place where Only isn't Only, eh?”
But Joe also heard traces of wonder in the voices, traces of fear in the reeling eyes.
“Get—out—the way,” he stammered.
“Ooooh! Maloney's getting mad!”
“Yes,” hissed Corinna. “Get out our bloody way.”
“And the Gyppo fairy tart as well.”
Goldie danced around Corinna with her fists raised.
“Come on, then, Gyppo fairy tart,” she said. “Come on. Take us on.”
“Chicken, they're both bloody chicken!” laughed Plug and all the others, and they squawked and bobbed and pushed their elbows back like stupid stunted birds.
They got through. Curses and whispers and the song followed them.
Corinna brushed her body as if brushing off dirt.
“That's what all kids is like out here?” she spat.
Joe shrugged.
“That's who you live among?” she snapped.
“Lost souls!” she hissed. “Lost souls! Lost souls!”
She spat and rubbed her spit into the dust with her boot.
They entered the street of pale houses. Dust in the gutters and in the cracks on the pavements. Rampant hedges. Little kids played around a garden gate, jumping an elastic band they'd stretched there. They stood in astonishment as the tiger-faced boy and the girl dressed for the trapeze approached them. Their wide eyes shone. They reached out to touch the pair as they passed by. Corinna paused, and reached down to tousle their hair.
“Mebbe not all of them is lost, then,” she said.
She jumped with them across their band, so graceful.
“Do this,” she said, stretching her arms wide as she jumped, pointing her toes, tilting her head. “Or this. Or this.”
The children watched, and the bravest of them copied her.
“That's right,” she said. “Oh, that's wonderful. Think of birds, think of fairies, think of angels. Let the pictures in your mind take shape in your bodies. That's lovely. Oh, that's wonderful! Wow, you're brilliant!”
They walked on, leaving their images to stroll for years afterward in the children's minds.
They paused at the gate.
“My h—” said Joe.
There was a long jagged crack in the pebbledash by the door. There was a single hawthorn tree that Joe's mum had planted when he was born. The garden was thistles and weeds and wildflowers where bees buzzed and a pair of red butterflies flew. This was where Joe used to crawl as a baby while his mum sat on the front step watching. She used to hug him when he crawled back out with jabbered tales of rabbits and elves and fairies. She used to take him on her knee and laugh as she listened. “Is that right?” she used to say. “Is that really what you saw in there? Well, I never!”
Joe breathed deeply. She'd always wanted him to bring a friend home.
“C-come in,” he said.
To the back of the house, the back garden, an overgrown lawn with more weeds and wildflowers growing. At the center, Mum lay on a sun lounger and wore a swimsuit and sunglasses. Music poured out of a little radio, Tina Turner, her favorite. There was a tray with an emptied glass and plate. “Mum!” Joe said. “Mum.” But Tina Turner drowned him out. He remembered crawling here also, crawling as far as the high back fence, where he found real toads, real spiders, where he heard fairies and pixies whispering and singing into his ear. Then toddling quickly back to her open arms with his tales again.
Joe didn't move. She looked so lovely, so relaxed there, letting the sun pour down on her from the unblemished sky. Already he felt older, much older than he had last night.
“Mum,” he said. “Mum.”
Too softly.
“She looks lovely,” said Corinna.
“Y-yes. Mum!”
A breeze blew through the garden and she stirred. She brushed a wasp away from her face. She sat up and turned and lifted the sunglasses from her eyes. She looked at him as if there was no disguise, as if she saw straight through to her Joe.
“Hello, Joe. And Corinna, too. Come on, then, before I have to dash off for my shift.”
She wrapped a dressing gown around her and came smiling toward them.
“Now then, Corinna,” she said. “Come on. Come in. There's not a lot but what we've got you're welcome to.”
Ten
They sat on stools at the kitchen table. They ate bread and cheese and tomatoes and the sun shone bright through the kitchen window. Corinna looked around herself in fascination.
“Never been in a house before,” she said.
“Never?” said Joe's mum.
“No. Never. Just caravans and tents. Been in shops and pubs sometimes, but never a house.”
Joe looked at the room with new eyes, thought of all the rooms around them, the roof protecting them from the sky, the foundations dug deep into the ground.
“Always wondered what they was like inside,” she said. “The walls is thick, eh?”
Joe and his mum just looked at each other and laughed.
“Funny to be in something that never moves,” Corinna said.
She stamped gently on the floor. She reached out and tapped the flowered wallpaper. She shook her head at the strangeness of it. She chewed her bread and cheese. Joe's mum watched her with pleasure.
“You know,” she said, “you look lovely. Your costume and everything. Doesn't she, Joe?”
Joe blushed and nodded.
“I'd've liked to be something like you. Light and easy and free, swinging on the trapeze. I bet you're good.”
“She's brill—” said Joe.
“No, I'm not,” said Corinna.
“I used to do it in the garden when I was little,” said Joe's mum. Her eyes shone as she remembered. “Isn't that funny? I'd nearly forgot about that. We had a cherry tree and I swung and swung and swung all day and me mam used to yell out the house, ‘Are you never coming off that blinking swing?’ ”