Читать книгу The Forest of Souls - Carla Banks - Страница 12

This is the story of how the trains came to the forest.

It was spring, and there were men in the forest, strangers. The sound of axes rang through the air as they cut the trees. They were clearing the land for the railway, Stanislau said. Marek took Eva along the paths to watch as the men worked, watching the tree they were cutting as it swayed and rustled, its branches whispering as it fell until it crashed down to the forest floor. And the men would shout to each other, and the chains would clank as the horses pulled away the tree that had fallen.

Eva would watch and listen. The tree seemed to struggle as the axes bit into its trunk, and then the sigh as it fell was sad, and the leaves of the other trees would rustle in agitation as the fallen one was dragged away. Sometimes the men would call to the children, and they would run back to the house in the clearing.

When the trees had gone, the rails came, long tracks that wound their way through the forest. And the men who built the rails built a bridge that crossed the river–much bigger than the wooden bridge where Stanislau led the horse carrying the orchard fruit to market.

Then the trains came, huge metal engines pulling wagon after wagon after wagon. The wagons were made of wood, apart from the wheels which were iron and sped along the track, making sparks fly up into the air. And the train carried a fire in its heart to make it go, and the fireman shovelled in the fuel and the train moved, sometimes slowly as if the engine was tired of pulling the long line of trucks, sometimes flying along through the forests, the smoke from the engine trailing behind it.

First, there was the sound of the whistle, then the smoke through the trees and the line would start to sing as the train came nearer and nearer and then burst along the track. Da da dah, da da dah, Marek would sing the song of the train. West to east and east to west, the trains ran night and day.

Eva loved the trains. Before she was old enough to walk the woods on her own, she would dawdle behind her brother, carefully, infuriatingly, holding him back from the things he wanted to do, until he became distracted and she could slip through the undergrowth and into the shadows and make her way through the trees with their shivering fronds that hung down and ran their fingers across her face and tangled in her hair.

She knew the times and the places. She would come to the clearings, the places where the trees had been cut and the ground built up with stones to carry the iron rails. And she would crouch by the line with her fingers on the rail, waiting. And then the iron would begin to hum beneath her fingers, before her ears could hear it, and she would leave her fingers there a bit longer and a bit longer, daring herself, then she would move back to the edge of the trees, waiting as the iron sang. And she would hear the beat of the engine, and sometimes the wail of its horn, and then it would be there, on top of her, in a rush of power and steam and smoke, and she would smell the burning cinders and see the men as they powered the engine, and sometimes they would see her crouched among the trees, and they would sound the horn and wave and laugh, and she would wave back, and then the train was gone, and Marek was calling with frantic anger from the forest behind her: ‘Eva! Eva!’

And she would go home with him and help Mama feed the hens, or sort the eggs, or draw water from the well. And the summer wind would blow, soughing in the trees, and she would hear birdsong and the sound of the carts bringing the men back from the fields. Nearby, the hens scratched and clucked, and bees hummed in the flowers that grew round the door.

And away in the distance, to the east, she heard the whistle of the train.