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.