‘Anselm was kind enough to let me know Ari’s returned. What wonderful news. You were so distressed when you came to ask for my help.’ A reminder, not so subtle, that I’d already been brought into this. That I’d made myself ill in their service, taken no payment for it.
‘Oh. Yes. In the excitement we forgot to tell you.’ The glare she gives her husband is searing; there’ll be more raised voices not long after I leave.
‘And is she well, your Ari?’ I sit without being asked, elbows on the tabletop, heedless of the floury surface; the smell of baking bread doesn’t tempt my appetite and I still feel queasy. Anselm sits across from me and Gida reluctantly follows suit. Both of them look exhausted.
‘Healthy as a horse.’
‘And did she say where she’d been all this time, with so many people looking for her without success?’
‘She doesn’t remember. Except for falling from the fence around the orchard’ – I think of the lack of footprints – ‘and waking in the darkness. In a cave, she said. Then she slept again, woke and slept again. When she woke next it was to findherself in a grove of trees. She’s been walking home ever since.’
‘She must have been very deep in the woods. North or south? East or west?’
‘She couldn’t say.’ Gida’s tone is growing sharp. But what child of Berhta’s Forge can’t tell their compass points from the position of the sun or the moss on the side of a tree?
‘What did she eat?’
‘Berries. You know the woods are filled with them this time of year, so many varieties. She dug roots as well – she’s clever my Ari, knows how to feed herself. All village children do, all those who were bornhere.’ This last is said tartly. This reminder that I was not born here, and twenty years later that lack is still not forgotten.
‘All that time on berries. She must have returned very thin.’
‘Very thin, I’ll give you that. But she found tubers and the like, drank from streams.’
‘I’d like to see her, Gida, even though it sounds as if she’s in rude health, and I know you care devotedly for her.’
Gida’s mouth moves without opening, as if she’s fighting to keep her reply in, and I have to bite down on a grin. Laughter would do no good. I simply gaze at her until she realises she’s got no good reason to refuse, and she turns and calls, ‘Ari, my dove, will you come down?’
And Ari steps so quickly into the kitchen that it’s clear she’s been listening from the staircase that leads up to the living quarters. In the seeing of her I finally recognise the child; she bears a vague resemblance to the image I’d conjured in my mind those months ago when the parents came to see me and I could not really recall a face. Shortish, dark hair in tight braids,blue knee breeches and a white shirt, leather shoes with laces, and she’s wearing her fine red woollen cloak, inside. I recall her nodding to me whenever she passed, smiling shyly when I visited the village, the bakery for bread and rolls fancier than I was prepared to make; a quiet, polite child. But now, the set of the chin is different, a haughty angle, an insolent cast to the brown eyes. As if her absence has been accompanied by a personality change. Much as her father said, I suppose.
‘Hello, Ari. It seems you’ve had quite an adventure.’ I’m usually wary of speaking down to children, but irritating someone can often make them show their hand.
She nods, doesn’t answer.
‘Ari.’ Anselm’s voice is louder than is required, a tense wire plucked.
‘Yes,’ says the child, as if dribbling out a taste she doesn’t like.
‘And you’re quite well? Despite nothing but berries and roots?’
‘And eggs. Sometimes I’d find nests with eggs in them. I’d eat them raw – nothing to cook them in, you see.’
I nod. ‘Do you recall how you got so far into the woods?’
‘I—’ She tilts her head to one side as if listening. ‘No. I was playing in the orchard, on the fence. I’d picked the mushrooms, but I didn’t want to go home and something happened,’ she squints trying to recall, ‘I dropped the mushrooms and thought how angry Mother would be, then…’ She shakes her head. ‘All I remember is waking in the dark many times, until one day I woke in the light, in a clearing, and started walking.’
‘And you knew which way to go?’
‘I can find my way in the woods.’ Scornful. Probably right; most children know how to get their bearings, to wind their way home. And contradicting what her mother told me – possibly what she’d told her mother.
‘And you didn’t see anyone else? The whole time?’
She shakes her head. I gesture for her to come closer. She hesitates, then concedes. I examine her hands and nails, the palms with their map of lines so intricately drawn. Next her face and throat, along the hairline and at the back of her neck in the little dip where skull sits so neatly on spine. I’m tempted to hold tighter, dig deeper into the very being of her, but that will hurt her, she’ll scream, and her parents will say how I injured their child out of spite. It’s not worth it. When I’m done, I sit back in my chair and nod. ‘Thank you, Ari. You’ve got your cloak on, going out I take it.’
She nods. I gesture towards the door, whether it’s my place to give permission or not, and the child skips away. I wait until the front door opens and closes before looking at her parents, pronouncing calmly: ‘Nothing wrong that I can see. You’re very lucky to have her back.’
Gida nods, sullenly, although she looks a little relieved. Anselm, beads of sweat on his brow, walks me out. In the front garden, he gives an anxious look. ‘Well?’
I shrug. ‘There’s nothing physical that I can point to. You may just have to come to terms with the fact she’s behaving badly because she was on her own for over two months and no one rescued her. She feels abandoned and she’s going to punish you for that for a while. And remember she was on her own and survived without help – that’s a hard-won independenceright there, Anselm. She might forgive you eventually, might behave better. But it will take some time.’
