LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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