Robert Dinsdale - Gingerbread

‘Were the soldiers very terrible, papa?’

Well, sometimes they were terrible, and sometimes they were kind. Mostly they were just soldiers, and took their delights as soldiers sometimes will. But that little boy’s papa made friends with those soldiers and, in that way, stood guard over his little boy for two whole years.

Well, one day, things changed, as things often will. Because the King in the West was bitter that the Winter King had brought his soldiers to town, and so the armies of the King in the West marched and laid siege. And the King in the West had soldiers reared on hate, and the Winter King’s soldiers were scared, and turned tail and ran. The new soldiers wore brown shirts and spoke a language more terrible yet, and they came in their thousands with murder on their minds.

‘Murder, papa?’

Yes , says Grandfather, and for a moment his voice loses its sing-song lilt, and it might be that he is not even telling a story at all. That little boy saw it for himself. For the King in the West had made a plan that certain mamas and papas and boys and girls must wear golden stars, and then the soldiers would know whom they should kill. Those mamas and papas and boys and girls were sent to live in a different part of the town. For a little while they were kept there. They had to make uniforms and cobble boots, and when they didn’t work hard enough, a soldier would come and say: the King in the West has called your name! Now you won’t know night from day! And that person would be taken away, and then that person might never be seen again.

Well, some of the mamas and papas and boys and girls worked harder and harder, hoping the soldiers might let them survive. But some of the mamas and papas thought: the soldiers are wicked, and their King is more wicked still. We must run away, or else be ruined and turned into dust. And one papa said: there are woods beyond town, and the woods are wide and the woods are wild and the woods are the world forever and ever. And there we shall be safe, because in the woods there is no King in the West, nor even a Winter King, and in the woods they will not find us.

‘It’s like the story of Baba Yaga, isn’t it, papa?’

‘How, boy?’

‘If you’re kind to the woods, the woods are kind to you.’

Grandfather nods.

Well, at night, our little boy would look out of his bedroom window. There, he could see the first line of the pines and know that things were moving out there, in a world he could never pass into. Because only little boys made to wear the yellow stars could go and live wild in the forest …

Well, that boy was watching one night, when out of the town there hurried a girl. She was older than the boy, but not yet as old as the boy’s mama, and for many months she had been wearing a yellow star. Now, she went to the forest to live wild. But she had lost her way, and that night rapped one, two, three times at the boy’s front door.

Please, please, let me in, she cried.

Do the soldiers chase you? came the reply.

No, for I go to make my home with the runaways in the wild, and live my life under aspen and birch.

Well, the boy’s mama and papa let the girl with the yellow star in. The boy watched them in secret from the top of the stairs. And what he saw was not one girl but two, for the girl had a baby swollen in her belly and ready to come out. You must stay, said the boy’s mama, and have your babe in these four walls. But no, said the girl, for the soldiers will find me and make my baby wear a star.

So she was fed and warmed and went on her way, deep into the pines.

Well, the runaways found her, cold and alone. They took her to their hideaways and fed her their kapusta , and she slept a day and a night in a burrow. And, when she woke, the men were angry at her, for they had not known she was carrying a child. Now they saw her, with swollen belly ready to burst, and told her: you cannot stay. A crying baby in the forest is worse than a fire. A baby might tell the soldiers where we are camped and bring ruin to us all.

And so, that girl made a terrible decision. Either she would roam the wilds alone, risking capture, or she would bear the baby and give it up, find a family who would raise it as their own and never breathe a word that it should wear a yellow star and be snatched by the King in the West.

When the baby was born, it was a beautiful girl, with black hair thicker than any baby the wild men had ever seen. She was, they said, a true baby of the forests, with fur to ward off the winter, and if she was theirs to name they would call her Vered, for she was certain to blossom a wild rose.

But the baby was not theirs to name, and nor would she be her mother’s. Now the baby was taken to the edge of the forest, to that same house whose mama and papa had helped the girl on her way. And the mama in that house took hold of the baby and promised she would be safe forever and all time.

I know a place, said the mama, where she will be safe, and me and my boy will take her there and watch over her from afar, and know that the soldiers will never find her.

So the boy and his mama took a small road along the forest’s edge, to where a little house nestled at the bottom of a dell. At the house lived a trapper and his wife. Once, they had had children of their own, but those children had perished young, and for many years now the rooms had not heard the sound of tiny feet, nor the cries of squabbling and bruised knees. The mama and her boy carried the baby to the step and laid her down, without a mother or a father or even a name to call her own. And they knocked on the door and hurried back, to watch with the trees.

The door opened. Two faces appeared. They looked down, and saw that they could be a mama and a papa again, and the baby started to cry. And the house was happy after that. The house had a little girl to run in its rooms and play in its halls. The mama had a daughter to dote on, the papa had a princess to give purpose to his days. And if, out trapping in the forest, he ever caught sight of ghosts flitting from tree to tree, if he ever heard the sharp cracks of gunfire as the runaways learnt to defend themselves against the soldiers sent in to ferret them out, well, he gave his silent promise that the girl would be loved and looked after and grow up in a world safe from soldiers and yellow stars.

And so ends the story of the babe in the woods.

‘Is it true?’ marvels the boy.

Oh , says Grandfather. I know it is true, for one was there who told me of it.

Outside, it is paling to light. Grandfather’s story has lasted all through the darkest hours. The fire is low, and Grandfather stands, meaning to bring new kindling. For a moment, the boy watches him leave. His head is swirling with pictures of the Winter King, of brown-shirted soldiers, of wild men living out in the woods, things so magical that, even through their horror, he wishes they were true.

Grandfather’s jackboots click as he disappears into the kitchen and, leaving the Russian horse behind, the boy scrambles to hurry after him. When he gets there, the door is propped open and Grandfather is treading softly across the night’s freshest fall. He hesitates at mama’s tree, and seems to gaze up at the branches, at the canopy bound in ice.

The boy creeps to his side. The old man is tired, of that there is no doubt, but there is another look in his eyes now, something more mysterious than simple fear of the forest. To the boy it looks something like … temptation.

‘Are we going to go back to the tenement, papa?’

Grandfather crouches, tracing his naked fingers along the roots in which mama lies. ‘Not yet, boy. I think …’