On the edge of the village of Brzeźce, where the fields ended in the soft line of the Whispering Forest, stood a house with a porch that smelled of lime trees in summer and cooker smoke in winter. Grandmother Kalina, with her green dotted kerchief, put a bowl of milk by the cooker every morning. - For the householder," she would say, also placing a crumb of fresh bread. - To keep an eye on him while we're away. Jagna rolled her eyes, because she was eleven and had been laughed at at school again yesterday for believing in things you can't see. Olek, her brother a year older, only shrugged his shoulders. He preferred to watch something work rather than talk about it. That day Mrs Jarema, a whisperer from the end of the village, came to them with a basket of fragrant herbs and a jay feather tucked into her braid. - 'The bees have tangled their darts in the wind today,' she said, as if it were something obvious. - You have to carry a jar of lime honey to the chapel by the old oak before the sun goes down in the forest. The forest likes it when you talk to it kindly. Grandmother Kalina nodded. She gave Jagna a jar, tied with red string, and put a bracelet of rowan on her wrist. - Red protects,' she muttered. - Don't whistle in the forest, don't count backwards and don't pick ferns, because the fern remembers your steps. The road to the Whispering Forest smelled of resin and dampness. Thin crusts of reflected sky strained against the muddy puddles. The clucking of hens could still be heard from the village, but the closer we got, the quieter it became. Such silence, in which one could hear the buzzing of flies and one's own thoughts, Jagna did not like. It was a good thing Olek could walk loudly. - 'I bet it's an old custom,' he muttered, throwing a stick over his shoulder. - A shrine, an offering... It's just a way for us not to forget how to respect the forest. - And if someone is watching us? - asked Jagna, scratching her knee which she had scraped against a juniper tree. - 'A crow,' replied Olek matter-of-factly, pointing to the black flashes between the branches. He smiled, but somewhat crookedly, as he always did when he pretended not to be afraid. The path was narrow, his knees rubbed against the ferns, and someone had drawn an arrow on an old pine tree with charcoal. Jagna remembered that the arrow used to point west, but now it showed north. - Look,' she said, stopping. - It has shifted. - Someone must have made a joke - Olek snorted, but his eyes also became alert. Footprints were imprinted on the side of the road. Clear, as if someone had just walked barefoot over the damp earth. Jagna crouched down. - Five fingers, like a human being's,' she whispered. - Only... - Only from the heel they go the wrong way - finished Olek, wrinkling his forehead. The footprints looked as if someone was walking towards the village, but all the forest around said they were advancing towards the thicket. - I knew one forester who talked about such signs. He said they were little tricks of someone who liked you to get lost. Jagna felt the red cord on her wrist tighten slightly, as if to pull her forward. - 'Grandma said that in the forest you don't follow your voice, you follow your heart,' she muttered. - 'But now we follow what we have to do. The chapel stood in a small clearing like a wooden boat in a sea of grass. Inside, behind the glass, someone had set up a picture of Our Lady of the Herbs, and beneath it a tiny figure of a bearded man cut from bark, with narrow eyes and a cap made from an oak leaf. The bark of the oak behind the chapel was old, wrinkled, and soft to the touch like old blankets. Above the clearing, amber pollen swirled, although the sun had already hidden behind the clouds. Jagna set the jar of honey on a flat stone and untied the red string. The honey smell was sweet and warm, like July encased in glass. - 'Here's to the bees, to the forest and to those who guard the border,' she said louder than she intended. For a moment nothing happened. Olek carelessly corrected his stick, snarled at a mosquito and grunted. Then Jagna heard a murmur. Not the kind that comes out of the throat, but from inside the trees. The jar trembled. A thin streak of light appeared on its wall, as if someone had drawn a path towards the lid with their finger. A bubble slipped out from inside the honey, burst silently and spread the aroma across the clearing. - Can you smell it? - Olek raised his eyebrows. - It's just... well, a reaction. The heat, the pressure. - And the fact that someone is saying my name? - Jagna asked more calmly than she felt. From the clearing came a protracted: "Jaaagna..." Sometimes that's how parents drag out the voice when they wake up in the morning. Only the parents were now in the orchard, far away, and it was soft, green, rubbed against the bark. Olek looked around abruptly. - Who's that? - He shouted into the thicket. Again, "Jaaagna..." and "Oleek..." One from the left, the other from the right. As if someone was standing on both sides of the clearing and learning their names out loud. - 'We're going back,' decided Olek. - We've done what we had to do. That's enough. The forest seemed to thicken. When they stepped back between the ferns, the arrow on the pine tree no longer existed. Had someone smudged it with resin or a touch? Olek broke small sticks along the way and left them like signs, but when he looked back a moment later, the twigs were whole again and the lichen on the trunks looked as if nobody had touched them for years. - No kidding," he growled to himself. Jagna tried to breathe evenly. The red cord on her wrist grew warm. The thought of her grandmother and a bowl of milk by the cooker suddenly seemed important and very far away. - Can you hear the river? - she asked. - She had not been this close before. Indeed, there was a murmur from the right, something that sounded like water running over stones. And from the left - a quiet, trembling "Come on...". There was no anger in it, but there was something that made one want to go, even if one did not know where to go. - We don't follow the voice," reminded Olek firmly. - Following the heart, following the needle in the compass that... - He fell silent. The compass he got from his dad was pointing in completely different directions at once, the needle shaking like crazy. In front of them grew a tree that had not been there before. The old oak under the chapel? No, another, even older, with a hollow as wide as a window. The bark had traces of incisions that no one remembered anymore: spider-like features, stars, bird's feet. One of the lines formed the shape Jagna had seen earlier today on the jar, when a streak of light ran towards the lid. - It's the same mark,' she whispered. - As if the forest wanted us to see it. - Or for us to be lost forever - muttered Olek, trying to joke, but his voice sounded hollow. There was a chill blowing from inside the oak, although there was no draught. Jagna raised her hand and touched the bark. She felt tiny tremors under her fingers, like the heartbeat of a very large animal that is dreaming. When she took her hand, a honeyed scent remained on her skin. - 'Jagna,' said a voice, this time right next to her ear. The second time: - Olek. Her brother clamped his hand on her wrist so tightly that the rowan tree squeaked. - On three - he hissed. - We are running towards... - He paused, as the air around them thickened like fog, although there was no fog. Suddenly there came a quiet thud from the side of the chapel - one, two, three - as if someone had knocked on the glass from inside. The tree by which they were standing groaned, and then an elongated, deep crack passed along its trunk. The bark began to crack, not violently, but slowly, with a heavy sigh. An amber glow shimmered in the crack, like that of a jar. - Olek... - Jagna didn't have to finish, because they were both already watching the fibres of the wood split apart. The smell of honey and wet bark flowed from the crack, and something large took a step towards them, inadvertently bending the ferns.