Russka (6 page)

He did not take his eyes off the snake. It lay only a few feet away and it had not been dead for long. Except for its torn head, it looked as if it might come back to life at any moment, and as he felt the heat of the rock through his little bast shoes and thought of the heat warming the snake, he still could not help trembling a little.

No, he could not drag it home alone.

But then a simple and comforting thought came into his head; and in his mind’s eye it seemed as if a broad path had just opened
up before him through the lonely woods. I’ll go back and fetch Uncle Mal. He’ll come and bake the snake for me.

How easy it seemed. For a second, he felt as if his journey was over and he was safely back already. With relief he scrambled down off the rock to the little brook below, and began to retrace his steps along it. The whole scene seemed less magical, more familiar now, as he began the return from his successful journey.

It was five minutes before he realized that he was lost.

Having turned back into the woods from the shining pool, he had taken his direction from the passing clouds. How was it, then, that the place looked so unfamiliar? The trees were starting to grow taller and closer together. There were some scattered boulders and bushes, quite different from the woods where he had been before. He would have been glad, now, to see even the dangerous pond with its
rusalki
. Again he looked up to see the clouds. He did not know that, since before noon, the wind had been gradually changing its direction.

And only then, at last, did the little boy slowly give way to panic. As the minutes passed, and he knew with greater and greater certainty that he was lost, a coldness seemed to envelop him. He stopped, looked right and left, saw only the endless ranks of tall tree trunks stretching in every direction, and realized that it was hopeless.

There was no way out. He called out, shouted his mother’s name four, five times. But his cries were only lost in the forest. It was as though the day itself had decided to trap him, imprison him in the forest under the endless blue sky, and was now watching him from far above, mocking. Perhaps he would never get home. There was a fallen tree nearby and he sat beside it. Waves of misery passed over him as he sat on the ground with his back to the tree, too discouraged to walk any more. He began to cry.

Twice more he called out, but there was no answer. A large mushroom was growing beside him. He stretched out his hand and stroked its soft form for comfort, then cried a little more. And so several more minutes passed as his crying brought him warmth and his wet eyes grew heavy. Then, for a little time, his head fell foward and his chin rested on his chest.

At first he wondered if he was dreaming when he saw the little bear.

It had obviously wandered away from its mother and was loping along, almost tumbling over its own large paws, hurrying to catch up with her. The bear cub passed only fifty feet from where Kiy was sitting half asleep.

Rubbing his eyes, Kiy struggled up, pinched himself to make sure he was awake, and stared after it. Could it really be, after all, that he had found the cub? He could hardly believe his luck. The cub was still visible, scurrying towards a brown form about a hundred yards away that must be its mother. The brown form vanished behind a tree.

Forgetting everything, the little boy started after them. He had only one thought: I must see which way they go. Excited, hurrying as quickly as he could, he followed.

They led him through the wood, across a glade, into another wood. He did not care how far it was. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of them and froze in case they saw him. But mostly he was following the sounds they made as they plunged and scuttled through the forest. He did not know how far from home he was now; nor how he would find his way back. He was too near the object of his quest to think of that. Eagerly he pressed on.

Several times he almost lost them. In the middle of a seemingly endless grove of oak or beech, he would suddenly encounter silence. All around would be trees, with no special feature. And he would pause, wander, pause again before at last hearing their rustling sound coming from some direction.

He had no sense of danger. For after so many magic signs – the hidden pool, the light in the stream from the other world, the snake under the hazel – it was clear to him that this must be a magical day and that the spirits of the forest were leading him to his goal.

It was in one of these silences that he saw that, over to his right, there was a patch of sunlight behind a screen of birch trees that suggested a glade. Perhaps the bear cub had gone there. He moved towards it.

And then ahead of him at the edge of the glade he saw a flash of light in the trees. It was not very high up. Something in the lower branches was glittering. He could not see what it was for the screen of birches, but the sun’s rays were dancing on it, darting this way and that amongst the trees, flashing bright colours of red, silver and gold. What could it be?

And then he realized, with a rush of joy – of course, what it must be. What else lived in a tree and shone like this? What else guarded the valuable things that people searched for – and must surely be guarding his bear cub at this very moment? What else, but the rarest and finest of all the forest’s wonders?

It could only be the firebird itself.

The firebird had plumage of many colours. It glistened and sparkled, even in the dark. If you could creep up and seize one of its long tail feathers, you could have anything you wanted. The firebird meant warmth and happiness. To be sure, the bear cub would be waiting there with the firebird, now. The glinting light seemed to beckon, inviting him.

He went forward, until he was only a dozen yards away. Though he could not see it clearly, the firebird did not move but still sent out flashes of light: it was waiting for him. With a little cry of joy he ran through the screen of birch trees into the clearing.

The face of the horseman that looked down at him from under a metal helmet was motionless. The helmet had several coloured gems set around the rim which flashed in the sunlight – like a firebird. The face was dark, with a large aquiline nose. A mane of black hair cascaded from under the helmet to his shoulders. And his black, almond-shaped eyes were cold. Behind his shoulder hung a long, curved bow.

The little boy stood before him, transfixed. The horse this awesome figure rode was black. Its leather trappings were richly decorated. The horse had been cropping the grass in the shade beside the trees: now it raised its head lazily to look at Kiy.

The face of the horseman did not move.

Then he swooped.

High above, in the vast blue sky, the heavy sun beat down upon the land at silent noon; though a faint, sultry breath of wind made a whisper in the dry barley that brushed against Lebed’s waist as she left the golden field. The dusty smell of the barley permeated the edge of the wood too. As she made her way along the open ground by the wood’s edge, a field mouse scurried out of the barley and hid under a tree root.

Perhaps the child had only strayed to the shadows by the trees. As she walked, she called out gently: ‘Kiy, my little berry. Little Kiy, my dove.’

The grazing cows looked up, but did not trouble to move. Across the field, skirting the woods, a buzzard glided over her in search of prey. Kiy was not there.

She took the path that led to the place where they picked mushrooms. The woods at noon were as silent as the field and the sun broke through the cover with a harsh light. She called again: ‘Little Kiy. Kiy, my duck.’

Hanging on a string of twine around her neck was a little talisman – a tiny goose carved out of pine wood – that her mother had given her. She pulled it out and kissed it.

Then she searched the glades where the mushrooms were. But Kiy was not there.

She went on to the pool. Might he have tumbled in? she wondered. Could he be there, under the still, dark water? She gazed at it. There was no sign of any body floating, and surely there was no reason why he should have fallen in, she reassured herself.

Loudly her voice rang through the wood.

She followed the path to the clearing. There she called out several times more, half expecting to hear his reply. Surely he could not have wandered much further?

She went over to the stand of silver birch at the far side of the clearing and, standing still for long moments, she bowed her head before the shining screen they made. The birch was sacred, and friendly: it could help you if you prayed to it. After this she moved on. But now she went the way she knew was eastwards, not guessing that her child, unaware that the wind had changed, had taken the path of the clouds, in another direction. Once she saw a pair of wolves, standing like pale grey shadows by a tree, watching her. For a moment her heart missed a beat. What if Kiy had met them earlier? She could only remind herself that wolves seldom attacked humans in the warm, plentiful summer.

As she went, images came slowly into her mind, lodging themselves, refusing to be cast out: uncertain figures from her people’s folklore – birds of joy and sorrow, birds of prey. For ten minutes her mind was full of the image of fire – fire in the stove at home, bringing comfort; fire in the forest, bringing fear. The two images seemed to impose themselves, one upon the other, so that she could not tell which was which.

Sometimes the trees seemed friendly, about to deliver her son
to her from their silent protection; at other times they were dark and threatening. At one moment, in an oak grove, she thought she heard his voice echoing plaintively somewhere to the left and listened, and called, and listened again before moving forward.

She thought of life without him. She imagined the space beside her over the stove, empty. How could she fill that desolate emptiness? Would her kindly husband fill it? No. Another child? She had seen other women in the village who had lost their children. They had wept, pined for a time, then settled down again. They had had other children, lost more. The life of the
rod
would always go on. But what use was that knowledge to her now? Lebed had known a mother’s anxiety many times, but never a fear like this. It gnawed at her, caused her a pain that she could hardly bear.

If only she could fly, like Baba Yaga the witch, to the top of the great dome of the sky and look down upon all that moved in the forest and upon the steppe below. If she could only see, and cast a spell upon the boy to bring him back.

As she went further east that early afternoon, two thoughts occurred to her. The first was that the child could not have wandered much further: so, as long as he was still alive, he must be lost somewhere in the forest to the right or to the left, if only she could guess which way.

The second thought was more frightening.

For very soon, to the east, came the end of this part of the forest; and there began a new danger: the steppe.

She imagined Kiy walking out from the line of trees into the tall grasses. Nothing would protect him from the burning sun. The grasses would close behind him: he would never find his way out and she would be unable to see him. And what of the animals there? Though the chances of a bear or a wolf attacking the child in high summer in the woods were not high, she had no such hopes if he met a viper, wild dogs, or a polecat in the steppe.

She decided to go on through the wood and then walk along the edge of the steppe, calling into the fringes of the forest as she went. Perhaps, if he had come this far through the wood, he would be tired and might rest in the shadows at the edge. Anxiously, she quickened her pace.

Five minutes later she emerged from the trees.

The steppe lay before her, a vast open sweep. The silence of the
summer noon extended to the horizon and beyond. The light fell like a weight upon the land, which shimmered. For a hundred yards, patches of short grass and sedge, blistered but still green in places, provided an introduction to the steppe. Beyond that the tall feather grass – so called because of the long, trailing wisps of plumage it exhibited in spring – stretched in a boundless expanse. Its bleached feathers blended in the middle distance so that the yellow haze of parched grasses seemed to be covered with a white down. Further on, the plain looked brownish and beyond that, glimmering under the line of the horizon, it was the colour of lilac. At first glance, emerging into the heat, there was a sense that the heavy sun had reduced, quelled all living creatures into sleep.

But it was not so. A grasshopper sounded near Lebed’s feet. To her right, a woodlark rose and hovered, bravely singing in the blazing heat. She noticed some hyacinths and irises at the wood’s edge, shrivelled by the summer. Some way in front of her, a dark green patch in the yellow grass told her that a marmot colony inhabited the place.

Several times she called, but neither heard nor saw any sign of the child. She turned left and began to walk north-east, along the forest edge. Ahead of her and to the right, perhaps two miles out into the steppe, was a small but clearly visible mound. It was a
kurgan –
a tomb – but she did not know who had put it there or when. Her own people seldom built such things.

Some time passed, yet strangely, through the heat haze, the
kurgan
never seemed to get any closer. The steppe played many such tricks with light, she knew; but today it seemed sinister, ominous. In the far distance, she saw an elegant demoiselle crane with its blue-black neck and white back make its way swiftly towards a hidden nest. Several times as she went along, she turned back into the trees, making a circle to search for Little Kiy before emerging into the glare of the steppe again.

At last, the
kurgan
seemed to be getting nearer; and at the same time, she came to a thin promontory of woodland extending from the left out into the steppe. She started to walk through the line of the trees.

The camp of the horsemen lay just the other side of the trees. She saw it as she came through, not a hundred paces away.

And she saw that they had her child.

The five wagons had canopies made of bark. They were arranged in a circle, making a modest ring of hot and dusty shadows in the huge brightness of the steppe. Several of the horsemen had dismounted and lay under the wagons.