Hearts are babies. Beating, blind, vulnerable babies.
I scoop the heart back up and it shudders with pleasure. I throw it from palm to palm and watch it switch between panic and joy. Then I stroke it, and hold it close, and it curls up to go to sleep.
When this heart cannot survive without me, when it consistently whimpers and diminishes if away from my side, that is when I will place it inside Cora.
And Cora will come back to me, wide-eyed and so deeply in love that she won’t know how to function properly. She’ll need me. Really, truly need me. No shouting, no packing her bags, no trying to run away from a man she says she can no longer stand.
She will love me.
I will make her love me.
The timer in the kitchen pings.
Long ago, there was a giant in Norway who kept his heart outside of his body so that he could live forever. But keeping his heart somewhere else had its down side, too. He turned men to stone in rage, for they could love and he could not, and he locked a princess inside his house to stop her marrying the sons of kings.
One day, a prince, whose six brothers had already been turned to stone by the giant, entered the giant’s house and found the princess there. She told him they would have to find the giant’s heart and destroy it so she could be released. The giant said it was buried under the floor, but that was a lie. He said it was in the cupboard, but that was a lie, too. Finally, the giant laughed and said he kept his heart on a faraway island, inside a warm egg, in the nest of a swan.
The prince went in search of this faraway island, and at last found the giant’s heart, inside an egg, in the nest of a swan. He squeezed the egg and the giant cried out in pain, clutching his chest. He sank to his knees and asked for forgiveness. The prince gleefully demanded he release all his stone victims and the princess, first. The giant did so, so scared was he for the fate of his heart. The men became human, the princess was free, and the giant wept, believing he was saved.
But then the prince smirked and crushed the giant’s heart anyway. Because hearts are meant to be crushed, and you cannot hide them anywhere for love, nor money. Especially not love.
I stroke Cora’s cheek, her new heart dripping in my hand.
The prince married the princess, and they loved each other. Until the love ran out.
Then they fought, and they cried and they filled themselves with hatred.
Thank goodness we no longer live in a world like that.
Jacob
Dear Miss Winter,
My name is Jacob Quinn.
If I am home from school in time, I watch you do the weather forecast on the six o’clock news. Most of the time you predict the weather correctly. My mum says that the world is an unpredictable place, so you must be very good at your job. Well done. I hope they pay you well.
I also hope you don’t mind me writing to you. This letter is not about the weather (sorry), but you seem like a very friendly person and I have some questions I need to ask. There are two reasons I think you might be good at answering these questions. 1. Because you are good at understanding the weather and so I think you might be good at understanding people. And 2. because of your name (more on that later, please keep reading).
I am writing to you about my sister. She is called Catherine and she does philosophy at university. She moved out last year but still visits during the holidays. When she comes home, she spends a lot of her time asking questions when people ask her things. Dad calls this answering back, but Cath says we shouldn’t blindly accept things. She says that if our answers aren’t questions then we’re not thinking hard enough and we’re not pushing ourselves to our limits. But she also says that limits don’t exist so I’m not really sure what she’s looking for. It’s like going to the corner shop to buy some Smarties, then picking them out of the packet one by one, hoping to find a silver one. It’s like Cath knows there isn’t going to be a silver Smartie but she’s still asking ‘where is it?’ and ‘can it exist?’ and telling us we should be asking those questions, too. I don’t know. I don’t really understand philosophy. My dad calls it stupid, which is one of the reasons I am writing this letter to you and not to him.
Anyway. I am sidetracking. Cath’s point was that questions are good things. Like water, and the colour yellow, and strawberry fruit gums. Cath says that questions make us expand as people, which makes me think we’re all like elastic bands, and that does something funny to my stomach.
Something else that does funny things to my stomach is that Cath is changing and I am worried about her. She says I shouldn’t call her Cath any more, because that isn’t her name. She decided to change it, so that she could be someone new. She went down to the council (which is where we send money so that the country works properly) and she signed her name away and put it in a drawer along with her baby teeth.
Now, she’s called Anna.
Like that old film Anna and the King. There was also a person in the Bible called Anna who prophesied about Jesus. Cath-Anna says that didn’t have anything to do with her decision-making, because she isn’t religious. She just likes the name. There’s a girl in my class at school called Anna. I asked her if she knew that Anna was a lady in the Bible but she shook her head and told me she’s Jewish and she didn’t think it was the same. Names are strange things, Miss Winter, sharing them doesn’t make you the same at all. I find this odd when I think about it hard. Maybe we should all have numbers instead because Mum says that those are infinite.