Dan Smith - The Child Thief

Coming to a place where the hedge was thinner, I turned sideways, pushing through the branches, knowing this was where my enemy would have passed through. His clothes would have touched these branches. His hands.

Within the woods on the other side of the field I spotted a number of burrows, cleared and left open, suggesting they were still inhabited. There were small prints in the snow, droppings on the surface, and I guessed my approach had disturbed the rabbits back to their holes. These signs were visible in the natural light, but once I was deeper among the beech and oak and hornbeam, everything became more obscure, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to track this man during the night. There was some light here, but not enough. I could see disturbances on the ground, the spot where the man had waited to take his first shot, and I found the marks where he’d crawled back to his place by the tree, unsettling the dusting of delicate light green moss on the bark, but the fresh snow had made an impact on the tracks. The marks were smooth, the footprints barely discernible. Here they were almost impossible to spot; even further into the woods and they would be invisible.

I cursed my fortune and tried to find some reassurance in my inability to track Dariya at night. It meant at least that yesterday’s decision had been the right one. I also consoled myself with the suspicion that this man wanted to be followed and would therefore ensure it was possible to track him. It was the only thing that made any sense and, as twisted as it seemed, it felt as if this was all part of a macabre game. He had taken Dariya as bait and he was leaving a trail that was easy to follow. He seemed to be doing everything he could to invite me to go after him so, resigned to waiting until dawn, I decided to make camp.

I moved away from the place where I had found the tracks and set about building a quick shelter for the night. It was something I had learned as a soldier, mostly through trial and error rather than training, and had put into practice many times. I had shared my observations with comrades, and they had shared theirs with me, until I had found the best way to provide shelter under many different circumstances. And I had practised many times, both at war and later while hunting to feed my family.

I used the trenching tool to pull together as much snow as I could, piling it into a mound along the length of a fallen tree. I packed it hard and used the small shovel to hollow it out. As I worked, I imagined the child thief doing the same. The shelter he had made for himself and Dariya had been efficient and uncomplicated, and it reinforced my belief that the man I was hunting had also been a soldier.

When I was finished, I built a low windbreak close to the entrance of the shelter, leaving me enough room to shuffle inside. It took me no longer than an hour to build, but I was exhausted when it was finally ready. It was small, compact, and would keep me warm during the night. I thought I might even be able to sleep for a few hours, but it was unlikely, knowing what was out there.

Before settling, I took a couple of wire snares and returned to the place where I’d seen the burrows. I collected some twigs and set the snares close to the entrances of two of them, hiding the base of each noose in the snow. The air was quiet, almost no wind, and there was a strong sense of being alone in the world, and when my mind wandered from the task an unnerving sensation crept in. As if something was out there, in the birch scrub and the darkness – something that was part of the forest – and I couldn’t help recall Dariya’s fears of the Baba Yaga.

Satisfied I’d set the traps in the best places, I took a tree branch and swept it across the surface of the snow as I backed away. It wasn’t a perfect way to hide my presence, but it was the best I could do. In the morning it would be obvious where I had swept the snow, but for now, in the near dark, it was good enough. If the man I was hunting came this way, he would have to look very closely to see what I had done.

Back at the shelter I placed a canvas sheet on the floor for insulation, and climbed in feet first, keeping my head close to the semicircular entrance. I turned onto my back, so I could see the roof of the cave, not even an arm’s length from my face, or so I could see the treetops if I shifted my gaze. I stared at the blank white surface above me and wondered about the man who had taken Dariya. I imagined him lying in a similar shelter. Perhaps Dariya was beside him, shivering and frightened, praying for her papa to come looking for her. And it occurred to me that maybe Dariya wasn’t even with him any more. Maybe she was already dead. And I might have believed it if not for the tracks in the snow. The small footprints alongside the larger ones.

Removing my right glove, I put my hand in my coat pocket and drew out the revolver. I lifted it to my chest and gripped the handle tight, closing my eyes and praying that Dariya was still alive.

Sleep didn’t settle itself over me. It circled me, moving in and away again, always threatening to take me but never doing so. I dozed in and out, warm enough in my shelter, always aware of the revolver in my hand, the cold air blowing against my face. There were vague snatches of dreams, visions of Lara and Dariya, of the children on the sled, of the man hanging from the tree, of Dimitri lying face down in the snow. These images taunted me, like the muddled dreams of a drunkard, but I persevered, determined to rest – trying to will myself to sleep, to not be afraid of the man who was out there in the forest with his rifle and his keen eye.

But somewhere in the darkness, somewhere in the plague of images that riddled my thoughts like an incurable disease, a sound broke through. A single terrifying sound. From far away the unmistakable sound of a scream.

Immediately my eyes were open and I was turning onto my stomach, bringing the revolver out in front of me, pointing into the night. I held my breath without thinking, making not a sound as I watched the night. My eyes were wide, my head turning, looking for anything.

I thought of Lara’s concern once more, the Baba Yaga, and I remembered the stories from my childhood. How real they had felt then, as a young boy. The thought of the witch in the forest, waiting to bring her victims to her pot. And now they seemed real again. During the hours of daylight nothing was more frightening than the threat of those who would come to break my family apart, but now, at night, roused from the broken dreams, something unearthly seemed more possible.

I listened to my heart beating and I felt both absurd and afraid. I had seen things not meant for human eyes. I had done things no man should ever do to another. I had killed and killed and killed, all in the name of one cause or another. I had seen men on the battlefield with their bodies turned inside out. I had seen artillery vaporise flesh and bone, and I had heard battle-hardened men sob for their mothers with their last breaths. But that scream in the night was unlike anything I had ever heard before. A single awful sound that could only have come from a child. And I had to remind myself who I was before I could force myself to crawl forward, to leave my small space of safety and emerge into the wood.

Once outside, I crouched by the low windbreak. I raised the revolver and searched the darkness once again.

The second scream made me jump. Almost an exact repeat of the first, like an echo, but a third followed it within a few seconds, this one longer. I tried to gauge the direction from which it had come, but it was difficult to be sure. There was almost no wind now and sound carried well over the flat ground. It might have been as close as a few hundred metres, but it might have been much further.