A Tree Is Missing

With the first light of dawn, Drufmna can see what she has been treading on during the night.

Splinters are embedded in the mud. One of her sandals, which she put on after going back to the house, lies beside a wheel track. She picks it up and fastens it again. Her heel hurts so much that she has to curl her toes inside the leather to put weight on her foot.

The wheel has crushed the ferns at the edge of the path. Closer to the tree there is a narrow furrow and several tool marks in the bark. The man whose silhouette she barely glimpsed has left several broken branches in his wake. A piece of thick branch lies on the ground, stripped of leaves. Drufmna picks it up and stands for a moment with it in her hands. The water can be heard spilling over the barrier of stones.

Her mother watches her from the other side of the trunk. She has dirt on her knees and a folded blanket over one arm. She tried to make her go home before dawn; Drufmna allowed her wounds to be cleaned and then returned to the stream.

“Those branches need to come out of the water,” the woman says.

Drufmna turns her head.

“Leave them.”

“The stream is overflowing.”

“I said leave them.”

Her mother receives the sharp tone without looking away. Drufmna lowers her grey eyes to the piece of wood. A splinter is lodged beside her bandaged nail. She pulls it out with her teeth and spits it away.

“Later,” she adds.

The woman puts the blanket somewhere dry.

“Later, then.”

For a while Drufmna does not move. The cloth she used to dry her arms the previous afternoon has caught on the end of a branch. She recognises it by a seam she stitched herself. She has to step into the water to retrieve it. It is covered in mud and has a new tear. She spreads it over the trunk and places the piece of branch on top. Her fingers follow the cut edge until they find a smooth part.

She closes the cloth around the wood, folds in the ends and presses the little bundle against her stomach. Her mother has come closer.

“Did you see his face?”

Drufmna shakes her head. When she looks up, the dawn light hurts her eyes.

“There wasn’t any light. He went that way.”

She points to the wheel tracks.

“Was there anyone else?”

“I heard one man.”

The woman looks at the path. She crouches to examine the nearest track, but does not quite touch it.

“We can ask the members of the council to send someone, perhaps a foreign mercenary, to follow his trail as far as the road,” her mother says. “But as you know very well, I don’t think they would support anything like that.”

Drufmna looks at her.

“Don’t worry. I’ll find him myself.”

Her mother stays crouched for another moment. Then she rises and rubs her hands against her skirt.

“I understand your anger, your sadness, but try not to talk nonsense, child. Come home and have something to eat. We’ll think about what to do once our stomachs are full.”

The girl does not seem to have heard her. Her eyes remain wide and unblinking, her gaze lost upon Ánsaflys’s trunk. At last, without the slightest change in her expression, she speaks again.

“I’ll find him and bring him here for the council to judge.”

“Drufmna…”

She slings over her shoulder the bag in which she brought her sandals. She puts the cloth bundle inside, pushing it down carefully so it will not open.

“If it rains, the wheel tracks will disappear,” Drufmna thinks aloud.

“Come home and I’ll make you some tea.”

Her mother’s voice is firm. Drufmna looks at the tracks, looks at the sky between the treetops and finally nods.

The walk back feels slow. She sees the cart’s ruts in places she walked the previous afternoon, when there were no marks at all. A bush is bent towards the ground. Farther on, a root bears a fresh scrape. She stops at each sign until her mother calls to her from a few paces ahead. When they are finally home, the table still tilts. Drufmna looks at it while her mother fills a bowl with tea boiled over the flames.

Then Drufmna sits down, the bag between her feet, and drinks without raising her head. She finds it hard to swallow. Her lips are dry and there is a small cut inside her cheek that she does not remember getting. Her mother gathers some nistrierf bread, a few walnuts and a clean piece of cloth. She wraps up the food and leaves it on the table. Then she kneels in front of her.

“Show me your foot.”

Drufmna tries to draw it away.

“I’m going to be walking.”

“Exactly.”

The woman removes her sandal. She cleans the wound on her heel and places a folded strip of cloth where the leather rubs. Drufmna watches her hands. When she has finished, her mother stays sitting back on her heels, one hand around that ankle.

“I’m going to wash those clothes. I need you to take them off,” her mother says.

Drufmna takes a while to answer.

“You talk to the council. I’ll go after him.”

“Child, what are you going to do when you find him? Ask him politely to come back and stand trial?”

“I’ll kill him.”

The woman squeezes her daughter’s ankle once before letting go. Drufmna lets out a cry.

“You aren’t a murderer. You’re a nistrierf girl, good, kind and peaceful, as all nistrierf are.”

“I don’t care if I’m a nistrierf. I don’t have to be like the others, afraid of a fight, of war, of death.”

Her mother looks into her eyes, horrified.

“I’ve loved Ánsaflys since it was a seed in my hand.”

“I know.”

“The others won’t understand, because that bastard only cut down one tree, only mine. But what if he’d cut down ten, a hundred, a thousand?”

“No man on his own can cut down that many. In fact, yours must have taken him a great deal of effort.”

“I’ll kill him,” Drufmna repeats. “I’ll learn to fight in foreign lands, since there’s no one in Fenoidfenifur who can teach me. I’ll pursue him, I’ll find him and I’ll kill him.”

“I’m your mother and I forbid it. I won’t allow you.”

Everything falls into a tense silence. All that can be heard is the wind and the heavy rain that suddenly begins to fall upon the eternal forests of Fenoidfenifur, where a tree is now missing.