They gather, as if at some museum of the arcane, marvelling at such simple things as a fire, a ribcage picked bare, a house made from sticks.
At last Navitski says, ‘Which way did he go?’
The boy searches for his papa’s trail. It criss-crosses this expanse in deeper degrees. In some places, it has been camouflaged by falling snow; in others, it is still as severe as it was the day it was carved.
It takes some moments before he realizes: they’re looking straight at it, but they can’t see. All they see is the snow dark. They don’t see the marks where the axe has bitten the trees. They don’t see the crunch underfoot, or the snaking roots. They don’t know what to look for at all.
His eyes light on a trail deeper than the rest. He leads them under the branches, away from biting snow. He sees the disruption in the frost where his papa approached the clearing. His gait seems stranger than usual, heavier and more crooked; it must be Elenya, still hanging over his back. He crouches, crawls along. Soon the trench is plain to see.
The boy surges ahead, finally kicking off the slippers they forced on him in the schoolhouse. With naked feet, he is freer; he bounces from roots, over storm-fallen boughs. With Navitski’s breathing fading behind him, he scrambles up an escarpment where the trees grow more sparsely and there are yet gaps in the canopy for snow to stream through. In the time they have been in the forest, the fist of night has closed completely. It is the time for cookfires and shelter – but only for men like Navitski, like Elenya’s father gasping his way up the hill behind. The boy needs nothing, not while there is still warmth in his veins. If that makes him a wild thing, if it makes him a little wolf-boy, he does not care. He flies.
In the gaps between the trees, his papa’s trail is harder. Here, he stopped. Here, he set down Elenya. Here, he lifted her again. The boy glides past and, slowly, begins to recognize the faces in the branches, the particular stoops of trunks. He kicks through a shallow bank of white, dead bracken beneath his toes and stutters to a halt.
He has come this way before.
He knows, now, where his papa is heading. First, there will be the marshes, treacherous beneath skeleton layers of ice; then, the aspens; then, strange mounds, relics from the long ago, with their underworlds beneath. Beyond that: the wide, wild woods, forever and ever, that place in which history and story are the very same thing, that other wild into which the Old Man of the Forest turned wolf and disappeared.
Navitski and Elenya’s father appear on his shoulder. Behind them, two policemen labour their way up the hill.
‘Is he near?’ gasps Navitski.
The boy stares into the snow dark, to find his papa’s trench disappearing again under the trees. Where the snow can light on it, its edges erode. By morning, it will be gone. He takes a step after it, lets them follow. Under the trees, the trail is more defined. It climbs over a ridge, forging a path where the wraithlike woods give way to pines.
For a moment, the boy sets off towards those pines. Their scent is strong. Then he crouches, as if fingering a trail – and, when he gets back to his feet, he shuffles so that the pines are in the corner of his vision. Now he stares into leafless trees, sculpted in white.
‘He went this way,’ he says, indicating a way down, into the skeletal valleys below.
Elenya’s father takes a great stride. ‘Here?’
‘He isn’t far,’ lies the boy. ‘He’s getting tired.’
Mr Navitski’s hand, trembling, finds his shoulder. ‘Are you certain, Alek?’
‘Please,’ the boy breathes. ‘Please, Mr Navitski.’
The boy thinks to follow them down, but they gather around him and their eyes implore him – and, once again, it is he who must lead.
The valley is sheer. He has to stop, so that the men following can stutter down its slopes. He takes Mr Navitski by the hand, shows him how to shimmy sideways down the escarpment, using the roots of clinging trees to steady his falls. Then, when he is certain he has led them so far that they could not find their way back, he hurtles forward.
At first, Navitski does not realize what he is doing. It is Elenya’s father who barks out: ‘Slow!’ Then: ‘Stop!’ By then, it is too late. The boy is wilder than they, and they could not follow his footprints any more than they could follow his papa’s trail. Alone, he takes flight.
The trees throw up walls of thorns to protect him. He whispers his thanks.
Only when he is certain he has forged too far ahead does he turn back, cutting an arc through a stand of wintering ash to find another way back up the hill. He knows when he is level with them for he can hear their voices, echoing in the trees. He thought he could take them to his papa, thought it was for Elenya – but he was wrong. He made a promise, and it’s a promise he’s going to keep.
At the top of the valley, he goes back to the pines. His papa’s trail has dimmed under the relentless snowfall, but under the branches it still shimmers. He hurries on.
The path meanders with the lie of the land. He follows it along a ridge, with a sheer face of earth on one side and a rolling precipice on the other. The pines grow on the ledges here, and he guides his way through them just as surely as his papa.
Soon the land levels out. The ridges soften, one bank rolls into the next, and he emerges from the thick pines to see the mixed woodland beneath him, a seascape of ice with occasional flourishes of fir cresting the surface. Here, his papa’s trail is more visible still. It wends its way down, and the boy follows.
Under an ice-bound canopy again, he begins to notice dead bark stripped back, axe marks where branches have been hewn away, a hole cleaved in the ground where his papa must have thrown the axe to take down some wretched woodland creature. Each is a sign he is close, each a sign his papa is growing tired.
Wind stirs beneath the branches. Cringing from it, he pushes on. Now, the trees come apart. Now, he sees a rippling curtain of white. He lifts his foot, but there is nothing beneath it, for the land drops away in a steep bank. No longer any trees to protect him, he gazes out across the marsh.
By a line of encrusted reeds, whipped into a frenzy by the wind winter breathes across them: oranges, reds, reefs of grey. How this fire burns in the blizzard, he cannot know. It is, he understands, a magic learned in Perpetual Winter, some gift from the wilderness that kept his papa alive after he fled that great frozen city called Gulag and made his wild walk home.
Down there, his papa is only a shape in the storm. He is hunched over the flames, feeding them with handfuls of bark plucked from his pockets. From where he stands, the boy can see only the long sweep of the greatcoat down his back. Beyond the fire, Elenya is huddled in reeds, curled up like a closing fist. Her blouse sleeves torn, she wraps her arms around her knees.
The boy steals forward. He thinks: they will not hear me in this raging wind. Yet, no sooner has he scrambled down the bank, he knows he is wrong. His papa would hear the faintest sound in a night filled with maelstroms.
Slowly, the wild man turns.
‘Oh, papa,’ he whispers. ‘What have you done?’
His papa snorts out dark plumes of breath.
‘Is she okay, papa? Is she okay?’
He stutters to the edge of the marsh to reach her, but his papa shifts, like a vagrant wolf protecting its kill.
‘Elenya?’
In the reeds, the girl unfolds. Her eyes are raw, but intelligence still sparkles in them. The same cannot be said for his papa. His eyes, black orbs, roll in their orbits.
‘Did he hurt you?’
Elenya shakes her head. ‘Is my papa coming?’
The wild man casts a final handful into the fire. Smoke explodes, flecked with shining sparks.
‘He is, papa. He’s coming, and he’s not the only one.’
The wild man gives him a questioning look.
‘There’s police in the house. Police in the woods. The teacher’s with them. Papa, why?’
This time, the wild man tries to find words. They seem to ride up his cleaved tongue, themselves bein
g cleaved in two.
‘Drink, papa. Drink, papa.’ The boy cups snow in his hands and lifts them to the wild man’s lips. He buries his lips, his whiskers, in the palms.
‘Is it better?’
The wild man nods.
‘Papa, they’re coming to get you.’
The old man brings his staff down in an arc over the fire, better to indicate Elenya.
‘He said you’d come,’ a small voice pipes up. ‘All through the forest, he kept saying it. Boy. Boy. Boy.’
‘For me?’ the boy breathes.
‘I think he thought, if you wouldn’t come with him, he’d make you follow.’
‘Papa, I didn’t leave because I wanted to. I left because … I didn’t want her to tell. I wanted to stay, and be with you. Because I promised, papa. But now …’
‘Boy …’ The word breaks apart. The old man stutters, as if to take hold of it, but instead he chokes up whatever pieces of bark he has been chewing through the long day. The boy cups his hands to melt more for him to drink, but in a single motion the wild man sweeps him aside. He drops the staff, cups his own hands, fills his cheeks with the raw, frozen snow.
As he bends over the fire, the boy rushes to Elenya’s side. ‘She’s freezing, papa.’
He rips off the police coat, wraps her in it. Above him, the wild man shakes.
‘Papa, what if she …’
He takes Elenya’s hand, as if to tease her from the reeds. Only now does he see the blue black bracelets around her wrists. He sees the same discolouration on her shoulder, where her blouse has been torn apart.
‘He hurt you, didn’t he?’
Elenya whispers, ‘He wouldn’t put me down.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Alek, I’m cold.’
He pushes her to the very edge of the fire. ‘Papa,’ he ventures, ‘I have to take her back.’
The old man stands.
‘They’re coming for you, papa.’
The wild man opens his encrusted mouth, as if to let loose a roar, but into the silence comes a different sound: the air above being torn apart in relentless rhythm; a sound like his papa’s staff constantly whirling in the air, the suck and pull of air in its wake.
The sound intensifies. The snow begins to dance in different directions, a new blizzard forced on them from above.
Light bursts over them like the dawn. It illuminates the canopy of the forest in brilliant whiteness, intensifying as it approaches. The wild man cringes, spreading himself over the fire. The boy finds his arms draped around Elenya, as if he might shield her from it.
As quickly as it comes, the light goes. The boy can see it sweeping over the forest. The sound diminishes. Now, it is only a distant storm.
‘Are they close?’ asks Elenya.
The boy squints upwards, tracking the retreating light.
‘I left Navitski in the forest, with your papa. I sent them the wrong way …’
‘What if there’s more?’
The sound is returning now, the light bearing back. He stares at his papa, tries to find some shred of man left in those eyes of blue. The cold sinks its teeth into him, like Aabel being devoured, and he thinks he finds a way.
‘It was like this before, wasn’t it, papa?’
‘Boy.’
‘They hunted partisans here, didn’t they? Police like Yuri’s Grandfather and wicked soldiers from the King in the West. They sent airplanes, and the partisans crossed the marshes and made their home under aspen and birch …’
‘Boy!’
‘And …’
The boy swallows. He fancies he can hear the tramping boots of those wicked soldiers coming through the trees.
‘… it was the same for you, wasn’t it, papa? When you escaped that frozen city called Gulag and had to cross Perpetual Winter. The soldiers of the Winter King chased you, and when they stopped chasing you, it was the other runaways chasing you. But you got away, didn’t you, papa?’
This time, no anger, only sadness: ‘Boy …’
‘You were wild then, papa. And you’re wild now. It isn’t your fault. I promise, papa. You’re not Baba Yaga. It wasn’t really you … It was the trees. They got into you then, and they’ve got into you now. But …’ The boy wipes at his eyes, for his tears are freezing as they trickle down his face, and he feels as if he is wearing a mask made out of ice. ‘… you can’t come back, papa. You can’t let them catch you. You have to run. They have to hunt. But, papa, you’ve got the wild on your side. You’re a wolf. They’re just dogs.’
The wild man holds his breath. No clouds of grey envelop his head. No click, nor soft thump. He stands still, stares at the boy.
‘Run, papa! Please, papa! Please, run!’
He pounds across the flames, kicking up burning logs as he comes. On the other side, he throws his arms around his papa’s broken form. At first, the wild man stands, resolute as any of the trees through which his hunters are coming. Then, he stops. The boy can feel him tremble. He buries his head in the stinking greatcoat and feels fingers in his hair, cold taloned branches but fingers nonetheless. They stroke him.
‘Boy.’
The boy draws back, his papa’s fingers trailing after.
The wild man makes a movement, as if he might whip the boy onto his shoulder.
The boy shakes his head. ‘Run, papa! Run. I’ll be …’
The wild man turns, drives out with his staff. He hauls himself one stride into the reeds. He stops. Looks back. Blackness in his eyes, but not only blackness. The shreds of something else, too, some memory entangled in bramble and briar.
‘Go!’ the boy thunders.
The wild man takes another step, falters again.
‘He wants you to follow,’ Elenya whispers from the other side of the fire.
‘Go!’ the boy sobs. He takes up a fist of ice and snow, lets it loose to catch his papa’s jaw. ‘Get out of here!’ he cries. ‘Please!’ he begs. ‘They’ll follow if I come! They won’t give up!’ He takes another ball, and another. The first hits his papa’s breast, the second the top of his head. To that wild man they are like snowflakes. They barely seem to touch him at all. The boy reaches back, finds a branch that has rolled from the fire. Taking it by its flameless end, he hurls it into the marshland. The flame drives his papa back, one step, two steps, and more. Again he stops, staring blankly at the smouldering bough.
The boy reaches for another. He is about to loose it when he hears sounds in the trees: voices bellowing his name, bellowing Elenya’s. It is Navitski’s voice, but he is not alone. There are countless other footsteps as well.
He takes the second flaming branch and charges after his papa, deep into the slicing reeds. He cuts the air with it, trailing fire in the blackness. His papa stumbles back.
‘Go!’ he cries. At last, no wavering, no begging in his voice. ‘Don’t you know what you’ve done? You kept me here, papa! You kept me in the woods. And you …’ He falters. Has to choke the words out. He does not mean them, does not believe, but he thinks of the things Navitski will say, he thinks of the teachers in the school and Madam Yakavenka in the tenement, and he lets their crowing come to his throat. He will spill out every vile thing if only it will drive his papa away, make his papa think that he hates him, when every fibre in his being, every muscle and sinew, compels him to follow. This, he knows, is the only way of staying true to his promise.
‘You kept me here and wouldn’t let me go, and you fed me dead things and you made me freeze! You went into that school, papa, and you dragged her away. You hit Yuri. Do you really think I’d come with you? You can’t really …’
The wild man moves, as if he might lunge forward, but the boy wheels the flaming branch.
‘I want to go back, papa. Back to the city. To the tenement. And … they’re kind to me, papa. They’re good. I don’t want you, papa. I don’t …’
The wild man lunges again. This time, it is not to lash out or snatch up the boy. His arms open, as if he might wrap them around th
e boy. He tries, but they are too broken now, their joints too jagged to ever complete the circle again. The boy lifts his fists, still clasping the smoking branch. He forces it between them. The wild man’s arms dangle. He pummels him in the breast.
‘Go,’ he whispers. ‘I don’t want you, papa. I want …’
‘Boy.’
The wild man lifts a hand. One taloned fingertip traces the line of his jaw.
But the boy will not look in his eyes. Even if there was memory in them again, to look into his eyes would be to betray the lie. Instead, he buries his face, fixes only on the tangled reeds. He feels his papa step back. There is no click and soft thump, not as he steps into the marshes, not as the veil is drawn.
When he looks again, there are only the reeds.
He is huddling with Elenya when her father storms out of the forest, flanked by more policemen than he can count. Navitski is among them, but though he tries to reach the boy, burly arms muscle him away. A meaty fist forces the boy to stand. He says: he wasn’t here; my papa’s already gone. When they ask him where, he tells them: he has turned into the Old Man of the Forest, but in the end he wasn’t Baba Yaga after all. They get even less sense out of the girl, but perhaps that can be forgiven; she is tinged in blue and slurs her words, and a police medic proclaims that it is only the fire keeping her from a long and dreamless sleep.
Soon, there is a cordon. Soon, flasks of hot, sweet tea. Then, the police medic sets down his pack and rolls it back to reveal a simple metal tin. He lifts off the lid. Inside, in perfect rows, sit biscuits engraved with a familiar design: ears of wheat curling around a ragged map, and a star with five points hanging above.
The boy cannot hold back his tears.
‘Don’t cry, little one. They’ll warm your insides, give you strength.’
Tentatively, the boy reaches in and takes a biscuit in his grubby hand. He does not eat it. Not at first. He lifts it to his nose and breathes in the scents of honey and ginger. He strokes the ear of wheat and ragged map, touches each point of the simple star.
When he takes a bite, it rushes to every corner of his body. He suckles until his mouth is coated with flavour, takes one more bite for good measure, but he will not eat it all – and he knows, in that moment, that he will not taste this taste ever again.
Gingerbread Page 33
