CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Austėja

The tracks lead me nowhere.

They were more visible along the soft mud by the river, but once I entered the forest path towards our hollows, they disappeared. The long grass and shrubs that edge the path look undisturbed but I know they’ve travelled along the ground, as wolves cannot climb. I’ve never been able to track one but I have seen them on occasion, rounded amber eyes, watching me. I’ve never felt threatened, though. They’re more active at dawn and dusk, which is why Motina only allows us in the woods during daylight hours. After what happened to Danutè, it is critical that I am more aware of my surroundings.

Bear tracks are easier to distinguish against the earth. They aren’t as light on their feet as wolves. With strong claws that bury into the soft forest floor, their print is like an oversized human hand with stubby fingers. They remind me of Tévas’s huge paws.

At the oak hollow, I don’t hesitate to kick off my shoes and clamber up the rough grey-bark trunk, reaching out to the higher limb where I once sat with Jonas. The log seat he made for me sits at the base, dusted with wind-blown leaves. Will I see the wolf from here? Is this what it feels like, to be a wolf? Hiding. Waiting for prey to stumble across the path. I wonder if the hunted sense what will become of them. Did Stanislaw?

I know I won’t see one. The wolf that disappeared on light feet is long gone. They travel great distances during the day, rarely staying in one spot for more than a few days. I once envied the ease with which they left behind familiar surroundings and established themselves somewhere new. But I won’t leave Motina, or Danutè, or even Senelè. This is my home.

Motina has lost a daughter, a son, her husband: she cannot lose anyone else. And neither can I. She has been distant since our picnic under the Scots pine. That was the first time Motina spoke to me as an equal, listened to the information I presented and treated me as an adult. Something has shifted again. It seems most likely, now, that the Duke or one of his men killed Stanislaw. That’s why he was never too concerned with investigating his death.

It is a lot to process. Motina has withdrawn into herself, her usual seriousness clouded with desolation.

A cracking sound echoes from below. I shift closer to the trunk, scanning the forest. Is it the wolf after all?

Deep voices strain through the trees as two men emerge from behind the pines. Jonas. My heart flutters at the sight of him, but then I see he is with his older brother, Tomas. The one I am meant to marry. He is taller and leaner than Jonas. I feel nothing when I look at him. I do not know him at all. It is not his face that I summon to mind as I drift off to sleep.

They do not see me but, as they near, Tomas’s chatter becomes clear.

‘We can’t say anything, Jonas. It will only cause trouble for us all.’

‘Isn’t the truth more important?’

‘Not always, brother.’ He pauses near the oak and when he recognises what tree it is he physically recoils. ‘Come, let’s get away from this.’

‘I thought I saw a felled tree around here,’ Jonas says. He looks around the clearing and then steps under the oak’s canopy. He circles the trunk, and his lip twitches when he spies the log seat he made for me. He brushes away the leaves and then stiffens.

He looks up. Our eyes lock and I hold my breath. I want it to be only us here in the forest, for him to join me on the branch so we can spy wolves together. But his brother slaps the back of his shoulder and Jonas stumbles forwards, our eye contact broken.

Tomas looks up and laughs. ‘Are you spying on us, Austėja?’

I shake my head.

‘Well, come on down from there. You can’t be climbing trees like that when we are wed.’

My eyes narrow and I imagine myself leaning forwards and spitting upon the bald patch on the back of his head. Instead, I shuffle across the branch and climb down the trunk, landing on the soil with a silent thud.

When I turn around, Tomas presents me with a fistful of wildflowers. He nudges his brother. ‘This is what women want as a gift, brother. Not a lump of wood.’

I shake an oak leaf from my hair and take the wildflowers. Jonas looks forlorn, his brother smug. I pull the heads off the flowers and throw them to the ground. Stamp on them with my bare feet.

‘Hey!’

I lift my chin. ‘Not all women want flowers, and I certainly don’t want you.’

Tomas growls at me but Jonas holds him back and this gives me enough of a lead to collect my boots, hike up my skirt and dash back through the forest. My heart thumps inside my chest and my limbs are energised, my senses on high alert, as if I am the one being hunted.

⚜

‘Why do you think Tévas wanted to say sorry to me?’

Senelè stops scrubbing the pot, just for a moment, before she starts up again. She is probably still annoyed with me for questioning Tévas’s honesty, but this continues to bother me. If the Duke or one of his men killed Stanislaw, and Stanislaw had Tévas’s knife because he owed him mead, then why did Tévas want to apologise to me? Why not Motina?

‘You ask a lot of questions.’

‘It has been niggling away at me. What do you think it was about?’

‘If what you heard is correct, and your father owed Stanislaw: the mead was running out, as he’d been too ill to make more last August and needed it for himself. I suppose that will be up to you and your mother now …’ She shakes her head as if to dislodge troublesome thoughts. ‘He must have promised him something else.’

‘What?’

‘Not what, my dear. Who.’

My mouth hangs open but no words escape. Me? My father wished to trade me?

Senelè dries her hands on a cloth and then places one on my shoulder. It is warm from the water but it does not feel pleasant. My skin feels hot, scorching, as if I am burning up from the inside out. ‘Breathe, Austėja.’

And I do. I breathe in the forest air but it does not satisfy me. I draw in more and my lungs fill, my stomach protrudes, my mouth puckers. I want to take it all so that I am full and cannot think about all the things that have happened since winter. The deals that were made before the snow fell. The betrayals.

‘Let it go, Austėja,’ Senelè says.

The air listens. It is coaxed out of me on her demand. My stomach curls into my spine, my lungs deflate and my mouth is dry and bare.

‘It will do you no good to dwell on this. Your father was ill; he wanted to protect his family. They were desperate times.’

‘No, he wouldn’t do that.’

She drops her hands and returns to scrubbing the pot. It is already clean. ‘We are all capable of these things when we are under pressure. Your father was a wonderful man, but he was only human. He told me in his final days. He was filled with regret that he could not right this wrong before he died. The taxes were to be raised, he knew that, and he, along with the other men, chose to work with Stanislaw to mislead the Duke. He made choices to protect our harvest, knowing he may not be here to help with future ones. Even so, I would not have let you wed Stanislaw.’

I would have run away before that happened. I would not have married him. Tomas is unacceptable, but Stanislaw? That is far worse. Stanislaw is old and vile and conniving.

And dead.

I cannot imagine my father ever agreeing to this. My father was gravely ill, and he couldn’t possibly have been thinking clearly. Senelè watches me and her eyes are just like my father’s. Tévas’s had been duller in the weeks before he left us. He had been so unwell, barely lucid. But if I’m being honest with myself, he wasn’t the same after returning from Alytus that summer. He and Azuolas changed, in body and in mind.

I see now it was the moment they realised our lives and livelihoods would change forever. The hard work we put in season after season would profit people who avoided getting their hands dirty. When Azuolas left us, some of Tévas’s joviality left with him. And then Tévas became ill too. If my brother had survived, my father may not have acted in such desperation.

‘Anyway, it was not to be. Stanislaw met an untimely death. But one thing your father was right about was the need for you to be wed. It is the only way for this family to survive. He was sorry, and so am I. But we need to look forwards. For Marytè.’

‘So I am to wed and that is it? You said we should never marry within the same community. And what about all the things you said about diverting the future?’

‘Sometimes the signs point to the simple things. If you marry Tomas, you will change the future. Our family will survive, we will succeed in future harvests, and we will pay what is due to the church and the Duke. There is power in these choices, if only you let yourself see it.’

I turn away from Senelè, biting back tears.

Is it possible to hold all of the power yet, at the same time, feel completely powerless?