Dan Smith - The Child Thief

‘I thought I saw something, but…’ I stared at the place where the child thief had been lying.

‘You thought you saw something?’ Viktor asked. ‘So why didn’t you come and look?’

‘I thought it was nothing.’

‘There’re no tracks,’ Petro said. ‘Coming or going. Nothing. How did he do it?’

I shook my head and scanned the trees. I studied the branches, searched for any sign.

‘Who is he that he can come and go without leaving tracks?’ Petro asked.

‘When he wants,’ Viktor added. ‘Otherwise he leaves enough tracks for any idiot to follow. Who is this man?’

I looked at my sons, understanding what this meant. The question now was not whether the child thief could kill us whenever he wanted, but why had he not done so already? And how long did he intend to wait before he tried to take another of us?

It didn’t take long to find the trail he had left for us, two sets of prints, one large one small. For the most part it looked as if Dariya was walking well. There were places where she seemed to have fallen, perhaps been dragged, but they were brief.

‘She’s strong,’ I said aloud. ‘To be walking like that. He must be feeding her, keeping her well.’ And even as I said it, I saw a meaning I hadn’t intended. Like the Baba Yaga fattening up children before they were ready to be eaten.

‘I still don’t understand how he left no tracks,’ Viktor said. ‘We’re following tracks right now, aren’t we? So why has he left these but didn’t leave any last night?’

‘He wants us to find these ones,’ Petro said. ‘He wants us to follow. He didn’t want us to follow last night so he covered his tracks.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he had a camp,’ Petro said. ‘Somewhere he was keeping Dariya.’

‘Right,’ I agreed. ‘He wanted us to know he’d been there, but not to follow him. Nothing else makes any sense. I should’ve gone to look. Last night. I should have investigated what I thought I saw. We might be going home with Dariya right now.’

‘If we’d caught him, though,’ Viktor asked, ‘you think he would’ve told us where Dariya was?’

‘Yes.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘There are ways to make men tell you what you want to know.’

Both boys were quiet.

‘He must’ve used the trees,’ I said. ‘I’ve been thinking about how he could have done it and it’s the only way. He must’ve climbed across the low branches and that’s why there were no tracks.’

‘You sure he didn’t fly?’ Viktor asked.

I smiled that his thoughts had followed the same pattern as my own. ‘I’m sure. He’s just a man.’

‘Who comes and goes as he pleases,’ Viktor said. ‘Like he’s playing a game.’

‘He is playing a game,’ I said. ‘That’s why we have to be vigilant if we want to win. I’ve let us down once; I won’t do it again.’

We followed the tracks for another hour or so, veering close to the edge of the woods, passing the houses of another village.

‘That looks like Uroz,’ I said. ‘Which means we’ve come almost fifty kilometres. We’re still going east.’

‘Maybe we can go down there,’ Viktor suggested. ‘Maybe they’ll have something for us to eat.’

‘And maybe they won’t,’ I said. ‘Maybe the place will be under the control of the OGPU. No, we have to keep going while we still have daylight.’ I thought about the screams during the night. ‘We have to keep going.’ And I thought about Dimitri, that first night, wanting to go after Dariya straight away. I wondered if maybe the child thief had been watching us then, ready to shoot the first person to follow him.

‘Papa.’ Petro stopped and grabbed at my coat, disturbing my thoughts, making me look up. ‘Something there. Someone.’

Immediately I crouched, dropping my rifle from my shoulder. Viktor and Petro did the same, but I damned myself for daydreaming, for not being as observant as I needed to be. Not much more than an hour ago I had told myself how vigilant I needed to be, and already I was failing. My instincts and senses were dulled by the cold and the hunger, and by age. I was growing old, and each day was taking a little more of my steel. I should have seen the shape through the trees before either of my sons saw it. It was my duty.

I looked to where Petro was pointing his rifle and lifted my own weapon, pulling the stock against my shoulder, wrapping the sling around my left hand to steady it. We were just past Uroz now, half a kilometre maybe, the houses behind and out of sight. A single figure was standing close to the trees, facing our direction. It was lighter out there, so he was only a silhouette, and to him we would be shrouded in the murk of the forest, but he was stationary and he was staring in our direction.

I put my eye to the scope, bringing the man into focus. It was hard to make out his features. His demeanour was that of an old man, though. He stood hunched, his shoulders slumped, his back bent, his head low.

‘Did he see us?’ I whispered.

‘I don’t know,’ Petro answered. ‘I just saw him there and stopped.’

‘You didn’t see him do anything?’ I asked as the man moved. He shuffled to one side, leaning forward as if looking into the forest.

‘No.’

‘Viktor? What about you?’

‘No.’

I tried to get beyond my anger at not having seen him. I was a soldier, a hunter. I was accustomed to seeing the slightest movement, always watching for signs of life. But tiredness blunted me, and now there was anger to distract me. I couldn’t allow any of those things to prevent me from finding Dariya. I had to be without exhaustion, without emotion; I had to lock those things away. There was only one purpose and I had to let it drive me. If I faltered from that, even for a moment, it could mean a child’s death.

‘Is it him?’ Petro asked.

I continued to watch through the scope. ‘I can’t be sure.’ But I couldn’t help thinking that if it were him, if he had allowed us to come this close to him, then his game was over and we’d all be dead. If he had concealed himself, he could have shot each of us three times over before we could have worked out where he was.

‘Shoot,’ Viktor said. ‘It’s him.’

‘And if it isn’t?’

‘It is , Papa, it’s him. Trying to sneak up on us like he did last night.’

I continued to watch the man peering into the trees as if looking for us. ‘It doesn’t feel right. If it’s him, why is he out there?’

‘Who else would it be?’ Viktor said. ‘We have to shoot him before he shoots us.’

‘No, Viktor, it’s not him.’

‘Isn’t that what you thought last night?’

‘But why would he wait here and not far ahead? Remember how he shot Dimitri.’ I whispered my thoughts, reasoning aloud why this was not our child thief. I wanted Viktor and Petro to see the logic in his thinking, to understand that the man we were following would not present himself in this way. But that wasn’t the effect of mentioning Dimitri’s name. Instead, the word was like a hot knife to Viktor, bringing back memories of blood and death. The sounds Dimitri had made as he struggled with his life out on the steppe.

And while those thoughts cascaded through Viktor’s consciousness, they brought with them a powerful instinct to survive. In his mind he saw Dimitri dying, and he responded in a way that was only human. He knew he did not want it to happen to him. His reaction was all instinct. The instinct to survive.

So when the man took a step forward and raised his hand, Viktor fired his rifle.

The man at the line of the trees stopped mid-movement and his head snapped back. His body relaxed as if a hand had come from the sky, taken hold of his soul and ripped it out of him in one movement. He simply ceased to be. In an instant his life was gone, his body now vacated, and the empty vessel collapsed into the snow.