‘Papa!’
Grandfather turns, his face lit from behind by the stirring orange. ‘It’s been a long time, boy …’
Into the orange orb Grandfather piles the rest of his kindling. Soon, the glow is stronger. These, he explains, are embers. How they appeared, the boy does not know – for Grandfather is just an old man from a tenement, and surely he does not know sorceries and enchantments. The rest, the boy understands. To turn those embers into roaring fire you have to add scraps of cloth axed from the old armchair, and even a piece of floorboard. Then, when the fire darts and spits and dances in the grate, you can put a pot in and melt down snow.
If you melt snow, you get water. And if you boil up water, you can use it to soften the frozen ground so that the axe can dig down. In this way, Grandfather excavates a tiny crater in the roots of a black oak. Once he is done, he unwraps mama’s urn. When the boy peeps in, he is expecting to see the bits of mama left behind, the bone of a finger with baba’s ring still on it, a lock of hair or a piece of heart, but instead it is only grey dust. Gently, Grandfather upturns the urn and piles her in the hole.
‘Go on then,’ says Grandfather. ‘Say goodbye.’
The boy looks at the pile of dust. Then he looks at Grandfather. ‘Goodbye.’
‘Not to me, you little …’ Grandfather cuffs him, gently, around his shoulder. ‘Did you think I was leaving you behind? Say goodbye to your mama.’
His eyes fall back on the dust. ‘I won’t see her again.’
‘No,’ whispers Grandfather, ‘not like this.’
‘But papa, we can come for …’
Grandfather cuts him off. ‘Goodbye, Vika.’
Now a chill wind blows up through the alders and the peak of the little pile of dust is caught and spirited away. When Grandfather sees it he drops to his knees to cover mama’s dust with dirt. Once that is packed down – the boy helps pat it flat – he smears the snow back over. The sky is heavy and, as soon as it starts falling again, there’ll be no mark that mama was ever here.
‘Is it a grave?’
‘No, not a grave.’
‘Then what?’
Grandfather’s eyes are wet. ‘It was summer when your Grandma … I didn’t come here, boy, though she begged me to. It was your mama who scattered her in these trees. This forest, that’s what your baba is now. And it’s what your mama is too.’
He nods.
‘It all goes back to the ground. Then it gets eaten up. And then there’s trees and flowers.’
‘And nettles and thistles?’
Grandfather nods. ‘All the bad stuff too, but don’t forget the good. There are wolves in this forest that ate rabbits in this forest that ate grasses that grew on your Grandma.’
The old man feels the boy’s hands, tells him they are frozen, that they’ll have to get warm before frostbite eats every finger. This is a thing to set the little boy thrilling, because to lose a finger in the forest would be a very great adventure.
As they turn back to the house, the boy cannot help seeing the look in his Grandfather’s eyes. It is not one he has seen before. He has seen him angry, and he has seen him sad, but fear has a way of making the eyes crease – and fear is what he sees now. His hand falls from Grandfather’s own, and as the old man tramps inside, the boy looks back at the tree that will drink up mama, and the still dark beneath the branches.
If Grandfather is right, then the wilderness is baba – and soon the wilderness will be mama too. But, if it is really so, then there is nothing to fear in those long darknesses between the trees. It would be like in the story of Baba Yaga, and you would be kind to the branches and they would throw up walls of thorn to protect you from any bad thing in the world.
Then he remembers: there are other stories too, ones he does not know, ones it seems Grandfather will not tell. There are stories of this ruined house, and baba and mama. There are the stories scrawled along the tenement hall, of soldiers and kings and the wars of the long ago. And there is the tale mama never knew, of why, until this day, Grandfather has never returned to the forest and stopped telling his tales. Perhaps, in those fables, the forest is a wicked thing, and boys and girls would be better off staying in Baba Yaga’s hen feet hut than running desperately for their papa through the chestnuts and pines.
Grandfather’s shape hunches through the door and along the narrow kitchen. Beyond him, the fire burns strong. The old man steps into the light, rounds the corner – and then, for a moment, though the boy can still hear the familiar click of his jackboot heels, he is gone. As the footfalls fade, the boy finds himself torn between mama’s tree and the echo of Grandfather’s jackboots. By the time he scrabbles back into the ruin, Grandfather is hunched over the fire, fingers splayed to drink in its warmth.
He joins him, feeling the lap of the flames. ‘Mama must have liked it, papa, to want to come back here.’
‘I suppose she liked it well enough.’
‘So why didn’t you live here? Why did you live in the tenement?’
‘Stories, stories,’ mutters Grandfather. ‘Haven’t you had enough excitement for one night?’
As the flames flurry up, Grandfather brings a piece of crumpled newspaper out of his greatcoat pocket. When he sets it down, the scrunched-up paper slackens and unfurls. There, in the light of the fire, the boy sees the nine remaining hunks of mama’s gingerbread.
‘Can I?’
‘Of course.’
The boy reaches out and takes one of the hunks.
‘I’ll want a corner.’
‘You can have a whole one, papa.’
Grandfather closes the newspaper bundle. ‘No,’ he says. ‘They have to last.’
He turns the gingerbread over in his mouth, until it is wet and sticky and stuck in the crannies between his teeth.
After some time, the flames lose their strength. In the hearth’s heart, the branches glow orange, but fire no longer licks up the chimneybreast, and the hiss and crackle has ebbed away. It does not matter, for the heat still radiates out. The boy curls in his eiderdown, and skims the surface of sleep, always the thought of mama hovering near, the reassuring presence of Grandfather, just beyond the line of his vision.
He must fall asleep, because the next thing he feels are bony fingers in his hair. He does not start. The heat has lulled him, and he opens his eyes to feel Grandfather near.
‘Are you ready, boy?’
‘Ready, papa?’
‘To go back to the tenement.’
The boy hurtles up. ‘Please, papa. We haven’t …’
‘I can’t stay here, boy. Not in the forest.’
‘But why not in the forest?’
‘Why doesn’t matter,’ breathes Grandfather. ‘Stop asking why. Why, why, why! I already kept my promise, boy. I did what I told her I’d do. Your mama loves this place. She’s fine out …’
A shrill cry, one to pierce every room in the ruin: ‘She isn’t fine, papa! She’s dead.’
If there was another anger bubbling out of Grandfather, the boy has shocked it back into place. Now he stands, merely numb.
‘She’ll be fine, boy. She doesn’t feel the cold, not where she is. She isn’t alone. She