Gingerbread

by Robert Dinsdale

  It takes long hours to fill his knapsack. He has to resist the temptation to gorge on the woodland fodder he has foraged, and on an empty gut he makes the march back up the escarpment. He can find the trail to the gingerbread house by instinct now, and by the time he enters the clearing he already knows his papa is there. The smell of the camp smoke is strong; it seems he must have a rabbit, because in the smoke are the smells of grease and baking flesh.

  The old man turns over his shoulder at the boy’s approach. Splayed around him are the creature’s entrails, its hide. He is crafting new moccasins for the boy to wear, something to spare his feet from the forest floor.

  ‘What is it, papa?’

  ‘Rabbit. What have you got?’

  The boy has had his arm draped over the knapsack, as if to protect it from famished rooks and crows, but the old man’s eyes have found it already.

  ‘It’s berries. Nuts.’

  ‘No good. You need winter fat. To keep out the cold. We have to take a boar. A bison.’

  ‘They’re not for us, papa. I’m …’

  The sad look in the old man’s eyes makes him waver and he crosses the clearing to sit at his papa’s side. Once there the smell of the rabbit is undeniably delicious. So that he might bring something to the feast, he sets out two handfuls each of sweet chestnuts and hazel. That, he says, is enough. The rest must be saved.

  ‘Winter’s not so deep that we need to starve on purpose.’

  ‘No, papa, it isn’t that. They’re … for somebody else.’

  The old man’s hands sink into the fire to bring back the glistening flesh. The way he glowers is question enough to compel the boy to answer.

  ‘It’s for the little girl. To take a basket to baba’s house.’

  The rabbit breaks in his papa’s hand, revealing flesh still pink and bones that ooze. He sets half down with his own hazels and sweet chestnuts and dangles the other half over the boy’s hoard.

  Then a word, soft as a snowflake: ‘No.’

  At first, the boy thinks he is going to go on – but it seems the old man has said it all. He lifts the carcass to his lips, slurping at the ooze that dribbles out.

  ‘No, papa?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why no?’

  ‘Look at you. Look what the wild gave you today. Why would you …’

  ‘It’s for the girl, papa. To have a taste of the forest.’

  ‘A taste of the …’

  ‘You gave me a taste of the forest. Why can’t the girl …’

  The old man sinks his teeth back into the creature. ‘You don’t know what the forest really tastes of, boy. I hope you never do.’

  ‘Papa, please.’

  ‘I thought you knew not to beg.’

  ‘I’m not begging.’

  ‘It sounds like begging.’

  The boy feels as if he has his hands plunged into the cattail pond, but every newt he tries to snatch up just slips through his fingers.

  It’s now or not at all. The boy takes a breath. ‘It’s to make friends, papa. Like it used to be. I used to … have friends.’

  The old man lays down the carcass and wipes his fingers dry on the rags clinging to his dead leg. Somewhere, among those rags, is what is left of mama’s shawl. The boy’s eyes try to find it, but it was gone long ago.

  The old man grunts, perhaps in acquiescence.

  ‘Then I can go?’

  He grunts again, a sound neither no or yes.

  Gingerly, the boy stands. Gingerly, he puts the knapsack on his shoulder. ‘I’m coming back, papa. I just want … Do you want to come?’

  The old man only shifts, as if nestling down into leaves and fallen pine needles. He does not look as the boy steals past him. He does not look as the boy disappears between the trees.

  As he goes, the thoughts tear him like a lacerating wind. His papa went into the earth one thing and came out of it another, just like any old hibernating bear. It is as if the aspens sucked him under and tried to drink him up, their roots salivating for the taste of a man, just like in those stories of partisans and soldiers marching out to murder in the trees – but his papa escaped the roots too soon, so they could only drink half of him up. Now he is half man and half forest, lumbering through the branches gasping for words. And that story he started to tell …

  The boy does not know he is so angry until he sees the lights in the face of his baba’s old house. A little drift of snow has built up on the back step, so that he knows nobody has come through it today, and the kitchen windows are fogged. He steals along the edge of the garden and finds the gap in the thorn where he can peep around the side of the house. The pebble drive is a strange landscape of stone and pitted ice, but there is no truck sitting on it, and nor can he see one stuttering up the steep dell. Wherever the girl and her father have gone, they are not at baba’s house today.

  He retraces his steps and reaches the backdoor. The door knocker is frosted, the fairybook wolf glistening out of shape. He thinks he can hear the dog named Mishka snuffling on the other side, perhaps lonesome without the girl to keep her company, and he decides to sit on the step. A pet dog would be a fine thing to have in the wilderness. It could keep you warm at night even if there wasn’t a fire.

  After a little while, he hears the dog whimper and retreat from the door. Now it is time to do what he came here to do. He takes the knapsack from his shoulder, stands, and places it gently on the step. When he has it exactly how he wants it, he takes one last look and goes back across the garden.

  The lowest branches of mama’s tree are too thin to swing from, so instead he scrambles up a neighbouring tree, balances on one of the heavier boughs and, in that way, works his way into the crook of one of mama’s taller branches. In spring this cranny would be cocooned from the world, with hardly enough air to breathe. Now he can see through the wraithlike branches and look down on the house.

  He waits. After a little while, he sees starlings gathering like a funeral host. Soon, their caw goes up and he realizes why they are summoning each other. They begin to make raids on the knapsack, taking off with half-frozen rowan berries and brambles. To drive them off, the boy collects up stones, and rains them down from on high. The most determined birds still run the gauntlet, but he works out a way of keeping the worst at bay: a single stone thrown at the kitchen window will raise the ire of Mishka, whose unearthly din sends the starlings flocking back to the forest.

  The light does not last long. Soon, dusk threatens. The boy’s eyes wander the face of the house. If he screws his eyes just so, he can make out the Russian horse standing proudly in the girl’s bedroom window. Wanting to see more, he finds a way further up the tree. Almost at the canopy, he is on a level with the window.

  He is so focused on the Russian horse that he does not notice the deepening of night. Nor does he notice the distant hum of an engine. It is only when a door slams and he hears the now-familiar voice of the girl that he takes his eyes from the Russian horse.

  ‘Daddy, I’m telling you, it was no such thing! I …’

  Her father’s gruff voice: ‘I’ve heard enough of it, Elenya. It’s a new school. You were going to behave.’

  ‘I did behave! It was that dastardly …’

  ‘Dastardly?’

  ‘It’s a word, daddy.’

  ‘I know it’s a …’

  Now a third voice chimes in, a woman the boy takes for Elenya’s mother. She has a voice not unlike his mama’s used to be, soft but with an air of severity.

  ‘That’s enough, from the both of you. It’s all I’ve heard ever since we left town.’

  ‘I’m sorry, mama.’

  ‘Don’t you think you should say sorry to your father?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  There is a grin in how she says it, something that must incite even more ire in her father – because the boy hears the stamping of heavy feet, the slamming of another door.

  ‘Elenya, you’ll be the death of him. He works and works and …’


  ‘I know, mama. I’m ever so ungrateful.’

  At last, the mother laughs. ‘Elenya, I’ll let you in through the kitchen. Take those dirty boots off before you …’

  ‘Yes, mama!’

  Before her mother has finished, the girl comes skipping around the side of the house. In the waning light, the boy can see why she was in such trouble: she is wearing a prim dress of embroidered flowers, but precisely half her body, from head to toe, is caked in thick mud, as if she has deliberately lain down in a puddle.

  She skips ungainly across the garden and up to the backdoor. In the fogged glass of the kitchen window, the boy can see the face of Mishka, front paws scrabbling, excited beyond measure to receive the girl.

  Elenya stops, her gaze drifting down to the step. She seems to consider the knapsack carefully before she ventures an approach. Crouching, she studies it from every angle. Then, she plants herself squarely alongside it. She is facing the forest now, and the boy can see the way her features contort, as if trying to puzzle out this conundrum. Her fingers hover over the frosted berries and nuts, and then dart down to snatch one up. She holds it up, looks as if she might toss it away. Then, quick as a snowstorm, she pops it inside her mouth.

  ‘Elenya, I told you to …’

  Her mother’s voice rips through the walls, and the door flies open. In the light stands her mother, her father slouching somewhere behind.

  ‘Elenya, you still have those filthy boots on! Do you want to stay out here all night?’

  ‘Mama, be fair!’ the girl protests. ‘Look what I …’

  ‘What have you got there, Elenya?’ Her mother steps out, holding herself against the cold. ‘Get off it, Elenya! It’s filthy!’

  The girl scrambles up from the step, leaving the knapsack where it sits. ‘It’s fruits, mama, and chestnuts too.’

  ‘Your father’s going to be …’

  The girl lifts one mud-caked boot up and slams it down. ‘Mama, it’s not mine. I didn’t do a thing. I was coming to take off my boots and do just as I was told, and then it was there.’

  Calmer now, her mother lifts the knapsack. She must think it’s a vile thing, because she holds the strap at a distance, between thumb and forefinger, as if to get it too close to her body might be to catch some woodland disease. ‘Where did it come from, Elenya?’

  The girl pouts. ‘I told you. It was on the step.’

  It does not matter that it’s the truth, not when the truth isn’t good enough.

  ‘Inside, Elenya.’

  The girl tramps towards the step, but her mother stands irresolute, blocking the way.

  ‘After you’ve taken off those horrible boots.’

  Once the girl is gone, the boy sits satisfied in mama’s tree. He might have lost the knapsack, but the nuts and fruits, they’re inside baba’s house. It is, he decides, almost as if the woods themselves have gone through the doors. The idea makes him enormously proud.

  It is almost time to go back and find his own papa, to unearth the old man from whatever leaves and snowflakes have fallen on him as he sleeps. He must go soon, but something makes the boy linger.

  He senses movement in one of the bedroom windows and his eyes stray back to the little Russian horse, standing guard upon the ledge. The girl appears, touches him gently on the head and rearranges him so that he is keeping watch on a different corner of the garden. Then she crouches down, her elbows poised beside the Russian horse. Together they seem to be surveying the treetops.

  At once, Elenya reaches under the ledge and, with something held in her hands, scurries away from the window. For a while, only the Russian horse looks out. Then, the boy sees the door shudder and Elenya squirms out. Though dirt still smears her face, she is wearing a nightgown pure and white.

  Mishka is desperate to follow, but Elenya battles him back. She lays whatever was in her hands upon the step, and then slopes back within. If she is as wily as the boy thinks, her mother and father need never know she was gone.

  Moments later, she reappears with the Russian horse above. Mishka is beside her too, forepaws up on the ledge despite Elenya’s protestations to sit – and together the three faces peer down.

  The boy waits until his curiosity can wait no longer, and drops through the branches of the tree. As he steals across the garden to whatever treasure has been left on the step, he keeps his head low, resists the urge to look up.

  In the dull light from the kitchen window, he can see a little bundle, wrapped up like a baby in its swaddling cloth. This, he remembers, was the way that the babe in the woods was found in his papa’s fables.

  The bundle is small and light, and he sees now that it is wrapped not in cloth but in thin paper, already matted with moisture. It is a moment before he recollects: this is tissue paper, the kind a little boy might once have used if he was making toilet.

  Inside is a figure made out of … He sniffs it, and finds to his delight that it is made out of biscuit. There is a faint hint of honey, sugar, treacle. Ginger. He angles it to what light is left, and sees two raisins for eyes, and something like coloured frost to make pyjamas in blue and white lines.

  He thinks to eat it there and then, cram it into his craw like his stomach is telling him, but when he looks at the little face, the make-believe bedclothes, the tissue paper blankets, he knows he is not holding tonight’s dinner. He is, instead, holding a little friend. He will keep the biscuit baby for his very self, take it back to the gingerbread house and not even tell his papa.

  He cradles it across the garden and back into the fringe of the forest. Once he is in the shadow of mama’s branches, he looks up. Elenya still sits in the square of light, her face poised in the cups of her hands. He thinks he can see her eyebrows twitch, as if admonishing him for some imagined ill.

  With one hand still holding the biscuit baby, the boy lifts a fist. At first, he is uncertain how to do it. His fingers remember before his mind. He shakes his wrist and his fingers open one at a time, to wriggle and dance, each out of step with the other.

  In the square of light, the little girl suddenly perks up. She scrambles bodily onto the ledge, presses her face up against the glass. As she does so, her knee catches the little Russian horse, and he cartwheels out of sight. Mishka leaps up, but there is no more room at the window. The girl lifts her hand, shakes her wrist. The boy might not remember, but Elenya never forgot how. She waves.

  In the forest below, the boy sees her waving. Suddenly, his hand remembers. He steps out of the shadows, waves again. In the window, Elenya freezes. She hesitates a moment, returns the wave; as if to mirror her, the boy does exactly the same.

  In that way, minutes pass. Hours. Winter retreats to reveal summer, retreats to reveal winter again. His papa is well and mama alive; there are tenements, streets, schoolhouses, and all is as it was.

  The boy turns and, with the girl still gaping in the window, disappears into the forest.

  Some nights his papa sleeps outside the gingerbread house, and some nights, if the boy is wily enough to leave the pine-needle doors apart, he can be tempted inside. Yet now there are more and more nights when the old man is abroad.

  Where he goes, the boy does not know. He thinks he cannot roam far, because his dead leg drags behind him and more often he must throw himself into his staff to carry him through the woods. But there are nights when the boy tries to follow and, although his trail is a deep furrow on the woodland floor, from emperor oak to cattail pond the old man is nowhere to be seen.

  At nights he stays awake and thinks about his papa’s return. He is not alone, because in the corner of the gingerbread house sleeps the baby of biscuit. He talks to it as his mama once talked to him. He tells it the woodland stories, of baba’s people and the wars of winter, and the baby in turn tells him stories of Elenya and Mishka, and the adventures of the Russian horse. Now that she has waved to him, he thinks of the girl more and more often. She is the one who sleeps in his bed and sits in his chair and eats all of his food. If she has his Russian
horse, it means she has his eiderdown too.

  A friend would be a very fine thing, when all you have had is your papa and the forest.

  This morning, he would dearly love to have his eiderdown. Sometimes, when he wakes, his bones are stiff and it is not until he has conjured back the fire and filled himself with pine-needle tea that he can think about going out into the woodland, looking for forage. His new rabbit-hide moccasins keep his toes from freezing, but the cold can always claw in through the threadbare stitching of his rabbit-skin vest; nettle fibres are not good for everything.

  The boy is awake before first light, but it is only as the sunlight is piercing the canopy that he crawls out of the gingerbread house to whisper the fire back to life. His papa must have been and gone already, because he has left two carcasses for the spit: a dead hare and a dead fox. The fox’s pelt will be especially welcome, because the rabbit hides the boy is wearing are worn thin and fraying apart.

  Once he has eaten his fill, he resolves to go after his papa. It is easy to see where the old man has gone. All he has to do is follow the trench carved by his trailing leg. This morning, he follows the track down past the emperor oak, as if his papa is following the old paths, all the way around the cattail pond and down to Elenya’s house. In a depression between two dead elms he finds the remnants of a fire where the old man has stirred a cauldron; that the ashes are warm tells him he has not long gone from this place. Yet, when he carries on, he finds another dead fire, and another one still – and, for the first time, he realizes that they are not bulwarked with stones in the way his papa always taught him. In fact, he can tell from the fall of branches in one that these were not fires built by his papa at all. They are ugly, ill-hewn things of the sort he himself might have built one whole winter ago, when he was stupid and young.

  He is crouching, with his fingers deep in ash, when he sees the strange depressions at the fire’s edge. At first he takes it for the print of some monstrous fox. If the ash has been shifted by the wind he might even take the print for one left by a woodland lynx. Only – he has seen the prints of lynxes before; he has seen the prints of foxes and wolves. This one is unlike any of those; it has great pads like he imagines a bear’s, with three toes and talons that seem to be clipped in straight, ugly squares. When he looks closely, he can see the prints of four paws. And – lynxes would not come sniffing around a campfire. Foxes might look for something to scavenge, but wolves too would keep downwind.