The small train stopped in Borki nad Mirna on a late June afternoon. Lena got off with her rucksack and a cardboard tube full of maps, hearing the storks croaking on the chimney of the former school. She had returned years later to put her grandmother Hedwig's house in order and write down stories that would not fit in any archive. The wilderness started just across the river, smelling of resin and wet moss, as it always did before a storm. On the porch of the cottage waited a box left by her great-grandfather, and on its lid someone had scratched a star and the sign of lightning. Inside, Lena found linen cloths, an ear of rye tied with red thread and a garland of mugwort, already dry but strangely light in her hands. "For Kupala," sounded the grandmother's short, faded handwriting on a piece of paper slipped under the binding. From the kitchen window we could see Mirna, meandering slowly between the alders, and the footbridge that always creaked underfoot. Mr Wolf, a neighbour, came in with a jar of honey and a warning. "Don't go over the reeds after dark. Leszy doesn't like it when they rearrange his paths," he said in a tone as if he were talking about a dog that only bites some people. Lena laughed, though she respectfully tucked the garland back into the box. She remembered her grandmother's stories about the river, which can give back what it has taken, but only to the one who knows how to ask. She wanted to take pictures of old border posts, to collect the names of places no longer on maps. As the sun descended behind the pines, she took a torch and a piece of bread, reflexively leaving a crumb on the cooker, as her grandmother had taught her. The footbridge groaned under her foot, and the Mirna darkened, smooth as glass, with a single streak of light on the current. On the other side of the river, the ground was soft and warm, full of the sweet smell of blanket and peat. Under an old oak tree, someone had scratched out a rune that Lena knew from her grandmother's sketchbook; three teeth, the sign of water, and a tiny cross beside it. On a branch hung a fresh garland of thyme and yarrow, tied with a blue ribbon, as if someone had just been here. There was a murmur somewhere in the reeds, and then it grew so quiet that it sounded louder than a whisper. "Lena," she heard, clearly and close by, in a voice she had known since childhood, even though no one was standing next to her. She took a small wax candle and a flint from her pocket, superstitiously, though she always laughed about it. The flame hesitated in the draught, but ignited and reflected in the black water like a second moon. "Give a sign, Mirna, if you remember." - she pronounced in a whisper, to herself for courage. Then the garland of branches twitched and, untouched by her hand, fell straight into the river, and instead of swimming downstream, it began to slowly return upstream, leaving a luminous trail in its wake. Just beside her shoes, wet, narrow footprints were imprinted in the soft silt that had not been there a moment before, and a hand, slender and seaweed-green, slid out from the thick wall of reeds, stopping a hair's breadth from her knee.