“And who'd you say your father and mother was?”
“I—I—”
Corinna clicked her tongue.
“Just tell her, Joe.”
“Mum's in Helmouth. Works in B-Booze Bin. Dad ran the Tilt-a-Whirl in a fair.”
“One of that crew. And he's gone and left you long time back.”
“Y-y—”
“Step closer. Let Nanty listen to your heart.”
She took his elbow and rested her ear against his chest. Joe felt his heart quickening, thumping.
“Aye,” she whispered. “The heart is beating in you as it should, then far beyond it is the secret one, like some creature panting in a deep dark cave.”
She reached beneath the covers on her bed, drew out a broad shallow wooden box. On the lid of the box was a tracery of silver. Nanty lifted the lid. In the pale light, Joe saw teeth, feathers, claws, fragments of bone, fragments of fur. Nanty closed the lid and gently rattled the box. She tipped her face closer to Joe.
“Corinna's right in picking you out, boy. Nanty gets the taste of something old and animal in you.
You're not at rest in that world out there, is you, Joe Maloney?”
“N-n—”
“That's why words is such a trouble to you, boy.” She turned her eyes toward her window, toward Helmouth. “The things you know is mebbe not suitable for the words and the world that exist out there.”
She rattled the box again.
“But look at these things, Joe. Look at the world that's in this box. These,” she hissed, “is relics. Precious precious things. Bits of a world that was here before and that's here still for them that knows how to see.”
Joe reached toward the box but she held his hand, held him back.
“Not yet,” she cackled. “Look into my eyes. Forget Nanty Solo's scar. Forget the world out there. Just look into the milky eyes of Nanty.”
He looked into her eyes, but still he saw the deep channel cut horizontally across her skull, still he saw the deep fault line, still he wondered what kind of weapon and attack could have done this.
“Now close your eyes, boy.”
Joe closed his eyes. He felt Nanty's hands cradling his head, and he felt how tender they were.
“How can a thing like a head be held within a lady's fingers?” she whispered. “Here's dreams and memories and ancient tales that's being told and told. Here's stars that shine a billion miles away and deep
dark caves and forests and Helmouth and teachers and mothers and horns of unicorns and the stripes of tigers. Here's a thing that's bigger than the world and all the worlds there ever was. And look. All held within a little tent of tender bone and skin and cradled in a lady's fingers. How can this be so?”
Joe licked his lips, attempted no answer.
“There's them that say they know how it is so. They look inside the tender bone and skin and tell us what's inside and how it came to be there and what's right in there and what's wrong in there.” She sighed. Her fingers shifted, and it was as if they melted and began to mingle with the bone and skin of his skull. “There is them that has already tried to tell you this, Joe Maloney. Isn't there?”
“Y-y—”
“Do not believe them when they tell you, Joe Maloney.”
He heard the squeak of the lid as she opened the box.
“What would happen if Joe Maloney's head was lifted open? What would happen if they looked inside to take something out? What would happen to Joe Maloney's worlds?”
“Dun-dunn—”
“Nor does Nanty. Where does the dreams go when the tent of bone is broke?”
Joe heard skylarks screeching, rabbits squealing, cats yowling. The tiger prowled. Beasts flapped across
the Black Bone Crags and padded through the Silver Forest.
“Touch,” said Nanty Solo. “Take something out.”
Joe scrabbled in the shallow box with his finger-tips, felt the sharp edges of bone and teeth, the lightness of feathers, the density of fur. His fingers closed on something hard, sharp, brittle.
“Bone,” breathed Nanty. “Bless you.”
Joe looked. A graying fragment rested on his palm.
“Bone,” she said again. She licked it, pondered. “Bone of a tiger if I'm not mistaken. Back in the twenties, or mebbe further back. Well chosen, boy.”
She snapped off a tiny fragment with her thumb-nail.
“Swallow it,” she said.
Corinna nodded: Swallow it, go on.
“Will match up with the tiger in yourself I tasted,” said Nanty. “Will prepare you for the coming torments. Let me see your tongue.”
Joe opened his mouth, rested his tongue on his lower lip. She pressed the bone fragment onto the tip of his tongue.
“Swallow the bone of the tiger,” she said.
Joe swallowed, felt the tiger bone slipping past his throat and entering his darkness.
“You must say, ‘I thank you,’ ” said Nanty.
“Th-th—”
“Say it.”
“I… th-thank you.”
Nanty Solo closed the box.
“Amen,” she whispered. “Amen.”
She smiled.
“Make me tea, Corinna.”
They sat on Nanty Solo's bed, sipped tea from little silver cups and nibbled ginger cookies. Outside the dusty window, the day began in Helmouth. People moved in and out of the neighborhood. Kids dawdled by the entrance to the Cut. The distant motorway dinned. Joe turned his face from the window. He pressed his cheek out with his tongue and felt the taut striped covering of paint there. He moved his shoulders beneath the cool dark clothes. He glanced at the unicorns and the tigers. He looked upon his friend Corinna who could fly and his friend Nanty Solo who had fed him ancient tiger bone. He leaned back against the wall, here in the ancient gaslit caravan beside the great blue fraying tent. He breathed gently and listened to the gentle running of his blood, and he felt at home.
“In the beginning,” whispered Nanty Solo, “everything was new. The tent, the tent poles, the
ropes, the pegs, the caravans. Long long time back. The writing of the names was bold and bright. The moon and sun and stars was bright as silver and true gold. Beasts was carried from the darkest and the furthest corners of the world, and they prowled in gleaming cages and in the darkest and furthest corners of the brain. Men had learned to be strong as lions. Girls had learned to fly like birds. On the first of all nights, the tent was raised in a green field outside a great city. At dusk the stars came out in an inky sky and shone upon it all. The city glittered like a sky upon the earth. Between the earth and sky the blue tent glowed. And people left the city and walked out into the green field and into the glowing tent and they looked in astonishment at all that occurred before them in the sawdust ring. Tigers roared, girls flew, men as strong as lions lifted many men. Soon the tent moved on, to other cities, other fields. But it also stayed, and glowed forever after in the dreams of those who had entered it.”
She sipped her tea and sighed.
“Now we are mocked and spat upon. We scurry from wasteland to wasteland. We are part of no one's dreams.”
She smiled at Joe. “No one's except those like you, I think, Joe Maloney.”
“Y-yes,” said Joe.
“The tiger come for you last night,” she said.
He gasped. “Y-y—”
“It come to find you.”
“Y-y—”
“It come for you, for you will be the one to take the tiger out.”
Joe stared at Nanty, at Corinna. They smiled back at him.
“Wh-what?” said Joe.
“It's OK,” said Corinna. “There are no tigers, Joe.”
“That's right,” said Nanty. “There is no real tigers.”
She pressed a twisted finger to his lips.
“One day not too far away, there'll be bits of me and Hackenschmidt and Charley Caruso and good Wilfred rattling round inside this relic box.”
She put the box back beneath the covers.
“And further off, mebbe bits of my Corinna and bits of you, my Joe Maloney.”
She gazed out through the tiny window, toward the folk resting, playing, passing by, toward the tussocky grass of the wasteland and the house walls of Helmouth. In the corner of the window, a fat spider squatted at the center of its web.
She sighed. There was a deep rattle in her chest. She gripped Joe's hand.
“In the end, Joe, everything is old. The tent falls and rots away and all the folk wander or is dead and the acts is no more and all is forgot. All is forgot.”
She smiled. Corinna kissed her cheek.
“This is a good pal for you, my Corinna,” said Nanty.
“Yes,” said Corinna.
“Like a twin a bit, I think,” said Nanty. “And it's good to say he's braver than he thinks he is.”
Corinna grinned at Joe.
“I know he is.”
“You can go now, boy,” cackled Nanty Solo. “Remember this. This place come from them that tamed the wild wild beasts. It come from them that listened to the wild wild beasts inside themself. All they did was put a tent round that and take it travelin' round and round the world. You don't understand, of course. You are just a boy. You have come for this day, the last of all our days.”
“Come on, Joe Maloney,” said Corinna.
“When Nanty's gone and is in the box,” said Nanty, “will you take a piece? Will you swallow Nanty?”
“Say yes,” said Corinna.
“Yes,” said Joe.
“You may kiss me then,” said Nanty Solo.
Corinna nudged him.
He trembled as he leaned toward the bed and kissed her damaged cheek. She caught his hand and pulled it to her mouth. She nibbled at the corner of his thumbnail and bit a piece off and swallowed it.
She cackled and wheezed.
“Bye-bye, little boy-thing,” she said. “Bye-bye.”
“It is! It is! It's Only Maloney! Only Maloney, lalalala…”
Cody's crew danced together to the song and howled with laughter.
“Here, tiger! Here, little tiger!”
“Walk proud,” said Corinna. “They're nothing to do with you.”
She turned her face to them for an instant and spat. She told Joe about Nanty Solo, how there had been great pains in her head one year, how doctors had opened her head and taken something out, how she had been left blind, how Nanty had wept and said they had taken out her soul. She told him about the rumors: Hackenschmidt had opened her up again and dropped in a new thing—some said a spider, some said a snake's tooth, some said a drop of tiger blood, some said the tears of an angel—and then closed her again and how Nanty was much improved by this and
how she could see through the white membrane on her eyes into the deepest secrets of the human heart.
Joe tried to listen. He felt his claws, his thunderous heart. He cursed his boots, his stuttering walk, his stupidity, his stupid disguise that they'd seen through so easily. He'd be mocked forever after for this day, for all this evidence of that stupidity. He closed his eyes, saw Stanny and Joff. They crouched by a swiftly flowing stream. They smoked cigarettes. Joff sharpened a hatchet on a stone. Stanny sharpened a knife. They grinned at each other. He should have gone with them, should have taken his own hatchet beneath the motorway and through the woods and up onto the mountain. He swiped at the stupid stripes on his face. She caught his hand. She stopped him, and stood facing him, holding his two hands, there, not fifty yards away from the mocking crew.
“You're more than you think you are,” she said. “You're more than they think you are.”
He tugged his hands away.
“I—I know I am!” he said.
His face burned. He stared at her.
“Only Maloney, lalalala…”
He gasped. His head rang with the voices of those who mocked him, those who said what he should be, those who said what he could be. The words struggled for life on his tongue.
“And I—I—I am more than
you
think I—am!” he stammered.
She touched his hand again, but he pulled it away.
“That's why we need your help, Joe,” she said.
“My help?”
“That's why the tiger came for you.”
He stared. He sighed. He wondered what she meant but he knew himself that the tiger had a purpose, that it had searched for him, that it had called him. And he felt the fur on his skin. He felt the heart drumming in his chest.
“We find it hard to understand,” she whispered, “but sometimes the most important things are the most mysterious. We don't have words for them. But we need someone like you, Joe. No, we need you.”
Joe narrowed his eyes. He stared into her. He saw other worlds, other lives. He knew that Corinna had larks and tigers inside her. He knew that her mind could stretch as far as and beyond the Black Bone Crags.
“It's always been said,” she whispered, “that when the circus comes to an end, we'll need someone to take the beasts back to the forest. Only that way will the circus be truly ended. Only that way will our hearts be truly at rest. Only that way will we be able to think of beginning again.”
“But there's no w-wild beasts.”
She said nothing. She met his eyes. He nodded. He knew that there would always be wild beasts.
Suddenly, Joe's mum's voice rang out.
“Joe! Joe!”
They turned. There she was, coming from the Cut.
“Joseph!”
He saw the fright in her eyes. He wanted to run to her, be held by her, hurry back home into Helmouth with her, take the tiger off him, take the satins off him, just be ordinary Joe Maloney again.
She slowed as she came nearer.
“You left me in the night, Joe. How could you leave me in the night?”
She kept back from him.
“How could you, Joe?”
He chewed his lips. Tears filled his eyes.
“And look at you,” she said. “What's happening, Joe?”
“H-had a dream, Mum.”
“Oh, Joe! And you couldn't have come and woke me like all the other times?”
“I found him,” said Corinna.
“Found?”
“He was—”
“And who are you?”
“Corinna. Joe's friend. Found him at dawn.”
Joe's mum stood there, unable to speak, eyes on her boy.
“Couldn't st-stop myself,” said Joe.
She came to him, held him by the shoulders.
“I'm tr-trying to…”
“To what, Joseph?”
“To… grow up, Mum.”
“Are you, Joe? Is that what this is?”
The song started again, ringing across the waste-land toward them.