Nika returned to the edge of the Bialowieza Forest just before the first thunder. Her grandmother's old hut stood low, on stilts driven into the peat. All around, the moors breathed as if preparing their lungs for a storm. On the porch hung a garland of dried calamus, dark and light for years. From the doorframe looked a claw-carved lightning bolt sign, the same as before. When she opened the door, the air smelled of smoke, juniper and soggy wool. The rain had not yet fallen, but everything was waiting. It was supposed to be a short visit and a closing of things, but promises have a memory. Under the bench, Nika found a box with a rusty lock and flax string. Inside lay a thunderous nail, heavy and rough, and a sheet of stained writing. "Give this to Perun before the first storm passes after my departure," the grandmother had written. Next to it, someone stuck a handful of millet and a badger skin husk. Tiny crumbs shimmered on the threshing floor, as if the domestics were shaking dust from their paws. Nika remembered her grandmother whispering about the order between water and fire. "Mokosz takes what is soft, Perun takes what is hard; do not confuse the gifts," she would repeat. She used to laugh at such words, then she left and forgot. Now the first distant thunder clattered in the chimney, and the thatched roof rustled. A raven sat on the chimney, watching with one brassy eye. Nika poured milk into a bowl and set it by the cooker, for domestic peace. Then she took a nail, a knife and a torch, and her grandmother's garland of calamus. The causeway was narrow; the reeds beat against her thighs, and the frogs grew quiet. Vicious fires shone over the bog, like school buttons lost in the moss. The air was thick, sticky salty, full of ozone and forgotten names. From afar came a murmur, like the rolling of barrels in an empty barn. "Don't look at the voices," she remembered another. Yet someone whispered her name behind her back, twice, in a tone that was very familiar. An old oak grew on a promontory, black from ancient lightning, with innate iron. Nika knelt down, slipped a nail into the crack until her fingers ached. The water by the dyke murmured, not like a stream, but like the loud sucking of earth. A tall shape moved between the trunks, quite green, made of bark and shadows. "I haven't come to harm." - she whispered, though she wasn't sure who that reassured. She was answered by a tapping from the hut, three quick knocks, impossible at such a distance. The first, close flash tore through the sky, and the oak sang with a deaf, metallic bass. The peat spat out a branch, at the end of which a spinning spindle throbbed. Low runes glittered on the wet thread, arranging themselves like ants into a sign. "Give the name, take the fire," said a voice from the water, sounding no longer like a grandmother. Lightning cut a silhouette in the darkness with antlers and wet moss instead of hair. Nika tightened her fingers on the garland, feeling someone take a heavy step on the causeway just behind her.