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‘What’s to see? Nothing but forest again now.’
    Unruffled, Maxim added, And I was telling Mischa here of all the women he’ll miss now he’s insisting on leaving that soft city berth of his to go back to a fighting batallion.’
    The interloper grinned. ‘Isn’t this a week’s leave? Your brother must make the most of his chances.’ He jerked a thumb towards the passing countryside. ‘From what I’ve heard, it doesn’t take much to make a peasant woman lift her skirts round here. I’m told a quarter of a loaf will do it these days.’
    Mischa rose. ‘We’ll come with you. Time for a turn or two at cards before we reach Strevsky?’
    Strevsky! My heart nearly stopped again. In the next province!
    The crates were kicked aside. The brothers brushed the grain dust off the back of one another’s trousers. And then all three of them were gone.
    Less than a minute afterwards, I was gone too. The moment their footsteps faded, I was bolt upright, pulling off the sacks. They’d left the side door gaping wide. I leaned out only long enough to peer aheadand check the steepness of the slope beside the track.
    Then, even before the train began to slow for the long rise to Strevsky, I’d hurled myself out, head first like a circus tumbler, somersaulting over and over, down the long slope and into the trackside bushes underneath the trees.

C HAPTER E IGHT
    SO WAS IT good fortune or bad that sent me rolling down the slope into that patch of wild strawberries? Because sometimes when I look back I think that, without their cheerful little red faces spread over the ground to offer a glimmer of comfort, I might have given up on the forest right there and then, and set off along the track to almost certain arrest as I neared the next station.
    Instead, with my mouth and hands stuffed with berries, I took off between the trees. A little further along I came to a clearing with hazelnuts for the picking to replace the few berries left in my hands. Cracking them between my teeth, I ate enough to satisfy the last of my hunger, and still kept on, stuffing my pockets till hazelnuts spilled out of them.
    Then I pushed deeper into the forest.
    The ground was soft with moss. Lichens climbed the tall silver birches, and everything around me breathed out scent. I couldn’t help but think that, if I’d not come here in this way, leaving behind all Ihad, I would have been so happy picking my way between the trees, choosing this path over that, upstream over downstream, this cloudberry over that bilberry. If I’d not been a boy in a province not his own, without his papers, I would have sung from sheer good spirits as I walked.
    Each time the path divided, I peered down both ways. When it was dry, I chose the path on which sunlight speckled most strongly. After each shower, I’d take the one along which the raindrops clinging to the branches shone brightest silver.
    I walked all day, drinking from streams and napping on beds of emerald moss in dappled clearings. Even my worries about my family gradually settled. After all, everyone knew I’d run from the building site, and not from home. A few sharp questions here, a man watching the door for a week or so, then, just as the guards would have to face the fact that I’d slipped out of their grasp, so surely my parents would be able to comfort themselves I’d got away safely.
    They would have trust in me.
    It seemed so easy to spread a comforting gloss over what I’d left behind. I felt as if I’d stepped into a whole new life, a world away from the drab city and the grim building site where I’d been working. Iwalked through dusk, and into the night. Now, when I looked down two paths, I’d pick the one the moon lit best because it was easier to pick out the writhing tree roots that tried to trip me.
    Time passed. Paths narrowed to nothing – little more than the sense that someone had