With Love from the Stars

the border

I took the brown denim jacket from the hook of the wardrobe in the hall and stepped outside the door. The first bees of the morning buzzed around me and I heard a blackbird singing its song as I stepped onto the small path that led between the fields in front of the house to the southern border. For a brief moment I stopped, closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of the sun's rays on my cheeks. The wind gently brushed through my hair, loosening a few strands from my braid, teasingly caressing the tip of my nose.

Another of Jilka's brilliant ideas had been to have the small farm in the forest surrounded by a sturdy fence and to plant numerous bushes in front of it so that it was hidden by a veritable thicket. Sara had once compared the farm to Sleeping Beauty's castle because, like the prince, you had to make your way through the bushes to get to the farm. My job had always been to check the fence, repair it if necessary, and make sure that over time an ever-widening layer of scrub grew in front of it, camouflaging the fence from every angle and making it look as dense as possible so that no one would even think of trying to make a way through.

Jilka was right. The forest had already been far too quiet for several weeks. Actually, we were very well protected from intruders and our tactics had proved very useful once or twice when groups or individuals passed us by without realising that we lived here. And so it should remain. In this new world, few could be trusted. Especially men.

I imagined I was a fox as I wandered from tree to tree, checking the border. Step by step, I strove to touch down gently with the balls of my feet on the ground first and then shift the rest of my weight onto my leg. Deftly, I dodged small cracking branches and moved almost silently through the forest. Many years ago, it had been a kind of challenge for me that I had set myself. I had noticed that the birds always stopped singing when I ran through the bush like a little elephant. At the latest when I observed a fox running very quietly over small hills, I wanted to adapt so well to my surroundings that the inhabitants of the forest no longer noticed me. Over the years, I could watch the deer nibbling on the first green of the year on the young trees, the fox cubs playing with each other in front of the den, or the hares hopping through the bushes.

One of those small hares was just sitting on a hill, eating a blade of grass before he stood up on his hind legs and looked at the surroundings. I leaned against an old oak tree and watched him.

Suddenly the hare straightened its ears, its nose twitched and it quickly disappeared into its burrow like a flash of lightning. The other animals of the forest had also fallen silent. There it was again. The strange feeling I'd had a few times in the last few weeks. As if something was wandering through the forest that everyone wanted to hide from. I looked around and then up the tree. The old, gnarled branches were very sturdy and I didn't hesitate for long before crawling up branch by branch into the tree and pressing myself close to the trunk. Secretly, I was very glad that even my clothes were adapted to the colour tones of the forest and virtually melted into the surroundings.

Tensely, I looked down and waited. A few minutes later I heard heavy footsteps and a group of three men trudging across the forest floor.

"Are you sure this is the right place?"

"Absolutely, I followed the tracks all the way here. We must be very close."

"What are we going to do when we get them?"

A cold shiver ran down my spine. One of the men answered something, but I didn't understand it because the blood was rushing in my ears. How could it be that they were on to us? How could it be that they were about to discover the farm? Who were these men? My heart was pounding.

From the treetop, I watched the men move on. Fortunately not towards the border and the farm. But seeing them here so close was worrying. Why did these men venture so deep into the forest in the first place? What were they doing here?

I waited a few minutes after the men had disappeared and was about to climb back down when I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. I remained still.

The figure of another man emerged from the shadow of a tree. I had to suppress a gasp. This one was like a tree trunk. Tall and broad, with shoulders and arms that could probably tear a tree in two with his bare hands. My heart began to pound loudly again. We couldn't possibly stand a chance against someone like this if it came to the point where we had to defend ourselves.

The man followed the path of the other men, stopping again and again to examine tracks. Suddenly he turned in the direction of my tree. Had he spotted my trail? His gaze wandered from my tree to the path of the men and back again. I forced myself to breathe shallowly and as silently as possible.

The man frowned, but then followed the path of the other men. Even when he was gone and the animals of the forest had resumed their voices, I waited half an eternity before I dared to leave my tree again.

So many men near our farm could not mean anything good.