Free The Child Thief by Dan Smith

aiming tentative blows, becoming more confident, more intoxicated by the crowd.
    And I watched from my doorstep.
    I watched as a rope was thrown over one of the tree’s strongest boughs. Thick and rough and black. The living wood dusted white and crystal on its leeward side. I watched as it was tied
off and a crude noose was formed. And I watched as the starving man’s head was slipped through the thick rope and he was hoisted into the air. His body didn’t resist. His untied arms
didn’t struggle. His legs didn’t kick. He simply rose into the air like a bag of grain and he swung, his body rotating slowly on the rope as the last of his life escaped into the cold
air.
    A naked man hanging from a naked tree.

7
    With death came a stiff silence. Their mania was now in a trough; their madness fallen into a hush of contemplation and realisation. It was done. The intoxication had passed
and reality had slipped back into their world.
    They stood and watched as if they were one. Heads inclined upwards to gape at what they had done, breath tangible in the air around them. They huddled close to one another, feeling the weight of
their actions, before their humanity returned to them, wanting to distance them from this and from each other. The first of them to step back was a woman at the edge, Akalena Vernadsky. She crossed
herself and turned to walk along the road from the place where she had sung traditional songs last summer. She looked at the ground and trudged the frozen mud.
    Then others began to peel away from the pack. Like a serpent shedding its skin, the layers stripped back as the villagers woke from their trance and edged away in silence.
    They left their agitator until only Dimitri was left before the tree, looking up at the naked body twisting on the rope. A gentle rotation. The man’s head tipped to one side, his eyes
bulging, revolving until his back was visible, his narrow torso, the spine clear under thin skin, his emaciated buttocks, the red marks where he’d been kicked. Then he swung round to show his
face again, the ragged beard covering most of his neck and face. More marks on his chest and legs. His genitals exposed. No dignity. No mercy. No pity.
    I left Josif to wonder at what his people had done and I stepped away from the door. There was no sound but for the breeze that brushed the surface of the snow and skimmed the gentle valley. The
sun still shone low in the sky, a faded orange arc made ill defined by a thin layer of cloud. The world was still a beautiful crisp blue and white. My boots made hardly a sound as I stepped in the
prints of those who had come to my door that morning. I walked in their footsteps without being one of them, and I went to the place where they had brought dishonour and humiliation upon
themselves.
    At Dimitri’s side I looked up at the hanged man, at peace on the end of a rope. I considered cutting him down, taking him to the cemetery and putting him in the ground – the stranger
deserved some dignity at least – but I chose not to. The man’s body had another purpose now: to act as a reminder to the people who had done this. I knew as well as anyone that people
are capable of terrible things but must recognise the things they have done. Without that recognition, they are nothing more than animals, empty of any feeling.
    ‘Shame on you,’ I said. My voice was hoarse and my words were quiet. ‘Shame on you, Dimitri Spektor. Shame on your family. Shame on this whole damn village.’
    Dimitri continued to stare up at the hanged man.
    ‘Is this what you wanted?’ I asked him. ‘Is it?’
    Dimitri opened his mouth, but whatever words he intended to say were caught in his throat. They stuck there and refused to come out.
    ‘Does this make our children safe?’ I asked him.
    He stared as if no thought could pass through his mind, then he blinked, shook himself and refocused. ‘I didn’t do this.’
    ‘You were part of it. You led it. You caused