In the Forest of Violet Shadows, Lena, Emil, and Pola find a glowing silver leaf and wake something ancient among the trees.
The Forest of Violet Shadows stretched toward the horizon, wrapped in mist that smelled faintly of honey cake and rain. The adults of Niebieszczany called it an ordinary wood, gloomy at worst, but Lena, Emil, and their cousin Pola knew better. To them, it always felt like the edge of a secret.
They met at the end of Wiper Street on a May evening, when the sky was turning the colour of plums. They had come to watch for owls, but Pola arrived with something far stranger than feathers or nests. From her pocket she drew a silver leaf, thin as a coin and bright enough to glow in the gathering dark.
"I found it under the old oak by the river," she whispered.
Emil leaned closer, squinting at the leaf as if it might twitch. Lena held her breath. The light was not steady like moonlight. It pulsed, warm one moment and cold the next, as if it knew they were looking at it.
"Do you think dragons really live in this forest?" Lena asked.
Emil was about to answer when a rustle ran through the thicket beside the path. Something shifted under the leaves. Then the ground gave a small, sharp tremble, and a wind as cold as cellar stones slid around their ankles.
The silver leaf flashed in Pola's hand. Green lights bloomed between the branches. The children froze as a huge scale, dark and gleaming, pressed against the roots at their feet. It was as big as a dinner plate.
A low, musical voice rolled out of the trees.
"Who dared to wake me?"
Lena took one step forward. The forest answered with a deeper shiver, and from the shadows ahead, two bright eyes opened.