Scarecrow

Florentina Ghițescu
My grandparents owned some land on the outskirts of the forest. The boars used to come down. The people would organize to keep watch. When it was my grandpa's turn, I asked to take me with him. We put on thick clothes and brought flashlights and materials for starting a fire. Night fell and the forest entirely transformed. My playground turned into something mysterious. Grandpa lit the fire, wrapped me up warmly and began telling me a story about his childhood village, about his own grandfather, and about a scarecrow on a wheat field. I fell asleep.

Carmen Tot
The orphanage was far from the city, nobody could hear us shouting. Three times I ran into the fields, thinking I would escape. The last time they caught me, they beat me to a pulp. One day, though, a girl I never spoke to, because her gaze always frightened me, told me that in the fifteen years she'd spent in the orphanage, she had found a way to escape. I was scared, yet, nonetheless, the next night, I went in her room and off I was, for a few hours. She was right. Courage had almost killed me, fear had set me free.
 
 Lucian Domșa
The traces of the sled's runners were visible on the freshly fallen snow. The woman's breath caught in her throat and she froze. The child's black bonnet laid up on the snow. She brought her hand up to her mouth to muffle a scream when she noticed red stains on the white around the cherry tree. Red trails were visible on its trunk and, behind it, drops of water dripped from the child's clenched fist. The sharp stump emerging from the snow had pierced the child's temple. Lying on his stomach, he gazed up at God.

(Translated by Laurențiu-Gabriel Niculae / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)