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THE FESTIVITIES OF KUPALA NIGHT are just beginning when Liska Radost leaves the village behind.

Her eyes prick with tears as she takes a final look over her shoulder. A gust of wind snags at her shawl, threatening to devour the flame of her lantern. This night, the solstice, should belong to revelry beneath a broad summer moon. It is the night unmarried girls weave crowns of wildflowers and float them down the river for the local boys to chase, the night that folk songs are sung to the roar of a joyful bonfire, the night when villagers pray to God for fertile fields and livestock and wives. But most importantly, it is the night that, according to legend, the fern flower will bloom.

And if the legends are true, this is the night that Liska will find it. She will take it into her hands and make her wish, and she will atone for her sins.

She treads deeper into the dark, through one of the many wheat fields that crawl along the rolling hills and wreathe the village from all sides. In midday, the sun will turn their stalks to spun gold, but now they are a foreboding rustle against Liska's floral- patterned skirts, bowing like penitents in contrition. She raises her lantern higher, but its light is no more than a sputtering spark—a mockery of the Kupala bonfire that dances far in the distance, etching the thatched rooftops of Stodola into the night's canvas.

Stodola. Home. A home she will not see again if she does not succeed tonight. She knows what rumors the villagers whisper: that she is a witch, that she is as wicked as the dark magic harbored in the spirit-wood. She almost smiles at the irony: that accursed place, called the Driada, is where the fern flower is said to bloom.

It is her only chance at redemption.

Overhead, the moon rises, a great silver eye opened wide and watchful. It spurs Liska onward, stokes the flame of urgency in her chest. In all the stories, the fern flower only blooms until sunrise—there is not a moment to waste.

Her path takes her past the farmlands, to rolling hills dotted with phantom- white birch trees and coarse grass housing an orchestra of crickets. In an attempt to bolster her spirits, she starts to hum, a folk song about a girl and two suitors and a rowan tree. The crickets set a rhythm, the breeze whispers in harmony, and slowly she convinces herself she is not afraid.

Until the spirit-wood comes into view.

She has seen the Driada before—every child of Stodola has, brought here by the mischievous curiosity only a child possesses. How often did she stand in this spot with Marysienka, the two daring each other to creep ever closer to the wood? Closer and closer and 'closer', until a growl or a rustle from within would send them shrieking, running all the way home. Children do foolish things until they are old enough to understand they are foolish—until their father teaches them to weave the straw hangings found in every Stodola home, or their mother explains why she ties their hair with crimson ribbons. 'It is protection,' she will say, gentle yet somber, 'from spirits and demons and the evils of the spirit-wood.'

Standing so close, Liska must admit that the forest has a morbid sort of beauty:

the beauty of flowers over tombs or the dive of a hawk catching prey. Its trees are enormous, thick as towers and sprawling, with branches like an old woman's fingers tangled in cotton-thick mist. It smells, Liska realizes, like a freshly dug grave—loam and rot and carrion, staining every breath.

Somewhere in there is the fern flower. When she finds it, she must make her wish carefully, for it only grants one. In the legends, men often make poorly worded wishes and meet terrible ends, assuming they make it past the wood's devilish spirits. Here at least, Liska's curse gives her an advantage—she has always been able to sense spirits, hear them, even see them: the skrzat by the stove complaining of the dirty floor or the kikimora in the neighbor's house exclaiming in delight as she finds yarn to tangle. But those are benevolent house spirits grown fat on offerings of bread and salt, friendly to the humans who shelter them. She doubts the Driada's demons will speak the same tongue.

Is she really going to do this? It's not too late to turn back.

'She does not belong here.'

A memory: Father Pawel sits in the kitchen of the cramped Radost cottage. He is a young priest, his fraying cassock as patchy as his beard, and his expression is too wary to pass for sympathy. He and Mama are the only people in Stodola who know of Liska's secret. At least, they were, until two evenings ago.

"The people are beginning to wonder, Dobrawa," Pawel says. "There is no proof, but no one can explain it elsewise. The best thing you can do is to send her away, before she loses control again or the Prawotas rally enough people to their cause."

Liska is not meant to hear his words, but she listens anyway, watching from outside the hut through a crack in the shutters. Her teeth are firmly clamped to her lip, and she tastes iron on her tongue. The day is humid, the sky a cloud- crowded blue, and a chicken is pawing at the dirt by her feet.

"I know, Father, I know, but where would she go?"