22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [102]
She tried to escape but he grabbed her leg and pulled her back to him. She kicked out and he clutched her by the hair. It was then that she saw a flash of metal glint in the sunlight. She blinked and stopped fighting. Gregor was back, the woodsman’s axe in his hand.
Everything moved more slowly then; everything seemed clear. She knew what he was going to do. They all did, all of them understanding the moment.
The soldier let go of her and Silvana crawled away. A shot rang out, then another, the soldier firing his gun into the air, hampered by Antek’s grip on his arm. Gregor stood his ground and lifted the axe above his head.
Silvana reached for Aurek, crushed him against her chest, but she knew he heard it. The crack of metal against bone. Again and again.
She could feel something hot on her face, touched her cheek, and her hand came away bloody. Aurek slipped from her. He was open-mouthed, swaying as if he could hear music somewhere and was letting his body move with it. Blood rained on them. Aurek let out a scream and ran towards the chicken house.
There was still the frenzy of Gregor slamming the axe down again and again. It was possible to believe that he was chopping firewood and that everything was normal, except that blood and flesh were everywhere and Marysia’s face was full of fear and the old man lay cowering in the dirt beside his dead wife, his hands over his head.
Silvana backed away. She snatched up her bag and stumbled across the yard. When she reached the chicken house she found Aurek crouched at the back of it, half in, half out of a nest box. She dropped onto her knees and grabbed his leg, pulling him towards her and still he struggled, trying to get back into the nest box.
‘Aurek,’ she cried. ‘Aurek, please. We have to go.’
She gripped the struggling child tightly in her arms, crawled out of the hen house and began to run.
She crossed the fields where the family cultivated potatoes and sugar beet and kept on running until she reached a deep stream, throwing herself into it, the cold water shocking her, setting her teeth chattering in her jaw, her legs shaking.
‘It’s all right,’ she told Aurek through gritted teeth. ‘It’s all right. Hush, my darling. Hush.’
He was shaking, shivering violently, and she washed the blood off him, rubbing at his hair, scrubbing him clean, ignoring his cries, spitting on his cheek, using her sleeve to clean him.
‘It’s all right,’ she insisted, tears running down her face. She looked at her dress and saw the bloodstains that had bloomed across it in the water. ‘It’s all right,’ she sobbed, unsure now whether she was soothing herself or the boy. ‘Hush now.’
She carried the child across the stream and climbed through a bank of brambles on the other side. Swinging him onto her hip, she staggered on across the flat landscape, the midsummer sun high in the sky above them, its heat drying their clothes. When she fell, she picked herself up, running on until she thought her heart would burst. Finally, she came to a wide, deep ditch that separated two ripe wheat fields and slid down into it, unable to go on any further.
In the muddy water, pulling Aurek to her, hand over his mouth, afraid he might scream, she lay trying to catch her breath.
She stayed there all day and all through the hot summer night, plagued by whining mosquitoes. At first light, she and Aurek climbed out of the ditch and made their way back into the forest. She could see distant flames across the fields and a spiral of grey smoke. Perhaps soldiers out for revenge had set fire to the cottage. Or maybe Marysia and Gregor and the woodsman had set fire to it and escaped.
Silvana reached the edge of the forest and the shadows of the trees, waves of dark rolling over her. The calm of pines and spruce and birch, all the trees drawing her and the boy in, letting them become part of their stillness and secrets.
‘We’re safe,’ she told Aurek. ‘We’re safe now.’
The forest was Silvana’s home again. A green world that swallowed up boundaries in its pine-scented