Gingerbread

Well, some of the mamas and papas and boys and girls worked harder and harder, hoping the soldiers might let them survive. But some of the mamas and papas thought: the soldiers are wicked, and their King is more wicked still. We must run away, or else be ruined and turned into dust. And one papa said: there are woods beyond town, and the woods are wide and the woods are wild and the woods are the world forever and ever. And there we shall be safe, because in the woods there is no King in the West, nor even a Winter King, and in the woods they will not find us.

‘It’s like the story of Baba Yaga, isn’t it, papa?’

‘How, boy?’

‘If you’re kind to the woods, the woods are kind to you.’

Grandfather nods.

Well, at night, our little boy would look out of his bedroom window. There, he could see the first line of the pines and know that things were moving out there, in a world he could never pass into. Because only little boys made to wear the yellow stars could go and live wild in the forest …

Well, that boy was watching one night, when out of the town there hurried a girl. She was older than the boy, but not yet as old as the boy’s mama, and for many months she had been wearing a yellow star. Now, she went to the forest to live wild. But she had lost her way, and that night rapped one, two, three times at the boy’s front door.

Please, please, let me in, she cried.

Do the soldiers chase you? came the reply.

No, for I go to make my home with the runaways in the wild, and live my life under aspen and birch.

Well, the boy’s mama and papa let the girl with the yellow star in. The boy watched them in secret from the top of the stairs. And what he saw was not one girl but two, for the girl had a baby swollen in her belly and ready to come out. You must stay, said the boy’s mama, and have your babe in these four walls. But no, said the girl, for the soldiers will find me and make my baby wear a star.

So she was fed and warmed and went on her way, deep into the pines.

Well, the runaways found her, cold and alone. They took her to their hideaways and fed her their kapusta, and she slept a day and a night in a burrow. And, when she woke, the men were angry at her, for they had not known she was carrying a child. Now they saw her, with swollen belly ready to burst, and told her: you cannot stay. A crying baby in the forest is worse than a fire. A baby might tell the soldiers where we are camped and bring ruin to us all.

And so, that girl made a terrible decision. Either she would roam the wilds alone, risking capture, or she would bear the baby and give it up, find a family who would raise it as their own and never breathe a word that it should wear a yellow star and be snatched by the King in the West.

When the baby was born, it was a beautiful girl, with black hair thicker than any baby the wild men had ever seen. She was, they said, a true baby of the forests, with fur to ward off the winter, and if she was theirs to name they would call her Vered, for she was certain to blossom a wild rose.

But the baby was not theirs to name, and nor would she be her mother’s. Now the baby was taken to the edge of the forest, to that same house whose mama and papa had helped the girl on her way. And the mama in that house took hold of the baby and promised she would be safe forever and all time.

I know a place, said the mama, where she will be safe, and me and my boy will take her there and watch over her from afar, and know that the soldiers will never find her.

So the boy and his mama took a small road along the forest’s edge, to where a little house nestled at the bottom of a dell. At the house lived a trapper and his wife. Once, they had had children of their own, but those children had perished young, and for many years now the rooms had not heard the sound of tiny feet, nor the cries of squabbling and bruised knees. The mama and her boy carried the baby to the step and laid her down, without a mother or a father or even a name to call her own. And they knocked on the door and hurried back, to watch with the trees.

The door opened. Two faces appeared. They looked down, and saw that they could be a mama and a papa again, and the baby started to cry. And the house was happy after that. The house had a little girl to run in its rooms and play in its halls. The mama had a daughter to dote on, the papa had a princess to give purpose to his days. And if, out trapping in the forest, he ever caught sight of ghosts flitting from tree to tree, if he ever heard the sharp cracks of gunfire as the runaways learnt to defend themselves against the soldiers sent in to ferret them out, well, he gave his silent promise that the girl would be loved and looked after and grow up in a world safe from soldiers and yellow stars.

And so ends the story of the babe in the woods.

‘Is it true?’ marvels the boy.

Oh, says Grandfather. I know it is true, for one was there who told me of it.

Outside, it is paling to light. Grandfather’s story has lasted all through the darkest hours. The fire is low, and Grandfather stands, meaning to bring new kindling. For a moment, the boy watches him leave. His head is swirling with pictures of the Winter King, of brown-shirted soldiers, of wild men living out in the woods, things so magical that, even through their horror, he wishes they were true.

Grandfather’s jackboots click as he disappears into the kitchen and, leaving the Russian horse behind, the boy scrambles to hurry after him. When he gets there, the door is propped open and Grandfather is treading softly across the night’s freshest fall. He hesitates at mama’s tree, and seems to gaze up at the branches, at the canopy bound in ice.

The boy creeps to his side. The old man is tired, of that there is no doubt, but there is another look in his eyes now, something more mysterious than simple fear of the forest. To the boy it looks something like … temptation.

‘Are we going to go back to the tenement, papa?’

Grandfather crouches, tracing his naked fingers along the roots in which mama lies. ‘Not yet, boy. I think …’

He pauses, because seemingly it does not sound right, even to him. The boy cocks his head. This is the same papa who wouldn’t come to the forest, the same papa who would have broken his mama’s dying promise and never set foot here again. Perhaps it is something to do with that fanciful folk tale. The boy looks back at the house, wondering.

‘I think we’ll stay,’ he says, letting his arm fall about the boy’s shoulder. ‘Just for a little while. Just until …’

‘Until what, papa?’

‘Just until the stories are done.’

The boy watches as Grandfather’s face shifts. His eyes seem suddenly far away. ‘Papa,’ he ventures, ‘I thought you hated the forest. I thought you said you’d never come back. We can go now, papa. I don’t mind.’ He thinks to say it again, as if to make sure Grandfather understands. ‘I don’t mind at all.’

‘Oh,’ grins Grandfather. ‘But neither do I. I think … the trees might not be so wicked after all. Come on, boy,’ he grins. ‘If I remember at all, there used to be a stream …’

He lifts his jackboot, and in one simple step goes under the trees.

Watching Grandfather under the trees is like watching a wolf prowl the tenement. His hands light on trunks and his jackboots sink into the frosted forest mulch, and he stops between the oaks, as if to judge the way. They do not find the stream, but it doesn’t matter; Grandfather says there will be other days, and in the dead of winter a stream sometimes does not want to be found. They stop, instead, at a stand of black pine and Grandfather shows the boy how to strip the branches of their needles. A scent like Christmas billows up to engulf the boy, and now he must fill his pockets with them, so that they scratch and prickle against his legs.

‘What is it for, papa?’

‘Aren’t you thirsty, boy?’

The boy nods.

‘I’m going to show you something. It saved my life, almost every single night.’

Once there are enough pine needles in his pockets, the boy follows Grandfather back into the house. He has unearthed a cast-iron pot and balances it in the new flames, adding the needles handful by handful as the snow melts to sludge and then begins to simmer.

‘What do you think, boy?’

They drink it from unearthed clay cups. There is a pleasing smell to its steam and its sweet taste, of woods and wild grass, warms the boy through. When he looks up from his cup, Grandfather is holding his to his face, letting the steam bead in his whiskers, the thatches above his eyes.

‘What’s wrong, papa?’

‘It’s the smell. It … reminds me. There’s nothing like a smell, boy, to put you in another place.’

The boy thinks he understands; it is not so very different when he drinks in the scent of mama’s shawl. The thought of it, lying crumpled by the rocking chair in the tenement, makes him wonder. ‘Are we going back to the tenement today, papa?’

‘Not yet, little one.’

‘I thought you didn’t like it here.’

Grandfather breathes out, expelling pine-needle steam. ‘You wouldn’t want to leave her again, would you?’

This doesn’t make sense, because it was Grandfather who said that mama was fine out there in the trees.

‘Maybe we can take mama back with us.’

‘No,’ says Grandfather, and his tone means he will brook no more questions. ‘We’ll stay with her, for a while. She’d like that, boy. You’d like it. I’d … like it.’

Through the day the clouds are thick, so that night might have already fallen for hours before the darkness truly sets in. With real night, however, comes real snow. Standing in the kitchen door to say goodnight to mama, the boy can barely see the end of the garden. It reveals itself only in fragments, catching his eye each time the driving snow twists and comes apart. At the end of that vortex, crusts grow over the roots where mama sleeps, but Grandfather says not to worry.

‘I once slept in a hole six feet under the ice,’ he begins. ‘Three days and three nights, boy. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought I’d freeze. I didn’t know, back then, that it was the ice protecting me. It was the ice keeping me warm.’

Grandfather turns to tramp back towards the hearth, but the boy is slow to follow.

‘Papa,’ he says, ‘is it a story?’

At the fire, Grandfather bends to feed more wood to the flames.

‘It is,’ he says, ‘but for another night …’

In the morning there is no talk of the tenement. Before the sun struggles into the sky Grandfather leads him off, deeper into the forest.

‘I remembered the way,’ he says. ‘It came to me in the dead of night.’

‘To the stream?’

‘It runs underground but comes to the surface for just a little while …’

It turns out that Grandfather is looking for cattails. Cattails, he says, grow by streams and you can dig them up even in the dead of winter. If you cook them right they can taste just like a potato.

‘But we have potatoes in the tenement, papa.’

They stand by a depression in the land through which Grandfather is certain the stream once ran.

‘Do you want to go back to the tenement, boy? Is that it?’

‘I don’t want to leave her, papa, but …’

‘What’s in the tenement?’ Grandfather sinks to his knees and runs his hands through tall bladed grass. He seems to be feeling their textures, teasing out the occasional one and following its stem all the way to its root. ‘Your mama was the only thing in the tenement that mattered, and now she’s here. In spring she’ll be in every tree, just like baba.’

‘Do you miss baba, papa?’

‘Only every day. Might be I’d forgotten how much, until you made me come here.’

Now the boy understands: it is his fault. His papa pleaded with him not to make him come, but the boy pleaded back. There must be old smells and memories rushing on Grandfather every second. Maybe he remembers how baba smelt, how she spoke, the things that she said.

‘Are the trees your friends, papa?’

‘They saved my life, once upon a time.’

Grandfather plunges a hand through the crust. The earth seems to swallow him, up to his elbow. He fights back, gripping his arm with the other hand as if struggling with whatever cadaver lurks beneath the surface. Finally, he topples back, the cattail in his hand, trailing pulpy white flesh beaded in dirt.

‘It’s for dinner.’

‘What about school, papa? I have to go to school.’

Grandfather’s eyes roam the grasses, searching out another stalk.

‘I never heard of a little boy wanting to go to school.’

‘I haven’t been since … before mama. They’ll wonder where I am. What about … Yuri?’

‘He’s your little friend.’

The boy shrugs.

‘You want to watch out for friends. When I was a boy, a friend was a dangerous thing.’

Grandfather’s hand plunges back through the snow and comes out with another cattail root, wriggling like some poor fish just plucked from the water.

‘Come on, boy. Aren’t you hungry?’

Cattail mashed with acorn is not so very bad a dinner, if it’s been two days since you had hot potatoes and hock of ham. By the time it is done the afternoon is paling and snow smothers the forest again.

Night means a different thing when there are no buzzing electric lights. Now Grandfather is ready for bed as soon as the darkness comes. He rests his feet, still in their jackboots, on a crate and sprawls back in the ragged armchair, tugging the bearskin hat to the brim of his eyes.

‘Will we go back to the tenement tomorrow, papa?’

‘We’ll see.’

‘We won’t see, though, will we?’

Grandfather opens one eye. It rolls at the boy with a taunting sparkle. ‘You need your rest.’

He really doesn’t, but he gets under the eiderdown all the same. Soon he can hear the tell-tale wheeze that means Grandfather is asleep. He rolls over, the Russian horse lying rigid in his belly, and dares to close his eyes.

When he wakes, the flames are still dancing and an advancing tide of melt frost runs down the wall. Without clocks or the sounds of the tenement hall he has no way of knowing what time it is, nor how long he has been asleep. He squirms out of the eiderdown, leaving the Russian horse to bask in the hearth’s demonic glow.

In the armchair, Grandfather does not move at all.

The boy steals over. There is a desperate silence in the room. It is the silence of snow, which devours all sound, save for the howling of storybook wolves or a foundling baby’s cries on the doorstep. By the time he has reached Grandfather’s side, that silence is overwhelming.

‘Papa, are you awake?’

He dares himself to touch the thin, unmoving arms. Yet, when he does, it is a strange coldness that he feels. His eyes flit to the dead wood piled by the hearth; Grandfather’s arm feels the same as those branches, brittle and somehow empty.

‘Papa?’

When there is no answer, the boy relents, sits in a nest in the eiderdown and draws the Russian horse back into his lap. He studies his papa’s face for a long time, as fingers of firelight lap at his hanging skin. He should be snoring. His head is thrown back in the way it always was in the tenement, but no sound comes up from his throat. His lips do not tremble, nor twitch; his chest, buried beneath greatcoat and dressing gown, does not move at all.

That must have been how mama looked: open-mouthed and bald, without any breath left in her breast. They wouldn’t let him see her then, but the firelight plays a cruel trick and it is as if he is seeing her now.

He feels a fist of stone rising in his gorge, like a mother bird regurgitating food for her young. He fights it back down, but the stone must burst in his stomach, churning up whatever horrible slime lurks within. Back on his feet, and the room seems to be whirling.

‘Papa!’ he cries. And then, ‘Papa!’ again. But each time he has cried out, the silence is thicker; and, each time he has cried out, the idea that Grandfather is gone is clearer, more defined. Now he is like a storm-fallen tree, lying in the forest; he has the same shape as ever, the same ridges and fingers and branches and eyes, but what made him a living thing has disappeared.

The boy gulps for air. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. His feet want to run, but where he would run to, he has no idea. If only to stop that stone from rising back up his throat, unleashing his terror, he goes to the backdoor, thinking perhaps to ask mama for help. The world is silent. The snow no longer falls. But mama cannot help him now and never will again.

He goes back to Grandfather’s side. ‘I’m sorry, papa … I didn’t mean to make you come. Papa, I have to get help.’

Doctors and ambulances have different kinds of sorceries. There is always a hope that their words can bring life back to Grandfather just like Grandfather’s words bring life back to deadened fires. There is, he tells himself, always the car. If he finds the car, he can find his way to town. To squatting factories and endless streets, to a tenement with its window eyes gouged out. To help.

The boy steals down the passage. When he tugs the front door back, snow pours in, burying him knee-deep. With it comes winter, that relentless marauder. He gazes up the incline to the border of black forest, thinks he can make out the jaws of the trail he and Grandfather followed.

If he is going to do this he will need to be prepared. He retreats to the hearth and wraps himself in the eiderdown, one, two, three times. Now it is too stiff to walk, so he loosens the blanket and tests out his stride.

He is passing Grandfather when he sees the bearskin hat sitting proudly upon the old man’s head. He does not need it now, so the boy lifts it down, awkward only when he has to wrestle it over Grandfather’s ears. His eyes light momentarily on the old man’s jackboots too, but they will not fit, and he does not relish the idea of seeing Grandfather’s feet with their bulbous blue veins now devoid of all blood.

It is time to leave, so leaving is what he does.

Up the dell he goes, through luminescent snow. The woods in dead of night are no different from the woods at dusk, and for this the boy is thankful. The same light is captured in the snowbound canopy, the same ghosts move in the darkness, the same sounds startle and echo and live longer in the boy’s imagination.

There are sounds in the forest, spidery things that scuttle on the very outskirts of his hearing, so that every time he whips his head round all he sees is frigid undergrowth. Every stem is crisped in white, every gnarled root iced with sugar like a wing of the angel. When he exhales, his breath mists, obscuring by degrees the deepening forest. It condenses in the rim of Grandfather’s bearskin hat, so that before long he is wearing a crown of ice itself. Soon it encroaches onto the skin of his forehead. It pierces him and holds fast, binding head to hat.

In this way the boy huddles through the forest. His lashes are heavy, the ice creeping down his face to make a carefully crafted death-mask, but at last he sees the car between the trees. The whole body is draped in ice.

He tries the handle at the driver’s side, but it is stuck. He heaves again, to no avail – and, this time, when he tries to let go, he finds his naked fingers held fast. He tugs and tugs, but the winter has him in its grasp.

Panic takes him. He twists around, but he cannot twist far. Careful that the skin of his other hand should not touch the treacherous ice, he draws it back inside the eiderdown. A moment later he tries to prise his hand free. Cold is surging along his fingers and up his arm. He thinks: what will happen when it touches my heart? I’ll be frozen forever, only to wake up in a hundred years, thawed out by some wanderer of the future.

He has a thought, and spits on his trapped hand. The saliva works a sorcery, thawing the thin ice and letting him work an inch of flesh free. He spits again, and then again – and, in that way, he is able to tear himself away.

At last, he remembers: when Grandfather lifted him out of the car, the door remained ajar behind him. He tramps to the ditch side and sees that door still open by inches. The winter has tried to seal the gap, closing the crevice with barnacles of ice just as skin grows back over a wound, but its work is not yet done. With effort the boy is able to force his way in.

The cold of inside does not have the same clarity as the cold of out. He heaves the door shut, to the satisfying sound of ice crunching against ice, and imagines he can hear the tiny clink of crystals interlocking.

The key is still in the ignition. All Grandfather has to do is turn that key and the car starts rolling. When the car is rolling, its undercarriage rattles and the floor gets hot – but when he puts his fingers around the key he finds it frozen in place, bound to the car by the same ice slowly smothering the forest.

Inside the car he cannot see out; through that icy cocoon all he can see are different shades of grey and black. Perhaps this is what Grandfather’s ghost feels like, if it still lingers inside his corpse. He shrinks back into the eiderdown, holding himself. He thinks: if I sleep, morning will come, and with it the morning thaw.

It is not long after he closes his eyes that his teeth begin to chatter. He concentrates on holding them still, but to do so he must tense every muscle in his body and soon the effort is too great. It is only when he gives up trying that he begins to lose sensation: first his feet, then his legs, his hands and arms. At last, the only parts of him awake are his chattering teeth; then, even they pass out of all thought.

‘Wake up.’

He turns, entangled in eiderdown, not knowing where, nor even what, he is.

‘He’s coming for you. You have to wake up.’

All he can feel is a circlet of pain running around the edge of his head. He is wearing an icicle crown and, rather than growing out, the icicles have turned on him, growing into flesh and bone. He shivers. It is not a shiver of cold, but a shiver of fever. It is the kind of shiver mama got every time they said they were making her better, and put the wires into her veins.

Mama’s voice. He remembers it now. She says, ‘Wake up, my littlest friend. He’s coming to find you.’

‘Who is, mama?’

‘He’s coming out of the wood …’

The boy’s eyes snap open. No sooner is he awake than mama’s voice is gone. He fights the eiderdown off to find himself trapped, somehow, on the inside of an ice cube. It takes a moment, but then: the car. I am in the car.

Outside, the snow dark is paling, but he cannot see the trees. All is occluded by ice.

Something moves.

As soon as he senses movement, other shapes fall into stark relief. Edges become distinct and distances become apparent – and, although the ice still magnifies and shrinks according to how deeply its scales have grown, he can make out individual trees.

He can make out, too, a figure coming lurching over a fallen bough.

In three great strides it is at the side of the car. Its hands seem to caress the windows and doors, but then it retreats. He thinks, for a moment, it is gone back to the forest, but then it appears on the ditch side of the car, brandishing a bough it has lifted from the winter wood.

The boy scrabbles against the furthest corner of car. His fingers find the handle, but it is held fast. He remembers the crunch of ice on ice, the sensation of the tiny crystals locking together, just as surely as this bearskin hat has become a part of his head. He tries again, unfeeling fingers fumbling – but still nothing.

‘Are you in there?’

It can talk. The shadow man can talk. Its voice is distant, a ragged whisper as a thing might make if it did not need to take any breath.