“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.”
He lay against her. She sang again.
“If I were a rabbit small, in the woods I'd roam, This is how I'd dig my burrow for my home.
If I were …
“It isn't easy, this life,” she breathed. “But we have each other, Joe, and nothing can change that. Good night, love.”
“Good night.”
He went back to bed. He wanted to see himself driving Joff from the garden. But he felt so small, so young, so uncertain, and all that night and for many nights after he was filled with the image of Joff with his mum and the fear that Joff was his dad.
Five
“One day,” said Stanny, “we're gonna stay out there for weeks. Real surviving. We'll live on what we can catch and kill. Back to nature. Mebbe we'll even do some raiding. Farms and things. Mebbe we'll end up going further and further out. Robbing and raiding and running from the law.”
Joe kept seeing the girl's face, the way she looked at him so easy from the doorway of the tent, the way she seemed so familiar, the way she seemed to know him, too. He recalled the tiger's sour scent, its vicious tongue, its teeth. It all seemed so familiar. Like a memory, not a dream. Joe turned and saw the summit of the tent against the sky.
“Used to be always like that,” said Stanny. “Man against nature. Survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed. But today…You've never killed nothing, have you?”
“No.”
“You strike hard. You do it fast and clean. Joff'd show you. He likes you, you know.”
“L-likes?”
“Says there's something about you the other kids round here haven't got. Says he wants to help you to get tougher. He likes your mum and all. He says…”
Joe's head reeled. He didn't listen. He saw the teeth of the tiger sinking into Joff's throat, heard the tiger's growl of pleasure. He sighed.
“There was bears and wolves round here once,” said Stanny.
“Ages back.”
“Aye, ages back, but there's tales of panthers and things still living out there.” He lowered his voice, as if in secret. “And we've heard them, Joe. Me and Joff. We've heard them things.”
“Heard?”
“We're lying in the heather in the dead of the night and we hear the breathing. ‘What's that?’ I go. ‘Keep still,’ goes Joff. Dead dead still. Think me heart'll explode. The heather's rattling and trembling. There's something in the dark, something blacker than the night, something moving, creeping to us across the heather. There's something shining there, a pair of eyes. Joff's got his knife out and it's shining too. He hisses like a snake. He holds the knife up. ‘Be off!’ he goes. ‘Be off!’ And it stops, it just stops dead still and watches us. Then it turns and we see it like the blackest shadow moving off again.”
“A panther?”
“I was little then. I said it was a devil. But we've talked about it since and said it must have been a panther, like they say is out there in those places.”
“Or a d-dream.”
“No dream. I saw its eyes. And its teeth. I know it would've killed me if Joff hadn't been there….You've got to come, Joe. If you come, you'll hear, and you'll mebbe even see.”
Joe narrowed his eyes, saw the winged creatures wheeling in the air. He imagined stepping through the Silver Forest, climbing through it to the Black Bone Crags. He felt the undergrowth beneath his feet, smelt the forest flowers. He lived in a dream, his mother said, and she was right. It was so hard to separate what existed in his head from what existed in the world. He blinked, shook his head, came back to Stanny Mole.
“We're going to kill it,” whispered Stanny.
“Eh?”
“Kill it. If we come across it again. We're going to cut its bloody head off and bring it home.”
Joe stared at him. He knew they would kill. Stanny already had skulls in his bedroom, boiled and bleached: sheep skulls, rat skulls, badger skulls. They stood in a row on his windowsill.
“Why k-kill?” said Joe.
Stanny screwed his face up, like he was thinking.
“What kind of question's that?” he said. He thought again, then he laughed. “How else'll we get the bloody head off it?”
His eyes shone, then he swiveled, with a knife clutched in his fist. There was a squealing from behind them, a high-pitched squeal of pain. But it was only a rabbit, attacked by a stoat. The rabbit was three times bigger than the stoat, but it lay there useless and jerked and squealed and let the killer do its work. Soon there was silence. Slick and bendy as a snake, the stoat ripped the flesh, lapped the blood and quivered in excitement. Maybe it caught the boys' scent. It turned its bloodied head and eyes and stared at them for a second, then darted off.
Stanny laughed. “See? Nature in the raw, Joe. Cruel, cold.”
Joe knelt up, tried to see the stoat again.
“Back in its hole,” said Stanny. “It'll be licking its fur, tasting the rabbit again, living the thrill again.” He thumbed the shining blade of his knife. “That's what it's like out there. Back here, we're soft and getting softer. Just like Joff says.”
Six
They walked down past the Blood Pond to the ruins of Broomstick Farm. Stanny lit a fire on an ancient hearth in the Hag's Kitchen. He crawled through the weeds and the tussocky grass, cutting with his knife. He filled a bent aluminum pot with water from a slow stream and put the pot on the flames. He started to throw in what he'd found: clover, dandelion leaves, mushrooms. He cut thistle heads open and picked the nuts from inside, threw them in as well. The smoke swirled around them. The soup boiled and bubbled.
“Nature Stew,” said Stanny. “The world's full of food for them that knows. Springwater, things that other folk think is just weeds.”
The fire died down, the soup went off the boil. Stanny wrapped his hands in his cuffs and lifted the pot onto a stone. He grinned and showed Joe four little speckled eggs.
“A speckled surprise,” he said. “Skylarks' eggs. The final touch.”
He dropped them gently into the soup and they sank, then slowly rose again and floated.
“Done to a turn. Go on, Joe.” He passed a twisted spoon to Joe. “You're the guest. You go first.” Joe wrinkled his face. Stanny took the spoon back, dipped it in, drank, closed his eyes, chewed the bits. “Absolutely delicious. Even if I say so myself.” He lifted an egg with his fingers and put it in his mouth, shell and all, and chewed and swallowed and smacked his lips.
“Yum-yum. This is what it's like, surviving. But imagine the stew with a wood pigeon in it, or the leg of a hare.”
He suddenly stabbed his knife into the earth and laughed.
“Die, pigeon!”
Joe took the spoon again, dipped it in, sipped. A weird sour taste. Silt on his tongue.
“Lovely, eh?” said Stanny. “Go on, again, get some of the good bits this time, Joe.”
Joe sipped again. Bitter mushroom on the tip of his tongue. He swallowed. Stanny grinned, took the spoon and drank again. Then lifted an egg and held it to Joe's mouth.
“Go on,” he said. “Shell and all. Yum-yum.”
He held it closer and Joe let him drop it between his teeth. Held it a moment on the floor of his mouth, then bit. A taste like an egg, but saltier, sourer. The shell brittle and sharp. He licked it from the hollows of his mouth, from the cracks between his teeth.
“Wash it down,” Stanny said, and Joe sipped again. They each ate another egg. They spooned up the last of the soup. They sat against the broken wall and looked across the motorway toward the Black Bone Crags.
Soon Joe's body began to twitch. He rolled from side to side. The distant tiny skylarks yelled. He opened his eyes and th
e sky was filled with them. They darkened the sky from horizon to horizon, a storm of trembling black specks that sang in the vast blue space between the village and the sun. Above the crags, the peculiar winged beasts wheeled across the sky. He closed his eyes again, heard a single skylark singing at the center of his brain, a sweet and frantic noise. Tasted its egg on his tongue, felt it trembling with life inside him. He stood up and crouched forward and gently stamped his feet on the earth. He turned slow circles. He let the skylark sing and fly. He gently stamped the earth. He groaned and let the noises in his throat become sweeter, sweeter, lighter, lighter. He spread his arms behind his back. He gently stamped his feet upon the earth. He sang. He trembled. He felt himself begin to disappear.
“Joe! Joe, man!”
Stanny rubbed his eyes, crouched low in the ruins, snorted. “What you doing, Joe, man? You do the craziest things sometimes.”
Joe hesitated, mid-dance.
“What you doing?” said Stanny again.
Joe turned to him. What was he doing? He had no words for it, for the way his spirit sometimes soared inside him and blended with the earth and the sky. He had no words for the way his body trembled and seethed with such excitement.
“Just th-this,” he muttered. He closed his eyes, turned a circle, opened his eyes again. He looked upward, to the pale blue tent, so beautiful. He started to walk up the slope toward it.
“And where you going?” said Stanny.
Joe peered back.
“Just th-there.” He pointed. “Just to the tent, Stanny.”
Stanny clenched his fists.
“The tent! For what?”
Joe searched for words to explain how it drew him toward it.
“Sometimes you're hopeless,” said Stanny. “It's time you bloody toughened up, Joe.”
Joe turned away, walked on.
“Five o'clock tomorrow morning,” Stanny said. “Be there. Let Joff get working on you.”
Seven
Up he went beneath the larks and through the breeze. The roofs of Helmouth appeared. The great sloped circular wall of the tent filled more and more of the sky. The arm-thick guy ropes creaked. On this side were the caravans and trailers of the circus people. Close to, he saw that they were ancient things. The frames were twisted, the tires were treadless, the chrome was cracked.
An old man stared into the sky from a caravan window. His head rested on his hand. He broke into laughter as Joe passed by. He knocked on the window and pressed his face joyously against the glass.
“Tomasso!” he called. “Tomasso! Tomasso! Oh, it's you! Isn't it? It's you!”
Joe hurried on. He shook his head violently.
“No,” he mouthed, “no. M-my name is Joe!”
He chewed his lips in confusion.
“Tomasso!” called the man. “Tomasso! Tomasso! Tomasso…” Until his lips were still and he looked to the sky again.
Half-naked children scampered here. A pair of little gray dogs in pink frocks trotted for a few seconds on their hind legs at Joe's side. He circled the tent, toward the billboards, a twisted ticket booth, the canvas door. A white-faced clown practiced juggling, throwing up sticks and stones and rubbish he lifted from the ground. Then Joe saw her, the girl from the tent door. She sat on a little stool with some village kids around her and she painted their faces. Mothers stood and watched and smiled from nearby. The kids were animals. They were mice, cats, dogs, lions, tigers, bears. The girl painted with thin brushes. She held up mirrors so that each child could see his new face. The children raised their hands like claws and growled at each other. They padded on all fours across the wasteland. They raised their heads and sniffed the air. They leaped at imaginary prey. They killed. They licked their paws. They giggled and their mothers grinned. One of the children called Joe's real name. “Joe! Joe! Look at me. Joe!” And the girl turned her eyes to Joe and smiled and held her paint-brush up and asked, “So what will you be, Joe?”
He blushed and walked on and stood before the biggest billboard. The paint on it was flaking away. The sheets of timber underneath were cracked. The animals on it were clumsy and stiff, as if they'd been painted by children. Lions, tigers, elephants, zebras roamed together through a forest of oak trees and sycamores, like an English wood, and there were daffodils growing and sparrows flying. In a clearing in the wood, people held hands and danced in rings. On a little hill was Hackenschmidt's Circus, a shining bright blue tent. The real blue tent was threadbare and faded and covered in patches. There was another billboard resting against the wall of the tent. It was an ancient blurry photograph of a barrel-chested man with his fists raised to show the muscles in his arms and the width of his chest.
GEORGE HACKENSCHMIDT
LION OF RUSSIA
WRESTLING CHAMPION OF THE
WORLD
!! Throw him to THE EARTH and make
YOUR FORTUNE !!
“The greatest wrestler the world has ever seen.” Joe turned and there she was behind him.
“He was,” she said. “George Hackenschmidt. The Russian Lion. Champion of the World. And he still performs every night. Can you believe it?”
“Yes.” He looked at the photograph. “No.”
“No? You wouldn't say that to Hackenschmidt's face.” She smiled. “I saw you this morning, walking past with your friend. Your name's Joe.”
“Yes.”
“And I'm Corinna,” she said. “Corinna Finch. And this is our owner, Hackenschmidt. So now we're all at home.”
She watched him in silence. Her face was smooth and pale and oval. Her skin was splashed with freckles. Her eyes were brilliant sky-blue. She still wore the grubby raincoat, fastened tightly at the waist, and black tights and silver slippers.
“Would you like to look inside?” she asked.
Joe's eyes widened.
“C-can I?” he said.
She laughed, and turned to the heavy canvas door. She held it aside.
“Come on,” she said. “Nothing'll eat you, you know.”
Joe looked back at the painted children, the dancing dogs, the village rooftops dark beneath the sunlight. Then went to her, pushed his way into the tent, and the canvas slid smoothly over him. Corinna followed, and let the door fall back into place.
Eight
Almost dead still. Almost dead quiet. Just the walls of the tent shifting gently in the breeze. Just the muffled drone of the city beyond the village that seemed a thousand miles away. So calm, in the subdued blue light. Joe breathed deeply. The scent of drying earth and grass, of old old canvas.
“Lovely, isn't it?” she said.
He nodded.
“Lovely.”
High up, in the summit of the tent, were the remnants of an ancient golden sun and silver moon and stars, faded to almost nothing. Below these were the trapeze, the high wires, the tiny platforms with the safety net stretched below. A ladder dangled from the central pole.
They walked further in, stepped over a low wooden wall onto the sawdust and straw that lay in the ring. The sloping wooden benches circled them. The blue light fell on them and made them gently luminous.
“I work up there,” she said. “Always have.” She tipped her head back and gazed upward. “But I'm not very good. None of us are. Hackenschmidt says it's because we've lost our way and our will and we're in our final days.” She turned her face to him. “Did you hear us, in the night, when we came?”
“Yes.”
She watched him.
“Go on,” she said.
“I d-dreamed about you,” he said.
“What kind of dreams?”
He sighed. He smelt the breath, the pelt. He looked around himself, but there was nothing.
“Tell me,” she said.
“A tiger come,” he said.
She laughed suddenly, and turned away as if what he said was absurd; then she watched him again.
“We weren't sure why we came here,” she said. “But maybe you're the reason, Joe.”
Joe blink
ed. He had no way of knowing what to say to this.
“I could swing for you,” Corinna said.
“Eh?”
“I could climb up for you and do some of my act for you.”
They looked up together toward the trapeze.
“Of course there's no one to catch me,” she said. “Never is these days. I just do it all all alone, Joe. But I could swing, let go, and somersault down into the net. At least you'll have seen something. Well?”
“Dunno. Anything.”
“Dunno. Anything. You don't say much, do you?”
Joe shrugged, looked down.
“Words is…,”he muttered.
“Words is?”
“H-hard,” said Joe. “They get all t-tangled and tw—”
“Twisted?”
He raised his eyes and looked at her.
“Aye,” he said. “Aye.”
She smiled.
“That doesn't matter,” she said. “There's stronger things than words.”
Her eyes clouded. She toed the sawdust with her silver slippers. The tent flapped in the breeze and the huge central pole creaked and sighed.
“Once,” she said, “when I started, when I was a little girl, I had a strongman as a catcher. Lobsang Page. Now he's in Las Vegas. Once, there were many many things.” She looked around the ring. “Once, they used to run in with great sections of a cage. They put the sections all around the ring, so the whole ring was a cage.” She swept her arms out, showing the extent of it. “Then they ran a low narrow cage to the outside of the tent. That's what the lions came through, and the tigers and the leopards. They growled and screamed and clawed the air and the ring was filled with wildness. The animals loved us, though. The trainers whispered into their ears and they did their acts for love.”
She watched Joe.
“You believe that?”
Joe blinked and saw the roaring beasts. He saw the trainers in shining clothes, dancing on tiptoe, holding whips and chairs.
“Yes.”
“Then my grandfather had his arm ripped off. Right here where we're standing.”