Gingerbread

by Robert Dinsdale

  He looks up: the flicker of shadows in the trees; the crunch of broken frost underfoot.

  That is when he sees the girl coming through the wood.

  She is still some distance away. He sees her only in the sudden shower of snow from a disturbed branch, the cry of a wood pigeon hurtling out of its roost. Yet he has no doubt it is her; the girl must be skipping, because there is strange music to the way her feet fall. At once, the boy understands the prints at the edges of the fire: the dog named Mishka is at the girl’s side.

  He is still squatting over the dead fire when he hears her voice. She is, in a tone reminiscent of her mother’s, admonishing the poor dog.

  ‘You’ll be for it when we get back! It’ll be a bath in front of the fire for you … And you won’t like it one bit. You’ll whimper and wail and, if you start howling, father’s going to come after you with his slipper!’

  The boy counts: one, two, three … And here they come. He can see one arm swinging, the other wrapped around a big bundle of sticks. The girl appears to be wearing a coat three sizes too big, a thing that makes her seem like a sheep gone wild and unsheared for too many seasons. On her head sits a scarlet hood, lined in fur eerily akin to the bitch at her side. Her cheeks are pinched, her nose glistening where the cold has coaxed it to run.

  They are about to come crashing into the clearing when the boy turns tail and flees. One bank of the clearing is still deep with dying bracken. Quickly, he loses himself in the ferns.

  When he peers up, fingers forcing a gap between two fronds, he sees the girl march up to the dead fire. Oblivious to the boy’s footprints, she dumps the wood she has collected straight on top of the ash. Seemingly aggrieved that it does not instantly burst into flame, she drops to her knees. As Mishka steals underneath to steal a stick, Elenya begins to toss them aside, revealing the obliterated embers underneath.

  ‘Now I’ll have to start again!’ she declares, as if it is the poor mutt’s fault that the night is black, the sun is wan, the snow is in the sky. ‘Give that back, you brute!’

  Mishka settles on the far side of the clearing, gnawing happily.

  ‘I tell you, I’m going to make them give you a double bath, and dry biscuits for dinner!’

  This the dog must understand. The stick rolls out of her teeth and she whimpers, sadly.

  Elenya sets to work. The boy can see she has no idea what she is doing; this is a game, and the other dead fires he has seen in the wild are merely past attempts at playing the game right. She heaps up the sticks, but there is no air in the heap to feed fledgling flames, no careful grading of tinder and kindling to teach the fire how to burn bright. Besides, most of the branches she has piled up are thick with frost. They have green flesh instead of brown, life still in their severed veins. Plant those branches and they might sprout roots.

  When she is satisfied, she steps back to marvel at her creation. In the bracken, the boy grins; that girl seems inordinately proud! She ferrets in her pocket to produce a book of matches, and now the boy grins more. Her papa ought to have taught her how to make a fire with a stick and a board. Instead, she is tearing off mittens, fumbling with fingers brittle and blue. More than once, the matchbook tumbles to the ground. More than once, she tears a match off and cannot keep a hold of it, so that it snuffs and dies in the frost at her feet. From behind, the inquisitive Mishka wanders over to look. Even she seems to understand: this girl is a fool.

  At last, one of the matches lights and she tosses it onto the pyre. Yet before it has landed the match is dead. She tries again, miraculously finds light, and this time places it gently on top of the mound. Lonesomely, the match head burns away, the flame creeps down the matchstick – and goes no further. Now, all of the matches are spent. She turns to flounce away, sweeping up Mishka as she goes.

  ‘It’s because you’re doing it wrong!’ He had meant his voice to be small, but instead it shakes the snows from the trees. It rises up and billows in the clearing, and pigeons scatter from their roosts and a single rook hurtles, screeching, into the sky.

  The girl sweeps around. Mishka scrabbles to leap in front but, with hands clad in great mittens, Elenya bats her aside. If there is anything peculiar about her, it is that she does not seem afraid. She sets her rubber boots squarely, puts a hand on each hip, and fixes her stare on the bracken.

  Between the fronds, the boy crawls forward, on hands and knees just like the dog. Only the fire is between them, not dead because it was never truly alive.

  ‘What did you say?’ the girl demands.

  The boy tries to draw himself up, but finds that his body refuses to uncurl beyond a crouch. Probably it is that he can see what she is wearing, and knows he is naked by comparison.

  Mishka drops her head, allows the rumble in the back of her throat to blossom into a growl. She is about to throw herself forward when Elenya grabs her by the scruff of her neck.

  ‘Don’t be so dramatic! It’s that little boy … from the other night …’

  She turns her gaze on him, as disparaging as any schoolteacher. ‘It is, isn’t it? You’re the little tramp who took my biscuit.’

  These words are like one of his papa’s snares; somehow, he’s tied up in them. ‘I still have him. You can have him back.’

  ‘Have him back?’ The girl is aghast.

  ‘I was saving him.’

  She eyes him suspiciously, and begins to prowl, cutting a circle with the boy and the dead fire in its centre. On the outside of the circle, Mishka waits with her head and tail both low. She too is like a snare, one wound up and ready to be tripped.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I? You’re the one who left the basket.’

  The boy whispers, ‘It was my papa’s knapsack.’

  ‘Filled with nuts and berries!’

  He nods, glum though he can’t say why.

  ‘Well,’ she says, stopping dead. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why …’

  ‘Why did you leave a basket?’

  ‘It was a present.’

  At this, the girl seems satisfied. She begins to prowl again. She has cut two circles when, again, she pivots on her heel to face him. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘What …’

  ‘Live!’ the girl declares. ‘It’s not as if there’s any neighbours. I used to live in Brest. There we had neighbours. There we had a whole street and there was a party every New Year. I had a big bedroom.’

  The boy does not like this question. It is like a circling hawk. It is like that day his papa fell through the ground and couldn’t climb back out. He wants to say: you’re living in my house. It belonged to my baba. It was where I went with my papa. And the Russian horse, that’s my Russian horse. But he casts his eyes down, because he cannot say: there’s a gingerbread house deep in the woods, way beyond the emperor oak. That’s where I live.

  ‘You don’t say a lot, do you?’

  The boy shakes his head.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to say a lot. You’ll have to do.’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘Well, I can’t just play with this dumb old thing, can I?’ Upon hearing the words, Mishka whimpers. ‘I need somebody.’

  The girl flounces to Mishka’s side and throws herself at the ground. The dog rushes over and drops her head into the girl’s lap.

  The boy does not want to tell Elenya that she is sitting in snow, that soon the chill will work its way through even her thick coat, because then she might admonish him again. Instead, he creeps forward and hunkers over the dead fire. He can still smell the ash below the wet wood. ‘You made it burn,’ he says. ‘Before.’

  ‘Yes, but I had matches, and now it won’t even burn at all. Some things are so inconsiderate …’

  The boy begins to pick off the wet branches, one by one. Carefully, he stacks them at the edge of the fire, taking out three of the biggest to make a bulwark. Some of the frost has dripped into the ashes, and he begins to lift out grey clumps, so that all that is left is powdery and dry.

  At
the edge of the clearing, the girl sits upright. Mishka stirs, suddenly aware. She cocks her head, watches the boy.

  ‘What are you doing with my fire?’ Elenya demands.

  ‘It’s not your fire.’

  ‘Not my fire? I gathered that wood myself!’

  ‘Fires don’t belong to anybody. That’s what my papa says. Somewhere there’s a great fire, like a forest that never stops burning, and all you can really do is ask it to come here for a while.’

  The girl snorts, as if she has never heard a more ridiculous thing in her life. ‘That’s sorcery!’

  The boy flushes scarlet red. ‘It isn’t sorcery at all.’

  ‘Calling down fire like you’re summoning a devil! That’s witchcraft. Maybe that’s what you are? A little witch boy, living in the woods …’

  The boy’s head bolts upright. He locks her with a stare. There comes a brittle snap: the bough in his hands, tearing in two. ‘I don’t live in the woods!’

  The girl reels. It takes her a moment to regain her composure, but when she does, her face breaks into the most irrepressible grin. ‘Who said anything about living in the woods?’

  ‘I have a house!’

  She beams, delighted at this sudden spectacle.

  Silently, he scurries around the edge of the clearing, snapping off any dry wood he can reach. When he has a small bundle, he returns to the dead cauldron. The bigger pieces he uses to construct a pyramid on top of the kindling, something to funnel the flames. When he is done, he finds a curl of dried bark and a stick and rolls it firmly in his hands.

  Soon there is smoke. It plumes up so that the boy has to whistle to keep it out of his eyes. On the edge of the clearing, Mishka lets out a single bark, enough to startle more birds from the treetops. Elenya’s eyes are agog. She sheds her mittens and claps, loud and hard.

  She does not notice when the sparks come. Stupid girl, but that is the most important part. Smoke opens the doorway to fire, but sparks are when he puts his foot through the door.

  He brings his head low. He whispers. Up flurry the flames. They dance, as if he is himself breathing them out, and grow and ebb and grow again. When they are strong enough to live without his whisperings, he draws back. The kindling crackles, and the baby flames take hold of the pyramid of sticks.

  ‘It is a sorcery!’

  Now the boy hangs his head, not in shame, but embarrassment instead. ‘It’s only a fire.’

  ‘It isn’t only a fire! It’s a campfire! What do you cook on it?’ Elenya shuffles into the glow of the flames, with Mishka hanging reluctantly at her side. She opens her palms to warm them, takes down her scarlet hood. For the first time, the boy can see her thick blonde hair up close, the way the tops of her cheeks are coloured by clusters of freckles, the gap between her front teeth which she hides, calculatingly, every time she smiles. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, anything,’ the boy mutters, not wanting to say: cattail and crow; red fox and frozen frogs from the edge of the pond.

  The fire spits up, and suddenly the pyramid collapses.

  ‘It won’t last long,’ says the boy.

  ‘Why won’t it?’

  ‘It needs more wood.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my wood?’

  When the boy doesn’t want to say, Elenya marches to the edge of the clearing, snatches up the frosted wood, and sends it crashing into the pyre. What flames are left hiss, as if recoiling in pain.

  ‘It’s because they’re still living!’ the boy protests, risking his hands to pluck back the branches. ‘Dead wood’s for burning, not green.’

  ‘And how exactly would a dirty thing like you know?’

  The words are terrible, but her tone tells him she is not really being terrible at all.

  ‘It’s because I … live here,’ he ventures.

  Elenya snorts. She doesn’t understand. She must be thinking: well, I live here too, and I don’t know.

  ‘You look like you need a bath.’

  It is astounding the way those few words wrench him from the forest and thrust him back into the tenement in the days when mama was still alive. In that instant, he might not be surrounded by bracken and wintering elm at all; he is squirming in front of a bathtub, with a kettle of boiling water and a hard sponge caked in soap. Mama, her own hair long and wet, is helping him out of his school clothes and promising him hot milk and honey, if only he’s good.

  ‘I don’t need a bath.’

  ‘You do. Even Mishka has a bath. All your clothes are …’

  The boy can feel his eyes burning. He turns from the girl, because to let her see would be a terrible thing. In two great strides, he is back at the bracken. He hesitates, hand reaching out to force a way within.

  ‘Where do you think you’re …’

  ‘Home,’ he interrupts.

  ‘Well, where’s home?’

  He takes off again, parting the bracken to lose himself inside.

  ‘Wait!’ Elenya cries. ‘What if I …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What if I want to find you?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To play. Don’t you know how boring it is in these woods? It isn’t like Brest at all.’

  The boy pauses again. ‘I’ll find you,’ he whispers.

  Then the bracken closes around him and, ignoring the girl’s cries, he takes flight through the forest.

  That night: snow beyond measure, and the caverns of the canopy are closed.

  In the days that follow, his papa barely leaves the side of the fire, save to take the boy hunting in the wilds. He has fashioned from the guts of some strangled fox a sling with which he whirls stones through the air – and a stone slung by that sling is enough to end a rabbit, a fox, a wood pigeon in mid-flight. The boy watches him dance with it, and around him the dead things plunge.

  With winter for a bedfellow, he finds himself thinking more and more of Elenya. He thinks: there had to be a reason she was wandering the wild, making those fires. He thinks: her face lit up, didn’t it, when I showed her how to whisper those flames into life? What if I could make her face light up again? What if we could play in the woodlands while my papa goes a-hunting? He wonders if she is out there, trying again, remembering the things she has learnt – but, when his papa roams alone and he goes down to the cattail pond, he sees only the husks of her old fires, kicked up by foxes or desperate birds.

  Probably she has not ventured so far, now that the snow has come more fiercely. He remembers her harassed father and wonders if she might even be locked inside, forbidden from venturing out. Then he remembers: school. Little boys and girls go to school, and do lessons. It might be that she’s there, slumped half-asleep in front of a blackboard.

  He watches his papa lurch under the trees, carving a trail behind – and, though the old man mutters that he should follow, the boy simply watches him fade, just another skeletal oak with branches for arms. Then he sets off.

  Down by the cattail pond, he pulls up roots and checks the nettle-string snare he set in yesterday’s gloaming. Sure enough, a weasel has wandered unwittingly in. He collects it up and tosses it onto his shoulder. Then, with kindling collected and cattail roots in the crook of his arm, he makes for baba’s house.

  He picks a spot nestled in the first line of trees and spirits up a fire. When it is blazing, he suspends the cattail roots above and skewers the weasel whole. Once it has thawed, he will use a sharp stone to gut it and open the flesh to be toasted.

  He does not have to wait long before, from the house, the dog named Mishka sets up a howl. In return the only voices are the cries of Elenya’s mama, telling the dog to be still, and then Elenya herself. He thinks he sees her in the bedroom window, but when he looks back the only face studying him is the face of the little Russian horse. He wonders: can it see me too?

  He is about to venture into the garden when the backdoor opens and Mishka hurtles out.

  In seconds, she is up, through the trees and over the fire. He thinks she is come to savage him,
but instead she bowls him over and proceeds to slather him with her tongue. A peculiar chill spreads across his features, fracturing every time his face creases: the touch of winter, working its magic on the dog’s slobber.

  ‘Mishka, down!’

  The boy scrabbles from beneath the bitch, but she pursues him and bowls him over again in the roots of an oak.

  ‘There you are!’ Elenya exclaims. It takes a moment before the boy realizes she is talking to him, not the dog. ‘I thought you’d never come. Don’t you know how bored I’ve been?’

  She stops, but still the boy cannot see her, the whole of his vision eclipsed by shaggy grey.

  ‘Mishka, get off him! He isn’t yours!’

  Boots crunch, and Elenya bustles Mishka away. Now the boy can see again. Elenya looms above him. This time her hair hangs freely and she wears ear muffs of blue and brown. She stands with her legs splayed wide and her hands on her hips, and considers him with the steeliest of gazes.

  ‘I thought …’

  ‘You thought what?’

  It is now or never: talk to the girl, or go back and live wild, with only his papa for company.

  ‘I thought I could teach you more fires,’ he ventures. ‘I can teach you other woodland things too.’

  ‘It isn’t what friends usually do.’

  The boy knows it. ‘Does it mean we’re friends?’

  Elenya remains silent. Then, once she has considered it, she extends a hand, clasps his, and hauls him to his feet. Only when she has done so does she look at her hand and, seeing the blood and grease and forest dirt smeared there, wipes it fiercely on the nearest bark. ‘I suppose it’ll have to do,’ she says, in a voice that means she is thrilled to be doing something, anything, that doesn’t involve sitting in the house. ‘But not so near my house! If papa gets back, he’ll murder me. Didn’t I tell you it was because of a fire we had to leave Brest?’