At dusk, the fog rolled over the meadow like spilt milk. The highway had long since disappeared behind, and the narrow, sandy road leading towards the Forest creaked under the tyres of the bicycles. It smelled of water, resin and smoke from the first autumn bonfires. - Will you check again? - Nina pointed with her chin at Frank's rucksack. Without getting off the saddle, the boy pulled a crumpled paper from a side pocket. It was a sketch of his great-grandfather Joseph, a forester, drawn in thick, browned lines and perforated from staples. There were brief notes in the margins: "The grove behind Narewka - do not enter alone after dusk. Listen to the whispering of the oaks'. - 'Point X lies behind the third clump of alders,' muttered Franek, squinting. - 'And we're here. - He tapped his finger on the corner of the page. - If great-grandfather wasn't joking. - Joseph? Was he joking? - Nina snarled. - The one who only fed on needle tea and stories about Lesy? Mrs Eulalia still claims to this day that it is because of him that the forest remembers our name. The whisperer's name sounded among the trees like something quite ordinary and yet not quite tame. Mrs Eulalia never raised her voice; she whispered directly into the ear, as if she were conjuring the air. "Don't look into the Sacred Grove if you don't have anything to redeem yourself with". - was her final advice before the kids disappeared around the bend. The path narrowed as they drove under the low branches of the pines. Magpies shrieked, the damp needles softly yielding to the wheels muffled any sound. Suddenly a passage appeared between two birch trees that had not been there before - a narrow strip of moss with no berries and no ferns, as if someone had swept it with a freshly swept broom. - 'A sieve,' said Franek more quietly than he had planned. - 'You know how paths like that close in on themselves? - And you know you stop sounding smart when you try to scare me? - replied Nina and smiled crookedly. There was, however, anxiety lurking in the depths of the laughter. They climbed off the bikes and guided them behind them as the sand softened and began to drag the tyres. All around them, the insects fell silent. Even the cranes, which a moment ago were still calling over the moor, seemed to have suddenly flown away, leaving only a brooding silence in their wake. The path led them to a small clearing. The trees - old oaks bent over like bearded heads - formed a circle. In the middle stood a tall wooden pillar, cracked by years, with four faces carved on its top, each facing a different direction of the world. The noses were worn down, the eyes flat, but in the light of the west they looked as if they were following every movement. At his feet were heaped stones, covered with thick moss, arranged in an incomplete ring. - A worldwidowid - whispered Franek. - Like from a photograph in a museum. - More like from a grandmother's story - Nina corrected him. She came closer. - Can you feel it? The smell of juniper and damp wood hung in the air. Somewhere off to the side, sap shot out, as if the blood of the forest was coursing through the trunk. Nina knelt by one of the stones. Something flashed between the roots of the oak tree. She stuck her fingers into the cool earth and pulled out a small object - a clay whistle in the shape of a bird, muffled by a layer of earth and covered with a soft tarnish. A mark was engraved on the wing - a pinwheel, the same one Nina had worn on a thin thong since last spring, when Mrs Eulalia had pressed it into her hand "just in case". - Let me see - Franek squatted down next to her. - It must be a hundred years old. Or more. - Don't blow - warned Nina reflexively. The boy looked at her questioningly. - 'Because I don't know what you do with something like that,' she added, looking into the four faces of the pole. - Great-grandfather marked the place for a reason. - 'For that, the phone doesn't work,' Franek stated, waving the mobile phone. There was not a dash of range on the screen. The compass arrow danced like magic, unable to find midnight. - Hello, Holy Grove. Nina pushed her hair back from her forehead and raised the whistle to the light. The clay was surprisingly warm, as if someone had held it in their hands just a moment ago. The bird had a tiny beak and a hollow belly. The wingwheel seemed to turn as the shadow of the leaves fell on it. - Did you know that Mrs Eulalia said the forest was listening? - Nina spoke in a half-hearted voice so as not to panic the fragility of the moment. - That sometimes it answers in its own way. - 'Then let's see what she says,' smiled Franek, but his voice trailed off somewhere between the trees. Nina put the whistle to her lips. For a fraction of a second she hesitated, then blew softly, just as her grandmother had once taught her at the donkey bells in the garden. She expected a thin squeak. Instead, the air around them seemed to tremble. The leaves of the oak trees moved at the same time, although no wind blew. Goosebumps appeared on Nina's skin, as if after touching cold water. - 'You couldn't hear anything,' said Franek quietly, but his eyes said something else. He was looking deep into the grove, where the darkness thickened between the trunks. The smell of juniper became clearer. A shadow flitted across the clearing, shapely and silent, as if a deer had flitted there, though not a blade of grass moved. A drop of sap dripped from the top of a pole and stopped on the gouged chin of one of the faces, glistening in the last rays of the sun like amber. - 'Can you see that too? - Nina pointed with her finger. - 'I saw it,' replied Franek briefly. - And that was before you even asked about it. From over the moor came a distant, dragging sound that any owl would recognise immediately. But it was not an owl. The sound was older than the birds, deeper than the water in the Narew, spreading under the roots of the trees and coming back from different directions at the same time. In response, something rustled in the branches of the oaks, as if hundreds of dry hands were clapping noiselessly. - 'Nino,' whispered Franek. - Noga. She looked down. Between her trainers and the stone crept a narrow root, cracked and smooth as a finger. It didn't touch her, it stopped in front of the string, like a dog asking if it could come closer. - 'Relax,' she said, more to herself than to him. - It's only growing. - In two seconds? - Franek reached into his pocket and pulled out a pocketknife, then hesitated and put it back. - Good. You're right, oak trees. We're listening. Nina raised the whistle once more. This time she blew harder. A strange, sticky silence hung over them, and then for a moment everything brightened, as if someone had scraped a thin layer of dust from the air. She saw the faces on the pillar more clearly: one gentle, another stern, a third smiling, a fourth focused. On each of them someone had once marked microscopic marks with a fingernail, which now looked like traces of words. - Do you hear? - she asked, although she wasn't sure herself whether it was a sound or simply a thought that had nowhere to come from. From the depths of the grove, where the black became increasingly tangled with the green, a tone flowed - very quiet and even. It was the answer. It repeated a melody that Nina did not hear when she blew, but which she felt under her skin, as if her bones had learned it faster than her ears. - 'Someone's here,' said Franek. There was no question in it. - 'Or something,' Nina added without a wince. A cold wind blew in from the side of the river. The phone in Frank's pocket vibrated once, briefly, and went silent, as if something was calming him down. The wheel on the wing of the whistle shuddered, and its shadows flashed on Nina's hand, settling for a second into a shape she didn't manage to remember. Somewhere nearby a twig snapped. Not like under a man's foot. More like under a paw. Or under something heavy that shouldn't have paws or feet. Franek turned abruptly and at the same moment Nina felt the hair on the back of her neck rise like a patch of grass before a storm. - 'Nina,' said Franek, this time already without joke, without clever remarks, simply by name. The sky above the clearing darkened. The shadows slipped in closer. The four faces on the pole seemed to be waiting. A root stopped by Nina's trainer twitched once, as if asking permission. Then, just behind their backs, the same tone rang out - identical to that of the whistle, only meatier, truer - and so close that they felt a warm, moist breath on their necks.