The Child Thief by Dan Smith

once liquid again, had soaked into the trousers and blossomed in a butterfly pattern across the well-worn material.
    Josif and I had been too busy to see it, but Dimitri had spotted it, watched its ethereal resurrection blooming on the material. He had pushed Viktor aside to put his blade into the cuff and
split the trousers lengthways, and now he gaped, looking around at the others until his eyes settled on me and narrowed.
    ‘You,’ he said. ‘ You .’ The accusation was thick in that single word. ‘You brought this man into our lives. And you give him shelter in your home. This man
who does . . . this . . . to children.’ Dimitri shook his head. ‘You have children of your own.’
    ‘It doesn’t change anything. We don’t know he did this,’ I said, beginning to doubt my reasons for protecting the man lying by the fire in my home. I wanted to do what
was right, but perhaps Dimitri spoke the truth. Perhaps I was a fool.
    ‘Of course he did this,’ Dimitri said, spitting on the ground. ‘Who else? You? ’
    ‘That’s enough.’ Josif pointed at Dimitri. ‘That’s enough from you. I don’t want to hear any more.’
    ‘So he told you?’ Dimitri asked. ‘He told you about this, did he?’
    ‘Not until just now.’
    ‘Then he kept it from us all.’
    I glanced at Viktor standing silent by the sled. He was watching Dimitri, and I could see the distaste on his face. His hands were clenching and unclenching, fists that turned his knuckles
white. Dimitri had pushed past him, forced him aside to get to the girl, and it had angered him. He didn’t like to be beaten in anything, and he didn’t like to be treated as an
inferior. Viktor was seventeen and considered himself to be a man. He expected Dimitri to treat him with the same respect he would have given to any of the others, but instead he had pushed him
aside as if he were a child.
    Petro, on the other hand, had taken a step back. He had removed himself from the potential flashpoint and was watching as if he were a spectator at this event.
    ‘Why would he do that?’ Dimitri went on, directing his words at Josif and the others, then turning on me once again. ‘Why keep it hidden, Luka?’
    ‘So people like you wouldn’t get so excited,’ Josif told him.
    ‘I’m not excited, I’m angry. Angry that he brought a killer into our village. A man who kills children and eats their flesh.’
    ‘No one brought a killer anywhere,’ Josif said. ‘Luka did the right thing.’
    I looked at Josif, glad to hear him coming to my defence.
    ‘I agree.’ Leonid Andreyevich stepped forward, shaking his head. ‘Something like this could cause a lot of trouble.’
    ‘You’re right about that,’ Dimitri said. ‘That’s why we need to get rid of him.’
    ‘No,’ Leonid said. ‘That’s not what I meant. I meant we should keep this to ourselves.’ Leonid was a taciturn man who might have seemed timid to an outsider, but he
was a man who listened and spoke only when necessary. He was younger than Ivan and Josif and, like me, he had fought in and survived the civil war. But, unlike me, he was a native of Vyriv, and
that, coupled with his reputation, earned him the respect of the others in the village.
    He spoke quietly now, his eyes averted from what was on the sled. ‘Bury these poor children and be done with it.’
    ‘Be done with it?’ Dimitri raised his voice. ‘What the hell does that mean? What about the man in Luka’s house? What about him ?’
    ‘We watch him,’ Leonid said. ‘As soon as he’s well enough, we talk to him. Find out what happened.’
    ‘He’ll deny it.’
    ‘Of course he will,’ Josif said. ‘But we’ll have to decide for ourselves if he’s lying.’
    ‘A trial?’ Ivan was using the heel of his palm to bang the used tobacco from his pipe. ‘Interesting. Like one of the communist troikas ?’
    ‘Something like that,’ Josif said. ‘But fairer. We have to give him a chance. We don’t know anything about