Chapter Twelve

Beyond the Forest

Misha loved Edith, not as someone to marry, but as a sister and a friend. She alone of all the children he’d grown up with had never thought him an idiot. That was more than could be said for the rest of the community. Their perception of him as the village simpleton had not changed since he was small. Even his love of the mountain was taken as a sign of his mental inability rather than seen for what it was: his courage to make a pact with and survive in an inhospitable realm. The older he became the more he realised that it was his grandfather who was mostly responsible for this misunderstanding. He had terrified Misha since he was a child. At night Misha would still wake in a cold sweat, certain that the butcher was in his room.

Misha was five when he was caught taking an apple from the orchard, a crime that no other child in the village had ever been punished for. His grandfather had lifted him up as he would a squealing piglet, stripped the boy and taken his belt to Misha’s tender skin. The beating had been of such severity that for a while no one was sure if the child would live. It was the only time he remembered his father being furious with his grandfather. He threatened to report him to the mayor. What surprised Misha even more was how angry his father had been with his mother.

The mayor’s wife, Georgeta, had paid a visit to the invalid only when he was on the road to recovery. A tall woman, she said nothing and held a handkerchief to her nose. He had been lying on his front, unable to move. The room was hot and he had been impressed when with one flick of the handkerchief she had stunned a fly so that it fell to the floor, buzzing on its back. With a quick movement of her small boot she had squashed it. Then she bent down and gave him a book. As no one else had seen it happen, Misha hid it under his pillow.

‘Very wise,’ said the mayor’s wife quietly.

It was from this book of fairy tales that Edith taught him to read; three years older than him, the little girl patiently spelled out the words as she had learned to do herself. Misha’s mother never knew. Her conviction that he was an idiot was unbreakable. He had only the vaguest understanding of his mother’s utter dislike of him. His father always excused her, saying that Misha had come too early and with his feet first. Misha, as children often do when there is nothing else to be done, accepted this irrational explanation as fact.