Secret Heart Read Online Free

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 blinked. 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