Evening dripped over the marshes like cool ink, from which strands of mist drifted out. In the November air there was the smell of peat, the chill of water and distant smoke, so thin that it was more implicit than present. Hanka slipped her hands deeper into the sleeves of her jacket and stopped on a wooden footbridge that trembled slightly under her step. In front of her stretched a flat world of reeds, sedges and alder clumps, with a starless grey sky above. She was accompanied by Truffle, a black and white female whose every step was soft, attentive, as if placed in the palm of her hand. To her left, on a sloping footbridge stake, squatted Coral, a raven with shiny feathers and eyes brighter than they appear in the headlamp light. Coral had a habit of appearing "all by himself" when Hanka went into the field. He would fly in like a shadow, circle around, comment on the world with his throaty 'kra' and then disappear when he thought he had done his business. - 'Just a bit more and we'll be there,' muttered Hanka, though she said it more to herself than to them. Truffle raised his head, hearing her voice, and wagged his tail. Coral tilted his head. The phone in his pocket beeped briefly. The signal of the lynx's collar, Lira, appeared again. It had been silent for three days, as if someone had switched off a key light on a clipboard full of data. Now the icon on the map pulsed again, displaying coordinates that, like a wedge, poked into the sheet of green marking the bog. Where even moose took a diversion, and in winter the snow did not walk on its own feet, but sank helplessly into the softness. "This is not normal," Hanka thought, squinting her eyes. She had known Lyra since the spring, when the team had put a lynx collar on her. Young, alert, cautious to the point of exaggeration, she stayed away from people. Her paths were as logical as a predator's mind map: grassland edges, dense youngsters, mid-forest meadows. Never the vast wetlands in the middle of the valley. The footbridge twisted, passed over a dark ditch full of still water and straightened out again. Truffle sniffed the edges of the planks, stopping at each lump of mud as if reading letters left by unseen authors. Hanka leaned over to the fresh print. Four fingers, claws imprinted faintly because the peat was soft. A fox? Too big. Dog? Arrangement too springy, step even. "Wolf," flashed through her, but she immediately chased the thought away; in this part of the valley wolves rarely ventured that far into the reeds. - Let me see," she whispered, putting her hand next to the footprint. She stained her nails with the blackness of the peat. The footprint was fresh, the soft bank still sloughing. The coral squawked briefly, as if it had noticed something earlier than them. Hanka lifted her gaze. To the right of the footbridge the reedbed undulated, but not as if in the wind: as if someone had moved their hand under the quilt. The truffle stiffened, listening. For a split second, Hanka had the impression that the whole landscape had held its breath - and even the water in the ditch had stopped whispering. The map on her phone showed that it was three hundred metres to the point. The footbridge here was old, made of uneven planks that had long since run out of warranty. Among the alders someone had once put up a makeshift wire fence, perhaps for cows. Now the wire hung ragged and rusty, like a bad mood. Hanka spotted a tuft of fur on it. Golden brown, short, with a sheen. Plus a few grey hairs, longer, with a dark tip. Through the magnifying glass she carried on the string, the hair looked like tiny feathers. Two different colours entwined at the same time on one zigzag of wire. Two bodies at one point, close enough to leave a common trail. A cool shiver ran through Hanka's head. This was no ordinary jump over a fence. - 'Truffle, leave it,' she warned, as the bitch was already pushing her nose against the rust. The dog raised his paws to the footbridge, peering into the darkness on either side. Coral, instead of flapping his beak, slid off the stake and spread his wings. It grabbed the air, made a loop over Hanka's head and dropped behind the wire, where it disappeared into the reeds. As they stood by a clump of alders, the signal on the map stopped. The coordinates no longer flowed, but stuck in place like a stuck stick. Hanka turned off the screen, as the light bothered her eyes, and waited. The noise of the reeds returned, but it rippled unevenly; gaps were laid between the bands of noise, like an all too regular rhythm that ceases to be a coincidence. A step to the side. Another. A thin twig crunched under her boot. Hanka cursed in her spirit at the too-loud shoes, at the creaking of the footbridge, at how the night never quite lets itself be tamed. Truffle was now walking by her leg, almost silently. Suddenly, the dog stopped and lifted its lips, revealing its teeth, not growling yet, but informing the world that this was the limit. - 'Calm down,' whispered Hanka, as if that word could change anything. At the entrance between two alders, where the roots looked like old women's hands, she saw something that made her heart beat faster. On a branch protruding from the trunk hung a leather strap. At the end, the strap snapped evenly, not ragged. Beside it was stuck a black piece of plastic with tiny metal letters embedded in it. "LIRA 07." Collar. Lighter than she'd thought, cold from the moisture, and yet - when she touched the plastic with her bare skin - she felt warm under her fingers. Like a pulse. As if the electronics held a bit of daylight or... something else. She looked at the phone. The icon still pulsed, but no longer here, where she held the collar. Twenty metres away, deeper into the reeds. - Impossible,' she said into the deafening air. The coral replied somewhere off to the side with a short, clipped 'kraal', only it sounded more like a warning than a comment. Hanka slipped her collar into the back pocket of her jacket and took a step in the direction the phone pointed. The water under the footbridge quivered from something heavy muscling the surface. Truffle turned her head in that direction and made a half sound, something between a bark and a sigh. The smell changed suddenly - in addition to the dampness and peat, there was a note she couldn't name. Metallic? Like the air just after a thunderstorm, although the sky had been lightning-free for days. The trees ended and the footbridge passed over a wide trough of water. Two dots flashed on the black mirror, like reflections of light, but there was nowhere to reflect from. Hanka stopped. There was something about the way these dots didn't blink and flow with the current. A coral hovered above the water, fluttering its wings so quietly that you could forget it was a bird of that size. - If it's a crane, it would have washed over us with its wings long ago - it flashed through her head. - And if it's a lynx... lynxes don't shine on water. The signal vibrated again. Five metres to the left. The phone vibrated every few seconds, a rhythm that got under her skin. Truffle raised her paws to the very edge of the footbridge, drawing in air in short bursts. Then she turned abruptly in the opposite direction - as if the ears that had hitherto listened to the water suddenly heard something behind her back. Hanka felt it not with her ears, but with her spine. The air behind her thickened, ceased to be just a background. Some reed stalk snapped with a sound so quiet it cut through the silence. The coral snuffled low, teetering violently upwards. Truffle turned on her heel and stood sideways, as dogs are taught to do when they want to be ready to leap and retreat at the same time. Hanka turned her head, very slowly, so that the older muscles had a chance to catch up with the younger instincts. On the footbridge, three metres behind her, something stood. She couldn't see the shape in its entirety - just a shadow darker than the darkness, with the outline of shoulder blades and a head set too low for a human, too high for a fox. Two flashes flashed again. This time not over the water. In the stillness, where every atom seemed to be waiting for a signal, Hanka heard breathing. Not heavy, not gasping. Quiet, even, sure. The coral, instead of crackling, made a short, metallic sound, as if someone had tripped a string. Truffle, without taking her eyes off the shadows, took half a step forward. Hanka squeezed the strap of Lira's collar in her fingers, feeling the plastic throbbing warmly in her palm, and raised her free hand to slowly reach for the headlamp. She didn't have time to press the button. Something - cool, damp - brushed the corner of her jacket, and the footbridge beneath her feet twitched, as if someone or something stood full weight on it.