Ane Riel - Resin

I think he was just lucky.

But I was scared because I didn’t know what he wanted. Dad hadn’t come back, and Mum was upstairs in the bedroom and couldn’t do anything. And the man had seen the dog and the trap and taken my arrow. He was walking around with it in his hand. I was scared that he was looking for me. But he couldn’t know that I was there. He hadn’t seen me. Besides, I was dead.

When he reached the farmyard he stopped for a long time with his back to me. I’m sure he was staring at all the things. He probably wasn’t used to seeing so many things gathered in one place, unless he also went to the junkyard.

I wish I knew what he wanted. I wanted Dad to come, yet at the same time I was scared about him turning up. Most of all, I just wanted the man to go away, I think. But without walking into a trap. And without bumping into Dad.

He just stood there at the edge of the yard with his back to the forest. I thought that he might make his way to the house, and I held my breath in case he walked past the silage harvester.

If you wanted to get from the white room to the house, you shouldn’t pick the most obvious route, past the harvester. You should walk around the baker’s pile first, in a zigzag pattern past the barn, then back towards the workshop, and then remember to take a right by the old cooker on the last stretch leading to the front door. I remembered it every single time – mostly because I’d never forgotten the look on Dad’s face when he explained the route to me.

I didn’t know exactly what it was about that cooker, but I had a hunch that it might tumble from the tall blocks it sat on if you went the wrong way round it.

Dad had made me promise to never ever do that. He trusted me more than any other person in the whole world, he said. It made me happy, but also a little bit sad. I don’t really know why.

The man didn’t go past the harvester. I think he heard a noise from the barn because he suddenly looked in that direction. Then he went around the farmyard and over to the barn door at the end. He stood there for a long time.

Meanwhile, I was wondering whether to shoot him.

I could easily hit him as he stood there, completely still, peering inside the barn. Especially if I crept a little closer and knelt down, because if I did that, I could hit anything I aimed at. By now I was as good an archer as Robin Hood.

But would Robin Hood ever shoot a man in the back?

And would Mum even like me shooting a man at all?

And would Dad mind me not shooting him when I had the chance? I had a hunch that Dad would have shot him.

You would probably need several arrows and possibly also a club to whack him over the head to finish him off. I didn’t know how killing a man would be compared to killing an animal or a granny, and what if I missed because I wasn’t used to shooting men? I squeezed the bow in my hand.

And then the moment was gone because the man started walking around the barn. What was he doing in the field? No one but us ever went there, and we had stopped going. Had he come to take our chickens? I wasn’t sure if we still had any. The geese were long gone.

I followed him. I had to leave my hideaway at the edge of the forest, but I made a quick dash from behind the trees to a new hideaway behind the pile with the yellow bicycle on it. From there I saw him wander along the field down to the end of our house. There were no traps around the back and I started to wonder if perhaps he knew about the traps after all.

He might see me if I followed him behind the barn, so I opted for the safe route across the farmyard instead. I could always find something to hide behind there. I was good at moving quickly and quietly, even when crawling.

He was knocking on the pantry door at the end of the house when I slipped behind the bathtub by the corner of the barn. I could hear it, and I caught a glimpse of him when he took a step back from the door. He was looking for something. The key? A moment later I heard him let himself in and saw a rabbit run outside.

I waited.

Another two rabbits followed.

Then I heard his voice. ‘Hello!’ he shouted.

And then the kitchen curtain twitched. It was dark inside, so I couldn’t see anything through the windowpane.

What if he found Mum?

If it hadn’t been for Mum lying upstairs in the bedroom, I would have gone into hiding in the container at that point. Instead I crouched on the gravel behind the bathtub, staring up at Mum’s dark window.

Then I heard an unexpected crash coming from inside the house and someone shouting. It couldn’t be Mum. It was the man shouting.

No, he was screaming.

I don’t think I thought anything at all. I just sat there, unable to move. Perhaps my tears couldn’t move either, because I wanted to cry but I somehow couldn’t. I couldn’t make the tears come. And I couldn’t make Carl come either. He didn’t come. And neither did Dad.

And the man was still inside the house with Mum.

Any minute now he would come out of the back door. I had no idea what to do when that happened.

After a while – I don’t know how long because it felt like a minute and an hour at the same time – the front door opened. I was so taken aback that I jumped. I hadn’t expected to see him there. I had to turn slightly to get a better view. Afterwards, I wondered whether I did it on purpose. Moving, I mean.

Whatever it was, he spotted me. I’ll never forget it. ‘Oi, you!’ he called out. It was the first time in ages that someone other than Dad had spoken to me.

Perhaps I should have grabbed an arrow and fired my bow from behind the bathtub. I could have shot him through the heart, I’m sure of it. He was standing at the top of the steps, it would have been easy peasy.

But deep down I didn’t want to. When your own heart is beating so loud you can hear it, you don’t want to aim at anything. Especially not another heart.

So I did something else. I ran.

I picked a safe route along the barn, then dashed in a semicircle to the right towards the place in the forest I had come from. He would never catch me in the thicket and I had a head start. But although I knew that he couldn’t catch me, I felt all mixed up and I didn’t run as fast as I could have.

It felt as if my heart was trying to pound its way out of my chest. And, at the same time, it was as if someone was beating it from the outside. As if someone were trying to bash it back inside me. Or bash me back? Perhaps it was Carl.

I stopped and looked for the man once I was some way towards the forest. He was running towards me and seemed to have chosen the safe route around the pile with the cooker on it. He shouted something, but I couldn’t hear what it was.

All I could think about was that he was making a beeline for me – and that very soon he would reach the silage harvester.

I wanted to run on, but I couldn’t.

The next moment I saw the man being knocked over and yanked violently up into the air, so that he ended up dangling from the harvester.

Head down.

Just like in Sherwood Forest, I thought.

His foot was caught in a noose. The other was kicking wildly out into the air, and his arms were flailing, as if he was trying to touch the ground, which was just out of his reach. The dog lead he had had around his neck fell off and settled underneath him, while he spun on his own axis.

He looked a bit like a fish on a line.

‘Get me down from here!’ he shouted.

I didn’t know what to do.

I waited for a long time. He continued to shout, and I continued to stand there. Stock-still. I could do that.

Eventually he stopped thrashing his arms about and the anger left his voice. He just hung there, rotating slowly like the violin over the wood-burning stove used to do. And the Christmas tree in the ceiling, if you nudged it a bit.