Dan Smith - The Child Thief

Two metres above the branch I was standing on, the tree split into three separate trunks, each with its own tangle of smaller branches, and the place where it split would give me the perfect place to conceal myself. My dark clothing would be well camouflaged against the bark and I would have a good view of the surrounding area. If the child thief came within a few metres of the place where Petro lay, I would see him.

I checked the rifle was secure on my shoulder and began to climb.

The sky was clouded grey, glimpsed through the branches above, and the sun was diffused behind it, giving away nothing, but I didn’t spend long looking up; my eyes were constantly moving, scanning the trees, expecting the slightest change in the forest; my ears tuned to the weakest sound, ignoring the faint wind that moved through the naked, tangled branches with the sound of rushing water. The occasional disturbance as a broken twig fell to the ground, bustling through the branches.

Somewhere to the right, the dark shapes of nests filled the trees, but they were silent except for the call of a single crow, either unaware of my presence or so used to me now that it bore no fear.

I sniffed quietly behind my scarf, breath moist against the wool preventing it from rolling out into the cold air and betraying me. I had barely moved since settling. Both legs were drawn close to my chest so I was in a semi-foetal position, leaning back against the thickest trunk, the rifle resting between the V-shape of the other two. If I turned my head, I could almost see all around, and that was the only movement I allowed myself. My legs were stiff with cramp, my back was aching from the base of my spine and the muscles were frozen stiff in my shoulders, but I didn’t need any of those parts of my body. All I needed was one good eye, something to steady the rifle and a finger with which to pull the trigger. And when I glanced at my hands, I saw they no longer shook.

But as time wore on and the sky greyed further, the temperature began to drop and I felt an easy numbness trying to overcome me. There was a heaviness in my eyelids and weariness lowered itself over me. I shook my head to stay awake, raised my eyebrows and stared so hard the cold air hurt my eyes and made them stream with cleansing tears. But none of those things made any difference now. My body and my mind needed rest. They needed to stop and they were threatening to do it right now.

My aches dulled to numbness. My thoughts began to empty. My muscles felt heavy. The crow’s incessant call faded to something barely noticed.

And then it stopped. The bird became silent. And in that silence I heard a single footfall in the snow.

The stillness that followed that first single footstep stretched for a long time. The child thief was close. I could feel him. As if he were something more than human. As if he were just breath that moved through the trees, a feral part of the forest that would always be there.

I pressed back against the trunk of the tree as if I might melt into it to find the perfect camouflage. My steady finger poised over the trigger of the rifle.

And then another footstep. Tentative. Slow. The gentle crush of snow beneath a boot. The crow called once more, a disturbed and irritable cry as it jumped from its perch, flitting out across the forest, a jitter of movement in my peripheral vision. I turned my head. Another footfall.

The grey sky was darkening further, an ethereal gloom descending over the forest, the faint shadows falling long across the forest floor. A breeze stirred the branches, wrapped itself around me before moving on, taking my warmth. And then there was movement. Not the natural movement of the shadows touched by the wind, but the lengthening and shortening of a shadow. The movement of a human being coming into my line of sight, just a few metres away.

The child thief, just below me, had skirted the lake as I had expected. He had made his way to this side, stalking deeper into the forest so he could come at me from behind the spot where we had been. He’d tried to outflank me, expecting me to be waiting for him, rifle trained on the open expanse of the lake.

I wanted to see his face. I wanted to know the face of the man who would steal a child and make a game of it, but the child thief’s body was turned away from me, only the back and side of his head were visible. A large hat of good fur was pulled low on his brow, but the flaps remained unrolled so his hearing would be unimpaired. His coat was long and dark.

I swivelled my rifle on its resting place so it was pointing in the child thief’s direction, and I leaned forward to sight through the scope. Closing my left eye, I watched the magnified form moving away, towards the spot where Petro lay. I willed him to turn around. I wanted to see his eyes when I took the shot. But the child thief continued forward.

I fixed the cross hairs on the back of his head.

My heart quickened, but I concentrated to control it. I inhaled through my nose, halting to keep the breath in my lungs so my whole body was still.

I tracked his movement with a gentle turn of the rifle.

I tightened my finger on the trigger and began to squeeze, waiting for the moment between heartbeats when my body would be most still.

The rifle kicked back against my shoulder and the child thief’s head jerked forward as the bullet pierced his skull and exited somewhere through his face, taking with it bone and tissue, spraying it across the snow in front of him. He dropped to his knees, his body falling forward so he went down face first with his hands by his side.

The sound of the gunshot evaporated leaving only a ringing in my ears. The smoke clung around my head, the smell of it strong in my nose, and then it too vanished and became nothing.

Immediately I drew back the bolt of the rifle, ejecting the cartridge. I drove another into place without pointing the barrel away from where the body lay. I wouldn’t take any chances with this man. I knew he was human, just a man, but Dariya’s talk of the Baba Yaga had stirred something primal in me.

I let my lungs empty in a rush and took in another great breath, my body hungry for the oxygen. And then I stopped. Something wasn’t right.

I had missed something important.

I stared at the body below, the stain of blood sprayed out in a fan, and tried to see what was missing.

And then I realised. There was no weapon.

The man I had shot was not armed.

I sat up, drawing the rifle away from the place where I’d supported it, and began to turn, knowing I’d been tricked.

The second shot that broke the peace of the forest was fired by the child thief. I saw him too late, propped against the trunk of a tree, resting the barrel of his weapon in the nook of a branch. He fired before I had time to sight on him, and my natural reaction was to flinch, to make myself small.

The bullet struck the bark beside me, showering it into tiny pieces, spitting into my eyes, stinging the exposed skin of my face. I turned my head in a sudden movement, shifting my body weight, one hand rising for protection. Beneath me, my feet slipped on the damp bark and I toppled backwards from the tree, a moment in space before I thumped to the ground, pain shooting along my spine. My own rifle, once the child thief’s, slipped, caught on a branch, then broke through and fell towards me, the butt plate of the stock smashing into my cheekbone in the place that Lermentov had struck me with the altar cross.

I felt a wave of nausea and a rolling blackness that wanted to take me into its arms, but I opened my mouth and shouted away the pain. I yelled at the forest and let the child thief hear my rage. I was not going to be taken. Nothing was going to take me. Nothing was going to stop me.