by David Almond
“Stanny,” whispered Joe. “It's me, Stanny.”
He wanted to reach out, touch his friend, comfort him.
“And me,” whispered Corinna. “Stupid Gyppo fairy tart.”
Stanny swiped his hand across his eyes.
“Oh, God,” he said. “Oh, my God.”
The tiger prowled.
“It's OK,” said Joe. “Just run. It won't f-follow.”
“Kill him!” breathed Corinna.
“Just r-run!” said Joe.
Stanny ran, and the beasts parted, and they heard the boy crashing through the undergrowth, through the trees, scrambling downhill.
The tiger was just a few feet from Joff. It held its belly close to the earth. It held its head straight out, level with its shoulders. Its eyes held the man in their grip. It stepped closer, poised to leap.
“Do it, tiger,” said Corinna.
Joe held his breath, waited, watched.
Joff sat up again, held his arm up to the moon, looked into the glade, reached into his blanket, took out a hatchet.
“Who's there?” he hissed.
The tiger growled softly.
“Who's bloody there?”
Rising fear in his harsh voice.
The tiger, low in the grass, crept to him.
“Look how scared he is,” Corinna said. She grinned. “Look how brave he is. Panther killer. Do it, tiger!”
She held Joe's hand.
“It won't kill, will it?” she said.
“Don't th-think so.”
Joff held the hatchet shoulder high, backed toward the trees, swung his head as he scanned the glade.
“Bloody moon,” he said. “Bloody shadows. What's there?”
He beckoned toward himself with his hand, as if he beckoned the glade, the forest, the moon, the night.
“Come on,” he said. “Show yourself. Come and try it.”
“Lost soul,” sighed Corinna. “Stupid puny man.”
The tiger closed on him, stood directly before him, so that its breath must fall across him, its scent, the sound of the sighing in its lungs. It growled. But the man saw nothing, heard nothing, smelt nothing. He knew nothing but his own great fear and scorn of what was there before him and all around him. And he started to shudder and gasp and curse like a lost thing. He backed away toward the trees, and again the beasts parted to let him through, and he stumbled away into the forest dark.
Nineteen
Corinna held the head in her hands.
“So beautiful,” she said. “So heavy. So wonderful. How could they do this?”
They looked into the dark forest that surrounded them. They imagined Stanny and Joff stumbling stupidly through the trees, losing all sense of where they were, losing all sense of who they were. They imagined the creatures of the forest regarding them coldly from their nests and dens and hiding places.
“Stupid man,” said Corinna. “Stupid, stupid boy.”
She held out the panther head to Joe. He took it into his hands. He felt the dense velvety fur against his palms and fingers. He felt the dried blood and ripped flesh of the awful wound. He gazed down into the empty eyes, imagined the brain behind the eyes, beneath the skull. Was that empty? Nothing in there, ever again? He stared. He dreamed himself into the eyes, into the brain. He felt the panther dreaming into his own brain, and beginning to run again.
“How could they do this?” Corinna said again.
Joe shook his head.
“Just what people… do.”
“People!”
Joe laid the head back on the stones.
“What should we d-do with it?”
“People,” she breathed again. “People!”
She turned away from Joe. The tiger lay nearby, watching. She stepped toward it, raising her knees high. She held her face to the moon. She stretched her arms out, the fingertips stretched and straining into the night. She cooed and gasped and whimpered. She sang slow intertwining notes. She started to dance in the grass before the tiger.
“Take my hand, Joe.”
He went to her, took her hand, stepped with her, sang with her. They danced around the tiger. They danced in slow circles on the grass.
“People!” she said. “Forget people, Joe!”
And the other beasts stepped further from the shadows of the forest into the moonlit glade. The shifting and shuffling of their feet and hoofs, the sounds of their weird voices: snuffles and snorts, whistles and gasps, breathy whispers and melodies. The sky was filled with creatures wheeling across the great round moon. The trees and the Black Bone Crags whirled around the glade. The tiger stood and raised its head and roared. Joe and Corinna ran, danced, cartwheeled, moved faster, faster, and they laughed and gasped as they lost themselves in the delight of it. They disappeared and came back again, disappeared and came back again, time and again.
Then slowed and stopped and crouched together at the center. Looked together at the moon. It paled as the world turned, as day approached again. The creatures stepped back into the trees, flapped back toward the crags. The tiger prowled. Leaves rustled in a predawn breeze.
“It's just like the t-tent,” said Joe.
They looked about them: the walls of crags and trees, fading moon and galaxy above. The tiger. The memory of weird beasts. Two children, hand in hand, dressed in satin, filled with dreams.
Corinna nodded. Yes. It was just like the tent.
“We disappeared,” she said.
“And c-came back again.”
Corinna smiled.
“We'll tell Hackenschmidt. We chased the evil people. We saw the unicorns. We danced with the tiger. We disappeared and came back again. And parts of the world are just like the tent.” She giggled and clapped her hands. “Parts of the world are just like the tent!”
Joe lifted the panther head.
“What should we do with it, Joe?” she asked.
Joe looked around him.
“We'll hide it,” he said. “Give it some p-peace.”
They started to walk uphill again, toward the crags.
They looked back. The tiger stayed in the glade, in the grass, watching as they left.
Twenty
At the foot of the crags a small waterfall splashed into a mossy pool. Behind it was a narrow opening in the rock, tall as a boy, a girl. Joe went first. The water sprinkled him. The floor at first was loose wet pebbles, then firm dry rock. There was weak light from the entrance, and from weak beams that fell from somewhere high above. The air was icy cold. The space widened and became an echoing empty chamber. Corinna came to Joe's side. The sound of tiny water drops, of their breath. Their eyes ached as they accustomed themselves to the light.
“Oh, horses,” whispered Joe.
“Wolves and bears,” said Corinna.
They leaned closer to the rock wall, to the pictures they were sure they saw there. They traced the outlines with their fingers.
“And deer,” whispered Joe.
“Tigers!”
Joe's heart raced. He pointed to the other beasts, winged and horned. The pictures came, merged with the rock, appeared again. And all around they began to make out handprints, human handprints. Joe and Corinna searched, found handprints that fitted their own, and they leaned to the rock as the owners of those prints once had.
They moved further in. Joe held the skull before him, as if the eyes in it might see, might guide them. There was a chest-high shelf in the rock at the far side of the chamber, with a deep dark niche behind. More pictures on the walls, more handprints. Joe lifted the head and set it on the shelf, and as he did so he felt the other things that were there. He lifted some, held them to his eyes in the semidark: bones, fragments of bones, horns, fragments of horns, fangs and teeth. He shuddered as he slid his fingers into the niche. Yet more bones, horns, fangs, teeth. He reached further, reached to arm's length, but the niche stretched beyond his fingertips into total icy dark.
Joe and Corinna stared at each other.
“Like N-Nanty
's b—”
“Yes. Like Nanty's box,” said Corinna.
They stared at the panther, into its sightless eyes. They saw the day when the fur had fallen from it, when the flesh and skin were gone, when the eyes were empty sockets, when the brain was gone and there was only the skull of bone and it still rested on the rock shelf and stared into the chamber. They gazed at the rock around themselves, and they saw that the rock was like bone, and that the chamber was like the inside of a skull of bone. And they held their breath as they thought this thought, and felt it moving gently through the soft folds of their brains. Then breathed, and moved backward across the chamber, bidding farewell to the panther skull.
The scrape of their feet and the sighing of their breath echoed from the walls. They backed out through the narrow passageway, through the sprinkling water. They stood beneath the Black Bone Crags, above the Silver Forest. The world turned and the sun began to show itself above the eastern horizon. From far off came the grumble of the motorway. Joe and Corinna trembled with the delight of being in this place, seeing it, touching it. They trembled with the delight that their minds could think their thoughts, and that they could know such wonder and astonishment.
And the sun rose and the moon faded and the stars went out, and day came back again.
One
The tiger was gone. They stood in the glade watching, listening, sniffing the air, but the tiger was gone. Sunlight shone brightly into the glade and shone through leaves and stems into the forest around them. No animals at the forest's edge. No beasts in the air but flitting little birds and larks high up that squealed their lovely songs.
They pulled the blankets and jackets aside and found knives, heavy things with gleaming sharpened blades. They dug a hole with them. They took rocks from the rock pile and pounded the knives till they were broken. They put the broken pieces in the hole. They found a few coins, a tin plate, a whisky bottle, a cigarette lighter. They dropped these into the hole too, then pushed the earth back in. They kicked the rock pile down. They stirred up the last embers and started a new fire. They put the blankets and the jackets on the fire and stood in the swirling smoke and watched them burn.
“Should be them that's in the fire,” said Corinna, and her eyes darkened as she dreamed the two tormented bodies burning there.
They crouched by the stream as the fire faded. They gulped the water and splashed their faces and rubbed the smoke from their eyes.
“The tiger's going,” said Corinna, touching Joe's face with her fingertips. She showed him the blur of black and white and orange that she wiped away. Joe gulped more water, washed more paint away. Far away, the motorway had begun to drone.
“Let's go,” they whispered, and they looked around themselves again, then left the glade.
Downhill again, through the Silver Forest. The animals they saw were little mice that scuttled for cover as their feet approached, twitching rabbits, spiders dangling on strings or squatting at the center of their webs, squirrels racing to the tips of swinging branches, worms, black beetles, ants, flies, caterpillars, centipedes. Once a deer stirred and stood in a dense shrub watching them, its dappled skin more dappled by the sun. Once a snake uncoiled itself and slithered from the mossy bank where it had basked in the light. Joe and Corinna picked their way between the trees, stepped across fallen branches, across ferns and toadstools, over pools of water, through boggy turf, through knee-high grass. They passed the bank where the panther's body lay. Already the flies and worms were at their work, and had begun to strip the body to its bone. They stood over it in silence for a time and wished it peace, then walked on through sun and shade, through the brackish scents of the forest, toward the noise of the motorway, toward the tent and Helmouth and home. And their thoughts moved from what they'd known in the night toward what they might find waiting in the day. And they quickened their step, wanting to be home again, wanting to move on. The world kept on turning, the sun kept on rising. They became warm and they smiled at each other as they wiped the sweat from their brows. They smiled more deeply at the thought that they had found each other, that they were friends, twins, that they would stay close to each other now, that a new life had started for them. Sometimes they laughed as they walked and just exclaimed each other's name.
“Joe Maloney!”
“Corinna Finch!”
“Joe!”
“Corinna!”
“Oh!”
“Ah!”
“Ha!”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!”
They smiled more quietly when the tiger came. It moved at a distance through the forest shade. It moved with them, step by step. Soon they approached the forest's edge. They caught glimpses of the meadow, of the motorway. Soon they stepped through the edge and stood together in knee-high grass and bright red poppies with a breeze blowing on them and the sunlight falling full on them. The tiger stayed inside. They saw its gleaming eyes, saw its stripes merging with the sun and shade, saw its mouth open in a final roar of farewell. Then it turned and moved back into the forest, and disappeared there.
“Goodbye,” Joe whispered.
Then closed his eyes, felt the tiger prowling through the forest of his mind, knew the tiger would prowl in him forevermore.
Two
“Run!” yelled Corinna.
There was a gap in the traffic but a huge car transporter and a silver Mercedes thundered toward them as they sprinted over the roadway. There were the squeal of brakes and blast of a great horn as they leaped into the safety of the median strip. Traffic roared past them. Drivers yelled and shook their fists. Faces gaped in fear or amazement.
“Now!” yelled Corinna, and they ran again and flung themselves onto the hard shoulder and onto the far embankment and they rolled downhill to the broken fence and lay there gasping and laughing. And picked themselves up and headed through the Ratty Paddocks with the breeze at their backs toward home.
Stanny Mole crouched on the floor of the Blessed Chapel. Raised his head as Joe and Corinna approached. Watched them in silence, then:
“You seen Joff?”
Joe shook his head.
“He's not come down yet,” said Stanny.
“He'll be lost,” said Corinna, and she gave the boy a cold stare. “Or worse,” she said.
Stanny blinked, turned his face away from her, and Joe saw how his friend was filled with questions, heard how the words to ask them were tangled and twisted on his tongue.
“Wh-what…?” Stanny stammered. “Wh-why?”
Joe looked toward the village. Kids in uniform were making their way toward Hangar's High. He shrugged, didn't know how to answer. Stanny watched him for a while, then hung his head. Tears dripped from his eyes.
“I hurt me hand, look, Joe,” he said.
He showed his right hand, a bloody gash across the palm. Joe took it in his own hand, touched the blood with his fingertip.
“I saw…,” said Stanny. “I thought I saw…”
He cried again.
“Poor boy,” whispered Corinna. “If I had a knife…”
Joe turned his back to her.
“Leave him,” he said softly.
“It wasn't me,” Stanny said. “Wasn't me. I know I said I wanted to do it but once we started I didn't want to do it, but I wanted to see it and watch him and…”
He sobbed, sucking in sudden breaths, coughing them out again. He rocked on the floor of the chapel and the breeze blew over him and whistled in the stones.
Corinna spat.
“Poor poor boy,” she breathed. “Such a shame for you.”
Then she quietened, as the two boys crouched in the Blessed Chapel reflecting on their friendship and the panther's death.
“There was blood all over,” said Stanny. “Splashing all over…On my hands, on the grass…”
He stared at Joe.
“And the sound of the knife, and the…”
He shuddered.
“Then last night… like a dream, but…”
“Not a
dream,” said Joe.
“Joe,” said Corinna. “Come on.”
She tugged gently at Joe's sleeve.
“What do you do,” said Stanny, “when you've done something you said you wanted to do but you didn't want to do but you've done it anyway and you can't undo it and…?”
He shuddered into silence. He looked toward the motorway, the Silver Forest, the Black Bone Crags, then back to Joe again.
“Too late for anything,” said Corinna. “It's done. You're evil and you'll always be evil. Ah, poor soul. Come on, Joe.”
“I was your friend, Joe,” said Stanny Mole.
Joe wiped the wound on Stanny's hand with moist moss. He pressed Stanny's hand onto the broken stones, wiped it across the name of God.
“Sp-spirits of the earth and air, look after Stanny Mole this day.”
He touched soil to Stanny's tongue. He snapped a button from Stanny's shirt and dropped it into the space between the stones.
“So what will you do now?” said Corinna.
She stood with her arms folded, looking down at them.
“D-do?” said Stanny.
“To make up for it, you fool.”
He blinked, and wiped his cheeks. He looked at Joe.
Corinna laughed. She pointed at Stanny.
“You must repeat the name of the panther one hundred times every dawn and every dusk. You must fast every Friday for the next six weeks. You must…”
Stanny turned his face from her.
“You'll be my friend?” he said.
“Yes,” said Joe. “I'll be your f-friend.”
Corinna tugged at his sleeve. He stepped from the floor, across the collapsed walls and broken stones of the chapel. Corinna stepped lightly at his side.
“Bring things to life, Stanny Mole,” she called over her shoulder. “Don't do them to death.”
Three
The sun strengthened and the light above the waste-land trembled. The faded blueness of the tent matched the blueness of the sky. It shimmered in the sun and shivered in the breeze. The guy ropes creaked. The summit gently swayed. A poster saying LAST DAY drifted slowly across the slope of the tent and was carried away toward Helmouth. The billboards of the animals and of Hackenschmidt rocked. Caravans were already moving off, trundling across the rough ground, pulled by lurching cars.