In Słomianki, on the edge of the Crane Forest, fog was gathering on the meadows like milk. Hania, the nineteen-year-old granddaughter of whisperer Agatha, returned to the wooden cottage after a long break. The attic smelled of juniper and wax, and in a cereal box she found a clay whistle in the shape of a crane. A thread of red wool was stretched across its beak and a mark resembling the star of Mokosz was scratched under the wing. As she put the whistle to her lips, the wood in the wall crackled, as if the house was listening. She put it down, but the light hiss of rushes, carried from afar, stopped in her ears. In Słomianki, it was said that water remembers names and the well repeats them before the storm. Hania was studying ethnolinguistics and had come to collect songs, place names and stories, lost between phone calls. Her grandmother had left her a crumpled map, drawn with soot on foil parchment. Thin lines led through marshes, around juniper islands, to a place signed 'Knot of Trees'. It was the eve of the Forefathers' Day, a night of closer thresholds and more attentive shadows across the village. Waiting at the edge of the woods was Peter, a young gamekeeper from the neighbouring village colony. "Don't go there after dark," he said without greeting, adjusting his knife belt. "The paths criss-cross like rush fibres and a man comes back from where he didn't go." Hania laughed quietly, showed him the map and shrugged her shoulders. "Names can go astray, too," he muttered, pointing to three-fingered footprints in the sand that did not belong to a bird. She reached three oak trees that intertwined their crowns like palms, hiding a small barrow in the middle. She tied a red thread on a branch and, without thinking, whistled once on a crane whistle. The air thickened, as if someone had poured honey into it. A rumbling sound came from the ground, unobtrusive, reminiscent of the rhythm of a lullaby. A circle of mushrooms blossomed around the barrow, their white edges glowing with moisture, and after a moment, the smell of the river came. Whispers from the rushes folded into three voices: that of a child, an old man and a bird. "Hania," they said, "don't turn around until the water speaks." The lines twisted like ribbons, pointing the way towards the long-drowned mill. An overgrown canal shone between alders and revealed a stone circle with a hand carved in the middle. A boat rocked on the bank, tied to a piling with rush fibres, though the water stood completely still. The whistle warmed in her hand, and the stream fell silent to the rest. A shadow as tall as a willow tree moved in the roots of an alder. A figure stepped out into the pale light, with antlers made of branches and skin like bark. "Give up the voice that is not yours," murmured a number of birds, though none took flight. Hania took a step back and felt the cold water under her heel. The boat at the pier suddenly vibrated, as if someone had just sat in it.