Child Thief

by Dan Smith

  I found the spot where the figure had been, my head filled with the sound of my own blood, my own breathing, and I searched for any more sign, but now Viktor’s shouts began to break into my concentration and I wondered why my son wasn’t further away. He and Petro should have reached the trees by now.

  I took my eye from the scope without lowering the rifle and saw Viktor on his knees.

  He was looking in my direction, his face contorted with anguish and pain.

  Beside him Petro lay face down in the snow.

  With the rifle in one hand, I ran out to where my son lay. I couldn’t get to him fast enough, my legs stumbling in the deep snow, my arms going out for balance. But even as I came close to where Viktor was sitting over his brother, another shot came from the other side of the lake, and thumped into the ground close to us.

  The horse startled and turned, moving out to the edge of the water then veering to trot along the shoreline before turning and heading back towards the trees where Dariya and Aleksandra had run.

  Another shot hit wide of its mark, the shooter struggling with his aim perhaps because I had hit him. But no other rifles fired in our direction. No soldiers advanced from the trees. There was only a single shooter out there – a thought that was held in my mind only for a fleeting second, because all else was lost to what I could see right in front of me.

  I dropped to my knees as another shot whistled overhead and ploughed into the trees.

  There was a hole in the back of Petro’s coat, the fabric pushed in to meld with his shirt and to trail its fibres into my son’s flesh. He was still breathing, but the breaths were shallow and barely detectable.

  ‘Take his legs,’ I told Viktor as I put my hands beneath Petro’s shoulders, and together we lifted him, stumbling as we moved back towards the trees, the shooter on the other side of the lake firing two more shots before we were into the shadow of the forest and out of sight.

  We carried Petro to a place where oak and maple rose close and tight, as if they’d grown here just for our protection, and we placed him on his back.

  His face was pale and the look in his eyes was dull.

  ‘Did they find us, Papa?’ Petro asked.

  ‘Shh.’ I took off his hat and told Viktor to help sit Petro forward so I could lift his coat and press my hat against the wound. I held it there to stem the flow of his blood, but I already knew it would do no good. I could see no place where the bullet might have escaped his body, so the lead would still be inside him, perhaps lodged in his spine. Already he had lost a lot of blood and life was leaving him.

  ‘Is everybody else all right?’ Petro asked. His eyes were wandering as if looking for something to focus on.

  ‘Everyone’s fine,’ I told him.

  ‘Good.’ Something like a smile came to his mouth, but the effort was too great and it faded before it was properly formed.

  I looked away, pursing my lips between my teeth and catching sight of Aleksandra standing against a tree, her focus intent upon Petro. Dariya stood in front of her, hands clinging to Aleksandra’s, wrapping them around her as if she hoped they would take her from the world. Close to them, the horse stood silent as if it understood what was happening. And, beside Petro, Viktor bore the expression of the helpless.

  ‘What can we do?’ Viktor asked, and I could see in his eyes that he wanted me to know just the right thing. He wanted me to take control and tell him Petro was going to be all right. But the truth was I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do.

  Petro was going to die.

  It didn’t take long. I held my son’s head while the others stood by, and a few minutes was all it took for Petro to leave us. And when his breathing stopped; when his chest failed to rise and fall; when his eyes glazed and emptied, I hung my head and wept. I wept for the darkness that had come into this life and for the light that had gone out of it. I wept for the space that would never be filled.

  32

  It took only a few minutes for Petro’s life to be gone, but I sat for a long time holding his head before Aleksandra spoke my name.

  ‘Luka.’

  It seemed as if she were standing a long way from where I sat.

  ‘Luka.’

  Her voice coming to me as if from another place.

  ‘Luka.’

  I opened my eyes and looked up at her.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ she asked. ‘We can’t fight the army.’

  She was standing closer now, her feet just an arm’s length from Petro’s still body.

  ‘That wasn’t the army,’ I said. ‘There was only one.’

  Dariya was beside her, the two of them still holding hands. ‘Is she coming for us now?’ she asked. It was the first time she had spoken since I had seen her in Sushne but there seemed to be nothing remarkable about it. Too much had happened for it to have any significance. But I thought about what she said and saw the strangeness in it.

  ‘She?’

  ‘Baba Yaga,’ she said. ‘Don’t let her take me again.’

  I stared at her, not sure what to say. I was still trying to process Petro’s death. My son was lying dead in my arms and now Dariya was saying something I didn’t understand.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I could feel anger rising, and it confused me, fuelling itself further.

  Dariya swallowed. ‘please.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I pushed to my feet, Petro’s head slumping back into the snow. ‘What do you mean, the Baba Yaga?’ I drew up to my full height and Dariya pulled closer to Aleksandra, moving so that she was almost behind her.

  ‘Luka,’ Aleksandra said quietly, ‘you’re scaring her.’

  ‘What’s she talking about – the Baba Yaga? It wasn’t the Baba Yaga who took her. It was a man. A man took her.’

  Dariya shook her head and drew even closer to Aleksandra. ‘He looked like a man,’ she said, ‘but it was the Baba Yaga.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘He said he was going to eat me.’

  Her words made my breath catch in my throat.

  ‘He said he was going to kill you and that he was going to eat me.’

  I put my hands to my face and pressed my fingers hard against my eyes. The imprint of my fingertips on my eyelids darkened and then brightened into a burst of white spots, and when I took them away the brightness smeared my tears and almost blinded me.

  I crouched and held out my hands to Dariya, but she shook her head and clung to Aleksandra, drawing away from me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘Please.’

  Aleksandra encouraged Dariya away from her, and she reluctantly held out her hands for me to take. I pulled her to me and held her, so that her face was buried against my neck and my face was pressed to the side of her head. For a moment I imagined I was hugging my own daughter.

  When I released the embrace I told Dariya not to be scared.

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  ‘I need to ask you something and I need you to remember everything you can. Is that all right?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘How many men were there?’

  She furrowed her brow as if she didn’t understand the question.

  ‘How many men took you?’

  ‘There was only the Baba Yaga,’ she said.

  ‘Just one person?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But you hurt him?’

  Again she looked confused.

  ‘With a knife,’ I said. ‘In the hut where he took you.’

  And, slowly, it seemed to sink in. I saw her eyebrows rise as if she was beginning to understand what I was asking. ‘In the hut?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘In the hut.’

  ‘The dead man?’

  ‘Yes. That was him. The man who took you.’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘That wasn’t him.’

  Leaving Dariya with Aleksandra and Viktor, I went to sit with Petro. I took his head and laid it on my lap and sat lo
oking out through the gaps in the trees, glimpsing shards of the lake. I took a cigarette and bent the tube without thinking about it. For a long time I held the match in my fingers before popping it alight with my thumbnail and touching it to the tobacco.

  So many things had led to this exact spot, this unknown place that was marked by nothing until my son’s death. We believed we had come close to making our way home without knowing how far we really were. I had made many mistakes, from the moment I had agreed to bring my sons, and now I intended to make no more. I had believed the child thief to be dead, but I had been wrong. Now it was my duty to make sure he would never fire another shot. That he would never terrify another child.

  ‘I made a mistake,’ I said when Viktor came to sit with me. ‘A stupid mistake. I’m old and foolish and careless.’

  ‘How could you have known?’

  ‘How could I have known? I should have known. I thought Dariya killed him; freed herself and killed him in his sleep.’

  ‘It’s what we all thought.’

  ‘But I should have known she couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Why not? Anyone can use a knife.’

  ‘Because the body was frozen,’ I said, finally grasping the dark thought that Kostya’s death had brought to my mind. ‘Dariya had only just left the hut, but the body was frozen. It must have been there for hours. If she had killed him, she would have escaped right away. Her tracks were fresh – the body would have been too.’

  I pictured it now, just as Dariya had told it. I saw the child thief dragging her into the hut, tying her and waiting for me to follow, watching through the window, disturbed by the footsteps outside. I saw the child thief open the door, a friendly face, then take his knife and drive it through the man’s throat. The owner of the hut perhaps, or maybe just a farmer from Sushne trying to escape the occupiers of his village, it didn’t matter. The child thief had killed him as surely as he had killed Dimitri and as surely as he had killed Petro. And then he had stripped off the man’s boots, better than his own, and gone out, leaving Dariya alone with the corpse of a stranger.

  ‘She must have been alone with the body for a while,’ I said. ‘That’s why hers were the only tracks. There was a fresh fall that day. His tracks must’ve been covered.’

  ‘Or maybe he covered them.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘So we wouldn’t know where he’d gone. If we found the hut before he came back.’

  I looked at Viktor and thought about what he’d said. For a moment events had been clear in my head, but now they were muddied again. ‘Maybe. However it was, she was lucky to get away,’ I said. ‘Lucky she wasn’t there when he came back.’ I shook my head and dragged on the papirosa. ‘I was so sure he was dead. I’m an old fool.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wonder why he left his rifle, though.’ ‘What?’

  ‘His rifle. He left it in the hut.’ I tapped the rifle beside me. ‘That means he thought he was coming back soon. So why didn’t he?’

  Viktor looked down at the weapon, his face blank. Neither of us had an answer.

  I passed him the cigarette and breathed out a lungful of smoke. ‘You have to go on,’ I said. ‘Wait for me on the ridge behind Vyriv, just as I agreed with the others.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you alone.’

  ‘It’s the only way to finish this.’

  ‘You’re going after him?’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘Let me help.’

  ‘No. Your job is to take Dariya and Aleksandra. Keep them safe.’

  ‘But—’

  Turning to look at him, I let Viktor see the intent in my eyes, and Viktor nodded, knowing he wouldn’t change my mind. I would be alone for this. Alone and focused on only one thing.

  ‘We’ll take Petro home.’

  ‘We have no home any more,’ I said. ‘You can’t take him.’

  ‘But we can’t just leave him here. We can’t leave him out here for—’

  ‘Petro’s gone,’ I said. ‘This isn’t him any more. There’s nothing left that was your brother. I’ll bury him here.’

  We both knew I couldn’t bury him deep. The ground would be hard and almost impossible to break.

  ‘We have to think about Dariya now,’ I said. ‘We have to think about your mother and Lara. Petro’s gone; there’s nothing more we can do about that.’

  I looked down at Petro’s face. His eyes were closed now, almost as if he were asleep if not for the paleness of his skin and the smear of dried blood across one cheek.

  ‘It’s time for you to go,’ I said to Viktor.

  They gathered their things, and Viktor mounted the horse, reaching down to help lift Dariya. Aleksandra put her hands on Dariya’s waist as if to lift her, but Dariya moved away and came to where I was sitting.

  Aleksandra and Viktor watched as the child came and stood by me. She looked smaller than her years now. I had seen this girl grow just as I had watched my own daughter grow and I knew her almost as well. She had spent much of her life in and out of my home, and Natalia had always remarked on how she’d seemed older than Lara. But now she looked smaller. More vulnerable.

  She looked at me, long and hard. Unblinking.

  ‘Are you going to kill the Baba Yaga?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I am.’

  33

  Grief expands. If allowed, it can push out all other thought, consuming all other emotion until nothing else exists. Uncontrolled, it smothers clear thinking, can take a man close to madness. I had no time for it, so I pushed the grief into a corner of my mind and closed a door on it. If the child thief was coming, he might be on his way now, perhaps skirting the edge of the lake, staying within the forest, advancing on the place where I now sat holding my son. I had to act now.

  There was no way of knowing if the child thief was going to follow me, or if he was too badly wounded to do so, but I had to make a decision, so I chose to wait for him. I would wait a while and, if he did not appear, I would make my way to the place where I’d last seen him. I tried to detach myself from what the child thief had done – the people he’d murdered and the fear with which he’d infected Dariya. I tried to take myself back to the days when it had been my job to stalk men, or lie in wait for them. I would do the same thing for this man. He was no different. He was just a man.

  I had no time to bury Petro; that would have to wait until my job was done. Instead, I dragged my son’s body to a place where the trees grew closest, not looking at him as I did it. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want anything to distract me from what I had to do.

  I dug away some of the snow at the base of a tree and put Petro into the dip, rolling him onto his front, with his chest on the higher section, so it looked as if he were using his elbows to raise his torso from the ground. I covered the rest of his body over with snow and found a straight branch to tuck in beside him, protruding as if it were the barrel of a rifle.

  ‘It’s just a body,’ I said, speaking in a whisper. ‘Not Petro. Just a body …’

  When I was finished, I walked a few metres away into the forest and turned to see what I had done. From this distance it looked as if a hunter had concealed himself in the snow.

  I took a branch from a tree close to me and used it to sweep across the surface of the snow as I returned to where Petro lay. It was intended to be a poor effort to disguise my tracks so the child thief would think I was tired and had become sloppy, that I was not a threat to him. My only advantage was that I knew what the child thief was capable of, but he knew nothing about me.

  With that done, I climbed onto a low branch of the tree closest to Petro, first testing my weight on it to be sure it would support me. I looked down at my son, seeing only the top of his head and the stick which I had laid beside him. I raised my eyes and looked out into the forest for a moment, then turned and stretched to the next tree, climbing across to it, making my way through four or five trees without touching the ground, without leavi
ng any trace of myself in the snow.

  My intention was to drop down now that I was away from the place where Petro was concealed. I would cover myself in a similar way and wait for the child thief to come to where Petro lay, led there by my failed attempt to cover my tracks. But when I looked up, I saw that the oak whose branches now offered me support was tall enough and thick enough to give me a different kind of cover. Something better.

  Two metres above the branch I was standing on, the tree split into three separate trunks, each with its own tangle of smaller branches, and the place where it split would give me the perfect place to conceal myself. My dark clothing would be well camouflaged against the bark and I would have a good view of the surrounding area. If the child thief came within a few metres of the place where Petro lay, I would see him.

  I checked the rifle was secure on my shoulder and began to climb.

  The sky was clouded grey, glimpsed through the branches above, and the sun was diffused behind it, giving away nothing, but I didn’t spend long looking up; my eyes were constantly moving, scanning the trees, expecting the slightest change in the forest; my ears tuned to the weakest sound, ignoring the faint wind that moved through the naked, tangled branches with the sound of rushing water. The occasional disturbance as a broken twig fell to the ground, bustling through the branches.

  Somewhere to the right, the dark shapes of nests filled the trees, but they were silent except for the call of a single crow, either unaware of my presence or so used to me now that it bore no fear.

  I sniffed quietly behind my scarf, breath moist against the wool preventing it from rolling out into the cold air and betraying me. I had barely moved since settling. Both legs were drawn close to my chest so I was in a semi-foetal position, leaning back against the thickest trunk, the rifle resting between the V-shape of the other two. If I turned my head, I could almost see all around, and that was the only movement I allowed myself. My legs were stiff with cramp, my back was aching from the base of my spine and the muscles were frozen stiff in my shoulders, but I didn’t need any of those parts of my body. All I needed was one good eye, something to steady the rifle and a finger with which to pull the trigger. And when I glanced at my hands, I saw they no longer shook.