Stefan Kiesbye - Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone

So when Bernhard was found missing, we were enraged. Pulling on our pants, we stumbled out of the woods. He couldn’t be far. We shouted, roared, we threatened to break every bone in his body. He didn’t show.

It was on that day, after returning to Hemmersmoor and not finding Bernhard at home and not being able to pummel him, that we asked ourselves who exactly was living inside the Black Mill. Bernhard did not come home, not this day nor the next, and by the end of the summer his parents had given up hope. The moor was treacherous and had claimed many lives, and after search parties did not find a single trace of their son, they stopped mentioning his name.

Christian, Holger, and I, though, kept searching. We had followed our fathers across the peat bog, we had looked at every inch of the moor, but no one had bothered to search the Black Mill. We’d kept our secret. Often we went to the mill, looking for a way in. We searched for a broken window, for an unlocked door, yet the windows were shuttered and the doors wouldn’t move an inch. Each time we found fresh grain on the ground, and each time we waited, hoping Bernhard might appear, might come stumbling out of the woods, having been trapped in a fairy-tale slumber. After dark we returned home, our consciences sanded down by our efforts. We had tried.

As the days grew shorter and colder, Christian and Holger lost interest in the mill. Bernhard, Holger said, had left Hemmersmoor of his own accord. “Maybe carnies picked him up,” he mused, “or circus people. Maybe he went to Bremen to live as a beggar or a musician. He did play the flute.”

Christian chuckled at such ideas. “He’s dead. Couldn’t stand watching us with Anke, ran off, stepped into the swamp, and whoosh! In a hundred years the peat cutters will dig him up, as fresh as the day he died.”

I wasn’t convinced by either theory and made the half-hour trip to the mill by myself. What I expected to find in the end I never asked myself, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to answer. Perhaps I wanted to find Bernhard and carry him home like a treasure chest. Maybe the legends of the mill brought me back. Slowly the mill became more important than ice skating with Anke Hoffmann. I still dreamt of our afternoons with the girls, still wished to be near them and crawl under their skirts, but as soon as I saw one of them in the village, the spell was broken. We talked for a minute or two, nodded, and went our own ways.

After Christmas that year, I walked through the fresh snow toward the Black Mill. School was out, Holger was seen every day with a different girl and claimed that Christian was making out with the baker’s daughter. They didn’t have the time to accompany me.

The forest was quiet, and even though the skies were overcast, it seemed bright like our town hall when decorated for a dance. The snow had robbed the woods of all its dark corners. My steps and breath filled my ears.

Where the mill had to be, thin smoke rose over the tops of the trees, and I quickened my pace, gripping my walking stick tightly. Yet before I reached the river, a cat jumped out onto the path in front of me. It was a house cat, but so large was she that I took two steps backward. Her fur was black, her tail as lively as a serpent, and her round face reached up to my belly. She cocked her head as if to say, “You’re here again, Martin. I’ve seen you before.”

I remembered the tales of witches and wizards taking on the shapes of animals and haunting villagers, but I had never seen one before. “Who are you?” I stammered.

The cat kept silent but stepped ahead, her big paws sinking deep into the snow. I had trouble keeping up with her. On reaching the mill, the large wheel lay quiet, bound by ice. Only in the middle of the Droste remained a tiny sliver of open water, like a cut that wouldn’t heal. If I should vanish from this spot, who would come and look for me?

When I took my eyes off the thin column of smoke coming from the chimney, the cat was gone. Her steps ended at the front door. Christian, Holger, and I had tried many times to force it open and had found it solidly locked every time. Now it stood ajar, tempting me. I pushed it fully open with my stick and entered.

The first room was the kitchen, with an oaken table and eight wooden chairs set around it. The pots hanging above the fireplace were old and dented and impeccably clean. A fire groaned and hissed, and after staring at this strange scene for a few long seconds, I felt the need to take off my coat. Then I shut the door to the outside.

Plates stood stacked on the table, as though someone had taken them from a cupboard but had been interrupted before being able to lay them out. Someone had written a message in the dust covering the dark oak table. “Come to me,” it read, and I gripped my stick, which was wet from the snow, with both hands.

“Bernhard?” I asked in a voice barely above a whisper. “Bernhard?”

I followed a narrow hallway. Through an open door I could look into a small bed chamber. Two beds stood there freshly made, it seemed to me. Slowly I walked toward some wooden stairs, turning my head every other second—my breathing was labored and the quiet inside the mill plugged my ears—and yet I couldn’t spy anyone.

Cautiously I climbed the stairs, and much as I tried to step without making a noise, the ruckus was terrible. Everyone inside the mill had to hear me. Soon the people living here would discover me and ask what the hell I was doing. I tried to prepare myself for that confrontation, but who would I meet? Had homeless people made the mill their refuge? Had Christian, Holger, and I in our ignorance never noticed that the old mill was indeed inhabited? Convinced as I was that the building had stood empty all these years, the smell of cabbage soup and the fresh linens destroyed this belief. I was no longer sure what I knew, what I should believe, and in the meantime I believed both things—that the mill had been abandoned and empty and that it was still inhabited.

“Bernhard?” I couldn’t hear my own voice.

“Is that you?” a female voice said behind me.

I turned and froze. I heard a squeaking noise and only half realized that my throat had caused it. At the foot of the stairs stood a young woman in a white fur coat. Her hair was carefully done, colorful stones glittered in its locks, and she wore tiny sandals with incredibly high heels. She looked like the Snow Queen—most beautiful and terrifying.

“Martin?” asked the young woman. She seemed both surprised and disappointed, and while my heart still beat in my mouth, I slowly realized who stood on the wooden floor below me. It was Anna Frick, Alex’s sister. “How did you get in?”

“Where is Bernhard?” I asked stupidly. My fear melted from my bones, but I still gripped my stick violently. At the same time, I understood how young and silly I had to appear in Anna’s eyes.

“Bernhard? What are you doing here? You have to leave immediately.”

I didn’t grasp what she meant. “Why? Is the miller around? And why are you here?”

“The miller?” she said with wide eyes. Then she caught herself and said sharply, “It’s none of your business. Get lost.”

“Where is Bernhard?” I asked again.

“Is he with you? Did you come together?” Then her face suddenly smoothed out and for a moment she was quiet. Then she asked, “Bernhard? The lost boy? Are you still searching for him?”

My face grew hot, and I stuttered, “I… I thought…”

“That I’m hiding him here?” she mocked me. And my relief over having discovered a known face turned again into fear. Maybe she really knew where Bernhard was.

“Do you know where he is? What are you doing here? How did you get here? What kind of coat are you wearing?” Slowly I walked back down the stairs. “Whose cat was that outside?”