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.
“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.”
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.
Someone yelled, “Good riddance, scum! And don't come back!”
A stone clanked across the hood of an ancient Austin.
Someone howled, “Only Maloney, lalalala!”
Someone screamed, “Stupid Gyppo fairy tart!”
But they took no notice, didn't even turn.
Charley Caruso called, “Tomasso! Tomasso!
Tomasso! Tomasso!” far off and frail and filled with yearning.
“What shall we do?” said Corinna.
“D-do?”
“With our lives. What shall we do? Where shall we go?”
Joe laughed.
“We can d-do anything! We can g-go anywhere! Look!”
He knelt and picked something from the grass. A broken skylark shell, speckled white. Joe felt the curved inside. It was dry, but sticky on his fingertip. He dreamed of the thing that had been in there, white and yolk that had turned to bone and flesh and feather, the thing that had bitten its way out, that had dared to fling itself into the air. He looked into Corinna's face, speckled white. He looked through to the forests and crags and caves and skies behind her eyes. And their faces turned together to the air, where a storm of larks danced high on the wind and sang.
“Miracle,” said Joe.
“Miracle,” said Corinna.
They moved on. She lifted the flap of the tent and they stepped through into the silent somber shade and found Hackenschmidt and Nanty Solo there, sitting together on the low wall at the ring's edge.
Nanty raised her milky eyes. She smiled.
“So our little loved ones flutter home again,” she said. “Welcome home, little loved ones.”
Hackenschmidt came to them and hugged them both to his great chest.
“It went well,” he said.
Corinna nodded.
“And the tiger's gone.”
“The tiger's gone.”
He cradled Joe's head in his great fist.
“You have done a great thing, Joe Maloney. You have done a thing that is filled with courage and that is beyond our understanding.” He stared deeper. “How did we find a boy like you in a place like Helmouth?”
“Was destined,” said Corinna.
“Yes,” answered Hackenschmidt. “It was destined, from the time the tent first stood upon the earth.”
“We followed you,” said Nanty Solo. “Far as the forest.” She tapped her skull. “In here,” she said.
“And did you see the glade and the…?” said Corinna, but Nanty pressed her crooked finger to Corinna's lips.
“Don't,” she said. “You must keep your secret places for yourselves.”
And she drew Corinna to her and kissed her and the tent around them trembled.
“We been talking and dreaming 'bout the old days,” said Nanty. “'Bout the old days when the canvas was so new that it blocked out all the light. Now you see it thin and frayed and it carries a million million
points of light upon it. Soon the rips and lesions will start, and the wind will play at these till they open further and great shafts of light will fall into this place. And the wind will keep on playing and rampaging till the rips race everywhere and the tent will give its final shivers and collapse. Then there will be nothing but emptiness above this place, just as there was all that time back, the time there was no tent at all.”
She laughed softly.
“And we been talking 'bout what happens to the ancient crazy blind one and the ancient wrestler in these new days, and Nanty looks and looks inside her skull and can see nothing there for them at all.”
She raised her head.
“Come on down, tent. Fall down and cover us and let us be still beneath. Come on down!”
She shrugged, smiled.
“Ah, well. It'll come, in its own time.”
Corinna laughed.
“Come on up,” she said to Joe, and she took his hand.
She went first up the dangling ladder. She clambered through the net. She stood on the platform. Joe followed, climbing away from the two old ones below. He stood on the platform beside his friend.
“Imagine,” she said. “Imagine that once upon a time you flew out there, swinging back and forward, waiting for me to leap. Can you imagine that?”
“Yes.”
“Really imagine it?”
“Yes.”
“Imagine it so strong it's nearly like a memory and not just like a dream?”
“Yes.”
“And imagine I jumped and you caught me and we swung out there together and the crowd gasped at how wonderful we were?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“And so strong it's more like a memory than a dream?”
“Yes.”
She laughed.
“We were together, Joe, you and me. Sometime long ago, in another world or in another life. We flew together. Do you believe that?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Jump!” called Hackenschmidt.
“Jump!” whispered Corinna, and hand in hand they leaped into the empty air, through memories and dreams, through other worlds and other lives, and the net sighed as it caught them in this world, in this life, and kept them safe.
A potbellied pig named Fatty. Little dogs in silver dresses teetering on hind legs. Good Wilfred in his goatee beard and Charley Caruso with his mind lost in the past. They all came into the tent as Joe and Corinna dropped down to the floor again. They gathered in the ring, so pleased to see the children back.
Then another, her face at the doorway peering in.
“Joe!” she called. “Joseph!”
“Mum!”