Child Thief (24 page)

‘Will we get frostbite?'

‘No. If your toes go white, we'll stop and rub them. As long as they're pink you're fine.'

‘That's the rule?'

I shrugged and looked at Petro. ‘I don't know.'

Petro had pulled his scarf away from his face and I could see the redness of his cheeks, the mud smeared beneath his dark eyes. His features were contorted with pain and determination. Like some kind of twisted clown. And, despite our situation, I felt myself smile.

‘What?' Petro asked.

‘If someone could see us now, they'd think …' I began to laugh.

‘What?' Petro started to smile, his expression turning to one of confusion. ‘They'd think what?'

‘That we're mad,' I said, laughing out loud.

Petro began to laugh with me as we hurried along the road, barefoot, like two insane vagabonds, and when I finally signalled to Petro to stop, we rubbed warmth back into our feet and put on our socks and boots.

We left the road, heading back into the trees, covering our tracks as we went, then doubled back to where Viktor and Aleksandra were waiting.

‘You think it'll be enough?' Petro asked.

‘We'll have to hope so,' I told him. ‘A fresh fall would help cover it better.'

‘But then we'd have no way of following Dariya.'

‘I think we'll be able to follow her whatever happens. It's part of his game.'

‘You really think this is a game to him?'

I nodded. ‘Take a child, provoke a hunting party and turn the tables on them. I'd bet the stranger who came into Vyriv wasn't alone when he started out to rescue his children. I'd bet this man killed them one by one, just like he wants to do with us.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it's exciting? Maybe he enjoys it.' I looked at my son. ‘But this time it's different. This time it's me who's after him – and he won't get away.'

Coming to where the others were waiting, I took up my pack and handed Viktor's to him, saying it was time to be strong again. Beside him, Aleksandra was swamped by the coat we had given her, the warmth bringing colour to her face and hardening the intent in her eyes. She no longer looked cold and afraid, but had the air of a woman who was watching closely, assessing her options, deciding what she had to do to survive. There was something almost animal-like in the intensity of her expressions. I had told Petro that we did not breed weak women, and the look in Aleksandra's eyes proved it to me.

Viktor took the pack from me and put it over his back. He hesitated when he was about to pick up the rifle, but he grasped it tight, fighting his guilt as he slung it over his shoulder.

‘I would have done the same thing,' I said, glancing at Aleksandra, looking for a reaction.

Viktor turned to look at me.

‘I would have shot him the way you did.' I gave him my full attention now. Aleksandra had not reacted to my comment, but she was watching us closely.

‘But you didn't.'

‘No.'

‘So you wouldn't have.'

‘I just hesitated a little longer than you, that's all. It's experience.' I shrugged. ‘Or maybe it's age, I don't know. Maybe I'm just slower than I used to be.'

Viktor said nothing.

‘It's no small thing, killing a man. Taking a life. Taking away everything someone is.'

‘It's not that,' Viktor said.

‘What then?'

‘It's taking the
wrong
life. If it had been
him
, if I had been right, I would be pleased.'

‘You're sure about that?'

‘I'm certain.'

I nodded. ‘Good. Then I need you to take care of Aleksandra. She's your responsibility now.'

‘I'm not anybody's responsibility,' Aleksandra said. ‘If you take me with you, I won't slow you down. I'm strong.'

I looked her up and down, seeing how much her demeanour had changed since we first saw her. ‘Yes, you are. But back there you were afraid.'

‘Of course.'

‘There will be more of that,' I said. ‘Are you sure you want to come with us? You don't even know where we're going.'

‘What choice do I have?'

‘You could stay here. Try to go home.' I shrugged. ‘It's up to you now.'

‘You'd just let me go?'

‘If it's what you want.'

‘But you know I'm going to come with you. That's why you hid Roman. That's why you made the tracks. What else can I do?'

I looked directly at her and saw that she knew her father was gone. She had accepted it as a fact because it was the only way she could move on and survive. Aleksandra had nothing to go back to; she had already told us she had no other family. The only thing waiting for her in Uroz was death or exile. Perhaps both. We were the only hope she had now.

I reached out and put a hand on her arm. I said nothing, but I let her see what was in my face, in my eyes. We were together now. She was with
us
now.

Aleksandra nodded gently. ‘I won't be a burden.'

‘I' know.'

And with that we began walking again.

17

Noon came and went. We sat to make a small fire and brew tea to warm us but there was nothing to eat. Aleksandra was weak and hungry, but we had nothing to give her. If we were still tracking Dariya by nightfall, I'd set more snares, but otherwise there was little we could do for her. Even so, true to her word, she did not slow us down. She walked as strong and hard as any one of us.

For the most part we were silent until Petro aired his worries once more.

‘You think they'll find Vyriv like they found Uroz?' he asked. It was an hour or so since we had left the place where Viktor killed the old man. None of us had spoken in all that time, each of us lost in our thoughts and exhaustion.

‘That's where you're from?' Aleksandra asked. ‘Vyriv?'

‘Yes.'

‘They'll find it,' she said.

Petro looked across at her, sitting an arm's length from Viktor. ‘Maybe not. We're small and remote. It was hardly touched during the civil war. Even during the famine there was enough to eat.'

‘Hardly enough,' Viktor said.

‘Maybe.' Petro nodded. ‘But it survived. It's well hidden.'

‘It's different now,' Aleksandra said. ‘The communists are different. They want everything.'

‘But if they can't find it …'

‘You think they won't find it?' Aleksandra said. ‘You think someone won't tell them?'

‘Why would they do that?'

‘Why would a woman denounce her own husband?'

‘What?'

Aleksandra shook her head at Petro's naivety. ‘A woman in Uroz gave up her own husband because they threatened her children. So she gave him up. Denounced him like a criminal. And you know what they did? They arrested them all. Him they executed. She was taken away with the children.'

‘Taken where?'

‘Who knows?'

‘Siberia maybe,' Viktor said. ‘Or the White Sea. Papa said there are prisons up there.'

‘Labour camps,' I told him. ‘They don't call them prisons.' I spoke to Petro: ‘They
will
find it – Aleksandra is right. Perhaps they're in our village now, as we sit here.'

Petro looked at me with alarm. ‘Now?' And he saw our dilemma. While we were scouring the countryside for Dariya, his own mother and sister had been left to fend for themselves in the shadow of an approaching danger.

‘We have to get back,' he said.

‘Get back?' Aleksandra looked confused.

‘We will, as soon as we can,' I said. ‘We need to find Dariya and we need to get home.'

‘And then? What can we do?' Petro asked.

‘You mean about the communists taking our belongings?' I said. ‘Nothing. There's nothing we can do. In the end they'll take what they want.'

‘Who's Dariya?' asked Aleksandra. ‘What's going on here? Why are you talking about going back? I thought you were running
away
. I thought you were afraid and trying to escape the communists.' She looked around at each one of us, not understanding. ‘But you're looking for someone?'

Petro turned to me and I thought for a moment before nodding. ‘All right. Tell her.'

‘A girl was kidnapped from Vyriv,' Petro said. ‘My cousin. We've been following the trail since yesterday.'

‘Kidnapped?'

‘There have been others too,' Viktor said. ‘Two dead children brought into the village. One of them butchered as if—'

‘Enough,' I stopped him.

‘—to eat her.'

‘That's enough.'

‘I want her to know. I want her to know why I killed that man.'

‘Not because you thought he was a communist?' Aleksandra asked.

‘No.' Viktor rubbed a hand across his mouth. ‘I was afraid he was the one we've been following. This man, he's … he's like a ghost.'

‘A ghost?'

‘He's there and then he isn't,' Viktor said. ‘Shooting at us from the shadows, watching us at night.'

‘He's just a man,' I said.

‘A man who eats people.'

‘Maybe that's not what he does.' I watched Aleksandra for a reaction, wondering what she would make of this. ‘Maybe he cuts them for another reason.'

‘But people have done it before,' Aleksandra said. ‘I've heard of it.'

‘We don't know it for sure,' I told her. ‘And it doesn't make any difference. He's just a man who's taken my niece. We'll find her and we'll bring her back.'

‘You really think we can, Papa?'

‘Of course we can, Viktor.'

‘And you thought Roman was this man?' Aleksandra asked.

‘I was … I thought …' Viktor looked at the ground. ‘I made a mistake.'

‘You weren't to know,' I told him. ‘You saw a man; it could have been any man. I would have done the same thing.'

We fell silent, all of us staring into the flames of the small fire.

‘Roman was old,' Aleksandra said. ‘I think he may be better off now anyway.'

We crossed the steppe like wild animals, scanning, watching for movement, stopping to listen. For a while we saw nothing but trees and shadow. The sky had darkened again and the snow began to fall in thick wet flakes, obstructing our vision and filling the tracks we followed. We increased our pace as much as we could, trying to keep up with the trail before it was swept away, but we were wary of what lay before us, and we were able to see only a few metres ahead.

‘We'll lose the tracks,' Viktor said.

‘We'll keep going,' I told him.

And then I saw the child thief's second gift and I wondered about the man who'd been hanged in our village – about him not being alone when he first set out to find his children. Perhaps the child thief had taken them one by one, taunting them, tempting them, murdering them. I imagined others lying out there in the ice, their lives gone.

The first gift had been a bloodstain on the land. A violent streak of crimson that might have been drained from Dariya's small body or from the carcass of a trapped animal. It had been both a gift and a trick, a means to draw us into his sights so he could kill the first of us.

The second gift was much worse. It was so much more than a stain on the snow. There was no doubt what kind of animal this trophy had come from.

The child thief knew we would be following his tracks. He had made it easy for us, so he knew we'd come this way, passing through this part of the forest, and he had chosen the perfect place for his display.

We came to a stretch which formed a natural path among the barren trees. An open space of perhaps fifty metres, like a scar in the forest, where nothing grew. The disappearing tracks led directly through this area, along the centre of it, the two sets of prints which I was certain belonged to our quarry and, I hoped, to Dariya.

Towards the end of the scar, where the trees closed ranks once
more, a single branch stretched across the natural pathway at head height. And, from the centre of the branch, something hung. A dark shape that may have been a fallen nest, its broken pieces dangling like tendrils from the nucleus of the construction. Or perhaps it was a bird, its body caught on the branch, its wings dropping, the feathers splayed out.

I stopped.

‘What is it?' Petro looked up. He had been walking with his head down for a while now, too tired to lift it.

‘Get into the trees.' I hurried them into cover, moving so there were thick trunks between us and the object. From there we looked again.

‘Is it an animal?' Viktor asked.

I shook my head and slipped my rifle from my shoulder.

I pulled the stock tight to me and looked through the scope at the dark shape, but still couldn't be sure what I was looking at. The light was all wrong. The object was in shadow and I could see nothing more than its shape.

‘It's hard to tell,' I said. ‘Could be animal fur. A bird. Maybe just twigs and leaves. I'll have to get closer.'

Petro put his hand on my arm.

‘It's all right,' I said. ‘You and Viktor watch carefully.' I glanced at Viktor. ‘You're all right?'

‘I'm fine.'

Petro released my arm and unslung his rifle.

Viktor did the same, and the vacant look that had been in his eyes had disappeared. He had something concrete to occupy his thoughts now. Something to take his mind from what he had done. ‘I'll go,' he said.

‘I need you to watch. From that side.' I pointed. ‘Aleksandra, stay with him.'

‘Let me go.
You
watch,' Viktor said.

‘You're not ready.'

Viktor closed his eyes tight, knowing there was no point in arguing, then he sighed and went to the place I had indicated, crouching and steadying his rifle.

‘You on this side,' I told Petro. ‘And don't take your eyes off the forest. This might be another trap.'