Oh, Grandfather says, lifting a foot and inching closer to the top of the mound. I know it is true, for one was …
Grandfather freezes. His body twists. There is a moment of pure stillness, in which he seems to be suspended there. Then a terrible sound reaches the boy: the groaning giving way to splintering, the rasp as the earth comes apart, the painful grating of wood shearing from wood.
His papa looks at him, throws his arms forward – but he is too late. Beneath his feet the roots part, the earth vanishes like an enchantment dispelled, and his papa plunges into the heart of the barrow itself.
‘Papa! Papa!’
The boy hurtles forward, weaving between the first mounds. His foot snags in a curl of root breaking the surface, but he does not go down. When he regains his balance, he is at the foot of the mound into which Grandfather plunged. He can see a thick length of root, dead wood pitted with holes, lying severed at his feet.
He slows, breath shallow and at odds with the pounding of his heart. ‘Papa?’
Up close, the roof of the mound is level with the boy’s head. To climb it will take some scaling, but the roots that encase it offer wizened holds for his hands and feet. When he puts his weight against it, it rocks forward; he knows, now, that the mound is hollow inside.
‘Papa, can you hear me?’
Hand over hand, bare feet scrabbling for a hold.
‘Papa, are you in there?’
His hand finds the edge of the gaping maw. He begins to haul himself up, but another length of root crumbles away and drops into the darkness of the void. It is a long second later that he hears it land. Next comes a moaning, softer still. The root has landed on Grandfather, forcing the air from his lungs. The realization comes with relief, for at least he is alive, but it comes with dread too.
When he feels the roots groan, he spreads himself out, edging up until he can peer into the jagged crevasse. Down there is only darkness so that, without daylight streaming through the aspen leaves, he can see nothing.
‘Papa,’ he ventures, ‘are you down there?’
This time, there is an answer. It is not a word, only a sound.
‘Papa, are you hurt?’
He puts his hand over the precipice. His fingers find nothing, and he claws to reach further. ‘Papa, I can’t reach you …’
His papa’s sounds are louder now, the sounds he imagines a rabbit in one of their snares might make before contorting to take its teeth to its own leg.
‘Papa, I’m coming down.’
He has not yet angled himself to go over the edge when Grandfather howls. From deep below, he hears the sound of a thrashing. Each thrash brings another howl, each howl another guttering gasp for air. He recoils, holds tight to the top of the mound. The howling ebbs away and, at last, he understands: his papa is telling him to hold back.
‘What should I do, papa?’
A lower howl this time, something dirtier. Mangled impressions of words.
‘Well, what should I?’
The boy slides away, stutters down the mound. Broken pieces of root lie at his feet and, as his eyes light on them, he has an idea.
He fumbles the dead roots together, ferreting at the base of every aspen for any other pieces of kindling he can find. Once he has enough, he finds a basin in the earth and sets about conjuring fire. As he whispers tinder to flame, kissing that flame to the kindling, he can hear Grandfather’s low roar in the back of his mind.
Once the fire is stirred, he takes a length of dead root and plunges its head into the heart of the flames. It does not take long before the brand has taken light. Shielding it, he hurries back to the mound.
This time, he can feel earth breaking free underneath him, showering into the hollow. He has a premonition of being sucked under just the same as his papa, but he hauls himself to the peak and lowers the flaming brand. The heat rushes up the wood, scorching his arm and, though his instinct is to let go, he clings on, forcing himself to squint past the bright halo.
It looks like the ruin. The walls go deep into a crater in the earth, and there are beams, roughly hewn timbers keeping the walls in place. There are rafters too, little more than branches from the trees fixed into place with the earth heaped on top. Aspen roots have coiled among them, encasing the place in a fairytale shell: a castle of thorns.
He swings the brand. Along one of the walls a shelf is cut into the earth, and on its top more dead branches, bound into place by yet more creeping roots. Suddenly, he knows this for what it was: a home, just like his papa said. In the long ago, the partisans made homes in the earth and, when they left, the forest came and took them back.
‘Papa?’
The light of the brand finds him: a dark shape lying in front of the shelf of earth. Perhaps he caught it on his fall, for around him lie scattered pieces of kindling thrown up from the earth. The boy pushes the brand further. At last, he finds his papa’s head. He knows it only from its white whiskers, for the rest is pressed against one of the earthen walls. There is something wrong in the way he lies. His legs are tangled, the first bent and seemingly knotted in an inhuman way.
‘Oh, papa.’
He lifts the brand. The precipice he is hanging over is held up by rafters that sheared beneath his papa’s weight. There is, he decides, a way to shimmy down the rafters and slide down one of the old timbers.
He hesitates. Thinks of the murder grounds under the branches. Places people were shepherded to die. The things the forest drank to make its leaves, its roots. In that moment, he is not certain if he can go down to join them, in that place where dead men were made dinner.
The fire creeps up the brand and bites at his arm. Instinctively, he lets go. When the brand hits the bottom of the bunker, its light is dimmed but not snuffed out. Dry tinder at the bottom of the bunker suddenly takes light, and in seconds a cauldron of flames is stirring.
Light enough to guide him by. Light enough to convince him there are no ghosts in the earth; the ghosts stalk the forest above, but down there is only his papa.
He takes the knapsack from his shoulder and casts it down, to land beyond the fire. Now there is no way of turning back.
He takes hold of the branches that once made up the roof of the mound, testing them with his weight. Still bound in earth, he thinks that they will bear him, and slowly he goes into the hole. He scrambles for footing, but there is nothing beneath him. He dangles there, sensing the nothingness underneath.
Hand over hand, he finds his way along the rafter. There are hand-holds aplenty, for the roots make a tangle in which it is easy to tuck his fingers. Finding a way down one of the timbers is easier still, knots in the wood like the rungs of a ladder. Soon he finds himself on the shelf cut into the earth and, from here, it is a quick jump to the cavern floor. He stops, looks around. The fire throws spidery shadows, but at least he can make out the walls. There were steps, once, leading into a maw where now there is only fallen earth.
Grandfather is at his feet. In the air is a distinct smell that he takes for the cloying earth; it is some time before he realizes it is his papa himself who made that soil.
‘Papa?’
The old man turns, his crusted mouth making a noise like some beaten dog.
‘Papa, can you hear me?’
For the first time, the firelight bathes Grandfather’s face: bulbous nose, smashed flat; flesh open above a purpled eye, half an eyebrow turned back like a white slug cleaved in two; down his cheek, a shining mask of red.
Grandfather opens his lips, and all the boy sees is a churning black mass. He makes a sound and, between those lips, his tongue bucks oddly, like a fish thrown onto land. Here is the reason his papa’s words are all mangled: his tongue is torn in two.
‘Papa, where does it hurt?’
More useless questions. The boy shifts so that he is not blocking the firelight. For the first time he sees a deep cleft in his papa’s thigh, where the axe has bitten through its sling and carved his flesh. Though curiously dry, it gapes in horri
ble reds and blacks, made darker yet by the fire. The axe is at his side, its blade smeared. He picks it up, hurls it away. It bites into one of the timbers, and in reply the timber groans. The roots coiled above seem to shudder and, in terror, the boy scrambles up. His eyes are on the roof, the walls, waiting for them to tumble in.
When they do not, his eyes return to his papa. Now he sees why the legs are tangled. One of them is bent back, and from a point just below the knee protrude three jagged spikes.
‘Papa, it’s broken.’
It isn’t the only thing. The boy hears the rattle every time he takes a breath. Probably ribs have been shattered. Probably he is broken inside.
He sits at his papa’s side and he cries – softly, unheard, nobody to listen but the wild.
Night thickens. The fire dies. The boy recovers from his torpor to build it back up. Giving life to the flames gives new life to him as well, but he doubts it is doing anything for his papa. The old man stopped howling hours ago, and though he still breathes, he does so only in short, desperate gasps.
Once the fire is built back up, he sits at Grandfather’s legs. The axe wound in his thigh is dark and dry, but the one below his knee has swollen to hide the jagged line of bone. A sour smell rises.
He opens his knapsack. Lying inside is the paper with mama’s gingerbreads, now rock-hard and beyond eating, and beneath that her shawl. There is his board for making fire too. Dried Jew’s ears and other tastier mushrooms. A little rabbit-skin pouch filled with moss for tinder.
Maybe the moss can pack the wound in his papa’s thigh. He carries it over and holds it tentatively above the place where the axe bit into his flesh. Very slowly, he touches the wound. Through the moss it does not feel like very much, but then the warmth bleeds through. If he was Grandfather, he would buck and cry and complain, but Grandfather remains perfectly still. Perhaps his breath is more agitated than before, but the moss packs into the wound, its fibres clinging to raw flesh like cotton wool to a grazed knee.
Next, he unrolls mama’s shawl. He presses it to his face but it hardly smells of her anymore. Mostly it smells of smoke and dry meat, but there is still something behind that, sweet like vanilla, that brings him instantly into mama’s arms. He gets lost in the memory for a moment too long; then he brings it to Grandfather’s side and kneels at his leg.
Gingerly, he rolls mama’s shawl over the bulging mass. Stretched out like this, it is only a blanket. To bind the wound he must wrap it around, tie it off, somehow hold the leg together with woven wool embroidered with flowers – and, to do that, he must lift Grandfather’s leg.
He puts his hands around Grandfather’s shin, but the skin is slippery, and when he tries to lift it, it feels so light that he dares not. Instead, his hands creep up past the wound – which radiates heat – and to his thigh. He takes hold, and strains to lift. An inch is all he needs, enough to tuck the shawl underneath and drag it down around the knee.
Grandfather shifts. His sleeping arms snatch at something. His throat rolls back. A sound, like foxes at night.
When he is still again, the boy takes the ends of mama’s shawl and draws them together. He rolls the shawl once more along the leg, wraps one corner into the other to form a loose knot. He draws it tight.
Grandfather opens his mouth, lets out a cry. One hand shoots up, the other shuddering savage at the shoulder; its fingers strain to claw for the boy. Even though they do not connect, somehow they have a hold of him. They gather him tight and cast him away.
‘Papa, I’m sorry.’
For the first time since he fell, there seems to be intelligence in the old man’s eyes. When they fix on the boy, they know that it is he, not some ghost of the forest dead, sitting there.
‘I wrapped them up, papa. So they’ll get better.’
The old man’s eyes revolve to his legs. He lifts one arm, but it hangs limp. He lifts the other; this, at least, looks human. With his body rigid, he uses that arm to lever himself up. That he does it without crying out must mean something, thinks the boy – but perhaps it is only his forked lizard’s tongue, keeping the words locked in his throat.
He opens his lips, only a fraction. Says something neither beast nor boy could ever understand. The language, thinks the boy, of trees.
‘Water, papa? Do you want water?’
The boy turns to find his knapsack. Inside, the crushed tin can is still half filled. He takes it to his papa and puts the crumpled spout to his lips. Most of the water runs into his bloody whiskers, and what does find a way into his mouth makes him wince. Even so, Grandfather wants more. The boy drips it to him until it is almost gone.
‘Papa, I think it’s your foot too. I think it might be broken.’
The old man’s head goes back, exposing a neck covered in thick white bristles. With an enormous effort, he hoists himself up on his one good arm. The boy follows the line of his eyes to the foot on the end of his broken leg. It must have been the one onto which he fell.
Grandfather cannot gesture with his hand, for it keeps him from falling back to the earth, so instead he tips his chin. He does it twice before the boy understands.
He goes to the broken foot. It, too, has started to swell; the flesh hardens and grows around the jackboot rim.
‘I can’t, papa.’
Grandfather’s eyes tell him: you have to.
There are no laces or buckles on Grandfather’s jackboots. The boy puts his hand around it and, as soon as he takes hold, Grandfather pulls back, smashing his head into the earthen wall behind. Some animal instinct has made him try and draw in his foot, but the mere attempt makes pain lacerate his body. The boy shudders backwards, sees a dark stain blossoming and spreading on mama’s shawl.
Once Grandfather’s breathing is under control, he paws at his eyes and gestures again at the boy.
The boy puts his hands around the jackboot. This time, his papa is ready. He winces, but he does not cry out. For a moment the boy simply holds on, but then the pulsing in Grandfather’s body ebbs away. He does not turn around, for he knows that, if he were to look into his papa’s eyes, his will would fail.
He tightens his grasp, and starts to pull.
Grandfather writhes, but he does not shriek. His eyes are shut tight, his one good hand closed in a fist. He seems to be biting down on what is left of his tongue.
The jackboot barely gives. It strains against flesh grown hard as stone. With one hand he takes hold of its heel. The foot seems to resist, but then flesh reveals itself, marbled black as night.
The boy has dragged the boot half off his papa’s foot when he looks up to see the old man basking there without any sound at all. He hurries to his breast, listens out for the rattle that will tell him he is still alive. Sure enough, here it comes: juddering, but somehow more peaceful than when Grandfather was awake.
If he is to take his chance, it has to be now. He returns to Grandfather’s foot and pulls the jackboot off bodily. Its insides are slippery, and he throws it down, over the fire.
The foot he has revealed is hardly a foot at all. It is a ball of flesh, tapering to a point at which two talons protrude, the others engulfed. Somewhere in there are bones and tendons and veins, but of them the boy can see nothing.
‘Oh, papa.’
He crawls to his papa’s head and teases his fingers into hair like tough grass. Even this must hurt the old man, for the abrasions on his face seem to strain, the open flesh above his eye shimmering as it weeps.
He wants to hold him, but his hands won’t let him; to hold him is to hurt him, and he is hurting enough already.
‘I promised mama,’ the boy whispers. ‘I promised her, papa.’
All through the night: the old man’s rattle.
The boy stands between the aspens and feels the wind across his skin.
It has been six days since Grandfather fell. Six days and seven nights he has scrambled out of the old bunker in search of forage. In all of that time, not once has his papa eaten. He has stewed soups out of le
aves, broiled the carcass of the baby hare, and dripped it to him from the crushed tin can. He has taken it back in sips, but the juices do not work sorceries on them like kindling to a fire. Grandfather’s brow burns and his face looks gaunt, haggard as a winter wood.
At nights, the boy eats the mulch that is left. It fills him, and yet he feels empty.
Tonight, he creeps back through the mounds where partisans once made their homes. His pockets are stuffed with mushrooms, but he doesn’t know which ones are full of flavour and which ones might poison him and send him to sleep for a hundred years. When he reaches the bunker, he sees only thin smoke rising up; he will have to bring a log to see them through the night. The axe is where he left it, its blade deep in the trunk of a tree. In the days past he has used it to carve a wider, lower entrance to the bunker, one he can drop through without risking himself on rafters and uneven ground. He ducks through and scrambles down.
His papa is propped up with his eyes half-closed. There are empty eggshells at his side, things the boy took from a nest hidden in the marsh grass. Raw eggs, it seems, are the one thing he can swallow and not scream.
The boy empties his pockets. Grandfather’s eyes find the mushrooms and start rolling, as if to tell the boy which ones to set aside and which to toss on the fire.
‘Papa, I want to go for help.’
Grandfather stops, only half the mushrooms counted.
‘You helped me, papa. I want to help you too.’
The old man shakes his head, makes a dull sound, one simple syllable rolled on the back of his throat.
‘I can …’
Now, the same dull sound again: a bark, a command.
The boy goes back to the fire. On a stone in its heart he has spread three chicks, snatched from their nest while their mother beat her wings in fury. They will all go to his papa, but he will not eat them; they will stay at his side and, in the night, the boy will creep over and suckle them instead.
His knapsack is fallen open and he sees, inside, the gingerbreads from the long ago.
‘Papa, what if we …’
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