Scott Mariani - The Cross

An hour passed, then two, before his sharp sense of smell detected a new scent. A human scent. Woodsmoke.

From the top of a snow-covered rise he saw the speckle of lights through the trees in the distance. Even in darkness, he could make out the fine details of the little houses, and the old wooden church steeple that jutted above the forest.

He knew this place. It was the village he’d passed through on his way to Valcanul.

Joel hesitated for a long moment, unsure what to do. He could easily skirt around the edge of the village unnoticed — but he couldn’t travel far, not in the state he was in. He badly needed to clean himself up and get hold of some new clothes. Someone would surely help him out. He still had some money left in his pocket — maybe enough for a cheap vehicle of some kind, to help him get back home.

He made his decision. The forest thinned out as he approached the village outskirts and the first of the old wooden houses. Snowflakes spiralled gently down in the soft glow from their windows. Their white roofs glimmered in the moonlight. The sides of the main street were piled with gritty slush where a snow-plough had cleared the way through. Joel’s boots crunched over the icy ruts made by its tracks. He’d walked up this street before, only the day before — for him, a lifetime ago. The same hush of serenity hung over the place. It was just as he remembered it, like a forgotten throwback to a bygone era. Some things never changed.

While other things had changed forever.

Joel began to feel increasingly self-conscious as he made his way up the narrow, winding street. The feeling suddenly struck him that he did not belong here, any more than the wild wolves from the forest. His step faltered. He felt himself gripped by the overwhelming desire to turn and run, disappear back into the safety of the trees before anyone saw him.

It was in that moment of panicky indecision that Joel heard the sound from one of the nearby houses. The scrape of a latch, the creak of hinges. He turned to see a woman leaning out of a downstairs window and peering uncertainly through the darkness at him. She was in her fifties, with shoulder-length black hair showing strands of white, a patchwork shawl wrapped around her.

Joel realised he knew her. She was the teacher he’d met on his outward journey. The woman who’d tried so hard to dissuade him from travelling onwards to Valcanul, the place the villagers feared and hated so deeply that they wouldn’t speak its name or even willingly acknowledge its existence. ‘Then you will not come back,’ she’d said when he’d insisted on finding the place. She’d been more right than she knew, he thought.

The frown on the woman’s face melted into an expression of surprise and relief as she realised it was really him. ‘You,’ she called out in English. ‘You have come back.’

Joel forced his face into a weak grin. He crossed the narrow street and stepped into the light from the window. ‘It’s me, all right,’ he said without conviction.

The woman stared at his tattered, filthy clothes. On his outward journey, he’d been carrying a rucksack and a photographer’s equipment case. Now he was empty-handed. The woman said, ‘What happened to you?’

The wheels spun fast in Joel’s brain. ‘I never made it as far as Valcanul,’ he lied. ‘I got lost in the woods. Some hunters must have thought I was a deer or something.’ He poked a couple of fingers through the holes in his clothes and shrugged. ‘But I’m okay. They missed me.’

‘You have blood on your clothes.’

‘Oh, that? I know. It’s not mine. I … er … I slipped and fell on a deer the hunters had killed.’ He winced inwardly at how lame it sounded.

The woman clicked her tongue and shook her head. She shut the window and disappeared inside the house. Seconds later, the door opened and the woman waved at him to come inside. ‘I have clothes to give you,’ she said. ‘And you must be cold. You want eat, no? Come.’

Joel hesitated.

‘Come, come,’ she insisted.

The house was small and warm and cosy, and smelled of freshly-cut firewood and chicory coffee. The wooden walls gleamed with centuries of varnish, the stone floors were covered in heavily-worked rugs. The woman smiled. ‘We were not introduced before. My name is Cosmina.’

‘It’s good to meet you again, Cosmina. I’m Joel. Listen, I don’t want to be any trouble …’

‘No trouble,’ she said. ‘My son leave home last year. To study business in Bucharest, yes? He leave behind some of his things. You are the same size. No trouble.’

Joel reached into his pocket and brought out a handful of lei banknotes. Cosmina frowned at the money, then waved it away.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll be on my way.’

‘Later. First you eat. Then we get clothes. Then you stay here and wait for the autobuz in the morning. Yes?’

‘That’s really not …’ he began, then decided there was no use in arguing. A wave of heat slapped him in the face as she fussed him into a small kitchen at the top of the hall. Next to an antique cast-iron cooking range, a woodburner crackled, giving off a faint smell of smoke. A cat that had been curled up in a basket near the fire arched its back at the sight of Joel, spat ferociously and then scuttled into hiding under a tall oak dresser.

Cosmina seemed not to notice as she sat Joel down in a wooden chair at the kitchen table. As if nothing could please her more, she battered about for a few moments fetching down an earthenware plate the size of a wagon wheel from the dresser, some cutlery and a huge stone pitcher from a cupboard. Using an oven glove, she slid a large iron pot onto the hotplate of the range to warm up. It smelled like some kind of meat stew.

The kitchen door suddenly burst open and an old man walked in. Joel remembered him, too. Cosmina’s father. He was about eighty, whiplash-thin and bent, with a mane of pure white hair and a face like saddle leather. Snow clung to his boots. In one wiry hand he clutched a walking stick; under the other arm he had a stack of freshly-cut logs that he dumped with a loud clang in a metal bin by the woodburner. There was a big bone-handled Bowie knife in a sheath on his belt. He looked even more of a hard, mean old bastard than the rangy hunting dog that trotted into the room behind him.

Cosmina stared disapprovingly at the dog and rattled off a stream of Romanian to the old man as she stirred the bubbling stew. The old man pulled up a chair opposite Joel and said nothing. His eyes were deep-set, wrinkled and inscrutable, taking in every detail of Joel’s appearance.

‘I tell my father you become lost in forest,’ Cosmina said, filling Joel’s pitcher from a jug of what looked like home-brewed dark beer.

‘That’s right,’ Joel replied, smiling at the old man. The old man didn’t smile back. Staring fixedly at Joel from beside the table, the hunting dog bared its fangs and let out a long, menacing growl. Joel glanced down at it. Its tail curled between its legs and it retreated behind its master’s chair. The old man’s stare was just as fixed on Joel as his dog’s.

‘Please excuse Tascha,’ Cosmina said, looking perplexed. ‘She does not normally act this way with people.’

‘Animals don’t like me very much,’ Joel said, as Cosmina ladled a mound of stew into Joel’s plate and set it down in front of him. She stepped back and watched him expectantly. ‘You eat now.’

‘This looks lovely,’ Joel muttered. He picked up his fork and spoon. His objective senses told him that the stew smelled delicious. He’d lost count of how long ago solid food had last passed his lips. Normally his mouth would have been watering so badly that wild horses couldn’t have stopped him diving in and stuffing himself.