read to her, her voice halting at first as the letters gradually shaped themselves into sounds, the sounds into words, the words suddenly leaping from the page. She read the story of the firebird, the story of Havroshechka, the story of the snow child who played in the forest too close to the fire. She read the story of Baba Yaga, the witch whose house ran on chicken legs, and whose fence was hung with the skulls of the people she had eaten.
And sometimes, Mama would fall asleep in her chair, the bump, bump of the rockers slowing to silence. Eva would tiptoe to the door and watch Marek until she saw him slip away along the path that led into the forest, and then she would follow him. Now she was older, she could walk further into the forest, but that day Marek was walking fast and she lost sight of him. She didn’t mind at first, following him along the path. She would catch up with him soon. The sun felt warm where it shone through the leaf canopy and she swung herself round the trunks of the trees, the silver of the birch and the dark, heavy pines.
A bird took fright, somewhere in the deep glades, and shrieked and clattered its way into the air. The path divided here, and she didn’t know which way Marek had gone. That way was to the railway line. She listened. The forest was still. No train, no birds, no rabbits. Just the silence of the forest around her.
The other way…She looked along the path. She didn’t know this path. Maybe Marek had gone this way. Maybe this was where Marek got the birds and the rabbits and the milk. She walked further, looking at the trees that were starting to change colour, the long fronds brushing against her face as she walked She’d never been this far into the forest before. As her feet pressed into the ground, she could smell the damp earth and the leaf mould. The breeze stirred the leaves and made the shadows dance on the forest floor. The trees whispered to her: Eva. Eva.
And she could smell something else, faint on the breeze. It was a sour, rotting smell. It reminded her of the time a rat crawled under the house to die. She stopped. The path branched again ahead of her, winding away through the trees. As she watched, the sun came out above the leaf canopy, and its rays dappled the ground that was golden with the early fall of autumn. The breeze moved the air again and she smelled the scent of the forest, and the birch fronds danced and beckoned. Eva. Eva. She turned along the winding path.
It led to a cottage, a house in a clearing, one of the houses in the deep forest that the village hadn’t yet reached. It was timber with a picket fence, and along the path, under the trees leading to the house, there were bushes, and the bushes were covered with berries.
The empty place inside Eva came alive. She looked round quickly but the house seemed to be deserted. She ran along the path, and knelt down to look at the bushes. She knew these berries. She could eat them without cooking. And there were enough to take back for everyone. She crammed them into her mouth until the empty place went away and she felt a bit sick. She began to collect berries in her apron.
But the sick feeling wasn’t just the berries. It was the smell. The smell was here, in the clearing and it was in her nose, in her hair, in her clothes, in her hands. She was inside the smell, and now she wasn’t so hungry, she couldn’t ignore it.
She looked at the house again. She could see the white fence glimmering from the shadow of the trees, and the windows were dark spaces behind. She’d never heard of a house so deep in the forest before. She crept nearer. The house was clean, well cared for, and the smell caught in her nostrils and brought tears to her eyes.
She could see movement in the shadows. There was something dark hanging from the beam above the porch. The shape came clearer as she moved closer. She could see a face. The face was watching her, but the eyes were half-closed and sunken. The hair, which was white, was pulled into a neat bun, like Mama’s. And the breeze blew, and she almost expected to smell Mama, the smell of lavender and herbs that she knew so well. But the smell that the breeze carried was foul.
And as the forest breathed around her, she knew what it was. She waited, frozen, for the house to stand up on chicken legs and step towards her with deliberate but silent tread. Her hands let go of the corners of her apron, and the berries fell, unheeded, to the ground. She backed away, and again, then turned and ran down the path not stopping, not daring to look back, until suddenly she was past the trees and into the clearing, and she could hear Mama calling her, and Marek had come back from the railway with potatoes and Mama had made soup. She couldn’t eat it, though Mama scolded and worried.
Over the next few days, she heard the women talking about the old woman in the woods–‘…her boy…shot in the fighting…hanged herself…’ And they made the sign of the cross, and Mama sighed.
But Eva had seen Baba Yaga’s house, seen the fence hung with the bodies of the people she’d killed. And at night, she would lie in bed, tense, listening to the sounds of the forest, trying to pick out the scrape of chicken feet stepping across the forest floor. She could remember the way chickens walked, the way they lifted their feet, the way the tendons moved under the wrinkled skin of their legs, the way their claws stepped on to the ground with slow deliberation. And she knew that Baba Yaga’s house was hunting her through the forest, stealthy and inexorable.
She had stolen Baba Yaga’s berries and now her bones would hang on that high, white fence.
The following morning dawned bright and clear with the promise of an early spring. The sun was rising as Faith left for work, the winter light warming the grey stone and gleaming off the rocky outcrops on the high moors in the distance.
She was worried about Helen. She’d tried contacting her, but no one answered the phone. She’d left messages, but there had been no response. She thought back to the last time they’d talked. Helen had seemed distracted. Daniel was putting a lot of pressure on her. ‘He wants his share of the house,’ she’d said. ‘I didn’t want all of this to go through lawyers and the courts. I thought we could sort it ourselves.’
‘Why don’t you just buy him out?’ Faith said. It seemed the simplest way–a clean break.
‘I can’t take on a mortgage that size. It’ll mean moving, and the kids…Now he’s saying he’s going to take me to court for custody.’ She sighed, apparently more exasperated than concerned.
‘Do you think he means it?’
Helen shook her head. ‘He’s just making smoke. He thinks we’re going to get back together. He’ll come round.’
‘Are you?’ Helen had blossomed since she had left her marriage. Despite all the worries and all the hassle, she’d seemed brighter and happier than Faith had seen her in years.
‘Sometimes I think it would be the easiest way, but…’ She shook her head. ‘It’s not going to happen.’
Faith thought about this conversation as she negotiated the traffic. Helen had been evasive about the break-up, about what had been the final trigger. Though Helen hadn’t said anything definite, Faith suspected that there was someone else in the picture. She had been astonished when she saw Helen for the first time after the break-up. Despite all the problems, she’d looked years younger. She had been the buoyant, vivacious woman Faith remembered from their university days, but a sophisticated one now, beautifully turned out, her hair styled, her clothes immaculate.
Another time–just after her birthday–Helen had been wearing a new watch with a delicate silver band. ‘Present from Daniel?’ Faith had asked, though it looked a bit subtle for Daniel.
‘No,’
