by Kim Wilkins
“It is funny,” Daniel said. “Were you embarrassed?”
“No. It was just a mistake, and a fairly easy one to make, don’t you think?”
“Um…yes.”
Em gave him a bright smile. “Go on, ask another question.”
“All right, then. Your most disastrous date.”
“Hmm,” she said, brushing a bug off her wrist. “I’d have to think about that. They’ve all been pretty awful.”
“I hadn’t picked you for unlucky in love,” Daniel said.
“Why not?” she asked sharply.
“I…just…you’re so sure of yourself in every other aspect…I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t apologise. I’m very unlucky in love, Daniel.”
Daniel’s curiosity had been aroused. “You must have had a few good dates. I mean, you were married weren’t you?”
“Yes, briefly.”
“Long enough to have a child.”
She sighed. They walked in silence for a few moments, then she said, “I’d rather not talk about it. You tell me your worst date story. I’m better at listening.”
The mood had become too serious now. “They’ve all been pretty bad, I guess.”
“Even with Rosa?”
“Especially with Rosa.” Daniel realised that he had forgotten Rosa’s promise for next time they met: to tell him the reason they couldn’t be together. Out here, in this strange place infested with bad magic, he began to doubt that he would ever know.
The trees opened up again on another wide view of the land.
“And it looked like such a perfect day at first,” Em said.
“What do you mean?”
She indicated grey clouds building in the south. “Let’s hope the weather holds.”
Em woke just before dawn. Something had troubled her out of sleep. She lay still for a moment, cracking her eyes open a fraction. Was it the aches and pains of her body? Her feet were sore; her calf muscles were tight from a full day of walking. Daniel’s back was turned to her, in silhouette from the fire. He’d confessed his apprehension about his first night watch out here in the open spaces of Skazki, but Em had noticed he was more and more in control of his fear.
Drip.
That’s what had woken her. A raindrop.
She noticed that Daniel’s face was turned to the sky. The stars were cloaked in rainclouds. Em sat up.
“Is it raining?”
“Not yet,” he said, turning to her. “Just spitting. Maybe it will blow over.”
She reached her hands out for the low flames of the fire.
“You’re awake early,” he said. “Do you want to eat something?”
“Just one pancake.”
“Have two. We need the energy for all the walking.” He opened the backpack of food, and they ate silently.
“Everything went well on your shift?” she asked.
“I heard noises…but a long way off.”
Em turned her glance into the dense woods. They were camped under a towering birch tree. “What do you think is in there?”
Daniel didn’t answer. The rain grew heavier, dripping off the branches above them and sizzling in the fire.
“I was just sitting here thinking about home,” Daniel said quietly. “About soft blankets, and electricity, and instant noodles. All those ordinary things we take for granted.”
Em heard the sad longing in his voice. She examined her own feelings. Yes, she would very much like to be home. She would very much like to be dressed in a fine woollen suit, with Italian boots, cruising the shops at Knightsbridge. But the situation was different and, for now, all her energy had to be directed at resolving the problem. She didn’t like it, but it didn’t make her sad.
“I’m sure we’ll be home very soon,” she said. “Perhaps today we’ll meet somebody who can help us and be on our way.”
“Yes, but that somebody might prefer to eat us than help us.”
“We have gold. We’ll be safe.” She looked up. In the glow of the firelight, the illuminated raindrops were spinning down towards them. “We should gather a bundle of dry firewood while we can. We’re going to get wet.”
“We have a moleskin.”
“One moleskin. Two people.”
“We’ll have to share it,” Daniel said, and Em could tell this embarrassed him. In his imagination, perhaps it was the fateful moment in a movie where the male lead and the female love interest are forced into proximity.
She pulled out the moleskin and unfolded it. “Never mind. I’m sure the rain won’t last long.”
That was the last of the positive talk she forced on Daniel, for not only did the rain last, it set in and looked like it might stay for weeks. Day broke weakly, the sky was the purple-grey of bruises, and the rain thundered down. They stayed close under the moleskin, shuffling slowly on the sodden path, as rainwater filled their shoes. The woods were drowning, the ground turning to mud. Birds sat mournfully on their perches, immobile and ruffled as they waited out the deluge.
Em and Daniel travelled wordlessly. All their concentration was focused simply on putting one foot in front of the other without slipping. They stopped after two hours. Drank a little water. Continued wordlessly. The woods were changing now, becoming flatter and sparser. The path was less well-trodden, sometimes just an overgrown muddy strip. Still they walked and still it rained. Finally, when Em spied an elm with low-hanging branches, she declared a stop to the day’s misery.
“We can hang the moleskin here,” she said, raising her hands to run along the low bough. “Then we can light a fire under it.”
“The ground’s wet,” said Daniel.
“Everything’s wet, and getting wetter. We might have to wait out this rain.”
Daniel agreed, and they set up camp. A spare fur went on the wet grass, the moleskin was affixed to the tree, and a fire was lit with the dry wood they had collected earlier. Em wasn’t comfortable, but nor was she freezing and soaked. She settled close to the fire and Daniel did the same, his chin in his hands, gazing at the flames.
“This is unbearable,” he said.
“We have to bear it.”
“We’re lost, we’re wet, we’re surrounded by supernatural dangers—”
“We’ve been walking for two days and haven’t seen anything dangerous at all.”
“Believe me, if the leshii is real, then so are the others.”
“Go on, then,” Em said, experiencing a delicate lick of fear. “I should know what we might be up against.”
“Demons who can turn your blood to ice. Water spirits who drown children to keep them company. Witches and wizards who travel on the wind, or who hunger for human flesh…” His voice grew thin.
“But nothing so far,” Em reminded him. “So far, we’ve been safe, and we’re safe right now, if a little wet.” She patted his knee. “Come on, let’s play more games.”
“No more lists.”
“No, no more lists.” She had worked out by now that Daniel was best distracted in talking about people and feelings. “Tell me your earliest memory.”
Daniel dropped his hands and clasped them around his knees. “You go first this time.”
“Okay.” She tucked her hands under her cloak. “My dad was a housepainter, and one day my mother was sick so I went to work with him. He was painting this enormous house with a tall white fence. I remember it very clearly. I crawled up to it before the paint was dry, and touched it. My palm was white, and I smeared it all over my clothes.”
“You say you crawled up to it?”
“Yes.”
“How old were you?”
She shrugged. “About seven or eight months, I suppose.”
“And you really do remember it?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I think that’s really unusual. Remembering something from that far back.”
“Perhaps it stood out because I got in so much trouble from my father.” She brushed a raindrop off her nose and huddled closer under the mo
leskin. “Your turn.”
“I remember the night when I was moved from a cot to a bed,” he said. “The bed was directly under a window and the tip of a tree branch brushed the pane. It scraped on the glass all night, and I was terrified, but my nanny would come in and say I was just to go to sleep and to stop crying. I couldn’t express what was wrong, I was only two.”
“Why do you think you were afraid?” she asked.
“Because it sounded like the branch was knocking, trying to get in.”
“But trees are inanimate objects.”
“I know that. Now. Kids have all kinds of crazy ideas.”
Em was about to say, “I didn’t,” but stopped herself.
Daniel filled the silence. “You’d know that. You have a little boy. Wasn’t he ever afraid of anything irrational?”
Em kept her tone carefully guarded. “I didn’t stay long enough to know that,” she said, and was aware that it sounded cold. “He was only a few months old when I left.”
“Oh.”
“I know that makes me sound like a bad mother.”
“I’m sure you had your reasons.”
So many reasons. Impossible for anyone else to understand. “Yes, I did.”
“What were they?” he asked bravely.
She considered him. The firelight reflected amber on his skin. He hadn’t met her eye and she was struck by the softness of his face, the boyishness. Should she answer his question? And if yes, how? Could one actually start an explanation with “I’m not like everybody else”?
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said. “Where are my manners?”
“I don’t think we need to worry about manners under the circumstances,” she said. “There are plenty of other things to worry about.”
“Still, it was rude—”
“I’d like to try to explain,” she said. “Do you have any nieces or nephews?”
“I have one nephew. My oldest brother’s son.”
“Do you see him often?”
Daniel shrugged. “Christmas. Maybe once or twice during the year.”
“How old is he?”
“I think he’s eight now. Maybe seven.”
“You love him?”
“I…well, I suppose so. He’s a nice little kid.”
“Of course. You’d be really upset if something bad happened to him. Like if he got sick, or if he died, or even if his parents split up. You wouldn’t like that.”
“No.”
“But you don’t feel any burning desire to see him. You never sit there and feel an ache in your heart that makes you want to put your arms around him and hold him tight.”
“No. I can’t say I do.”
“That’s how I feel about my son.” And that was the best she could do, because to explain why she had even had the boy in the first place was too complicated.
Daniel was nodding in sympathy, but she could tell he didn’t really understand.
“So, when this little baby came along, and I liked him well enough but that was all, and he was so dependent on me, and took up every second of my day and most of my nights…I got quite resentful. I thought it was best for both of us if I got out.”
“I suppose that was very brave of you.”
Em stared at the fire for a few moments, thinking about this. “Not brave. Just practical.” She shifted uncomfortably on the damp fur, determined to change the subject. “I really hope this rain eases overnight.”
“At least we’ll sleep well,” Daniel said. “The walking tires me out. I feel jetlagged.”
“How would you know? You don’t fly,” she teased.
He slumped forward gently. “If I did, we wouldn’t be here.”
“If I wasn’t so bossy we wouldn’t be here either,” she said, “but it’s too late for all that now.”
Daniel slept, and then Em, despite the rain which continued all through the night. In the grey morning, their spirits low, they decided to move on.
“The rain could last a week,” said Daniel. “We could have found the Snow Witch and been home by then.”
So they packed up and moved again, limbs leaden with weariness and misery. The clouds hung low and darkened to a cruel blue-black, a wind whipped up and the path became obscured. Following their instincts, they kept heading north-east, into another thick wood which was dank and muddy and as dark as night-time. It wasn’t possible to tell when the sun had set, as they hadn’t even seen it rise. They battled with rough ground, ridges and falls. When exhaustion overcame them, they stopped and camped again, took turns catching a few hours’ sleep and prepared to do it all again on the equally dismal next day.
As she trudged up a rocky slope in the woods, the rain thundering on the canopy of leaves above her, Em realised that the weather was a far greater threat to them than any supernatural monsters. The moleskin barely kept the moisture off their clothes, and they had used the last of their dry firewood the previous night. Tonight, unless the rain stopped or they found good shelter, they would start to freeze. Already her feet were numb with cold, which was useful as they didn’t register the pain of continued walking.
She wasn’t afraid of dying, but she was afraid of dying horribly. Wandering, cold and starving in sodden woods far from home, was about as horrible as she could imagine.
“We have to find shelter today,” Em said.
“I know,” Daniel replied. He had already grown used to the proximity that sharing the moleskin forced upon them. Their elbows and forearms bumped and he no longer shrank back into himself and muttered apologies. “If we don’t—”
“Let’s not think about it.”
On they went, finding another path and following it despite the fact that it was loose and muddy. They didn’t stop for a break; they were already moving so slowly it didn’t seem prudent. The path wound upwards, and Em’s thighs ached from pushing herself up the incline. Then downwards, and her calves ached from the effort of clenching her feet to the ground so she didn’t slip. Up and down the path went, steep and sudden, and Em felt like a zombie, shuffling desperately along in the deluge, dead-eyed and lost.
Until her right foot missed its place on a steep decline, and she felt herself falling.
Down, slamming into the ground and mud.
“Em!” Daniel called behind her.
The slippery ground carried her, turning her and rolling her down the slope. Her hands went out to find purchase anywhere, but everything was sodden. She kept sliding, rain drenched her, rocks thumped her arms and back.
And finally she landed, feet in some stinking mess off the side of the path.
Daniel’s footsteps behind her, cautious but quick. She took a breath, wondered if she’d broken a rib.
“Are you all right?” he called.
The stupid questions people asked! “Of course not,” she snapped. “At the very least I’ll be covered in bruises.” She sat up, peered at the blackened mess her feet had found, and recoiled with a horrified gasp.
“What is it?”
“Body.”
Daniel was with her then, helping her to her feet. He glanced at the body and then quickly turned his head. “What is it? Human or animal?”
Em leaned over it, holding her breath against the smell, which even two days of rain hadn’t erased. “Human. As to male, female, black or white, impossible to tell. It’s been skinned.”
Daniel held his stomach and bent over.
“Don’t throw up,” she said. “We don’t have much food.”
But he threw up anyway, and Em waited patiently, poking at sore spots on her arms and ribs to see if they were bruises or fractures. She was pleased to note that she was still intact.
Daniel turned to her, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Rain poured down.
“Where’s the moleskin?” she asked.
“I dropped it back on the slope in my hurry to get down here.”
“You go back and get it.”
“We’re going to keep walking?”
“Wha
t’s the option?”
“Sitting here and waiting to die.”
“I sincerely hope you’re joking,” she said. “Go and get the moleskin.”
He left her in the shadowy dip in the path, and she picked up a stick and bent close to examine the body. The flesh was black, and bones poked through here and there. Wolves had been at its feet and ribs. Em reassessed her earlier opinion about horrible deaths. Being skinned alive was certainly worse than dying of exposure.
“I really don’t want this to happen to us,” she said to Daniel when he returned with the moleskin. “We must get out of these woods by nightfall.”
Daniel wiped rain out of his eyes. “I keep hoping I’ll wake up and find this is a dream.”
She pinched his arm. “Let’s move.”
The path dipped down a little further, then rose again.
“Why would somebody want human skin?” she asked. “Why leave the body?”
“Dead candles,” Daniel said. “Very powerful magic. Tallow candles made with human fat.”
“Well, then, a couple more days on rationed food and hard labour, and we won’t be worth hunting,” Em said darkly.
The path narrowed onto the top of a ridge and they were silent as they walked up the slope. Then Em looked to her right and, through the trees, could see a grassy valley below.
“Daniel,” she said urgently.
“I see it.”
A dozen little wooden houses, huddled together. Not pretty painted cottages, but raw wood huts with long sloping roofs.
“Shelter,” Daniel said, cautiously.
“Yes,” said Em. “We’re saved.”
FOURTEEN
They cut from the path and headed directly for the valley. The trees had been cleared, and long grass had grown up. It was apparent immediately that the tiny village had long been abandoned. Most of the roofs had fallen in, the walls were sagging and eaten by the elements. The furthest hut was little more than a log skeleton, with grass growing where its floor should have been.
“We just need to find one that’s dry inside,” Em said, cracking open a door and peering in.
Daniel joined her. He could see daylight through the roof. “Not this one.”
