Child Thief

by Dan Smith

  ‘What about his coat? And his boots? You want us to leave them?’

  ‘No,’ I sighed, ‘they’re too valuable.’

  ‘So how do we explain—’

  ‘Petro will do it,’ I said, looking up at my youngest. ‘I want you to tell Mama what happened. She’ll speak to Svetlana.’

  Petro didn’t ask why I had chosen him.

  I stared after my sons as they left the small circle of light and walked into the darkness with their reluctance and their annoyance clear in their eyes. I watched the place where the night had taken them and I warmed myself one last time by the flames before I kicked snow into the pit and suffocated the fire. It flickered and fought to survive, hissing and spitting, but it quickly succumbed to the snow and gave up the last of its light and warmth.

  I threw the pack over my back, kept my satchel close to my side and took up my rifle before moving away in the other direction. Once again I stepped out onto the open field and headed across the steppe.

  I had a fix on the place I wanted to go. I remembered the direction of the tracks and I remembered the place where the man had run into the trees. The sky was without stars, but the field was white enough to collect just enough light for me to know where I was going.

  I tried to be aware of the land around me, of movement and sound, but I had to concentrate just to put one foot in front of the other. The snow was deeper now, and the rise and fall of the land beneath it was invisible. I stumbled a few times, but kept on going until I reached the hedge. I had only travelled a few hundred metres, but it felt longer and I was beginning to sweat beneath my clothes. As a younger man, I could have crossed that distance in half the time and hardly felt it in my chest and legs, but years and circumstance had slowed me.

  Pausing at the hedge, I allowed my heartrate to return to normal, giving my body a moment to rest. I didn’t want to sweat, to dampen my clothes with moisture that would freeze and steal my warmth. I stood and looked out at the wood beyond, seeing nothing but the trees and the darkness. Dariya was out there somewhere. Alive or dead, I had no way of knowing.

  As I moved along the line of the hedge, looking for a way to pass through, I imagined the man with the rifle doing the same. I pictured him dragging Dariya with him, perhaps tied, or maybe she followed him because she had nowhere else to go, or because he had tempted her with some kind of promise. And it struck me that the child was now dependent on the thief. The kidnapper had provided shelter and warmth, perhaps even food, and without those things Dariya would die in that wilderness. She was now reliant on the child thief to keep her alive and protect her. She was damned if she remained with him, and damned if she managed to escape. I was her only hope.

  Coming to a place where the hedge was thinner, I turned sideways, pushing through the branches, knowing this was where my enemy would have passed through. His clothes would have touched these branches. His hands.

  Within the woods on the other side of the field I spotted a number of burrows, cleared and left open, suggesting they were still inhabited. There were small prints in the snow, droppings on the surface, and I guessed my approach had disturbed the rabbits back to their holes. These signs were visible in the natural light, but once I was deeper among the beech and oak and hornbeam, everything became more obscure, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to track this man during the night. There was some light here, but not enough. I could see disturbances on the ground, the spot where the man had waited to take his first shot, and I found the marks where he’d crawled back to his place by the tree, unsettling the dusting of delicate light green moss on the bark, but the fresh snow had made an impact on the tracks. The marks were smooth, the footprints barely discernible. Here they were almost impossible to spot; even further into the woods and they would be invisible.

  I cursed my fortune and tried to find some reassurance in my inability to track Dariya at night. It meant at least that yesterday’s decision had been the right one. I also consoled myself with the suspicion that this man wanted to be followed and would therefore ensure it was possible to track him. It was the only thing that made any sense and, as twisted as it seemed, it felt as if this was all part of a macabre game. He had taken Dariya as bait and he was leaving a trail that was easy to follow. He seemed to be doing everything he could to invite me to go after him so, resigned to waiting until dawn, I decided to make camp.

  I moved away from the place where I had found the tracks and set about building a quick shelter for the night. It was something I had learned as a soldier, mostly through trial and error rather than training, and had put into practice many times. I had shared my observations with comrades, and they had shared theirs with me, until I had found the best way to provide shelter under many different circumstances. And I had practised many times, both at war and later while hunting to feed my family.

  I used the trenching tool to pull together as much snow as I could, piling it into a mound along the length of a fallen tree. I packed it hard and used the small shovel to hollow it out. As I worked, I imagined the child thief doing the same. The shelter he had made for himself and Dariya had been efficient and uncomplicated, and it reinforced my belief that the man I was hunting had also been a soldier.

  When I was finished, I built a low windbreak close to the entrance of the shelter, leaving me enough room to shuffle inside. It took me no longer than an hour to build, but I was exhausted when it was finally ready. It was small, compact, and would keep me warm during the night. I thought I might even be able to sleep for a few hours, but it was unlikely, knowing what was out there.

  Before settling, I took a couple of wire snares and returned to the place where I’d seen the burrows. I collected some twigs and set the snares close to the entrances of two of them, hiding the base of each noose in the snow. The air was quiet, almost no wind, and there was a strong sense of being alone in the world, and when my mind wandered from the task an unnerving sensation crept in. As if something was out there, in the birch scrub and the darkness – something that was part of the forest – and I couldn’t help recall Dariya’s fears of the Baba Yaga.

  Satisfied I’d set the traps in the best places, I took a tree branch and swept it across the surface of the snow as I backed away. It wasn’t a perfect way to hide my presence, but it was the best I could do. In the morning it would be obvious where I had swept the snow, but for now, in the near dark, it was good enough. If the man I was hunting came this way, he would have to look very closely to see what I had done.

  Back at the shelter I placed a canvas sheet on the floor for insulation, and climbed in feet first, keeping my head close to the semicircular entrance. I turned onto my back, so I could see the roof of the cave, not even an arm’s length from my face, or so I could see the treetops if I shifted my gaze. I stared at the blank white surface above me and wondered about the man who had taken Dariya. I imagined him lying in a similar shelter. Perhaps Dariya was beside him, shivering and frightened, praying for her papa to come looking for her. And it occurred to me that maybe Dariya wasn’t even with him any more. Maybe she was already dead. And I might have believed it if not for the tracks in the snow. The small footprints alongside the larger ones.

  Removing my right glove, I put my hand in my coat pocket and drew out the revolver. I lifted it to my chest and gripped the handle tight, closing my eyes and praying that Dariya was still alive.

  Sleep didn’t settle itself over me. It circled me, moving in and away again, always threatening to take me but never doing so. I dozed in and out, warm enough in my shelter, always aware of the revolver in my hand, the cold air blowing against my face. There were vague snatches of dreams, visions of Lara and Dariya, of the children on the sled, of the man hanging from the tree, of Dimitri lying face down in the snow. These images taunted me, like the muddled dreams of a drunkard, but I persevered, determined to rest – trying to will myself to sleep, to not be afraid of the man who was out there in the forest with his rifle and his keen eye.

  But somewhere in th
e darkness, somewhere in the plague of images that riddled my thoughts like an incurable disease, a sound broke through. A single terrifying sound. From far away the unmistakable sound of a scream.

  Immediately my eyes were open and I was turning onto my stomach, bringing the revolver out in front of me, pointing into the night. I held my breath without thinking, making not a sound as I watched the night. My eyes were wide, my head turning, looking for anything.

  I thought of Lara’s concern once more, the Baba Yaga, and I remembered the stories from my childhood. How real they had felt then, as a young boy. The thought of the witch in the forest, waiting to bring her victims to her pot. And now they seemed real again. During the hours of daylight nothing was more frightening than the threat of those who would come to break my family apart, but now, at night, roused from the broken dreams, something unearthly seemed more possible.

  I listened to my heart beating and I felt both absurd and afraid. I had seen things not meant for human eyes. I had done things no man should ever do to another. I had killed and killed and killed, all in the name of one cause or another. I had seen men on the battlefield with their bodies turned inside out. I had seen artillery vaporise flesh and bone, and I had heard battle-hardened men sob for their mothers with their last breaths. But that scream in the night was unlike anything I had ever heard before. A single awful sound that could only have come from a child. And I had to remind myself who I was before I could force myself to crawl forward, to leave my small space of safety and emerge into the wood.

  Once outside, I crouched by the low windbreak. I raised the revolver and searched the darkness once again.

  The second scream made me jump. Almost an exact repeat of the first, like an echo, but a third followed it within a few seconds, this one longer. I tried to gauge the direction from which it had come, but it was difficult to be sure. There was almost no wind now and sound carried well over the flat ground. It might have been as close as a few hundred metres, but it might have been much further.

  For a long time I crouched behind the windbreak with the revolver in my hand. I considered striking out into the forest to search for the source of the scream but knew it would be a mistake. The child thief might be trying to draw me out. So I remained where I was, alert, eyes wide to draw the light, listening. The forest listened with me.

  The screams were long gone. The only evidence of them having existed was the echo of them in my head. And then I heard movement. Close.

  Boots in the snow. The gentle scuff and crunch of someone moving in the forest. Footsteps pushing through the soft surface covering, breaking through the icy layer beneath. I turned the revolver towards the sound and squinted into the gloom. The trees stood unmoved by the screams and the secretive movements, like silent witnesses. Unjudging and unconcerned with the affairs of men. Their silhouettes against the snow, laying shadow where I needed there to be light, and among those shadows something demanded my attention.

  A shape. Close to the base of a tree. A mound that broke the evenness of the area. As if something lay covered. I narrowed my eyes, pushed my head forward, studied. The shape of a man, perhaps. A killer in the night, lying concealed beneath a camouflage of snow, his rifle barrel pointed directly at me. I dropped lower, holding the revolver out, my finger tightening on the trigger. And, for a moment, the clouds above me parted. As if they had been looking down at me they split and allowed me the light of the moon. In that light my mind saw the child thief revealed: his face intent, his eyes hard and cold, his aim steady and true.

  But all that my eyes showed me was a mound of snow covering a decaying log. And when the clouds reformed, shutting out the light, I continued to stare at that place. I stared and stared until something else took my attention. The briefest of movements. Something passing among the trees. Too tall for it to have been a small animal. It had to be something larger. A wolf. A deer. A man.

  Then another exclamation. Not a scream. Not a child’s scream as before, but a more guttural sound. And then a loud bang, less than ten metres away from where I was crouched.

  The muzzle flash lit up the area around the shooter, a man, his weapon pointed somewhere to my left, the orange-yellow flare exploding from the barrel of his rifle. A few metres away I heard the crash of a bullet as it struck something solid. I ducked lower, kept the revolver pointed at the figure and hunched so I was looking directly along the barrel, lining up the sight.

  I was sure I hadn’t been seen. The shot had been a blind one. Something had startled the shooter and he had fired at it, but I had not made a sound. I had not moved. I had hardly even taken a breath.

  I raised my eye from the sight and looked out at the dark shape, thinking this erratic shooting didn’t seem like the behaviour of a man who had led me to a killing place. This had less purpose and was less professional.

  The figure moved now and I could see its shape more clearly. Then something was moving beside it, coming close, the two shapes crouching low in the forest, moving back to the cover of a tree, blending with its shape, becoming part of its shadow.

  An urgent whisper.

  The sound of breathing.

  I raised my head further and took a risk. There was a danger to revealing my position, but I had to be sure. ‘Viktor?’

  Silence.

  ‘Viktor?’

  I kept the revolver pointed at the place where the shadows had merged. ‘Speak now or I’ll shoot.’

  ‘Papa? Is that you?’

  15

  Viktor and Petro had walked back in the direction of the shelter we found earlier that day, but their quiet conversation had focused solely on what they were going to do. Neither of them wanted to return home. For different reasons they both wanted to be by my side, so when they reached the shelter, instead of settling down, they turned round and headed back the way they had come. At the open steppe they found my tracks and followed them to the line of the hedge and across the field, but once inside the trees, they had lost sight of them.

  ‘We stayed together,’ Viktor said. ‘Looked for signs, but we couldn’t find anything. It was like you just disappeared, and then we heard …’

  They were sitting by the shelter, backs to the low wall, talking in whispers. I clasped my hands together, my fingers held tight to hide that they were shaking. There had been a moment when I had almost shot my own sons.

  ‘What was it?’ Petro asked. ‘What made that noise? You think it was Dariya?’

  No one answered. We all thought it was Dariya’s scream. We knew of no one else out there who would make such a noise.

  ‘We’ll find her.’ I put a hand on my son’s shoulder and Petro looked at me. I could hardly see his face in the darkness, but the light reflected from the snow into his eyes.

  I told them to try to get some sleep. There was enough room in the shelter for both of them if they lay close and didn’t move around. It would work well: we could take turns staying awake, watching the forest. It made sense, and I felt more comfortable. I’d at least be able to close my eyes for an hour or so later on, knowing one of my sons would be watching.

  ‘I’m glad,’ I said to them. ‘I’m glad you came back.’

  ‘You’re not angry?’ Petro asked.

  ‘That you disobeyed me?’ I smiled. ‘Of course, but you’re not children any more. It’s good to have your company and I feel safer having you here. We can watch each other.’

  As my sons slept, I watched over them, the revolver never leaving my hand. I sat until my legs were numb, then I moved slowly, keeping to the shadow until it was my turn to sleep.

  At first light Viktor woke me and Petro as instructed. I handed them my satchel, telling them to make a fire, and trudged back towards the hedge, through the area where I had brushed the snow last night.

  Up close, I could see the forest edge was a tangle of brambles and briars, the perfect place for rabbits to build their winter burrows, and there were fresh tracks where the animals had come to forage in the early morning. I was disappo
inted to find the first of my snares empty, and I took it up, removing the stakes and putting the noose into my pocket. As I came to the spot where the second snare was, however, I saw movement in the snow and hurried to grab the rabbit struggling in the trap. It must have been a recent catch because it still had plenty of energy, jumping and fighting to free itself, but the stake and the noose held tight. I took the animal’s back legs in one hand, gripping it tight, before removing the noose and holding it behind the ears. A quick pull and the rabbit’s neck was broken.

  ‘It’s not much for three,’ I said putting the carcass by the fire, ‘but it’s better than nothing.’

  Viktor cleaned the animal and we cooked it over the flames, sharing it equally. As I ate, I glanced over at the place where I’d seen the mound last night.

  ‘What is it, Papa?’ Petro asked, seeing me stare.

  Ignoring the question, I got to my feet and took the revolver from my pocket.

  ‘You see something?’

  Both boys reached for their rifles as I advanced on the place where the snow had collected over the fallen log. Only there was no longer any mound.

  There was no fallen log.

  All that remained was a slight disturbance in the snow. Enough to tell me that someone had been there, concealed just a few metres from our camp.

  ‘Someone was here?’ Viktor asked. ‘Last night? Right here?’

  ‘It seems so,’ I said.

  ‘Was it him?’ Petro couldn’t hide the fear in his voice.

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘How the hell did we not see him?’ Viktor said. ‘How did we not know?’

  ‘I thought I saw something, but …’ I stared at the place where the child thief had been lying.

  ‘You thought you saw something?’ Viktor asked. ‘So why didn’t you come and look?’

  ‘I thought it was nothing.’

  ‘There’re no tracks,’ Petro said. ‘Coming or going. Nothing. How did he do it?’