Secret Heart

by David Almond

Joe felt the lark singing inside him and the tiger prowling inside him. he looked at the teacher, and knew that Bleak Winters was never anything except Bleak Winters. He looked at the children. He knew that they, like him, might have larks and tigers inside them, but they kept them hidden, and one day their larks and tigers might disappear, just as Bleak Winters' had. He wanted to tell them this, he wanted to draw them away from Winters and toward the tent and the wasteland, but he didn't have the words.

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They wandered across the stony earth.

"Maybe you are Tomasso," said Corinna. "Maybe you are and you don't know it. Maybe we're all something else and we don't know it."

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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 finger?" 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?"