The Tightrope Walkers

The Tightrope Walkers by David Almond Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: The Tightrope Walkers by David Almond Read Free Book Online
Authors: David Almond
you believe I can do this thing, that I can walk from this point to this point and not fall?”
    “Yes,” Holly whispered. “Of course you can!” She grinned. “I bet he pretends he can’t. I bet he seems about to fall. I bet he makes it to the end.”
    “Yes,” I whispered too, but with less belief. I stared up at the narrow cord across the emptiness. How could a man do such a thing?
    “Can I?” Gabrielli called again. “I can’t hear you!”
    “Yes! Yes!” the young ones yelled.
    “Yes,” called Holly. “Yes, you can!”
    Gabrielli calmed down.
    “That is good,” he told us. “For if you truly believe in me, children, then I will not fall.”
    He threw his cloak into the gathering silence. He climbed up to his rope. A spotlight shone upon him and cast his silhouette onto the cloth above. An assistant stretched up to hand him a long balancing pole. He took the pole, weighed it between his hands, slipped them across it so that it was balanced, held it horizontally across himself, breathed deeply and stepped out.
    There were screams and cheers from the little ones. Adult voices hushed them.
    And so he walked, and yes, there was a moment when he swayed, when the rope seemed to lurch beneath him, when he leaned right over, when he truly seemed to be right on the point of tottering, but he corrected himself, and he didn’t fall.
    We cheered so loudly. He grinned in joy and triumph and relief. He posed for us with his chest held out.
    “Thank you, children!” he called. “You kept me safe. Now keep me safe again. Keep me on my tightrope.”
    And off he set again, and then again, and then again. The tent was small. It seemed that we could almost reach out to touch him, that we could almost guide him with our hands across the spaces above us. But we held him there with our breath, with our hope, with our faith. He walked, he teetered, he smiled. He didn’t fall.
    And he came to earth at last, leaping the final inches to the circus ring. He gathered up his cloak of sky.
    “Thank you,” he said again.
    He waved. And I was certain that he looked directly at Holly Stroud and me as he gave us thanks again.
    “Without you, children,” he said, “I am as nothing.”
    Then he went from sight into the darkness beyond the circus curtains, and the top-hatted ringmaster came in. There was a llama at his side. He held his arm around its peculiar neck as he spoke to us.
    “Did you enjoy our show?” he called.
    “Yes! Yes!”
    “So who wants to be a strongman, who wants to be a trapeze girl, who wants to be a clown, a tightrope walker?”
    “Me! Me! Me!” was yelled by many voices.
    He held his ear to the llama’s lips.
    “Not you, you silly,” he said. “It’s only people who could do such things.”
    “Me!” was yelled again.
    “Me” was whispered by Holly Stroud.
    We went out into the shining day. Our eyes stung as they adjusted to the light.
    “We could do that, Dominic,” Holly told me as we headed back towards the estate. “We could be brilliant tightrope walkers.”
    She stepped across the earth as if it were nothing but a half-inch of rope across the void. She teetered, laughed, straightened again.
    “Couldn’t we?” she said. “We’re light, we’re strong, we’re young.”
    I thought it was a joke, but next morning she was at our door with a rolled-up washing line in her hands.
    “I’ve been dreaming about it all night, Dominic!” she said.

The rope was useless. Too soft, too weak, too flexible. We couldn’t get it tight enough. We tied it to the drainpipe at the corner of the house, the other end to the drainpipe on the outhouse, a distance of four feet or so, two feet or so off the ground. But it sagged, sank. No way it could take the weight of one of us. So we tried again. We doubled the rope and tripled it and twisted it and hauled on it with all our might before we tied it. A little better, still no good. Holly fell, I fell.
    Someone called, “They’re playing

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