He walked down toward the lake. The white hull of a plastic boat rose like a limestone cliff from the grass. The shore was lined with birch trees; he hid behind them and gazed out across the water, which was dark and rippling with white-crested waves. The forest stretched out across the mountains beyond the lake. There was a jet-black line where the spruce trees were reflected in the water. And over there, in the darkest spot, he glimpsed something.

A human figure.

He squinted and took a few steps to the side to see better.

It looked like a child. A naked child.

He didn’t realise he’d waded into the water until his legs went cold and heavy. He continued until it was up to his waist. It was freezing; he held his elbows above water. The figure on the other side was no longer anywhere to be seen. He waded back up and ran along the shoreline and into the forest. His shoes squelched and he had trouble controlling his feet and he was running so fast his chest quickly started hurting. There was no path to follow. Whispering, he forced his way through whipping branches, pursued by mosquitoes drawn to his wet, steaming body. He didn’t want to call out or even say anything. It couldn’t be far now.

Ransu was squatting with his back toward him, partly hidden underneath a spruce. His entire body was smeared with clay, which had dried in uneven layers; spruce needles and other debris from the forest floor were stuck in the greyish-brown muck. His tail was thin and sparse like on a mangy fox and within moments, that too had disappeared in under the tree. The only sign that he was in there was the swaying of the branches, and that swaying was minimal.

*

He had seen a climbing frame outside one of the houses in the village; this is where he was now walking and sometimes running to. He sidled up to the corner of an outhouse and peered out. There was no one there and the house seemed vacant. The front porch was littered with so much stuff the front door was unreachable.

There was a tunnel to crawl through in the climbing frame, a net to climb. Two slides that had patches of rust on the edges where the paint had cracked. It looked like an abandoned world.

When he crossed the road, he spotted an old caravan. It had no tyres and lay like a filthy egg at the back of an ancient storage building. A plank with rungs led up to the little window. What caught his interest about the caravan was the chirping voice coming from inside it.