THE RETURN

by Sue Davnall

Long ago and far away in a tumbledown cottage deep in the forest lived a man called Daniel. He had lived there forever, or so it seemed to him. Sometimes at night in the fragrant flames on the hearth he saw pictures. A cluster of dwellings surrounded a wide green clearing and there were folk like him – some old, some young, some comely and others plain, with long tresses of hair down their backs or bristling beards on their chins. Where the pictures came from, Daniel did not know. In his life he had met only one other human being, Old Anna, and she was long gone.

Daniel loved to watch the figures in the flames, they looked happy and playful. They laughed together and spun each other round on the grass, he could smell meat cooking over an enormous fire and taste the sweetness of the honey-cakes piled high on a table nearby.

There had been no sweet things to eat since Old Anna had left. He was still young when she fell asleep and wouldn’t wake up again, but she had told him what he must do when such a day came. He laid her to rest under the ground in the clearing by the stream then went hunting as he had done every other day of his life. He thought himself now to be the only creature of his kind in the world.

Sometimes, as he dozed before the fire, Daniel imagined himself in the pictures. The other humans towered above him as he weaved his way between their legs, chasing some small animal that he wanted to pick up and cuddle. He saw himself growing tired and climbing up into a warm pile of hay to sleep. Then it was night and the thing on which he lay was moving; the little boy watched the tree branches slipping past swiftly above his head. He stayed as still as he could until the movement stopped, then slid out of his nest and looked around him. In every direction was the deepest black, apart from above his head where the pale moon silhouetted the leaves, and a little way off a flicker of firelight. He stumbled towards the light on his chubby toddler legs but was frightened by the sight of the two large figures looming over the fire.

Grown-up Daniel felt young Daniel longing for his mamma, like a lost wolf cub. He watched the little one skirting round the firelit clearing and setting off into the dark, hoping that round the next corner or the next or the next she would be there, sweeping him into her arms and snuggling his neck, calling him ‘Danny boy’, ‘sweetie pie’, ‘little chick’.

He saw the boy growing weary and tearful before falling asleep in a pile of leaves. Then Old Anna was leaning over him and saying: ‘My, my, whatever have we here? Do not fret, my dear, Old Anna will take care of you’. He saw her lifting the child awkwardly and carrying him to the cottage.

Daniel believed that the shadow figures that he saw in the fire sprang from Old Anna’s imagination, the night-time tales that she told. And so he might have gone on thinking for ever were it not for the Great Storm. It arose from nowhere one bitter autumn morning: first the leaves danced in the trees, then the branches whipped and screeched in protest, then whole trunks bent and snapped beneath the scourge of the North Wind. And finally, with a rumble and a roar a crashing, swirling maelstrom of trees and rocks and soil and debris poured down the mountain and through the forest, leaving a broad and barren highway in its wake.

By good fortune Daniel had been in another part of the forest, hunting. When he returned, the cottage was gone. At first he stood uncomprehending, then he sat for a long time on a flattened tree trunk, taking in the devastation before him. He could no longer live here, he saw, so he skinned and dressed his kill and packed the meat into a bag before setting off down the path that had been cut through the forest by the storm.

When darkness fell he kept on walking; there was no safe place to rest. He walked all night and as the morning light tiptoed into the world he saw that he had come to the edge of the forest. Daniel rubbed his gritty eyes and wondered at the yellow fields spreading into the distance on either side of the gash left by the storm. Far off, he could see a cluster of buildings from which wisps of smoke trailed up into the sky. Closer to hand, three humans stood by the gash in the earth, talking to each other and gesticulating. Daniel approached them with great caution, uncertain that he would be able to make himself understood.

‘I am Daniel. I live in the forest.’ He pointed behind him as the men stared at him, slack-jawed.

‘My home has gone. In the storm’.

The nearest of the men stared at him for a minute more, then smiled and held out his hand.

‘Welcome, Daniel of the forest. Come with us to the village and break your fast with us.’

Behind them came the other two men, whispering as they went.

‘Could it be…?’

‘After all this time?’

‘How did he survive?’

When they reached the village Daniel recognised it immediately from the pictures in the fire. Later a weeping woman took him in her arms and he smelled once more the fragrances of cinnamon and honey and baking.

‘Daniel? Oh, Daniel!’

Then there were more hugs and laughter and tears, followed by a night of feasting on the village green with the best meats and the strongest beers, to celebrate the return of the toddler who went missing at the Michaelmas fair twenty-five summers ago.