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IN HARMONY WITH NATURE

František Kotleta


A sharp whistle flew through the trees and pierced Kateřina’s ears.

“Assholes,” she sighed, her right hand shooting into the air, not intending to turn around after the source of the whistling. In doing so, her fingers curled and straightened in the international gesture known in Czechia as fakáč.

The only response was loud male laughter.

“Go screw yourself,” she hissed, but in doing so she did exactly what she didn’t want to do—thoughts of whistling lumberjacks and a raised hand diverted her attention from the bushes she was just pushing her way through. So she tripped over a large spruce branch and fell on it. She felt sharp pain in her knee on impact, and her mouth subsequently became the proof of how well she could curse.

“Shit!” she gasped, rolling onto her back. She closed her eyes in pain, a few tears escaping from them.

“Do you need help, Red?”

The man’s raspy voice sounded genuinely concerned.

“Not from you,” she growled. She didn’t have the courage to open her eyes at the same time. She could just make out the three figures above her, casting shadows. Beyond that, she could smell them. They carried the scent of a mixture of gasoline, sap, and fresh sawdust.

“You’re bleeding,” the voice informed her again, then added: “Bob, get the medkit.”

Bob trotted off somewhere. His heavy boots shook the surrounding ground, making her head pound. She opened her eyes and saw two lumberjacks. The one whistling and talking was Old Pávek. She’d never called him that in her life, but no one in the village called him anything else, so that’s what she called him in her mind at least. Standing next to Old Pávek was Young Pávek, a boy of barely eighteen who had graduated from the forestry school in Olomouc a few months ago and looked a bit like a pimpled copy of his father. But unlike him, he had no baldness and no muscles built not in a gym but by daily hard work. She hated to admit it, but Old Pávek looked a bit like Bruce Willis in The Last Boy Scout, a movie she loved and would watch whenever she was feeling blue. She felt that way a lot the last few weeks.

“Aah!” she yelled as the returning Bob sprayed her bloody knee with disinfectant without warning. She held the edge of her skirt tightly at the same time, so that the men wouldn’t see that she hadn’t put on panties for her trip in the woods.

Bob was Roma. But Kateřina Hodková was probably the only person in the entire Jeseníky Mountains who called him that, because the others—even himself—referred to him as the Gypsy. During her studies of andragogy at the Faculty of Arts, she took a semester of Romani studies, and so she tried to speak Romani to him once. He didn’t understand a single word and subsequently told her that she had nice tits. That was the end of all their interaction.

“You wanna bend over, Red?”

“What?”

“You wanna bend that leg so I can bandage it?” Bob grinned. He was grinning like a teenager, not just now, but all the time, even though he was apparently in his late twenties. The double entendre was, of course, rewarded by the other two lumberjacks with a grin.

“You don’t have neither the guts nor the tools for that,” she snapped angrily. Even she was surprised at how sharp she was. But the whole situation was driving her crazy. Without their whistling, she wouldn’t have scraped her knee and she wouldn’t be in such an undignified situation in the first place. She gritted her teeth and jumped to her feet. Her knee stung again, but she managed to ignore it. She could think of about a dozen ways to explain to the men that their behavior was not only unacceptable, but more importantly, it showed what village primitives they were, but then she just waved her hand mentally. She’d given up long ago. After moving to Jeseníky in a foolish hope that she would be closer to nature as well as the people who live there, she had to reconsider her ideas quickly.

She rolled up the bottom of her blue and white batik skirt so she wouldn’t get blood on it, ignored their stares at her knees and thighs, took the two wicker baskets—the reason why they called her Little Red Riding Hood—and just left. She was being damn careful not to trip again.

When she was out of their sight and heard the chainsaw whirring again, she finally sat down on the stump and swore for a long time.

* * *

The evening was close. It took a few hours, but she was in a better mood. Mostly because both her baskets were full. In one of them were several kinds of boletes and two parasol mushrooms. She loved mushrooms. Maybe that was the only reason why she was still staying in that house after all.

The other basket held a mixture of blueberries and raspberries. She had an important meeting to attend over Zoom tomorrow, and when lemon balm tea wasn’t helping, it was berries that she used to chase away the depression of her work. Fruit sugar was the only sugar she indulged in. She and Boris had been living a healthy, organic and eco lifestyle, and she still clung to it, as if it was the only thing between her and sinking into absolute futility.

“Dianthus carthusianorum sudeticus,” she breathed enthusiastically. Indeed, there was the Sudeten carthusian, an endemic pink flower as delicate as Kateřina herself, fluttering in the light breeze. Boris would have always been telling her about botany, and especially about the endemics of Jeseníky. While she’d been studying andragogy and sociology, he had completed his doctorate in botany. He showed her the world of plants and mountains. He brought her to the Jeseníky Mountains, where they began to live together in harmony with nature. Kateřina left the walls of corporations and start-ups to follow her love and his dreams.

And then he died of a heart attack at forty because the ambulance didn’t get to him in time because of the snow. Since then she’s been gritting her teeth and trying to keep her cabin and especially her home office job in a Prague marketing agency where she was bossed by girls ten years younger and with much less experience just because they could talk to senior managers face to face and not via a webcam. The bold neckline and short skirt, traditional tools for career growth, worked rather poorly via a webcam.

She resisted the urge to pluck the flower, preferring to walk a few more steps to discover any others. But endemics weren’t as easy as mushrooms—they didn’t grow in a circle.

Help.

She turned instinctively at the sound. That it might mean something didn’t occur to her. She was standing in a clearing where several spruce trees had been freshly cut down in an effort to prevent the spread of the bark beetle. Looking at the rusty needles of the nearest trees, she knew immediately that the effort was as pointless as it had been all over Jeseníky. Nothing could stop the bark beetle’s spectacular march through the forest.

Help.

Only now did she realize it was a man’s voice and that he was indeed calling for help. She dug into the basket of mushrooms and pulled out a folding knife.

“Who’s there?”

She wasn’t afraid. She’d encountered strange types of existences in the woods before, but none tried to harm her. There was only one danger in the woods, and that was—breaking a leg and not being able to reach anyone.

Help.

The voice definitely belonged to a man. Yet it sounded strangely whispery. Like it had been strained through old fallen leaves.

She placed both baskets on a big stump and resolutely set off among the nearest trees. It grew darker immediately. While there was still plenty of light in the clearing, it was already dark among the forest giants.

“Hello? What’s your name? Are you lost?”

The voice echoed through the forest as it made its way through moss and ferns. Even though it didn’t look that way because of those stupid lumberjacks, Kateřina knew how to walk through a forest. She could dodge potholes, leap over rotting stumps, see and step over moss-covered puddles. She couldn’t remember the last time she had worn heeled boots, but she walked through the forest as if she had been born in it. At least during the day.

Help.

Finally, the voice sounded clearer than something that pops into one’s head on its own. She picked up the pace. She assumed that if someone was lying here with a broken leg, they’d already spent at least one evening here. And despite the summer, it tended to be near zero at night this high in the mountains. The first frozen puddles usually appeared in the second half of August.

Here I am.

Finally, something other than a simple “help.” Kateřina pushed away young birch trees, walked through them, and when she lowered both hands, the tree barrier closed behind her again like a subway door. She could see nothing. Only a massive oak tree that was covered with a group of white polypores. It had a blackened cavity in the middle that smelled of rot.

Here I am.

It came straight out of the tree.

“Hello?!” she called, a little unnecessarily, and took a step towards the tree.

She finally recognized it—a human face. It was sticking out of the tree like the polypores. The man’s face was black with dirt, but the whites of his eyes were shining. Otherwise, they were a brown color reminiscent of the sky shortly before dawn. His mouth was open and his teeth were also white.

Kateřina remained standing and just stared at the man. Her brain tried for a moment to convince her that there was a body along the head, but it finally gave up. The body—if the man had one at all—had to be in the middle of the trunk.

“Please call for help. Call Fantom. My name is Martin, tell them that the SRS totally screwed up. It’s important because at midnight there will be a . . . ”

The voice trailed off as the woman retraced her steps. She walked through the birch trees, which soon blocked her view of the man’s face, and then simply ran towards the clearing. In her hand she still clutched the knife in front of her. Strangely enough, it gave her a bit of confidence that if she encountered anything else, she would kill it with her five-inch blade. She skipped past the last of the trees and spotted her baskets.

Come back!

She picked them up and ran down the forest path below the ridge. Expertly aiming for where the fewest trees grew, she knew she would find the most light there. Her mind was clear, completely blank. She focused only on the path, step by step, skipping over puddles, logs, branches, rocks, and holes. She was in great shape, so she didn’t even get out of breath and made the four miles to her house in less than an hour. As soon as she heard the familiar whirr of a chainsaw, the tension lifted.

“I need to start taking antidepressants,” she decided aloud when she finally arrived at her cabin. Still, she locked the door behind her, used the latch that otherwise only swung next to the lock on the door like a prop for an old cobweb, and turned on all the lights in the house. She left the baskets on the floor, the knife still clutched in her hand.

She cursed. Several times. Only then did it finally dawn on her what she needed. She ran up to the second floor, with two attic rooms. One served as a storage room, the other as a guest room. The last time someone had used it was for Boris’s funeral. That someone was Jasmine, and in addition to a crumpled thong, she had left an open pack of Marlboros there. They were still on the bedside table. She grabbed them and ran to the kitchen with them. She was cold, so she pulled a sweatshirt over the T-shirt she’d headed out into the woods in before scrabbling for the lighter on the stove and managing to light one cigarette on her third try. The dried tobacco burned faster than she remembered, but the first drag made her feel like she could do it. She felt a little dizzy, but she just considered that a nice bonus. She opened her laptop, turned it on, expertly punched in the password Boris12345, and quickly opened Facebook. Jasmine’s Messenger screen glowed green. She hovered with the mouse right over the camera icon and then pressed it.

Her friend only picked it up as she lit her second cigarette. By then the first puff had made her a little nauseous.

“You smoke?”

Jasmine’s appearance matched her name. Her mother had met her father while working as a nurse in Saudi Arabia. She left her lucrative job early, but with something of a trust fund that guaranteed Jasmine money during her childhood, her studies and a decent start in life. They met at university and also started their first job together. Throughout all the complex escapades of their lives, they were and have remained each other’s support system, although in recent years they have communicated mainly via Messenger using memes.

“I’m losing my mind!” she blurted out.

“Explain.”

Typical Jasmine. Smart, brusque, straight to the point. Only now did Kateřina realize she was only wearing her underwear. And quite sexy, too. She probably distracted her from something important. But the thought just flitted through her mind as she was trying to concentrate on her own state of mind.

“I was in the woods. Someone was calling for help. I found a big tree and saw a human face in it. The guy was mumbling something about SRS, Fantom, screw-ups, and that something was going to happen at midnight. Total mess.”

With a shaking hand, she put half a cigarette in a saucer. She was sure she’d take one more drag and throw up.

“Are you drunk?”

“I don’t have any alcohol, Jas. You know we live . . . I live healthily.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Yeah. Mushrooms and tofu this morning.”

At the word tofu, Jasmine shuddered. She preferred bacon, caviar, and port, though with her figure she looked more like she was living off air.

“Those mushrooms, weren’t they liberty caps?”

Still matter-of-fact and calm. She even started giving herself a manicure during the interview.

“I know my way around mushrooms,” Kateřina argued. But she turned to the basket on the floor anyway, suspiciously checking the pile of mushrooms. She raked through them, making sure there were no liberty caps or toadstools.

“Are you tired? Are you sleeping well?”

“I sleep for ten hours straight, thanks to that bloody fresh air around here!” she retorted, but then lowered her eyes. She couldn’t be mad at someone who was helping her. Jasmine generously waved off her outburst. She was like that.

“Jesus, I’m sorry. You’re probably right. It’s too much for me. Those bitches at work are bossing me because I didn’t send a presentation to a client last week because a tree fell here and damaged a 5G mast. Those idiotic lumberjacks dropped some spruce on it.”

She reached over to the other basket and scooped out a handful of raspberries and two blueberries. This would do her good. She remembered that she and Jasmine used to organize raids to the cake shops. They called it looting. Once a month they indulged in tiramisu, panna cottas, harlequin cakes and cream puffs. Another pillage usually followed at a bar. She realized she’d do almost anything for a cream puff and a bottle of gin now. Hungrily, she scooped up another handful of forest fruits.

“Are you still dreaming about Boris?”

Kateřina shook her head. She had indeed dreamed of him often since his death. She saw him in various situations, especially at their cabin or in the woods he loved. A few times she had even spoken to him in her dreams. But about a month ago, all the dreams stopped. Unexpectedly and suddenly. She’d slept soundly every night since.

“Do you think I could have gone crazy? The loneliness, the loss of Boris . . . ”

Jasmine turned away from the monitor and Olaf came into view. The tall blond man was actually named Jarmil. He said his parents apparently hated him, so he had taken to calling himself Olaf. He was only wearing shorts. As a mockery of Kateřina’s situation, there were yellow ducks on them.

“Hi,” Kateřina mouthed through a mouthful of raspberries. She didn’t like Olaf. He was a consultant for the government, which could mean anything. But Jasmine was happy with him.

At least someone was doing well.

“You don’t look like a nutcase, Kat. I’d say you’re just missing a good steak.”

Typical Olaf. Not only was he the only one who called her Kat, but he’d also teased her when she’d gone vegan for Boris.

“Thanks, Jarmil, I’ll take that as a credible diagnosis from you,” she growled. She knew very well how to return his teasing.

Before he could react, there was the sound of shattered glass.

* * *

She turned and saw something knock three window panes out of the window. She had a double-glazed window, so only one pane remained whole; the others scattering shards to the floor. Jasmine screamed something, Olaf asked in a calm voice what happened. Kateřina just stared out, startled. Several branches came through the window.

“Bastards.”

“Who?!” Jasmine yelled.

Kateřina had no doubt that Old Pávek and company were behind this. The window was across from a small herb and vegetable garden. The nearest trees grew maybe a hundred yards away. The forest was on the other side of the house. The branches had nowhere to fall from. And certainly not with enough strength to destroy the window. The wind blew in through the fresh holes. It was very strong. The air smelled of rain, yet Kateřina was sure there wasn’t a cloud in the sky when she turned on the computer. What’s more, she didn’t hear the usual pounding of drops on the roof.

Instead, there was pounding on the door.

“Kat, should I call the police?”

Olaf finally said something that made sense. She didn’t have the time to answer. All the electricity in the house had gone out. Only the blue light of the laptop screen illuminated the room. She skipped over to the basket of mushrooms, on top of which lay a still-open knife. She grabbed it in her hand and pointed it in front of her, as if the knife could actually protect her from whoever was pounding so hard on the door.

It didn’t take long for the door to break open.

* * *

Someone must have knocked it out with tremendous force. They didn’t break the lock; the door just fell in. It split in the hinges as well as around the lock. It hit the floor with a loud thud and clatter. The figure that stood in the entrance certainly didn’t look human.

* * *

Jasmine’s voice screamed from the laptop. Olaf’s voice, still calm, echoed in the background, but the noise of the door slamming and the wind whistling changed it to a murmur that Kateřina couldn’t perceive. Her hand was shaking, and despite the sudden cold, sweat was running down her forehead. She wiped it off with her free hand and spread the salty drops through her short hair. She’d cut her hair short once she’d moved here. It was practical.

“I’m back, my love.”

* * *

The man had the voice of Boris, but he certainly didn’t look like him. His whole figure seemed to have grown and thickened. His skin was black, covered with hair and something else—as if, like the hair, it was growing needles. A huge penis swung between his legs. He’d never had one like it, nor had he ever had testicles shaped like pine cones. This was a strangely disgusting masquerade.

“This is a crime, you idiots. The police are on their way!” she yelled.

The figure took a few steps toward her. It reached out a hand, unnaturally long, slender, with skin resembling tree bark, and grabbed her left hip. It finally dawned on her that this was no Pávek prank. She grabbed the laptop with her free hand, and while Jasmine’s screams rumbled out of it, she whacked the figure over the head with it. She didn’t believe for a moment that it was Boris. He was dead, after all.

* * *

The laptop crackled and Jasmine stopped screaming. The blue light disappeared and the terrifying figure let go of her. At that moment, she stabbed the knife in it. All the way in. It wasn’t very deep, but she stabbed it with all the force she could muster. The computer ended up on the floor and she jumped onto the table. She then flipped it over onto the dark figure.

“Don’t run away from me, my love,” it growled.

* * *

Kateřina ran through the kitchen and up the stairs, old floorboards buckling under her. Before that, she gracefully zigzagged between the mushroom, apple and herb dryers in the hallway. She knew the house even in the dark. After all, she was usually moving around in darkness. Considering her expenses, she tried to conserve electricity at all costs. After dark, the only light in the house was usually the laptop with a screen saver on.

While she was running up the stairs, her attacker crashed into them. Drying racks and wooden boxes full of dried berries fell to the ground. So did the attacker. But it didn’t take it long to get up. When the first step made a creaking sound under its weight, the door to the guest room slammed shut. She ran past the bed, still unmade after Jasmine’s visit, and pushed it towards the door. She then picked up the rickety nightstand and placed it on the bed so that it formed another counterweight to the door.

It didn’t take long for it to fall into the covers, knocked down by the kinetic energy of the blows torturing the door.

* * *

Kateřina was breathing heavily. She searched all the drawers and cabinets. Each one looked different. Some had been left by the previous owners, others had been bought by her and Boris at an antique shop so they could put in things that they no longer needed, but didn’t want to give up. While that thing was banging on the door, which only resisted thanks to the heavy bed, she was throwing clothes, old books and notebooks on the floor. Soon, her certificates were on the floor too—coaching, digital marketing, presentation specialist, social wizard . . . All that marketing crap materialized on paper was now worthless.

“My love, don’t run away from me.”

The voice sounded as real as Boris’s, at least from what she remembered. It made no sense. Nothing made sense. Ever since she’d seen that terrifying human face in the tree, her world had turned upside down.

The door had turned to rubble. The thing with Boris’s voice pushed the bed away and stepped into the room.

“Leave me alone!” she shouted. She abruptly realized the absurdity of it all. A command, a shout, a plea, nothing could change it. That creature had come for her.

She leaned against the dresser and heard the clink of bottles. They were filled to the brim with an alcoholic tincture with her pickled herbs—mint, chamomile, lemon balm, plantain and several others. Some she had for her own use, others she planned to sell, through an upcoming e-shop.

“Don’t be afraid, my love. This is what we’ve always wanted—to become one with nature.”

She knew about the lighter in her pocket the whole time. She put it there when she lit the first cigarette in Jasmine’s pack. There was a wobbly table between her and the intruder. She poured five glasses on it. The whole room was filled with the smell of herbs. The lighter flared with a bright red flame.

“Whoever you are, leave me alone,” she said.

The creature took two steps forward. A wall of fire rose between it and Kateřina.

* * *

She ran through the darkness, feeling every footfall. The moment she fell after jumping, she lost the warm socks she had pulled on when she got home; pine needles, twigs and small stones bit into her bare feet. But there was no other way down to the settlement. And that way was too damn long. She only looked back once. She could see the terrifying figure in the window, and the alcohol-drenched table burning behind it. She didn’t want to see if the fire had spread. She firmly believed it hadn’t, but she preferred to play Schrödinger on this one and didn’t want to find out. In addition to the pain in her feet, she could feel her left knee. When she had jumped out of the window and landed in the compost below, it had snapped, and now the sharp pain in her knee alternated with the sharp pain in her feet. Still, she didn’t stop. She knew she couldn’t. She could handle it. She’d built up a decent body by walking in the mountains. It was finally doing her some good.

She saw the light of civilization before she reached the first house. It was coming from a construction trailer. She knew too well who it belonged to, or rather, who was currently living in it. According to the faded sign, it was the property of the Forestry of the Czech Republic js and probably maybe c, but it no longer had corners and the letter had disappeared with one of them.

“Hey! Help!”

She was screaming from a distance. With no success because of sport commentator Robert Záruba shouting from the open windows of the trailer. She stumbled about fifty yards from the trailer and rolled to the ground. Her left foot was bleeding. It must have been cut by a rock. She landed on her knee, which Bob had treated that morning. The scab had worn off and she was now bleeding from two places. The grass was wet with evening dew. It cooled her and stuck to her at the same time. She realized that the sweatshirt she had thrown on at home was torn. She had no idea from what. Maybe from that . . . guy who’d broken into her house.

She looked back. Her cabin was drowning in darkness. It was maybe even darker than it should have been. At least that was good news.

And then she just started crying. With exhaustion, pain, fear, and utter confusion at what was happening around her. Her tears fell straight into the grass. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. Not even after Boris’s death. Back then she had simply been her gritting her teeth and doing whatever it took to fulfill his last wish.

After a while, a strange sound penetrated her ears. She looked up and saw Bob standing in the open doorway of the trailer on the highest step of the three, urinating. In the darkness she couldn’t see the details—and she certainly wasn’t interested in them—she only saw the powerful stream of fluid arcing to the ground where it broke up in droplets that sprayed out into the wide open.

It woke her up. Something as natural, common and normal as emptying one’s bladder brought her back to sanity. She stopped crying, took a deep breath, and stood up. She felt pain in her knee and foot, but it was nothing that would prevent her from getting up. Finally, Bob noticed her, too. That he should stop urinating because of it didn’t occur to him.

“Hey, guys, it’s Red,” he shouted. The stream of urine finally stopped on its own. Bob performed a “shaking” and finally buttoned up the fly of his pants. Only then did she make her way over to him. She bypassed the impact zone of the urine in an appropriately wide arc.

“Dude, what happened to her?”

The voice belonged to Old Pávek. She looked him in the eyes and started crying again.

* * *

She stared hesitantly at the clear liquid in a red cup marked Nescafé for a moment, then drank it. The slivovitz burned her throat, but did her good before it could even be absorbed into her system. She had a brown blanket thrown over her. She had no idea why, and the lumberjacks probably didn’t either, for the trailer was warm as the sunlight roasted it during the day. Plus, someone had been cooking on the gas stove recently, judging by the smell of sausages. Throwing a blanket over someone in need was probably a tradition, so she didn’t refuse it.

They didn’t pressure her to talk, which was unexpected. Old Pávek surprised her the most. He dragged her inside, made her sit down, gave her a blanket, and with Bob’s help, they cleaned her wounds with disinfectant. They even pulled out a clean bandage and bandaged both her foot and knee.

“Can I have another one?” she asked.

Young Pávek smiled and poured her a drink from the bottle. The faded letters on the label claimed “Domestic Rum.” Fortunately, the contents didn’t match it.

She kicked the second shot back as well before looking at the faces of the lumberjacks. They looked unexpectedly human. And caring. She had to tell them what had happened. But at the same time, she was afraid of how absurd it would sound. Here in the warmth of the trailer, with the TV off, and after the second drink, she felt like she’d lost her mind and none of this had happened. For a moment she even thought about borrowing the phone from them, calling Jasmine and having her confirm that she hadn’t even spoken to her today so she could go straight to a madhouse.

She shook her head. She wasn’t crazy. She was sure of what she had experienced. Still, the whole event was incredibly absurd.

“Someone broke into my house. He beat me up and I ran away.”

Actually, that was true.

“Who? It was Blažek, wasn’t it?”

Young Pávek clenched his hands into fists. Blažek was an infamous alcoholic from the other end of the village, but Kateřina had never had a problem with him. In fact, he limited himself to beating his own wife. She shook her head.

“I don’t know who he was. Maybe he’s still in the house.”

She stared at the ground as she spoke. She couldn’t lie, but now she just had to. They’d think she was crazy.

“Try putting these on.”

Old Pávek tossed a pair of shabby army boots at her feet. They must have been a good thirty years old. She went straight to putting them on. At least she could keep staring at the ground. They were about three sizes too big for her, but she didn’t mind. As long as she had solid support for her feet. Bob took off the blanket and handed her a light, dark green coat. It smelled of smoke, wood, and male sweat. She buttoned it up and rolled up the sleeves so her arms stayed free. She wanted to say thanks, but somehow, she couldn’t. These guys still struck her as a bunch of primitives after all the teasing, mouthing and whistling.

But she was grateful anyway.

* * *

They went fast. Old Pávek and Bob led the way, with the youngest member of the expedition following behind. They all had axes in their hands. Bob called his axe a hamaxe, but Kateřina could not tell the difference. She wrapped herself in her borrowed coat. Not that she was cold. She had a strange feeling that the extra layer of clothing would protect her from . . . 

If only she knew what it was. Definitely not Boris.

The door remained open and the house was dark. Old Pávek went inside and tried turning on the light. It didn’t work.

“Whew,” she sighed in relief, maybe louder than she wanted to. Bob turned to look at her in disbelief. At least the loss of electricity wasn’t her invention. The fact that they’d get there and find that nothing had happened to the house at all scared her more than whatever had tried to hunt her down. Maybe a little more. That she was going to go crazy was a much worse idea than some masquerading bastard who might be trying to rape her or maybe just rob her.

The cone of light from a powerful flashlight illuminated the entry room, the hallway, and then the kitchen. Shards of glass and a broken laptop lay on the floor. Something rustled under her feet.

“Leaves?”

They were indeed everywhere.

“Probably blown in through the broken window,” she explained to Old Pávek, pointing up the stairs. He went first, Bob following Kateřina. Young Pávek stayed outside. Bob shoved the flashlight in her hand to shine under their feet. The door to the guest room remained closed. Old Pávek pushed them open and her flashlight began to lick the room hungrily. The charred table, the pushed back bed, the open window. Everything reminded her of her frantic flight and feeble defense.

“What the hell happened here?”

Her throat tightened. What if she’d really made this up and made this mess because she was hallucinating? She shook her head as she tried to convince herself, but she could almost believe it.

“Why are the leaves dry?”

That question came from Bob. He wasn’t stupid at all. And he was right. Dry oak leaves were lying up here too, in a room smelling like a burned table. It was damn summer. There was no place to get dry leaves. Before she could think of a coherent response, a whistle came through the open window. Everyone looked out. Young Pávek stood there with a lighted headlamp.

“Hey, you gotta see this.”

* * *

The electrical box was on the floor. Someone ripped it off with brute force and tore out the wires.

“I’m not crazy,” Kateřina was relieved. Someone really was after her.

“Dude, what cutters did he use?” Bob looked at the case and shook his head.

“I’d probably call the cops and the dicks from ČEZ[1]. The former will be here tomorrow, the latter in a month,” Old Pávek grinned and pulled out a pack of Chesterfields. He nonchalantly slung an axe over his right shoulder and with one hand pulled a cigarette from the pack. In doing so, he offered the pack to the others. His son just waved his hand, but the others took one. Kateřina coughed at the first drag, but steadied herself and took another. The head of the lumberjack party pocketed the pack, as well as the lighter.

“I’d lock everything. If you’re worried, Red, my boy could sleep here on the couch.”

He may have called her Red, but his usual piggish grin was gone. This was an unexpectedly serious offer.

“Or you can sleep in our trailer. Just expect farting and snoring,” Bob added. Yeah, his grin was back.

“Did you hear that?”

Young Pávek turned around. They were standing at the back of the cabin. That part was the one closest to the woods. Not even ten yards away, the first spruce trees were already growing. The light of his flashlight licked a few trees.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Bob stated.

“It’s like someone’s talking, really,” uttered the fresh graduate, taking a few steps closer to the woods. The sturdy boots on his feet crushed the grass, drops of night dew falling from its stalks.

The wind picked up. Kateřina looked up at the sky, which now glowed with the first quarter moon. Not a single cloud drifted across it. She tried to wrap herself more tightly in her coat, but she couldn’t.

“I’d rather wait for the cops,” she whispered. She was afraid. Thanks to the broken electrical box, she was sure she wasn’t crazy and hallucinating. But now she was more afraid of who had actually attacked her.

Rightfully so.

* * *

Young Pávek went down screaming. He threw up his arms and fell on his back before he disappeared from everyone’s sight. The burning cigarettes immediately flew to the ground.

“Help!”

She didn’t see him. The light of his torch had gone out. Fortunately, he was still shouting, so they knew he was moving toward the woods. The lumberjacks ran after him, Kateřina with them. The woods scared her, but she was more afraid of being left alone in the darkened cabin.

“Dad!”

Heavy boots hit the grass of an uncut meadow. It wasn’t long before they caught up with him. Young Pávek grabbed the trunk of the nearest fir tree and held on to it. His axe lay beside him. Something was pulling him into the woods by his legs. Kateřina shone a light on them. They flailed three feet in the air, wrapped in ropes. Black, maybe brown; they looked like wood. She shone her light behind them and saw a figure like the one that had attacked her in the cabin. The man, perhaps six feet tall, was covered in pine needles, leaves, and twigs. The massive hands had turned into branches instead of fingers, the ends of which were wrapped around the young man’s legs.

“Virgin Mary, intercede on our behalf! It’s the devil!” Bob screamed. He stopped dead in his tracks; Kateřina almost bumped into him. But Old Pávek flew past them. Still running, he drew his axe and stuck it in the guy’s chest. The smell of resin wafted through the area.

The branches let go of the young man and a second later knocked Old Pávek to the ground. His axe remained lodged in the strange monster. Just as he hit the ground, the light of the torch showed the branches pounding the man on the ground. Moments later, one wrapped itself around his neck. Pávek flew in the air, flailing its legs and grunting. He tried to tear the branch apart with his hands, but judging by the grunting, he wasn’t that successful.

The hamaxe dug into the creature’s right arm. Kateřina was standing close enough to see droplets of pitch fly out from the point of impact. A few landed on her face. She wiped them off and shone her flashlight on them. The red blood still smelled of resin. Old Pávek hit the ground, panting heavily, while Bob delivered a blow after blow with practiced movements. As he withdrew his hand, the creature screamed. But it did not move from its place. The second branch struck Bob in the face. This time, his blood spurted in the air.

But by then, old Pávek had already pulled his axe out of it, and at his side appeared his son, to whom Kateřina handed his lost tool.

“One!” the oldest lumberjack shouted, swung and plunged his axe deep into the body of the attacker. From the other side, his son did the same.

“Two!” he shouted. They both pulled their trusty axes from the body and chopped again.

“Three!” Old Pávek bellowed again, and then they were slashing furiously at the man’s body.

It wasn’t a human body. No human could have lasted that long. And it didn’t even look like one. It fought back. Even as they hacked chunks of flesh from its body, even as its thick blood spurted everywhere, it kept attacking with its remaining arm. It punched Old Pávek a few times, but he didn’t care. He just staggered, yelled a foul curse, and continued hacking at the wooden body. It wasn’t long before the creature fell to the ground. The Páveks cut it in half. The two parts were now lying close together, still twitching. Thick blood oozed from both.

All the time she had been shining a light on the monster to be of some use to them. The others’ torches had either gone out or they had simply lost them somewhere. Now she was looking for Bob. He was lying in the grass, holding a hand to his face. Blood was running between fingers. She ran over to him, took off her jacket, and gently pulled his hand away. A gaping wound peeked out at her.

“We need to stitch it up, quick,” she uttered expertly. In doing so, she frantically removed her sweatshirt. She wore a T-shirt underneath and nothing else. She pulled it over her head and wrapped it around Bob’s face. She didn’t care that she was naked from the waist up.

“Uh, what’s wrong with him?”

Old Pávek didn’t know whether to stare at Bob or at her. His son acted like a gentleman, picked up her sweatshirt from the ground and handed it to her.

“I’ve got disinfectant and sutures at home. It only looks awful, but the sooner I sew it up the better,” she replied.

“We have medical equipment in the trailer. Lumberjacks need it all the time,” Old Pávek nodded his head down toward the village, where some of the houses were peacefully lit.

“Hehe, nice tits,” Bob said through his shirt.

* * *

They went fast. The Páveks held Bob’s hands and together they looked for the easiest way. Fortunately, it was easier to get into the valley than out of it. Kateřina carried the axes and the hamaxe. Soon she overtook them and helped Bob into the caravan. There she finally disposed of the bloody tools. Old Pávek opened the couch and pulled out a green first aid kit. He was right—the lumberjacks really did have great equipment.

Bob had made it through without so much as a scream. Not just the sewing, but the disinfecting too. Kateřina patched his gaping wound professionally, while Old Pávek got two shots into Bob and the others, then hid the rest of the bottle as a precaution.

“Maybe you shouldn’t smoke with that wound open,” she growled nervously.

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk when he’s got the wound open,” he retorted, but took two steps away. He picked up his cell phone, fiddled with it for a moment, but in the end put it back on the shelf.

“What the hell was that?” he finally asked.

“The devil,” Bob replied. Kateřina cleaned the blood off the rest of his face and checked his eyes. They looked fine. She’d tried really hard at stitching him, but he’d still be left with a big scar.

“Was that the guy who broke into your house, Red?” Old Pávek ignored Bob’s mutterings about the devil.

She shook her head.

“Similar, but not this one.”

She was sure of it. This creature wasn’t claiming to be her deceased Boris. And after all, he looked a little different.

“Why did you lie to us?”

The young Pávek didn’t look angry, just very scared.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me. I also thought I was hallucinating, that I was going crazy from . . . everything.” She wrung her hands.

“I’ve never seen something like this in the woods before. I’ve been cutting damn trees since the commies. I ran into Soviet troops on a training exercise once, saw two bearded nimrods banging each other in the moss and ferns, kicked a bunch of lost Prague idiots out of the woods, but this, this has never been here,” Old Pávek uttered.

“I . . . ” Kateřina looked around at their faces. Bob had his eyes closed, Young Pávek was tapping the floor with his right foot, and his father was lighting another cigarette. “I saw something similar up below the ridge. A guy trapped in a tree. He said something about midnight tonight . . . ”

“The same monster?”

She shook her head.

“Someone else. He wasn’t moving. Really, it was like the tree trapped him. Maybe he could help us. What if he was right about midnight and something terrible happens?”

“Worse than this?” Bob pointed to his freshly stitched wound.

Old Pávek looked at his watch. It was half-past ten.

“It’s at least an hour’s walk up the ridge,” she sighed.

“That’s all right. The young one will start the Lakatosh. In the meantime, the Gypsy and I will take everything we need.”

* * *

LKT was an abbreviation for Lesní Kolový Traktor—a Forest Wheel Tractor. It’s been produced in Slovakia since the 1970s and one of its more modern versions was standing on the edge of the forest. It was used by a logging crew. Like everyone else, they called it Lakatosh because of the official abbreviation. This one had a metal plough and a hydraulic loading arm. It probably lived its best years around the turn of the millennium, but it was still a reliable servant. The loggers loaded it with all their equipment, so there wasn’t much space left inside the cabin. It could only fit the driver and Kateřina, who had to stand next to the driver’s seat. The other two passengers were outside holding onto the metal fencing protecting the glass of the cabin. It was necessary. Old Pávek stomped hard on the gas. The headlights shone out into the deep night, which was taking on a much darker and more eerie quality in the forest, and the tractor’s engine rumbled out into distance. Few people could drive that fast at night, but the lumberjack knew the whole area better than his own boots. They reached the clearing where she had first heard the strange help in less than a quarter of an hour. The men jumped out of the tractor, Kateřina checked Bob’s bandaged wound, and then everyone grabbed their axes and flashlights.

“Damn,” she cursed when her foot got stuck in a muddy puddle. The whole area looked different at night than it did during the day. And Kateřina didn’t go in the woods after dark. She loved it when the sun was shining. She was always in the cabin after sunset. She had a strange feeling about the dark. Probably like every person who grows up in a city that is actually always lit and never as dark as a village or a forest.

“This way, maybe,” she pointed between the trees when Young Pávek helped her pull her foot out of the mud. She finally wasn’t wearing a skirt, but his overalls, which she only needed to tuck in a little and tighten the belt properly. They were now taking the brunt of the mud.

She stepped over a stump that looked familiar and then slipped through the trees, the lumberjacks behind her. Torch light licked the tree trunks, moss and mature ferns.

Help.

“There!” she pointed. Everything looked different in the dark, but she was sure she knew where to go now. She stepped over stumps, a rotting trunk of a fallen young spruce, and parted the veil of birch trees.

“Please, don’t shine light in my eyes.”

She recognized the man’s voice, but didn’t turn off or lower the flashlight. She couldn’t. She was still staring at what she’d seen a few hours ago, and it made her question her sanity. The man’s face did indeed look like it had grown into the tree.

“The devil!” Bob exclaimed.

“Screw you and your devil. Whatever it is, it doesn’t have goddamned horns or a tail.”

Old Pávek walked up to the trunk and stood between it and the torchlight. As he did so, he raised his axe hand. He was obviously waiting for one of the branches to move so he could chop it in defense. But the tree did not move at all. Moreover, it looked quite different from the creature they had killed at the cabin. Kateřina was right about that.

“I’m from the Fantom company. I was hired by the SRS to help them with an awakened leshen. But they screwed up. Most of their agents are dead, the rest will soon turn into leshens themselves. At midnight, the summoner wants to perform an ancient spell to awaken the forest. We wanted to stop it.”

“Lewhat?” asked Pávek.

“The devil, dammit,” Bob spat.

“A leshen. An ancient woodland creature. It’s also called a mochovik or a polisun. All of them that lived here were put to sleep before the First World War. But some imbecile woke them up to get their power.”

For a guy completely covered in trees, he spoke with unexpected directness, though neither Kateřina nor the lumberjacks understood the details of what had happened here.

Old Pávek pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He scratched his head and then lit one up. Kateřina squared up and walked over to him to take one as well. She wasn’t as sick of smoking as she had been a few hours ago. And she wasn’t as scared either.

“We killed one,” Young Pávek joined the conversation.

“That’s not enough. We have to stop whoever woke them up. The mage. Apparently he had prepared some sort of a spell, which he triggered by his own sacrifice. He died and rose again as a leshen. That woke the others.”

“What?!” Kateřina exclaimed.

She crushed the filter of her cigarette.

“A mage. Self-sacrifice is the most powerful magical tool. Tonight, he will become the lord of the leshens. He will control all the ancients and be able to create new ones. We underestimated him a bit.”

“Boris . . . ,” she gasped.

It was crazy, but in the light of what she had experienced, the man’s words made sense to her. Boris had spoken to her about his funeral shortly before he died. He’d insisted that—if I ever died, my love—she bury him in the woods. Plus, she had to bury his bag with him. He claimed it contained the seeds of trees and plants and he wanted to serve some good purpose when it all grew from him. With Jasmine’s help, she bribed the guys at the crematorium to give her a receipt that Boris had been burned. She then officially scattered his ashes in a meadow by the cemetery in Olomouc.

“ . . . that fucking bastard,” she added. The creature in her house was indeed her late husband.

“Are you all right, Red?”

She turned to Old Pávek with a mad expression and an angry curl of her bottom lip. But then she returned her gaze to the guy in the tree. She realized she was embarrassed in front of the lumberjacks. She’d despised them all along, hated them, and now it turned out that biggest bastard was her husband and they were saving her ass.

So no, she wasn’t all right. Plus, she had this weird intense feeling in her head that she needed to apologize to them.

“He came to my house. Boris. The one who came back from the dead as a leshen.”

It was really hard for her to say the name.

“He wanted to add you to his pack. You’d be just like him.”

She cursed. She swore so nastily that Young Pávek raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“Where can we find these woodies?” Old Pávek finally asked, straightforward.

“According to the map, it’s called Červeňák.”

The old lumberjack looked at his watch. It was after eleven o’clock.

“Okay, let’s go. It’s half an hour, even with the Lakatosh,” he finally announced. Kateřina just grunted something, turned on her heel, and went through the birch trees. The lumberjacks followed her.

“Hey, wait a minute, you don’t know how to stop him!”

But no one was listening to the man in the tree anymore.

* * *

The tractor sped through the darkness over potholes as if it were a freshly paved road. Mud splashed from under the wheels, branches crunched and rocks flew. Young Pávek and Bob were struggling to stay on it. But they made it, just like the Lakatosh. Kateřina’s legs tingled and her calves cramped as she stood in the driver’s compartment behind the single seat. At times she closed her eyes; that was when Old Pávek lit his umpteenth cigarette while driving with one hand, or when they drove into terrain that seemed impassable to her. They drove through several dense areas and freshly cleared clearings. The closer they got to Červeňák, the stronger the wind blew. The cloudless sky glowed with the moon and stars, as if perhaps beckoning for a nighttime romantic picnic. But just as they entered the last of the dense undergrowth, she saw the treetops buckle under the strong wind.

“To the left. Something’s shining there!”

She waved her hand at Pávek, who was in the process of dropping another cigarette butt on the floor.

“The moon?”

She shook her head. The light looked like moonlight. Theoretically it could have been reflecting off something, but it was shining too strongly to be a reflection. He turned to follow the light. Carefully this time. He figured that the hands of the two passengers clinging spasmodically to the cage around the cabin must be frozen to the bone. The tractor groaned as it pulled out of a pothole filled with dirty water, and that’s when the country radio started playing.

“Shut up,” the lumberjack shouted at Michal Tučný and turned the radio off.

Then he finally focused on driving. He went off the road and had to continue through the trees. Fortunately, they became more and more spaced out until they reached a clearing dominated by several stray rocks. It wasn’t Červeňák. The well-known hiking spot was about four hundred yards higher up the ridge.

The Lakatosh stopped and Kateřina jumped off. She held a flashlight in her hand, but it was useless. The whole place literally glowed. That’s why Pávek turned off the lights.

“Devils.”

Bob dropped to the ground beside her and was rubbing his hands. Old Pávek then helped his son jump down.

“Wait here,” she said and took off. She didn’t look back at the lumberjacks. She took a few steps and only now did she see the whole scene. There were eight leshens standing there. Boris was at their head. In the line to his left . . . branch . . . , one was missing. Her throat tightened. It wasn’t just the leshens, it was the source of light. Skulls. Twenty, maybe thirty, she found it hard to count them, spread out on the stones, glowing as if each one had a full moon inside. Beneath the stones lay a pile of human bones. Beside them sat a group of people. She counted them quickly—nine. Seven men, two women. Bruised, dirty, and most importantly, immobilized by flexible, but surely strong branches. She saw it when the lumberjacks had killed that leshen near her cabin. They could hardly move. She assumed they were the SRS people, whatever that meant.

She pulled the cigarette she had got from Pávek from her pocket. She needed four tries to light it. Her hand was unexpectedly steady, but the wind all around her was extinguishing the flame, even as she tried to hide the cigarette and lighter under her coat. Eventually, though, she took a triumphant drag and kept walking.

Despite the smoke, she could smell rot and dampness, just as she had when Boris had visited her at their house.

“My love, you came!”

She looked at him. No longer with fear, more with interest. She detected several familiar features in his face. It made him look even scarier. In the light of the skulls, she examined his strange body covered in hair and needles, and the creepy thing that was wobbling between his legs. He wasn’t the only one, they all had such jewels. She noticed there was a difference between Boris and the other leshens—his humanity. Boris looked more human. They looked like trees, as if, it occurred to her, he had become a tree from a human, and they had gone through the opposite process, as if something had once transformed them from a tree to something more human-like.

“You lied to me. It wasn’t a heart attack,” she said.

“Of course it wasn’t. I stumbled upon a way to awaken these powerful guardians of the forest. But I had to become one of them. This is what we believed in—living in harmony with nature.”

His voice rustled like leaves, and the other leshens nodded as if in agreement.

No, I’ve believed all my life in making a pile of money to afford a loft apartment in Prague. I gave it up for you.

“ . . . and now I’m here.”

She didn’t realize she’d spoken the last part of the thought that ran through her head out loud.

“Yes, you’re here now. You’ll merge with nature. You will become a powerful being of the forest,” Boris said and added: “But first there must be more of us. Behold.”

The people sitting by the bones began to move without wanting to. The leshens, whose branches imprisoned them, drew them together. While they fumbled and muttered something, the tree creatures dragged them among the others. Kateřina finally saw up close how exhausted and bruised they were.

“You want to kill them?!”

She shouted. But not hysterically. More like angrily. She took a drag from her cigarette as she did so.

“I’ll show you what you’ll become. They will belong with us.”

Boris raised his hands to the moon. The wind, already strong enough, picked up. The people on the ground began to thrash and scream in pain. The first one had needles growing out of his body.

Kateřina threw down her cigarette, put her fingers to her mouth and whistled loudly. Behind her, the lights came on and the Lakatosh started up.

* * *

The front plow picked up the nearest leshen and threw it to the ground. Only then did the door open and Old Pávek jumped to the ground. In a moment, the other two lumberjacks were standing by him. This time they held whirring chainsaws in their hands instead of axes.

“These guys know their job, Boris,” she grinned and ran over to them.

Old Pávek took a few steps toward the prone leshen and plunged the chainsaw into it. The leshen roared, but it couldn’t drown out the chainsaw. Sawdust and sap-like blood flew out of it. Boris swung his branches, the wind whined, and all the leshens ran towards the Lakatosh.

They attacked mostly with their branches that had held a group of strangers at bay only moments ago. They tried to whip them, beat them, or wrap around them and knock them down, but all the lumberjacks had to do was set their chainsaws and the branches became stumps.

It was literally the Jeseníky chainsaw massacre.

But Kateřina didn’t run to the lumberjacks. Something grabbed her legs and knocked her down. She screamed in pain and tried to turn around so she wouldn’t be lying on her stomach on the ground. It didn’t work. Instead, something pulled her as far away from the lumberjacks as possible. She had just seen Bob cut off a branch and then expertly cut one of the leshens in half. The engine seemed to hum happily as it did so.

She hit a few bones and then whizzed past the thrashing people. They seemed to be better off than they had been a moment ago. Some were touching themselves, but their transformation was interrupted.

“You can’t escape me, my love.”

Only now did she turn around—dirty, wet, her overall covered in dirt, twigs and pine needles. Boris towered over her. The branches that held her legs shortened—as if they had been sucked into his body—and strengthened. Then they crawled under her body—one wrapped around her hip, the other under her arms—and lifted her into the air. She hovered only a few inches off the ground, but it still felt like she was literally flying. She tried swinging her legs, but she wasn’t having much success. She couldn’t reach solid ground no matter how hard she tried.

“I’m going to make you into a being just like myself. The tree killers won’t stop us, my love.”

She looked at his woody, limp penis with horror in her eyes and thought of the worst. She tried to scream for help, but the end of one of the branches clamped around her throat and choked her. She just grunted. The end of the other arm extended and slipped into her mouth. She gagged, became nauseous and finally tried to vomit. There was nothing but her gastric juices oozing out around the branch. It didn’t last long, maybe a few seconds. But at the same time, with even more horror, she heard the whirring of the chainsaws cease and screams of the lumberjacks could be heard instead.

She hit the ground. Boris pulled the end of his hand out of her mouth and released his grip at the same time. She felt cold, a strong chill in her insides, and at the same time it felt like something was awakening there. She looked down at her hands. A leaf was growing between her index and middle finger.

“I planted my acorn in you. It has already begun to sprout. Your transformation has begun,” he said with satisfaction.

“You son of a bitch,” she said.

“You’ll thank me later,” he chuckled hoarsely, and headed for the lumberjacks. She watched his back. Old Pávek was on the ground. Bob waved the chainsaw furiously, trying to free Young Pávek. The youngest lumberjack was entangled by several leshens’ branches.

She stood up. She took an arc around the stray rocks. She jumped over the bones, and even though her insides clenched and she could feel something happening to every cell in her body, she kept running. She pushed past two dead leshens cut into several pieces, splashed into a thick pool of their blood, and then finally ran to the Lakatosh. She sat down on the seat, slammed the door and started the engine. The tractor lights illuminated the whole scene.

There were only five leshens left. The others were dead. But things weren’t looking good for the loggers. Fortunately, Bob managed to free Young Pávek, who was crawling towards his father. His forehead was surrounded by a pool of blood.

She took off and the radio came back with country music. Someone was furiously playing the banjo and singing about how beyond the blue mountain, the blue woods, there’s my home, there lies Tennessee.

She ran into Boris. The plow blade threw him back a few yards, but she caught up with him, didn’t let him rest and hit him again. This time she managed to impale him.

“You bastard, you bastard,” she muttered to the tune of the country song, still stomping on the gas. She ran over the remains of several leshens and headed straight for the stray rocks.

But Boris didn’t wait for anything. He stretched his twiggy arms out to the door of the Lakatosh again, and even opened it. But at that moment the plow blade hit a rock. The Lakatosh stopped, but kept trying to push forward. She jumped out, ignoring the flailing branches, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw the blade sink a few inches into Boris’s body. He was a tough son of a bitch.

“It’s too late, my love. Soon you’ll be like me. And so will they, look.”

He smiled at her, wanting her to look at the people they were trying to turn before her. She felt something start to grow out of her nose. But she wasn’t going to let it distract her. She pulled a canister of gasoline from the cabin, the kind that lumberjacks used to refill their chainsaws, and poured it on Boris.

Only now did he start to get scared.

“My love, what are you doing? Remember what you promised me. Loyalty . . . ”

“Shut up, really, Boris, shut the fuck up. I knew there was something really wrong with you,” she snapped and then she simply flicked her lighter.

* * *

The sun was shining.

“A smoke?”

She shook her head. Her stomach clenched. From hunger, dehydration, nerves, and probably cigarettes. She sat next to the charred Lakatosh, still unable to look away from Boris’s ashen body. While the other dead creatures had been removed by the SRS agents, this one was still here. When Boris had caught fire, the others seemed to have lost their strength and Bob easily turned them into firewood. When he ran out of gas in his chainsaw, he thoroughly shredded them all with his hamaxe. Right then, not only did her transformation stop, but everyone else’s as well. Now she and Bob were alone. Old Pávek was taken to the hospital by a helicopter, and his son flew with him. The SRS agents arranged it. Not the ones who were supposed to end like leshens, but new ones. They arrived at around 3 a.m.—all-terrain vehicles, helicopters, a bunch of guys in bulletproof vests and with equipment the purpose of which they couldn’t even guess.

Olaf called them. He worked for the government, and when he saw what was coming at Kateřina in her house, and heard her mention the SRS on top of that, he figured out who to call. She made a mental note to thank him later.

It was strange that no one was talking to them. They just took them aside and started cleaning up the mess she and the lumberjacks had made. In doing so, they photographed, filmed and documented every part of the dismembered bodies as well as the bones.

It wasn’t until dawn that they were approached by a guy in a brown jumpsuit.

His brown eyes looked familiar to her.

“A smoke?” Bob asked him.

He too shook his head.

“It’ll be a while before I stop being afraid of fire,” he chuckled. “I still feel like a piece of wood,” he added by way of explanation.

“Hey, it’s you! How did you get out of that tree?” Kateřina asked.

“You don’t want to know, miss.”

“Widow. For the second time,” she nodded her head towards the charred Boris.

“Yeah, actually,” he rolled his eyes at not figuring that out sooner.

“I wanted to thank you and reach an agreement to keep it quiet. You see, neither we nor the SRS are entirely eager for anything that happened here to become public.”

Kateřina and Bob nodded their heads. They knew that no one would believe them anyway.

“Sure thing, boss. And will anything come of it? Maybe a new Lakatosh?” asked Bob.

“Well, considering how many monsters you’ve killed, you’re due a decent reward. I’m guessing it’ll be enough to buy five of them,” the guy scratched his beard and a wide grin spread across his face. A magical protective medallion swung around his neck. He instinctively squeezed it tightly. It visibly calmed him down. He exhaled deeply. It was the only thing that saved him from the fate of eternal woodenness.

Kateřina was surprised by the gesture, but she was too tired to think about it.

“Is there anything I can do for you now? Anything?” he asked.

“Yes,” she nodded. “Take us somewhere for a proper steak. Ideally an Argentina one. Because I’m definitely done with organic, eco, and the rest of this bullshit,” she stated firmly with a glance at the charred leshen.



1) ČEZ—the main Czech producer and supplier of electricity


FRANTIŠEK KOTLETA (* 1979)


A phenomenon of Czech fiction and the rougher alter-ego of a writer, journalist and science popularizer Leoš Kyša. At the beginning of his work stood his great role model Jiří Kulhánek. Fascination with Kulhánek’s work is already evident in Kotleta’s first book Hardcore (Hustej nářez, Klub Julese Vernea, 2010), full of blood, sex and explicit violence, where aliens and vampires fight each other for the fate of the Earth. The author followed that up with several more volumes to finally bring the story to the end in Stalingяad (Stalingяad, Epocha, 2019). In the meantime, Kotleta went among the gods in the Perun’s Blood trilogy (Perunova krev, Epocha, 2013-2014). But he didn’t stop there—he combined urban fantasy and detective themes in A Too Long Swingers Party (Příliš dlouhá swinger party, Epocha, 2014), and took a superheroic approach to an existential account of real people’s lives in The Hunters (Lovci, Epocha, 2015). He offered his own version of a post-apocalyptic world in the tetralogy Fallout (Spad, Epocha, 2016-2018), and he did not forget to include several sequels to A Too Long Swingers Party, which he concluded with Dark Blues in New Orleans (Temné blues v New Orleans, Epocha, 2022).

The cyberpunk-themed Underground (Underground, Epocha, 2020) and Underground: The Revolution (Underground: Revoluce, Epocha, 2021) make a separate series. Both books became bestsellers in Poland and were also published in US by Royal Hawaiian Press.

The most ambitious project so far, however, is a series of space operas called Legion, set in a universe which he shares with Kristýna Sněgonová. He opened it with the novel Operation Thümmel (Operace Thümmel, Epocha, 2020) and continued with Red Sparrow (Rudý vrabčák, Epocha, 2021), Aga (Aga, Epocha, 2022) and Operation Petragun (Operace Petragun, Epocha, 2023).

The MHF project is exactly what Kotleta loves most about fiction, so he was immediately welcomed on board!



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