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old babushka , he always felt a wave of affection.
    There were three babushki sitting together at the edge of the field. Smiling kindly, he spoke to each in turn.
    Lebed watched him as he spoke to them and wondered why he was taking so long. Finally he returned, grinning.
    ‘They’re old,’ he explained, ‘and a bit confused. One says she thought he went back to the village with the other children; the second thought he went to the river; and the third thinks he went off into the forest.’
    She sighed. She couldn’t think why Kiy should have gone into the forest, and she doubted that he had strayed to the river. The other children were back in the hut in the charge of one of the girls. Probably he was there.
    ‘Go and see if he’s in the village,’ she asked. And since it was better than working, Mal wandered off contentedly.
    As the women worked, they continued to sing. She loved the song – for though it was a slow and mournful one, its tune was so beautiful it seemed to take her mind off her troubles:
    ‘Peasant you will die;
Plough your bit of earth.
Neither water nor the fire
Comfort you at your last hour;
Neither the wind
Can be your friend.
    In the earth
Is your end:
Let the earth
Be your friend.’
    The long line of women moved slowly forward, stooping as they cut the heavy-eared barley. The field was full of the soft swish and rustle of their sickles cutting through the browning stalks. The thin dust from the toppled barley hung low over the ground, smelling sweet. And Lebed, as she often did, experienced that half-pleasant, half-mournful sense – as though a part of her was lost, unable to escape from this slow, hard life in the great silence of the endless plain – half-mournful, because one was forever trapped; half-pleasant, because these were her people, and was not this life, after all, as things should be?
    Some time had passed before Mal returned. His face still wore its usual vacant smile, but she thought she noticed a hint of uneasiness in it.
    Wasn’t he there?’
    ‘No. They hadn’t seen him.’
    It was strange. She had assumed he would be with the others. Now she felt a trace of anxiety. Again she called to her mother-in-law.
    ‘Little Kiy isn’t at home. Let me go and find him.’
    But the older woman only looked at her with mild contempt.
    ‘Children always disappear. He’ll come back soon enough.’ And then with more malice: ‘Let your brother look for him. He’s got nothing to do.’
    Lebed bowed her head sadly.
    ‘Go to the river, Mal. See if he’s there,’ she said. And this time she saw that he walked more quickly.
    The work went on steadily. Soon, she knew, it would be time to stop and rest. She suspected that her mother-in-law was keeping them at it for longer so as to have an excuse to stop her leaving. She looked up from her work to the long horizon. Now it seemed almost to mock her, to remind her as brutally as her mother-in-law: ‘There is nothing you can do – the gods have already ordered all things as they are destined to be.’ She bent down again.
    This time Mal came back in only a few minutes. He looked worried.
    ‘He didn’t go to the river.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    He had met the old man he went hunting with, he told her, who had been at the river bank all morning. The old man would surely have seen the little boy if he had come by.
    She felt a stab of fear.
    ‘I think he’s gone into the forest,’ Mal said.
    The forest. He had never wandered there before, except with her. She gazed at her brother.
    ‘Why?’
    He looked embarrassed.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Obviously he was lying, but she knew better than to cross-examine him about his reasons.
    ‘Which way would he have gone?’
    Mal considered. He remembered his foolish words to the little boy that morning: ‘To the east. Far to the east. I can be there in a day.’
    ‘He’s probably gone east,’ He blushed. ‘I don’t know where.’
    She looked at him scornfully.
    ‘Here, take this.’