“What was it like?”
“It was dark and didn’t come out from the trees.”
“Did it move like this?” Telek jumped off the log and moved bent over in a smooth trot. “Or like this?” He lumbered slowly from side to side.
“Like you did first.”
“A wolf.”
“What other animals are there?”
“This isn’t like any forest in all of Europe.”
“Why not?”
“Bialowieza Forest has never been burned or logged. It has stood here since forever.”
“No one owns it?”
“God owns it.”
“But we take wood for Magda.”
“Some wood is gathered, but no one has ever torn the forest apart. It is as it was all over Europe thousands and thousands of years ago.”
Gretel breathed lightly. “And what other animals live here?”
“Animals that don’t live anyplace in Europe anymore. There are cranes and storks and hazel-hens. Eight kinds of woodpeckers.”
“Have you seen them all?”
“Yes. And there are elk and roe deer, lynx, wolf.”
“Will the wolves kill you?”
“Not unless they’re starving and you’re helpless.”
“What else is there?”
“The otters play in the spring. Sliding down the banks and leaping around near the river. And frogs and fish in the river.” Telek looked around at the clearing. They reminded him of what it was to be a child and wander alone in the forest. After his mother killed herself, he had wandered until he felt like a wild creature himself. Men came and men went, but this forest was always here.
“Are the deer the biggest animals?” Hansel was busy piling up the snow in a wall.
“No. The wild ponies are heavier than the deer. And the wild boar is stronger. But the king of all of them is the biggest of all.”
Gretel stared at him. “What is the king of all of them?”
“He’s a shy king. You won’t see the bison easily. And he’s like a house he’s so big.”
“It’s magic.” She sighed deeply. “And think, Telek. They just live out here. They can walk around and are free and eat and play and have the whole forest to be their home.”
“We have the forest too, child.”
“But we don’t have it the way they do, Telek.”
He didn’t answer, but he knew what she meant.
“If you promise not to wander so far again, I’ll show you both something special.”
“I love all of it.” Gretel put her hand in Telek’s.
“I know. But if you never again come so deep in the forest, I’ll take you with me when I gather mushrooms in the spring. I’ll show you”—he paused—“I’ll show you everything by summer.”
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“The bison and the wild boar and the frogs?” Hansel stared at Telek.
“Yes.”
“All right. I’ll wait for you to show me.” Hansel dusted off his hands and jammed them in his pockets.
“Come on,” Telek said. “Let’s see what we find today.”
He led them deeper into the trees through snow that was so soft he sometimes turned and picked up the girl, and the boy clung to his back. He could feel the faster beat of her heart through his coat. He had to hush the boy, but she was as silent as he.
They were closer now to where he had been going, and he slowed, dropping her onto the ground. He put his finger to his lips, but he didn’t have to worry. She had no need for words. Her eyes were big with excitement and blue, like the sky had broken and fallen into her face.
The boy was excited too, but more wary, more cautious.
Telek sucked his index finger and raised it into the air. Nodding at the children to do the same, he watched as they raised their thin fingers, sticky with saliva.
Bending until his mouth was next to their ears he whispered so low that they could barely hear him, “Which way is the wind blowing?”
She shook her head. A city child.
“Which side of your finger is coldest?”
She thought and pointed to the pad of the finger. He nodded. “The wind is blowing in our faces. The animals behind us can smell us on the wind, but any animals in front can’t smell us.”
The boy’s eyes were wide in surprise. “How do you know about the wind?”
Telek shook his head. He had never thought about it. He had known it all his life as if he had been born knowing it. He whispered again, “When you want to see the animals, you keep the wind in your face.”
She nodded and he knew she wouldn’t forget. He walked on very slowly now, straining to see through the trees. First it looked like more snow that was banked and piled, but he knew it was too gray to be snow. He pointed slowly and they stood, the man and the children, and waited.
Through the trees they came, pawing at the snow to uncover the moss and leaves, eating any low-growing twigs and chewing the bark. Gretel caught her breath but didn’t move or speak. Telek took her hand, and they stood in the snow and did not even blink while the ponies came toward them.
They were smaller than domesticated ponies, and their heads were heavy, almost like the heads of donkeys. They were thickly built and moved surely in the snow.
Two mares were in front, the first with a belly swollen by foal. Their coats were dense and pale gray and hung almost to their hocks. The hair hung over their faces, and you couldn’t see any glitter of eye. The younger mare came second and the little stallion, more watchful, pushing them on with a thrust of his head butting their flanks, protected their rear.
They didn’t see the humans, and Telek waited for the moment when either they would see him, or he would make a movement and startle them so they wouldn’t trample the children.
He looked down at Gretel without moving his head so the horses would not run. Her mouth was slightly open and her eyes dilated with joy. She clutched his hand so tightly that her nails pinched his skin.
Before he could raise a hand and end it, the stallion lifted his head and gave a sudden blow of steam through his nostrils. The mares lifted their heads too, and in one movement it seemed, they all three broke and ran toward the east in bounds that cleared the deeper drifts of snow.
Telek gripped Gretel’s hand warningly and didn’t move. He grabbed the boy’s coat collar and pulled him close. Something had frightened the ponies. He saw nothing, but then he smelled it. Tobacco smoke.
“Not a word,” he whispered, and he picked Hansel up and ran to a fallen tree covered with a drift of snow. Gretel followed on his heels. He shoved the children under the tree and knocked snow over the footprints. They disappeared in a shower of powdery white.
Telek ran past where the horses had been toward the cigarette smoke. He saw the man in front of him. He was standing, smoking, and Telek stopped behind a tree and watched.
“Is it you, Telek?” the man called.
Telek moved out from behind the tree and saw the others. It was the Russian and his group.
“Yes. It’s me. Looking for rabbits.”
“What news of your village, Telek?”
“The SS man has come and gone.”
“The same that was in the other villages?”
“Yes.”
“He’s coming back.”
“Yes. We’ll try to deal with it. The Lithuanian warned me about this.”
The Russian nodded. Telek saw that he had two new members. The man was tall and could have been a Jew. The woman was small, but she wore a German uniform and had a pistol. Her hair was white in streaks. Telek nodded but didn’t speak to them.
“Go in peace, Telek. Here.” The Russian reached in his coat and offered a small flask. Telek took it, drank quickly, and gave it back to the Russian.
The partisans moved on, going away from the village, moving into the forest, looking for a place to sleep before the sun went down. Telek moved away between the trees, and he was gone when the woman l
ooked over her shoulder for him.
Gretel lay perfectly still where he had put her. Hansel had climbed out and was behind a tree. Telek pulled the girl out of the snow and laughed.
“You did well. You lay as still as the rabbit when the fox is hunting. If the rabbit lies still, the fox never catches her. But if she runs—” Telek snapped his jaws twice.
“I wasn’t still. I was going to help. I can fight too.”
“When I say be still, you must be still.”
“I want to help, Telek.”
Telek grinned at the boy. He was foolhardy but brave.
Gretel shivered. “What was it, Telek?”
“A wild boar. I would have shown you, but they’re hungry and angry in the winter. It was better that you stayed here.”
“I want to see one.” Hansel started forward, and Telek grabbed the boy and put him on his shoulders.
“Someday. I’ll show you that and the mother pig with her piglets. But we’ll climb a tree and sit like squirrels and let her come to us. Magda is worried, and I have to get you home.”
He took Gretel’s hand and began to lope through the snow, going around the drifts and avoiding the patches that covered the swampy places, the boy’s weight light on his shoulders.
“You children must never come here alone, Gretel. Never again. There are bright lights over the swamps. People say it’s witches trying to draw us into darkness. Listen, Hansel.”
“I wouldn’t be afraid. I want to see it all.”
“Promise you won’t come in the forest alone.”
“I promise, Telek,” Gretel said, squeezing his hand.
“I’ll show you the forest, Hansel, but don’t go beyond the creek again. Do you promise?”
“I promise,” Hansel said.
“Yes,” she said, promising for the second time.
The boy was too independent, but Telek was satisfied by Gretel’s promise. She was not like other children. There was something in her that he could understand as he had never understood a child before. She felt about the woods as he did. Telek tightened his grip on her hand and moved faster toward the hut and Nelka.
In the Cage
Hansel looked at Gretel, who lay with eyes half open, breathing heavily on the sleeping platform. Her cheeks were bright red, and he could hear her breath rasping. It had been ten days since they had wandered off and been found by Telek.
Magda took a small bottle and poured a spoonful of dark syrup into a cup. She added hot water, and the smell of raspberries filled the room.
“When it cools a little, she must drink it. God help us. I have almost no herbs left. Everyone has been sick for the last three months.” Magda went to the girl and felt her head.
“She’s too hot.”
Magda lay her head down on Gretel’s chest and listened. The lungs were filling.
“It is a grippe of the lungs. Help me pile logs against the wall of the platform. Cover them with a pad of blankets. We have to make her sit up so the lungs will be easier.”
Hansel lifted the largest logs he could and made a backrest. Then the blankets. The two of them pulled Gretel until she was sitting upright, her head lolling back onto the blanket.
“I don’t feel good, Hansel. I don’t like it. Let me eat snow, Magda. I’m hot.”
“No, child. Open your mouth wide ... wider.”
She turned the girl’s head toward the light coming through the waxed paper of the window.
“I have to swab it.”
She began to cry. “Don’t do it, Magda. Leave me alone.”
Magda got the bottle of iodine and with a few firm twists wrapped the tip of a twig in clean cotton. Hansel stood clutching his own throat with his hands.
“You make people well, don’t you, Magda?”
“Hold her shoulders, Hansel.”
Hansel climbed on the platform and held Gretel down. He struggled against her determinedly.
Magda opened Gretel’s mouth and put a piece of wood between her back teeth so the girl couldn’t shut her mouth. The old woman dipped the cotton in the iodine and slowly painted the whole of the girl’s throat with the stinking medicine. She painted it so deeply that Gretel gagged repeatedly. Then Magda would stop and wait. She didn’t want the child to vomit and take the iodine off the membranes of her throat.
When they were done, Gretel lay limp. “I hate it,” she whispered.
“You were a good girl,” Magda said. “That will make your throat heal.”
“It hurts.” Tears ran down the child’s face.
“I know.” Magda gave Hansel a bowl. “Get a few icicles off the trees. Not from the roof, they have soot in them from the stovepipe. She can suck them and it will get some liquid into her.”
Hansel ran outside, not stopping for his coat. The larger trees were too tall, but the saplings had lovely icicles hanging from some of the branches. Then he saw the pine trees ahead. The icicles were small and easy to suck, and when he broke them off, they smelled faintly of pine sap.
Hansel filled the bowl and ran back to the hut.
“Let me,” he said. Sitting on the platform beside Gretel, he held the icicles to her lips.
“It’s nice,” she whispered.
Hansel sat beside her all day, getting fresh icicles from the pine trees and encouraging his sister to suck, but she was not getting better.
Magda shook her head. It was a bad grippe. She could hear the gurgle of liquid when she pressed her head to the girl’s chest.
Magda didn’t believe cupping would help much, Gretel was too far into the grippe now, but trying anything was better than doing nothing. It was growing dark. The fever had to break before night.
“Darkness sucks the life out,” she muttered.
“What, Magda?” Hansel sat up from where he lay beside Gretel.
“Nothing, child. We’re going to fool her body.”
“How?”
“We’ll make her body think about something besides the lungs. Take Gretel’s shirt off and lay her flat on her stomach.”
“It’s my piano!” Gretel shouted weakly. She flung her arm out and it struck Hansel.
“Magda!”
Magda sprang to the platform and helped Hansel roll the girl over. Without the shirt her arms were almost fleshless, and Magda could see all the veins under the skin.
Magda sighed. Gretel ate all Magda had to give her, but it was a time when the girl should have been growing. Every piece of bread was burned off by her growth.
“Hold her, Hansel, while I prepare the cups.”
Magda went to the floor and took out a basket that held her cups. Clear glass, they had a lip at the bottom. She took three of them and lit a candle.
“On my mother’s milk I pray to you, Virgin. Make it break the fever.”
Holding the glass with a cloth so she wouldn’t burn her fingers, Magda heated the air in the cup until it was hot. Swiftly, she clapped it onto the white skin of the child’s back, avoiding the backbone, which stood out like a fish’s spine.
Gretel cried out and struggled, but Hansel held her down.With hands stiffened by arthritis but practiced in doing this, Magda heated two more cups and pressed them to the girl’s back.
As the air in the cup cooled, it created a vacuum which sucked the circle of skin up in a puff of flesh into the cup. The skin turned bright red from the heat.
“See, child.” She nodded at Hansel. “The cupping brings the blood to the surface. It distracts the body and makes it forget the lungs. The pain goes to her back, and then the lungs can fight harder and not just lie on the bed and give up.”
Hansel watched the cups for about half an hour until Magda took them off by pressing down the flesh near the cup to break the suction and lifting the glass. They made a popping sound as they released the flesh, and there were three red circles on Gretel’s back.
They rolled her over, and she struggled against them, turning and twisting.
“I want to go out!” she screamed. “I want to ride the p
ony!”
Magda knew that unless the fever broke, the girl would try to get up and leave the hut. She would fall off the platform. Tying her was too harsh. It was better if she could move some, but not fall to the floor. She needed to be on the warmth of the platform.
“Hold her down, Hansel. I won’t be long.”
Magda put on her coat and went out. If only it was still there. If only the children hadn’t broken it up playing with it. She walked through the trees to a small clearing. It was downstream from the hut, and here she had once kept chickens. The last one had been eaten long ago. She hoped it was large enough for the girl. She hoped it was still unbroken.
Kicking through the snow, Magda searched the ground near the low shelter the chickens had used. Her boot hit something hard, and she dug the snow away with her hands.
Not very clean, but unbroken. Her eyes measured the wooden length of it. It would do.
It was frozen to the earth, but a few hard kicks freed it. She dragged it behind her to the hut and kicked it again before she took it inside. Most of the frozen mud had fallen off, and the wooden cage was wet with snow but unbroken.
Magda dragged the cage inside and put it near the stove. Hansel stared from the platform.
“Move her over if you can.”
Hansel dragged the girl to one end of the platform, and Magda, with strength she didn’t know she had, swept the blankets aside and lifted the chicken cage onto the wooden boards. She flipped open the top and laid blankets down until the bottom slats were covered and wouldn’t hurt Gretel’s back. The girl could roll and turn, but she couldn’t fall off.
Hansel’s eyes were wide, but he understood. “Just until the fever breaks, Magda.”
“Yes. We can give her syrup and icicles if she’ll take them. She’ll just have to pee on the blankets.” Although there had been no urine for hours now.
Hansel hauled and Magda pulled, and they dumped Gretel onto the blankets in the long cage. Magda closed the top and tied it firmly with a piece of rope.
“It looks cruel, Hansel, but it will keep her up here where it’s warm. You go to sleep.”
“I’ll sit up too.”
“No. If you want to help me, you’ll sleep. I’ll be tired tomorrow. By then her fever will have broken, and you can nurse her while I rest. But you have to be strong tomorrow. Sleep.”