Free Secret Heart by David Almond Page B

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. Butthe 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