Dan Smith - The Child Thief

Here there were tufts of long grass which protruded from the carpet, their stalks heavy with the weight of ice. The line of poplars with their long, naked legs, evenly spaced and regimented as if planted by men. Behind them, a wooded area of stark black trunks and branches. Trees that would only come to life when the snow was gone and the air began to warm. Dark branches harsh against the white of the snow, icicles hanging from them like wild and strange fruit. And the ground was laced with the shadows of those wretched limbs.

‘Dimitri,’ I called, and the voices ahead of me stopped. Only the sound of my boots in the snow. A soft crunch and squeak. ‘Dimitri.’

‘Who’s that?’ came the reply, and I saw the shadows moving. Shapes coming towards me in the darkening day. The blood now seeping from the sun, the final strength of that light shining as if to burn out the very last of its energy before falling from the earth.

I didn’t reply. I didn’t shout my name. I continued on until I could see the men, and Dimitri came forward and, for a moment, we stood like that. Them on one side and me on the other.

‘Have you found her?’ I asked.

‘She’s not here,’ Dimitri said.

‘Any sign?’

‘There are tracks,’ he said. ‘All the way up to here. We followed them into the woods.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

Dimitri looked at me and I held his stare. Our breath reached out, merging around us. The other men stayed behind Dimitri, not speaking, and when I looked over at them, none of them met my eye. They knew their shame.

‘You walked over the tracks,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘You followed Dariya’s tracks up here?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you walked over them. I could see your boot marks all the way up here. All of you.’

Dimitri stared.

‘You ruined her tracks; they’re no good any more.’

‘Why didn’t she tell us?’ Dimitri took a step towards me.

‘What?’

‘Lara. Why didn’t she tell us where Dariya had gone?’

‘You’re trying to blame Lara? Why the hell do you think she didn’t tell you? She was afraid.’

‘Afraid of what?’

‘Of what? I can’t believe you even need to ask after what happened today. She’s afraid of you , Dimitri. Of them .’ I waved a hand at the men behind him. ‘Afraid of what was happening in our village. She was afraid of the same things your own daughter was afraid of; the men and women who were shouting like animals.’

‘ He was the animal. What he did to those children. If that man did—’

‘That man didn’t do anything to those children. They were his own children, Dimitri. His own . That man you murdered did nothing more than serve his country. He fought for us. For you.’ I could feel my anger rising again, my breath coming heavier now as Dimitri tried to shuck the weight of blame from his shoulders. ‘And you strung him up from a tree.’

Dimitri stared. ‘I… she… she should’ve told us.’

‘This is not Lara’s fault. Don’t blame her .’

‘She should’ve told us.’

I struck out with a gloved hand and hit Dimitri hard in the face. My limbs were stiff with cold and heavy with the weight of my coat, but I hit him hard and Dimitri had to step back to stay on his feet. The cold would have numbed Dimitri’s pain, but his nose was bleeding when he came back at me, trying to rush me in the deep snow. I had no time to move away and the farmer struck me, knocking me from my feet, taking us both to the ground.

Dimitri was a big man and he used his full weight, but I put my arms around him and rolled, raising my hands to punch him in the side of the head, over and over again as he struggled. I moved so I was on top of my brother-in-law and I hit him again and again before I felt hands grabbing at my coat and I was yanked back, falling in the snow.

I sat like that, the sun almost gone, the air so cold the snow didn’t even melt beneath me, and I looked across at Dimitri. I watched him push himself up to look back at me, his face bloody and blotched from the weight of my punches, his eyes wild and staring like a horse’s when it’s exhausted from a hard run.

‘Don’t try to blame Lara for this,’ I said to him. ‘Dariya ran away because she saw you killing a man.’

‘She didn’t see anything.’ Spittle came from Dimitri’s lips as he spoke. The hate was thick in his words.

‘She saw you take him and string him up and she came up here to get away from it,’ I said, getting to my feet and standing over Dimitri. ‘While you were trying to save us from a killer, you were failing to protect your own child.’

Dimitri looked away.

‘And if you ever say it again,’ I told him. ‘If I ever hear you blame my daughter for this, I’ll kill you. I swear to God, I’ll bring you out here, right here , to this place, and I’ll kill you.’

The other men said nothing. They stood in the failing light, among the dark trunks of the naked trees, with their breath circling their heads like wraiths, and they said nothing. I looked at each of them and let them see what was in my eyes; let them see that if any of them repeated Dimitri’s thoughts, I would take the words as an insult.

One of the men nodded, his face barely visible beneath his fur hat and his thick beard, but I saw that it was Leonid. The respected war veteran who had been in the cemetery earlier that day. One of the men Dimitri had brought with him. He had seen it my way; he had tried to persuade Dimitri to keep what we’d seen to himself, but later he had been in the crowd.

I had always thought Leonid Andreyevich to be strong – a man who knew his own mind – but today he had proved himself fickle and indecisive, following the majority, afraid to step forward from the line. He’d listened to Josif, a wiser and stronger man than he would ever be, but faced with the strength of numbers he’d merged with the majority, following them like a sheep that follows its flock to the place of slaughter.

He opened his mouth as if to speak.

‘You have something to say, Leonid Andreyevich?’

He held up his hands to my challenge, a defensive, calming gesture.

‘There are tracks,’ Stanislav offered, trying to ease the moment. He was a young man, just a few years older than my own sons.

‘What kind of tracks?’ I asked, still staring at Leonid.

‘They could be the girl’s.’

‘Show me.’ I was already thinking it would be a miracle if any tracks had survived all the activity up here. When the men had come up the slope, they had walked in Dariya’s prints, and now all that was left was a deep trough from my house to this point. It looked as if a small army had marched there. And where we were standing, the ground was a mess of crushed snow from our fight. We had destroyed what might be the quickest means of finding Dariya.

Stanislav turned and led me further among the slender trunks of the trees. They were widely spaced, but they were confusing; the many bare trunks against the white snow in the failing light of the day made it hard to focus on anything in particular. The last of the sunlight was showing, a glimmer that reached from the horizon and felt its way among the trees. A mesmerising babble of colour and image that could easily confuse a man lost in this place. Above, visible through the gnarled and empty tree branches, the spectral image of the waxing moon as it drew its strength from the sun, waiting for the short day to come to an end.

The other men began to follow, but I turned and held out a hand. ‘The rest of you stay here. You’ve disturbed enough.’

Leonid spoke up. ‘What makes you think—’

‘Leonid.’ I stopped him. ‘I saw you there too. Did you bring the rope? Or maybe you tied it off so he swung like that from the tree.’