The train left Lena on a tiny platform where birch trees leaned over like curious old ladies and the air smelled of peat and hay. The sign read: Silent Meadows. A bright evening hung over the village, the kind of light that refuses to go out in June. The edge of the wilderness rippled with a green sea, and the Srebrnica River, dragging lazily through the reed beds, gathered the singing of larks and the croaking of frogs into one. Jagna's grandmother's house stood on a knoll overlooking a bend in the water. The beams of the grey, weather-worn walls creaked softly, as if breathing after a long day of heat. The orchard was mossy, the plum trees bent under the weight of their fruit, and a mossy boulder lay beneath the largest oak, which they called the Thunderwood. Its surface someone had once drawn with a knife: a sun, a cross, something like horns and something like an ear. Lena stopped by the boulder and touched the engraved lines with her fingertip; the stone was cool and smooth. Somewhere in the greenery, geese disturbed the stillness with a short, sharp cluck, then fell silent, as if something had silenced them with a single gesture. The door of the farmhouse let go after a moment's persuasion with the key. Inside it smelled of wax, dried herbs and sun-warmed tiles. The cooker stood in the corner, as big as an old bear, clad in green tiles with painted lilies. Above it hung a bunch of rowan trees, dabbed in dark orange. On the table - an empty compote glass and a china bowl in cornflowers. Lena smiled at these trinkets, and her throat itched from the memory of how Jagna used to spread honey on her bread in the summer "to make the word come sweet". An envelope was left on the dresser for Lena. Her grandmother's handwriting was even but firm, like herself: 'Lena. I am gone, but the house is. Remember that every home has a guardian. Leave him a little milk in the bowl and don't curse at the cooker. If something clicks behind the tiles - don't answer him with a question. And if June and night come, which permeates the air, don't go alone to the barrow. And certainly not empty-handed." Lena laughed quietly - out of habit, out of emotion, out of disbelief. Although she had dissected such notes in her folklore studies, they sounded different in this kitchen, with a cupboard that remembered her childhood run-ins. She trailed her finger over the letters 'keeper' and reflexively glanced at the cooker. The tile in the middle of the lily row had a crack, like a scratch through a pupil. From behind the cooker came a smell, hard to name, not exactly smoky, more like clay. Someone grunted quietly in the threshold. It was Viktor Borovets, a neighbour, the same one who had once pulled her out of the Srebrnica when she tried to fish for tadpoles with a jar. Already grey-haired, but his eyes were still brighter than water. - 'Well, you're back,' he said, entering without excuse, as is the custom in the village. - Good, because the apple trees are asking to be pruned. I... don't put anything heavy on the boulder under the oak. Grandmother always said you don't put weights there. - Because she'll be offended? - Lena smiled crookedly. - Because he wakes up - he replied calmly, as if he were talking about the wind. - Today, by the way, it is better not to go into the field after dark. The time has come that the water stands straight as glass and the word goes further than usual. After this visit, Lena went to the vestibule, took out a bundle wrapped in an old shawl from a trunk that was hidden under a sheet. There was a bone spoon, a slender crimson key and a thin soft-bound notebook. Inside - Jagna's notes, meticulous, minute, alongside herbs and recipes: "should I offer ash to the house-keeper? no, only honey", "the meridian is standing by the hay, do not start a conversation". A schematic map of the orchard and what looked like a red circled passage from the kitchen door to the boulder. Above the map a notation: "Return to the overgrown path, but only when the June moon is rising". It would have seemed funny if it weren't for the fact that the air in the village today had a sort of distinct edge, like a river at high water. Girls on the bridge were weaving garlands, laughing louder than usual. Someone was singing sorrowfully at the fiddle. The children, who ran like birds during the day, now kept closer to the houses and looked further than allowed, with the faces of serious old men in small bodies. Lena went to see the whisperer Agatha, another regular star of the Silent Meadows. Agatha lived by an alder tree that looked like a woman with her hand raised. The cottage smelled of valerian and juniper smoke. - 'The deceased came to me in a dream,' Agatha said without greeting, as if continuing yesterday's conversation. - Your Jagna. She told you not to listen when you are called out of the water in a soft voice. And that you should start with thanksgiving, not with a request. In the square at the spring nothing is taken for free. - What spring? - Lena asked, although she guessed the answer. - Where the river has a second bottom and the roots make a canopy. The spring of the Virgin. The old passage. Not always open, but when the night is longer in the heart than on the clock, something there falls silent and a path is revealed. Listen, child: you have curiosity in you, and curiosity is a great key. Just remember that when the door swings open, sometimes you don't know who's looking in first. Agatha's words trembled in Lena's stomach like a string. When she returned to the Srebrnica River, the sun was already mussing the edge of the meadow as if conjuring it not to disappear. From the bridge, she could see the sandy bottom and the green braids of aquatic plants, the lazy movement of circles after the spearing fish. But over the spring that Agatha spoke of - where water as clear as glass flowed from under the clay - there was a chill. It was like having a window open in winter. Lena sat down on a stump. She took a cornflower bowl out of her bag, the same one on the table, and poured a little milk into it. She set it by the cooker in the house before she left, remembering her grandmother's words, but she took the other bowl with her, herself not knowing why. Now, by the spring, she set it on the stones, placing a slice of bread and a golden honey stain beside it. - 'Thank you there was a house,' she said into the space, not really knowing to whom she was speaking. The wind quieted for a moment, as if someone had put a finger to the world's lips. The reeds stopped rustling. The water in the Srebrnica, the one flowing and the one standing in the spring, lost its sheen. Lena grew colder, but not from fear. Rather, it was like meeting someone you knew a long time ago and suddenly seeing them. With the moss heavy from the ecto November leaves hanging from the branches, the Thimblewood on the other side of the meadow stretched a shadow to the very edge. The shadow merged with the darkness beneath the water. Lena noticed something that hadn't been there a moment before: under the roots of an alder tree, an oval stone, smooth as a mirror, was exposed, although the river wasn't used to exposing anything but sticks. There was a gap between the strands of wooden fingers - just in time for the hand. Then she heard singing. Low, wordless, the way you sing to babies when you want to lull them to sleep. The singing did not come from the meadow or the road. It came from under the water, from the bottom, or from something even deeper that has no name. Lena looked at the bowl: the milk trembled but did not spill. A tiny white moth sat on the bread like a piece of ash and immediately flew away. - 'Leno,' said someone. The voice was soft as moss and surprisingly close. It sounded like Grandma Jagna when she called her to the table. - 'Do you remember where I keep the key in the kitchen? Lena's heart hit harder. She took the corrugated key out of her pocket and, although reason told her to put it all off until tomorrow, another day, another life, her fingers worked their way around the serrated metal on their own. This key did not fit any lock in the house. Jagna had shown her a hiding place in the cooker many years ago, a small niche behind a tile where letters were put "for those who sit in the wall". Lena remembered the joke, remembered the warmth over her fingers as she reached behind the lily. The alder's roots now looked as if they too had their own lock. One of the thick, twisted veins ended in a loop - a handle. The river seemed to be holding its breath. Snatches of laughter came from the pitch, but as if from behind glass. The geese were no longer clucking. Lena took a breath. She gripped the loop with her fingers. The skin of the root was cool and unexpectedly smooth. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. From behind the thick, black space that opened up between wood and stone, someone began to speak quietly, and the words formed into names she hadn't heard since she was a child, into names of places no longer on maps. In that moment, as the metal key touched the wood, something on the other side breathed quietly and whispered: - Come in. Just don't look left. The ground vibrated like a house in a draught. The milk in the bowl danced in a wide circle. Lena felt a soft rumbling underfoot, as if someone with heavy but careful steps was walking from under the meadow. The shadow of the Thunderbird Tree separated from the trunk a palm's width away. In a split second, she realised that this was the very point Jagna had written about: a passage that is not always a passage. Lena clenched her fingers tighter on the root. The key slid into the slot with a soft clatter, as if into a lock that has known its shape forever. Something on the other side - something that was neither air nor water - bent towards her. And before she could ask the simplest of questions that had long been unanswered, a second, lower, as yet unknown sound rang out right next to her ear: - But first tell us, Lena Wysocka.... what have you brought us in your hands?