The Child Thief

17

Noon came and went. We sat to make a small fire and brew tea to warm us but there was nothing to eat. Aleksandra was weak and hungry, but we had nothing to give her. If we were still tracking Dariya by nightfall, I’d set more snares, but otherwise there was little we could do for her. Even so, true to her word, she did not slow us down. She walked as strong and hard as any one of us.

For the most part we were silent until Petro aired his worries once more.

‘You think they’ll find Vyriv like they found Uroz?’ he asked. It was an hour or so since we had left the place where Viktor killed the old man. None of us had spoken in all that time, each of us lost in our thoughts and exhaustion.

‘That’s where you’re from?’ Aleksandra asked. ‘Vyriv?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’ll find it,’ she said.

Petro looked across at her, sitting an arm’s length from Viktor. ‘Maybe not. We’re small and remote. It was hardly touched during the civil war. Even during the famine there was enough to eat.’

‘Hardly enough,’ Viktor said.

‘Maybe.’ Petro nodded. ‘But it survived. It’s well hidden.’

‘It’s different now,’ Aleksandra said. ‘The communists are different. They want everything.’

‘But if they can’t find it…’

‘You think they won’t find it?’ Aleksandra said. ‘You think someone won’t tell them?’

‘Why would they do that?’

‘Why would a woman denounce her own husband?’

‘What?’

Aleksandra shook her head at Petro’s naivety. ‘A woman in Uroz gave up her own husband because they threatened her children. So she gave him up. Denounced him like a criminal. And you know what they did? They arrested them all. Him they executed. She was taken away with the children.’

‘Taken where?’

‘Who knows?’

‘Siberia maybe,’ Viktor said. ‘Or the White Sea. Papa said there are prisons up there.’

‘Labour camps,’ I told him. ‘They don’t call them prisons.’ I spoke to Petro: ‘They will find it – Aleksandra is right. Perhaps they’re in our village now, as we sit here.’

Petro looked at me with alarm. ‘Now?’ And he saw our dilemma. While we were scouring the countryside for Dariya, his own mother and sister had been left to fend for themselves in the shadow of an approaching danger.

‘We have to get back,’ he said.

‘Get back?’ Aleksandra looked confused.

‘We will, as soon as we can,’ I said. ‘We need to find Dariya and we need to get home.’

‘And then? What can we do?’ Petro asked.

‘You mean about the communists taking our belongings?’ I said. ‘Nothing. There’s nothing we can do. In the end they’ll take what they want.’

‘Who’s Dariya?’ asked Aleksandra. ‘What’s going on here? Why are you talking about going back? I thought you were running away. I thought you were afraid and trying to escape the communists.’ She looked around at each one of us, not understanding. ‘But you’re looking for someone?’

Petro turned to me and I thought for a moment before nodding. ‘All right. Tell her.’

‘A girl was kidnapped from Vyriv,’ Petro said. ‘My cousin. We’ve been following the trail since yesterday.’

‘Kidnapped?’

‘There have been others too,’ Viktor said. ‘Two dead children brought into the village. One of them butchered as if—’

‘Enough,’ I stopped him.

‘—to eat her.’

‘That’s enough.’

‘I want her to know. I want her to know why I killed that man.’

‘Not because you thought he was a communist?’ Aleksandra asked.

‘No.’ Viktor rubbed a hand across his mouth. ‘I was afraid he was the one we’ve been following. This man, he’s… he’s like a ghost.’

‘A ghost?’

‘He’s there and then he isn’t,’ Viktor said. ‘Shooting at us from the shadows, watching us at night.’

‘He’s just a man,’ I said.

‘A man who eats people.’

‘Maybe that’s not what he does.’ I watched Aleksandra for a reaction, wondering what she would make of this. ‘Maybe he cuts them for another reason.’

‘But people have done it before,’ Aleksandra said. ‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘We don’t know it for sure,’ I told her. ‘And it doesn’t make any difference. He’s just a man who’s taken my niece. We’ll find her and we’ll bring her back.’

‘You really think we can, Papa?’

‘Of course we can, Viktor.’

‘And you thought Roman was this man?’ Aleksandra asked.

‘I was… I thought…’ Viktor looked at the ground. ‘I made a mistake.’

‘You weren’t to know,’ I told him. ‘You saw a man; it could have been any man. I would have done the same thing.’

We fell silent, all of us staring into the flames of the small fire.

‘Roman was old,’ Aleksandra said. ‘I think he may be better off now anyway.’

We crossed the steppe like wild animals, scanning, watching for movement, stopping to listen. For a while we saw nothing but trees and shadow. The sky had darkened again and the snow began to fall in thick wet flakes, obstructing our vision and filling the tracks we followed. We increased our pace as much as we could, trying to keep up with the trail before it was swept away, but we were wary of what lay before us, and we were able to see only a few metres ahead.

‘We’ll lose the tracks,’ Viktor said.

‘We’ll keep going,’ I told him.

And then I saw the child thief’s second gift and I wondered about the man who’d been hanged in our village – about him not being alone when he first set out to find his children. Perhaps the child thief had taken them one by one, taunting them, tempting them, murdering them. I imagined others lying out there in the ice, their lives gone.

The first gift had been a bloodstain on the land. A violent streak of crimson that might have been drained from Dariya’s small body or from the carcass of a trapped animal. It had been both a gift and a trick, a means to draw us into his sights so he could kill the first of us.

The second gift was much worse. It was so much more than a stain on the snow. There was no doubt what kind of animal this trophy had come from.

The child thief knew we would be following his tracks. He had made it easy for us, so he knew we’d come this way, passing through this part of the forest, and he had chosen the perfect place for his display.

We came to a stretch which formed a natural path among the barren trees. An open space of perhaps fifty metres, like a scar in the forest, where nothing grew. The disappearing tracks led directly through this area, along the centre of it, the two sets of prints which I was certain belonged to our quarry and, I hoped, to Dariya.

Towards the end of the scar, where the trees closed ranks once more, a single branch stretched across the natural pathway at head height. And, from the centre of the branch, something hung. A dark shape that may have been a fallen nest, its broken pieces dangling like tendrils from the nucleus of the construction. Or perhaps it was a bird, its body caught on the branch, its wings dropping, the feathers splayed out.

I stopped.

‘What is it?’ Petro looked up. He had been walking with his head down for a while now, too tired to lift it.

‘Get into the trees.’ I hurried them into cover, moving so there were thick trunks between us and the object. From there we looked again.

‘Is it an animal?’ Viktor asked.

I shook my head and slipped my rifle from my shoulder.

I pulled the stock tight to me and looked through the scope at the dark shape, but still couldn’t be sure what I was looking at. The light was all wrong. The object was in shadow and I could see nothing more than its shape.

‘It’s hard to tell,’ I said. ‘Could be animal fur. A bird. Maybe just twigs and leaves. I’ll have to get closer.’

Petro put his hand on my arm.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You and Viktor watch carefully.’ I glanced at Viktor. ‘You’re all right?’

‘I’m fine.’

Petro released my arm and unslung his rifle.

Viktor did the same, and the vacant look that had been in his eyes had disappeared. He had something concrete to occupy his thoughts now. Something to take his mind from what he had done. ‘I’ll go,’ he said.

‘I need you to watch. From that side.’ I pointed. ‘Aleksandra, stay with him.’

‘Let me go. You watch,’ Viktor said.

‘You’re not ready.’

Viktor closed his eyes tight, knowing there was no point in arguing, then he sighed and went to the place I had indicated, crouching and steadying his rifle.

‘You on this side,’ I told Petro. ‘And don’t take your eyes off the forest. This might be another trap.’

When they were in position, I made my way towards the object, scanning the forest ahead, looking for anything out of the ordinary. If the child thief was out there, he would be stationary. He would have chosen the perfect place and he would be prepared, so I stayed in cover, kept to the shadow, and moved to a protected spot beside the tree with the protruding branch.

From there I could see blood on the ground directly beneath the hanging object. There was a great deal of it, and I was sure it had been spilled right there. It had been warm when it touched the crust of the snow, had sunk into it, the body heat melting the surface ice. Much of the snow here was flattened, something we hadn’t noticed from where we were standing before, and I could see that while two sets of tracks led to this spot – a man’s and a child’s – only one set led away from it. Only one person had walked away from this carnage.

I was almost afraid to look up at the branch, but I forced myself to raise my eyes from the blood and see the horrible tangle that drooped from this naked tree.

And now, from this close, I knew exactly what it was. The matted hair, clumped together with frozen blood, the underside of the skin glistening as if still wet. I turned away from the child’s scalp and put my back against the ragged tree, sliding down it until I was sitting in the snow. I put my hands over my face and blamed myself for being too slow. I had failed in my promise to Lara. I had taken too long. I was too late. I was no longer looking to rescue a child. Now I was searching only for justice and revenge.