Behind the school in Lipiny, where the asphalt abruptly turns into a sandy road, lies Mud Meadow. Here, in the evenings, you can hear the croaking of frogs, the flutter of wings, and the air smells of mint, silt and smoke from distant bonfires. A crooked wooden bridge crosses the middle of the meadow - so old that someone greases it with tar every summer, and still every plank can wail when you walk over it. A lazy stream flows under the bridge, black as tea with honey, and gets lost in the reeds, where a grey heron stands motionless like a stick stuck in the ground. Nela was eleven years old, a fringe that never listened to clips, and a checkered notebook in which she wrote down things that "looked cryptic". They weren't words, just rhythms, arrangements, repetitions. This summer she had already seen jackdaws sit on the wire in two even rows and leave a gap exactly over the lamppost. She has noticed that the pine woodpecker by the playground always taps out the same arrangement: three fast, pause, one, pause, three again - so that her hand counts by itself: 3-1-3. The ants on the path have suddenly changed track and arranged themselves in a circle around the smallest berries. And a beaver, which she sometimes saw at dawn, carried the bark from the willows under the bridge and peeled it off so that the patches of white arranged themselves in a spiral. "This can't be a coincidence" - she wrote in her notebook and next to it she drew the curved line of the stream, the bridge and the dots where the birds stand. The notebook smelled of wet grass and an eraser. Nela's dog, Fritz, loved the smell. He was red, shaggy and had one ear put up and the other completely out of place. When Nela sat by the window, Frytka would lie down so that his paws were touching the notebook, as if to make sure that no gust would close it. On Monday, a magpie with a shiny feather in its tail perched on the railing of the bridge and dropped something right in front of Nela's fingers. It was a small old button, all scratched up, but as silver as if someone had just polished it with grass. The magpie tilted its head, squealed and then flew away as if nothing had happened. Nela slipped the button into her pocket and felt herself getting hot inside - just like when your guesses start to take shape. In the afternoon, when the sun hung low over the poplars and all the shadows became as long as tongues, Nela returned to the meadow. Fritz walked beside her, nibbling the grass like a goat. She touched a button in her pocket from time to time to make sure it wasn't a dream. She sat down behind an alder tree, whose roots looked like intertwined fingers, and quietly tuned her ears. Before she could hear anything, she noticed movement. First a heron appeared. It didn't sit down, it didn't hunt - it stood in the water two steps away from the bridge, looking under the boards so intently that Nela had to lean in too. A fox slipped out of the reeds, ran silently, grasping the air with its nose, and sat down under a willow tree. A badger, as heavy as a sack of flour, crawled out of the bushes on the right and sat down opposite the fox, facing the heron. A flock of jackdaws flew over the wire, but instead of splitting up around the area, they all sat on one cable, leaving an even gap right over... the bridge. There was a noise from the reeds and a grass snake slipped out, green with two yellow spots near its head, and lay on the stone like a ribbon. Somewhere further on, cranes rumbled and their voices flew around the meadow like an echo. Nela held her breath. She had never seen animals so close together before. They didn't look nervous. They were focused. The hairs on the nape of Fritz's neck turned auburn, but he didn't bark - he only moved his muzzle, as if he too was counting out a rhythm. A familiar clatter came from a pine tree by the pitch. Tok-tok-tok. Pause. Tok. Pause. Tok-tok-tok. The woodpecker answered as it always does, but something was different. Instead of spreading around, the sound rolled across the water and seemed to stop just below the bridge. At the same moment, the beaver slammed its tail against the taffrail - one single time, very loudly, so that a wave rolled through the reeds, rustling. The teals fell silent. The frogs stopped croaking. Nela felt that everything in the meadow was waiting - even the wind. Nela's father used to say that under the bridge you could sometimes hear a buzzing, "because that's how the water swishes, like in a bottle". Grandfather Staszek always laughed then and replied that it was "the bridge talking to those who want to listen". Now Nela thought that perhaps both were true. The buzzing was indeed coming from under the planks, quiet, deep, but there was not a mere sound. There were pauses. There were repetitions. If one listened closely, it might have sounded like... an invitation. Nela slid out from under the alder tree and walked a few steps closer. The boards were darkened from the dampness. On one of them, right next to a rusty nail, someone - or something - had carved a row of short cuts. Three short lines, a longer break, one line. Then a break again, and three. Nela swallowed her saliva and pressed the magpie button into her fingers. It fitted into the indentation between the notches like a key to a lock. - 'Fritz, look,' she whispered, although the dog was looking anyway, with affectionate frowns over his nose. The wet board was as cool as the morning grass. Nela put a button on it. She just wanted to see if the cuts she could see were simply cracks in the wood. When she moved the button, the board vibrated. Not the usual creaking. It vibrated underneath, as if something had let the air out, and the water sighed quietly. The heron moved its fingers like someone standing on tiptoe and counting. The woodpecker paused longer than before. Something pale emerged from the dark water under the bridge. At first Nela thought it was just the water mirror reflecting some star, but the sky was still bright. The glow was from underneath. Greenish, mobile, like hundreds of skylights enclosed in a jar. The light moved in a buzzing rhythm - three vibrations, pause, one, pause, three. Fritz whimpered softly and clung sideways to Nela's leg. Small, fresh scratches ran along the railing, over which the magpie had left a button in the morning. It was as if someone's teeth - sharp but not large - had tried to nibble at it a little. Nela slid her fingers under the edge of the board and felt that there was a narrow gap between it and the next board. Something was stuck there. Something soft, smooth. It looked like a braided reed or a string of rushes, so even that it was hard to believe it hadn't been made by someone's hands. - 'On the count of three,' she whispered, more to herself than to the dog, recalling the rhythm from the pine tree. - Once... The woodpecker tapped once, loud as ever. The beaver didn't strike, but the water under the bridge whined quietly again. A badger's gasp came from the reeds. The fox closed its eyes, as if impatient. - Two... When she said 'two', the jackdaws on the wire simultaneously raised their tails and moved one wing to the left, leaving a gap right over the middle of the sternum. The heron tilted its head so low that its beak almost brushed the surface. The light beneath the planks trembled and the greenish glow spread wider, as if someone under the water had unrolled a scroll. - Three. Nela pressed. The board gave way to the thickness of a coin. The gap widened. The string of rushes slid out a tad and touched the tip of her trainer, leaving a wet line on the material. Frye let out a screech that sounded like a question. A bubbling, soft 'plum' came from the darkness, deep beneath her sternum, and for a second Nela was sure she felt movement on her toes - gentle, determined, as if someone on the other side was pulling the same string. At the same instant, the woodpecker tapped four times fast in a row - the first time since Nela had been watching it - and the whole bridge creaked low, draughty, like an old cart on stones. The water under the planks swelled from the sudden current, the reeds jerked, and the fox stood up and strained like a string. The rush rope jerked, popped out of the crevice and touched Nela's boot again, this time entwining it lightly, like an inviting hand. Nela looked at Fritz. The dog trembled, but did not retract its paw. Another, deeper sound came from below, as if someone under the water had taken in air and was about to say something. The board under Nela's fingers bent a hair more, and a greenish glow suddenly shone so brightly that it reflected in the heron's eyes like small bright dots. - 'If I pull now...' whispered Nela, feeling the slippery cane rope tighten a little around her shoe, and all the eyes in the meadow - bird's, dog's, fox's, even those of the shiny yellow snake - focused exactly on her hands. Then something heavy moved under the planks, dragging a shadow so wide under the bridge that a silence fell such as Nela had never heard here before. The light flicked on, the rhythm quickened, and the rush cord twitched a third time, harder, like a request, like a signal, like a countdown just before....