'The Boy Looked Lost', by Sophie Krich-Brinton

Vera first saw the boy on one of her woodland walks down the old dirt paths that must have been here since time began. She’d paused at the crashed airplane, the one with the complicated foreign name that was slowly getting covered in moss and flowers. Her husband didn’t like seeing it, said it brought back too many memories, but Vera found it charming. A once-dangerous thing, now safe.
She rounded a bend in the path and she saw the boy. He loped toward them wearing a ragged red shirt slung over his shoulders, the kind that was so popular among the youngsters, and nothing that could be called pants, they were so ripped and ragged. 
At first, she simply stared at him, unsure what to think. He looked so natural, so comfortable out here in the wilds, with that lean, hungry look that most twelve-year-olds had, his muscles brown from sun and arms slightly too long for his body. But Vera knew these woods weren’t safe, especially for children. Not with all the young ones going missing lately.
The boy was walking with his head thrown back, his eyes on the trees, and when he looked down and saw Vera standing in the path ahead of him, he stopped so abruptly she caught her breath.
“Don’t be scared,” Vera said.
Her heart was pounding. This might be one of the children who’d disappeared last month. She couldn’t recall how old they’d been. Ten, eleven? Close enough.
“Are you hurt? I’m sure you’re hungry.”
The boy stood with his legs bent in a crouch, as if he’d run off any second.
“It’s okay.”
Vera approached slowly, her palms outstretched.
“You’re safe now. I’ll take you home.”
“I don’t think he understands,” her husband whispered from behind her.
He didn’t love these daily walks like she did, but Vera insisted he accompany her to keep their old joints lubricated.
“Of course he understands.” She smiled at the child. “You understand me, don’t you?”
The boy didn’t speak. So perhaps this was a different lost child, not one of the local kids. He might even be foreign, though Vera only had a vague understanding of what that might mean.
More likely, he was traumatized after spending weeks in the forest on his own, somehow surviving. That was nothing for a child to have to experience. There were other wrecks out here from the war. They could be scary for a kid alone.
“It’s a miracle you survived.” She took another step toward the child. “Come with us, son. We’ll see you dressed and fed and then we’ll find your family.”
The village was getting so large, she couldn’t keep track of all the youngsters running about, but she’d find his family one way or another. They’d be overjoyed. None of the others had been found, not yet anyway. This child appearing like this, exactly while she and her husband were walking past, was nothing short of a blessing.
As Vera approached him, his eyes got huge, the whites showing all around. He took a quick backward step. Vera stopped moving to dig in the sack she always took on these walks, since her husband tended to get peckish halfway through.
“Here. See this nice scone? It’s for you.” 
She held it out. After a second, the child darted forward and snatched it. He crammed it into his mouth without pausing for breath.
“There, you see? He’s just hungry.”
She offered him the canteen, top unscrewed, and he stared at it for a moment. Maybe he’d never seen an old army canteen before. She poured some water into the lid, and at the sight of the liquid, his mouth opened. He took the canteen and swallowed noisily.
“He must have been out here quite some time, to be so thin,” Vera’s husband said from behind her. “Wonder who he belongs to.”
“Let’s get him home and find out.”
She edged forward until she reached the child’s arm. He was skinnier than one of those pond reeds, and as strong. She put a gentle hand through his elbow and his entire body went tense. She thought he might run, but he didn’t. He twisted to look into her sack as she pulled him gently onto the road. Luckily she’d brought two scones. 
“Here, have another.” 
The child devoured it as quickly as he had the first.
Her husband muttered something about his own hunger, but Vera only smiled. He had a soft heart, under that rough exterior. He’d have offered the food himself if he were carrying it.  
She chatted mindlessly as they walked back down the lane, aiming to put the boy at ease. He was barely clothed and it wasn’t too warm of a day, but he didn’t complain. Such nice manners. She’d compliment his parents, when they found them.
Vera’s house was at the far edge of the village. She used to hate how long it took to get to the center green, but tonight she was glad for how close it was to the woods. Her husband held the front door open and Vera went inside first, gesturing for the child to follow.
“Love, draw the boy a bath while I get him something else to eat.”
Her husband trundled off to the bathroom and she turned to the boy.
“What do you like? Bread? Or I have some cold chicken.”
“Chicken?”
The word came out low and hoarse. Poor child. Likely it was weeks since he’d last spoken. She didn’t want to think about how long he might have shouted, lost out there in the woods.
“Chicken it is. You sit tight and I’ll get it cooking.”
“Cooking?”
The boy frowned. Maybe he was foreign after all, or maybe he’d gone through so much he’d forgotten some of his words. Vera clucked her tongue. Poor child. Poor thing.
She pulled the cold roast fowl she’d made yesterday from the pantry and turned to take down a plate, gasping to find the boy inches away, snuffing the fowl. He grabbed it from the bowl with both hands and tore off bites far too large for any child to safely swallow, throwing his head back to get the meat down his throat. 
“Easy now, son. It isn’t going anywhere.”
She wanted to pull the food from his hands and cut it into bites for him, but he was clearly ravenous. Vera didn’t know much about children, but she knew this one was hungry. Let him eat like a wild animal. Nobody was watching. 

* * * 

“You should apprentice the child somewhere,” Marge said, tisking behind her teeth.
Her shopping basket was full, but she’d stayed back to lecture Vera once more about the boy.
“He ought to learn a trade, be around other people. It would help him be less…odd.”
She shivered dramatically.
Vera tightened her lips.
“He isn’t odd. He’s traumatized after what he’s been through. He needs time to heal.”
Marge opened her mouth to reply but Vera pushed on.
“He can barely speak. He didn’t remember how beds or cutlery work. I won’t force him.”
“I’ve only raised three children myself, but I suppose you know best.”
Scowling, Marge went to pay for her groceries. Vera waited her turn, keeping her thoughts off her face as best she could. Guilt battled anger in her belly. Marge might be right, but Vera knew the child needed more time. She just knew it. 
Vera and her husband had asked all around, but nobody’d claimed the child. Nobody knew who he was. So he continued on with Vera and her husband. Others had offered to take him in, families with children his age running about, but she’d refused. Keeping him was the charitable thing to do, and seeing his small shape curled up on a cot in the spare room warmed her chest as nothing in her life had. 
They’d never had children of her own. She’d never wanted them, and while she had no regrets, the gift of this child’s presence wasn’t something she would turn her nose up to. He was quiet and serene, his wide eyes watching everything, his plate scraped clean after every meal. Soon as his words came back to him, he’d be the perfect child.

* * *

After a week in her home, the boy started to fill out. The sharp lines of his face faded, and the muscles in his arms began to change from ropy to sturdy. His wild twitch when she caught him unaware softened, and once he even smiled to see her, showing straight white teeth. 
But the boy still didn’t talk. He said “meat” and “chicken” and some other flesh-related terms, but he never joined in conversation. Never played with the other kids in the front lane, who were back to running wild now that the disappearances had stopped. Vera never asked the boy about the other missing children. Maybe he’d seen them out there, maybe not. No need to rake up old nightmares.
He stood at the front window and watched children his age run shrieking past the cottage, chasing a ball or rolling a hoop.
“Don’t you want to go play with them?” Vera asked.
“No.” But his eyes never left them. 

* * *

  After the second week with the boy, Vera decided he needed a name. Something friendly.
“What about Gabriel? Or Daniel?”
The boy looked up at the second name, so Vera nodded.
“Daniel it is. Danny for short.” She cleared her throat and tried it out. “Danny, come on in here and get ready for supper. It’s beef tonight.”
The boy perked up instantly, flowing to his feet in that graceful way he had. He’d learned to take three plates from the shelf and place them on the small table with forks and knives beside each. Vera watched, warm with satisfaction. How lucky she’d been to have found this child.  

* * *

During Daniel’s third week with Vera, summer officially ended. Golden leaves carpeted the village square, and the woods had burst into a riot of fire colors. It was too chilly to go shirtless, in Vera’s opinion, so after much convincing, Daniel agreed to put on a shirt and button it top to bottom, though he flat refused to put on the old shoes a family had donated. Vera didn’t worry about this, since most children didn’t wear shoes except on Sunday, and Vera hadn’t tried taking him to church. He wasn’t ready yet.
Vera never asked why these things bothered him. No need to push for details about what he’d experienced, all those days and nights he’d spent in the woods. He’d tell her when the time was right. Or not; she wasn’t one to pry, and he still didn’t speak more than a word here or there. 
That evening as the sky eased into violet dusk, Daniel stood at his usual spot, looking out the window at the children playing. Vera came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. He twitched, but he didn’t leap back like he used to. The moon was just appearing on the darkening horizon. 
“Almost full.”
She patted his arm.
“Tomorrow.”
Danny spoke with certainty, as if he had the moon’s schedule in his pocket. 
 Vera smiled at his tone and went to the kitchen to prepare supper. Her husband hadn’t spent much time at home since Daniel moved in. It wasn’t unusual. He chopped wood all day, then drank his aches and pains away at the pub. Vera didn’t begrudge it to him. Too much time together in their little cottage wouldn’t be good for either of them. Better this way, especially now she had the boy for company. 
“Ready to eat?” she called.
She didn’t raise her voice; Danny’s hearing was astounding. Perhaps a survival instinct he’d picked up during his time in the woods.
“Meat?”
He appeared silently in the doorway. The kitchen window looked east, same as the front room, and the heavy yellow moon hung right in its center. 
Vera smiled.
“Your favorite. Set the table and I’ll make you a plate.”

* * *

The next day, Daniel woke up wrong. 
Vera always rose with the sun, but she’d learned that Daniel preferred to sleep late, so she didn’t make noise as she prepared her morning tea. Sleeping in must be typical for a child his age, and he was always prompt when food was ready, so it didn’t bother her, but today, when she set down his plate of sausage and eggs, Danny didn’t appear.
“Breakfast is ready.”
She waited, expecting him to sprint into the room, but he didn’t come.
Vera wiped her hands on a cloth and went into the small room where he slept. There he lay, tucked into his bed and snoring as if he hadn’t slept in a month. Vera put a gentle hand on his arm, not wanting to startle him.
“Danny, breakfast is on the table. Sausage.”
His eyelids flickered, showing slits of white, but he didn’t wake up. She watched him for a while, taking in the soft rise and fall of his chest. There was meat on his bones that hadn’t been there four weeks ago, and smiled to herself. He was healing. He had nowhere to be. She’d let the child sleep.
Vera went about her day, checking on Daniel every now and then. The child slept through lunch and late into the afternoon. She felt his forehead; cool, no fever. Evening rolled around and he still hadn’t gotten up, so she went to prepare supper. She’d combine his uneaten breakfast and lunch, put it all into a casserole. So long as there was a good amount of meat in the mix, he’d devour it. She added a bit more sausage, another egg, and some noodles to fill it out, and had a quiet cup of tea while it baked.
Thirty minutes later, she pulled the steaming dish from the oven. She set the table—she wouldn’t ask him to do that today—and filled his plate. 
“Danny, supper’s on!”
She sat down and put her napkin on her lap, but he didn’t appear. She went to his room: His bed was empty. She checked the bathroom, her own bedroom, then stuck her head out the front door.
“Danny?”
She looked left and right, but she didn’t see him. The sun was already down and in another ten minutes it would be dark. The full moon was just visible over the treetops, fat and bright. 
Panic trembled through Vera’s limbs. In all the weeks she’d had him, Danny had never disappeared like this. Where could he be? 
She untied her apron and tossed it on a chair, then strode outside into the lane. Where would a child like Danny go? He might have been in the throws of terror, perhaps recalling how he’d gotten lost this time last month. Not towards the woods, surely.
Her head slowly swiveled in that direction. The forest loomed so close, the full moon casting dark black shadows through the leafless branches.
“Daniel?”
She took one step, then another, then she was running, her soft house shoes flapping. She wished for her boots, but she couldn’t go back now, couldn’t waste the time. Vera reached the trees, shouting for Danny. Her throat felt shredded and her chest squeezed of breath. Where was the child?
Another set of feet pounded up behind her. Vera glanced back. A young woman—ah, the baker, she hadn’t recognized her without the cloth that tied her yellow hair back all day. 
“Have you seen him?”
The baker’s voice was thin and pinched. Tears streaked her cheeks.
“Daniel? I’m looking for him now.”
How kind of the woman to worry.
“No, my son Geoff didn’t come home for supper. I don’t know where he is.”
Her voice cracked in a sob.
A scream ruptured the air. Both women whirled, staring into the dark forest. They started to run. Up ahead, what was that on the path? Vera skidded to a halt and picked it up. Her heart stopped. Daniel’s shirt, the buttons torn free of the cloth. 
The baker made a strangled sound as she tugged something from a nearby bush. Another child’s shirt, bloody and shredded as if its wearer had been attacked. The woman fell to her knees, clutching the cloth and screaming her son’s name.
Vera held Daniel’s shirt to her chest and squinted into the dark woods.
“Daniel? Where are you, son? Please come out!” 
She shouted the words, but she didn’t expect he’d hear them. Those weren’t accidental tears in the other boy’s shirt; they were made by something sharp, and Vera knew in her gut that the boys had been attacked, maybe killed. Nobody had found clothes from those other missing children, but they must have met the same end. There were predators in these woods. Everybody knew that.
Vera wiped her eyes.
“My poor, poor boy. He never had a chance.” 
She put her arm around the baker’s heaving shoulders and led her back toward the village.

Sophia Krich-Brinton (she/they) lives in Colorado with her partner, kids, and cats. They write weird stories at dawn when the world sleeps and the cats try to sit on their keyboard. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in HAD, Farewell Transmission, Bull, and more. When not writing, she boxes, plays the banjo, and goes backpacking. Find them at sophiakbrinton.com or on Twitter/Instagram at @sophiakb_writes.

Photography by Zinoviy Nudelman.