uniform as he shifted closer. “What notebook?”
Lukasz lifted his head, using his ruined hand to rub his chin.
“It was the first one Franciszek kept,” said Lukasz, without taking his eyes off Rybak. He didn’t mention Franciszek’s most recent notebook, tucked in his coat pocket. “It had a map of the forest in it. The route we took when we came down from the Mountains in the first place, seventeen years ago.”
Rybak watched his burned hand, enraptured. He said, in his soft, lisping voice:
“Your brother was well prepared.”
“Of course he was.” Lukasz laughed, rubbing his eyes. “He’s always prepared.”
To a fault, he added silently.
He could feel Rybak watching him. Over the crackling fire, the teakettle began to whistle.
“For what it’s worth,” said Rybak, getting up from the table, “I think that wherever he is, your brother is still alive.”
Lukasz watched Rybak pour two dirty cups of tea, and waited for his throat to loosen. If Franciszek had been here, it could only mean that he was at this very moment making his way to the Mountains. And if Franciszek was going back to the Mountains, then Lukasz would follow him.
Behind him, Koszmar peeled himself off the mantelpiece long enough to take a cup of tea. He returned to his perch by the fire, where he idly examined his tea before asking, “Did you make copies of the maps?”
Rybak returned to the table and eased himself into one of the chairs.
“Even if I had, they’d be useless,” he said. “The forest is changing too quickly. It is being devoured by evil. The Golden Dragon is burning it down, and from the embers of its fires, new monsters rise. Nawia, nocnica . . . all the unimaginable evils in the world. Every day, new pits open. New things crawl out. The forest itself is growing, swallowing up this village.”
Perhaps flirting with destruction, Koszmar shoved aside a few stacks of parchment and lit his pipe. With an elbow on the mantelpiece, he said, “Even if you don’t have the map, you could be our guide. You could get us to the Moving Mountains.”
Lukasz shot him a questioning glance. Rybak snorted, seeming just as baffled.
“Why would you think that?”
Koszmar’s fingers played with the pages on the mantel. There was an exaggerated slowness in how he moved. A lazy kind of elegance that completely escaped Lukasz.
“Only one of us is illiterate, Rybak. You’ve been writing about this forest. Specifically”—Koszmar put his pipe in his teeth and rifled through a sheaf of papers—“about the monsters. I’m impressed by your level of detail. Eyewitness, I should think.”
Lukasz swallowed and rapped his knuckles on the table. When he had time, he promised himself, he’d learn to read.
“That is a manuscript,” Rybak replied in a stiff voice. “It is an observational field report on the development of monstrosity in this kingdom. It is not a how-to manual for idiots looking to get drowned by rusalki or—or eaten by strzygi or—”
Koszmar interrupted.
“Or attacked by lynxes?”
Lukasz’s heart skipped a beat.
“What?” he asked hoarsely. “What are you talking about?”
He wasn’t sure if he had imagined the hands on his cheeks, the wet strands of hair that had flickered across his face. Those green eyes, changing, slipping away, turning to slit pupils and perfect rounds—
“There’s a monster in the woods,” said Koszmar, striding forward to drop the sheaf of papers in front of Rybak. “Vila, demon, who the hell knows what she is. She preys on humans. Well. One human, especially.”
Despite the disfigurement, Rybak had an expressive face. And now he was glaring at Koszmar with a look of pure murder.
“She’s not a demon,” he said at last. “At least, not in the traditional sense. In my opinion.”
Koszmar smirked.
“Your opinion?”
Lukasz was reeling. She’d pulled him out of the water. Thrown him down on the bank. Dragged him up the grass. She’d come so close—
“What . . .” He hesitated, not quite able to gather his thoughts. “What—what is she?”
“I suspect she was human once,” said Rybak. He sat back from the table, hands folded in his lap. “Or, at least, as human as the rest of us. Perhaps something got ahold of her, made her as she is. The strzygi, for example, multiply not by procreation, but by consumption. In the act of devouring a susceptible human, the strzygoń creates its progeny. Perhaps that is how this creature came into being.”
Her eyes, above that water. That dark hair, wrapped slick and shiny around her throat. She had been so overwhelmingly human. But then again