Dan Smith - The Child Thief

‘Dariya!’ With renewed hope, I called her name again and again as I followed her trail away from the cabin, but there was no reply. I stayed with the tracks for a few minutes until I reached the crest of the rise and looked down the other side towards the forest, but I saw no sign of her other than the trail, which continued away into the distance.

I tried to make sense of what I’d seen and what must have happened. The child thief was dead, and the only trail leading away from the hut looked as if it belonged to Dariya. There was only one conclusion to make. Whatever condition she was in, Dariya was still alive and I needed to follow her, but I had to let the others know I was safe, so I turned and hurried back to the hut.

Once inside, I went into the main room and something caught my eye close to where the half-barrels were stacked and the chain hung from the ceiling. Here, another blanket lay beside the fireplace, thrust into the shadows, and I went over, bending to pick it up, lifting it and shaking it. Something fell from among its folds, a metallic sound as it hit the floor. I crouched to inspect the floor, putting out a hand to run it over the boards. As I groped for whatever had fallen, I saw that a thin rope was tied around the last link in the heavy chain. The knot which held it in place was good and tight, but the other end was frayed. And when my grasping fingers found what had fallen from the blanket, I thought I understood what had happened. I looked at the nail for a moment, then put it in my pocket and left the hut.

I stood at the front of the cabin and waved my arms until one of my sons emerged from the trees, then I went to the place where I had broken the fence and fallen. I collected my rifle and satchel, and returned to the front door, seeing three figures making their way up towards me.

Inside, I took the cartridges from the table and scooped them into my satchel. I packed the waxed paper parcel and the bottle, and I put the child thief’s rifle on the table along with his pack and the other things, sure that my sons would have the sense to collect them. Coming straight up the hillside they would reach the cabin within fifteen minutes but I didn’t want to take any longer than I had to. The tracks leading away from the back of the cabin were Dariya’s, I had no doubt about that, and I estimated they’d been there for only a short while. The snow had stopped now, but for some time it had been heavy and would have covered these tracks if they had been made much earlier. Dariya was out there somewhere, close, and she was alone now. I needed to find her as quickly as possible, and I would now be able to move without the fear of her kidnapper lying hidden, with his rifle scope trained on my heart.

Leaving the cabin from the back door, I followed the single line of prints, feeling some comfort that I was no longer tracking the familiar large tread with the piece missing from the tip of the right toe; that the only footprints ahead were those of a young girl. But now she was alone, and alone she wouldn’t last long exposed to the Ukrainian winter.

It was a strange contradiction that the man who had taken her had kept her alive, made her dependent upon him, and that now she was free of him, she was at equal risk. Dariya wouldn’t have been able to survive for as long as she had in the wilderness if it hadn’t been for the child thief keeping her safe. But his aim had not been her long-term survival.

Halfway down the hill, I turned to look back at the cabin. The sun was lying across the hill, a hazy orange disc diffused by low dark clouds, its outer rim just visible over the roof of the hut. I raised a hand to shield my eyes, hoping to see a figure standing close to the crest of the hill, but there was no one there. The others hadn’t reached the cabin yet, but they’d be there soon and they would catch me up. They were young and strong; they’d keep up a quicker pace than me, and I calculated they’d be with me in half an hour or so, as long as they didn’t take too long in the hut. They would find the body and try to piece together what had happened, just as I had, but they would follow soon.

As I walked, I took off my glove and put a hand in my pocket to take out the object I’d found on the cabin floor close to the chain and the rope. I held it out on my palm: a single nail, rusted and old, as long as my index finger. The point was still keen but it was bent at the top as if it had been hammered in at an awkward angle. The flat area at the head was bloody and I was certain the blood was Dariya’s.

I pieced together what I thought had happened inside the cabin. The child thief had restrained Dariya while he waited for me and my sons to appear at the base of the hill, where he planned to shoot and kill at least one of us – I suspected he planned to kill only one, as he had done when he murdered Dimitri, because I believed that for him the thrill was in the chase and in the kill. If he killed us all at once, he’d have nothing but a child, and she was only part of his game.

The child thief knew he had to restrain her well, because she had tried to escape once before – I’d seen evidence of it in their tracks – but he’d made a mistake. Whether it was because he was tired or overconfident, I couldn’t know, but he had underestimated Dariya. Sitting on the cold floor of the cabin, she had found something to pinch in her fingertips. The blood on the head of the nail made me think Dariya had prised it out of the old wood with her fingernails while the child thief looked out the window. And when she had loosened it, she pulled it from the wood and used it to fray the rope which secured her.

Dariya must have been terrified, quietly working at the rope while the man waited, just a few feet away with his back to her. I could almost picture him hearing a noise, turning to look at her, seeing her stare back with hatred in her eyes, hiding the nail from view. But she had been more patient than I could believe. And even when she had freed herself from the rope, she had waited longer still, knowing he would sleep. She had been with him long enough to know he needed to close his eyes, at least for a few minutes. And then she had struck.

I saw Dariya in the semi-darkness of the room, crouching behind the table, creeping closer, reaching up and taking the handle of the knife, slipping the blade from its sheath. I saw her approaching the sleeping man, her small foot putting pressure on a floorboard which creaked, the man’s eyes opening in surprise, the knife coming forward with all the strength a small girl could muster. And then the point pierced the soft flesh in the hollow of his throat, slicing through skin and meat, the keen point grating against the vertebrae in his neck, his breath leaving him. I imagined the child thief’s surprise at seeing her standing over him, pushing the knife deeper, forcing it into him until only the handle was visible. He would have reached up to grab it, to pull it out, but he was already dying, his life bleeding away, soaking into his coat, slipping away to pool around him on the floor, seep between the boards.

Then she had fled that place. A child who had murdered the man upon whom she had become dependent. And if that was really what had happened, I also had to believe that Dariya was all right – strong enough, at least, to kill a man in his sleep.

Deep in thought, I followed Dariya’s tracks to the forest almost without thinking, but now I glanced back to see the others at the crest of the rise, and nodded to myself before slipping among the trees.

The pocket of forest was narrow and dense and the snow was shallow. I crossed it quickly, reaching the far side, breaking back out into the open. Beyond, the land was flat, and I could see a road curving round from the right. It was the same road Aleksandra and the old man had been travelling, and I was eager to keep away from it, but Dariya hadn’t been so cautious. Her tracks led right to it and veered left to follow it.