CHAPTER 1 – A Star Above the Ridge

Night came without warning, as it always did.

Harjin walked slowly along the Rokytka stream, his boots damp from the grass that had overgrown the path and pressed against his legs as if trying to hold him back. The little river flowed beside him, almost silently, just a darker ribbon between the banks, silver where it caught a scrap of the sky. The air was heavy from the rain that had stopped perhaps an hour ago, leaving behind the scent of churned earth and leaves that were still radiating warmth.

Harjin did not know all the paths by the Rokytka by heart, but he knew them with his feet. He knew where the trail drew close to the water and where it rose toward the ridges, where the grass turned to stubble and the stubble to the edge of the woods. He came here on evenings when the air in his apartment became too thick to breathe — not from the heat, but from another kind of weight, unnamed, settled somewhere behind his ribs like an old debt.

Out here, it thinned out.

The edge of the field, the edge of the woods, the edge of the stream.

The edge of everything.

Over the hill behind the viaduct, the sky was a little brighter. Prague's night glow settled into the clouds, tinting them a greyish orange. Harjin wasn't looking at the light. He looked straight ahead, at the narrow path, at the white stones that lined it and glowed in the dark with their own quiet light.

The birds were silent.

He only realized it after a while. The absence of birdsong. Every silent branch. Every calmed beam of air. During the day, there used to be tits and blackbirds, sometimes pigeons heading over the boundary ridge into the fields. Now, nothing. Just a distant train above the viaduct, a deep hum that swept across the landscape, slipped beneath his skin, and vanished again.

He stopped.

It wasn't anything specific. The landscape hadn't changed. The grass stood, the water flowed, the trees at the edge of the forest were in their place. And yet something in the space above the field had tightened, like a string pulled a pitch higher than it should be.

Harjin felt it in his chest rather than his ears.

Then it came.

First, the light.

A thin line, too slow for lightning, too steep for an airplane. It split the sky from north to south in a single stroke, as if someone had dragged a pen across paper and the paper lit up from within. Harjin narrowed his eyes. The light swept across his face, across his tattoos, across his bald skull, and in that moment he felt as though someone had squeezed his hand — firmly, in a single grip — and let go again.

Then came the sound.

Not an explosion. Not a rumble. More like a deep strike against the air, as when a heavy bolt slams a gate shut. Distant, hollow, with an echo that rolled across the landscape long after. The ground beneath their feet shivered, not violently, but slowly, like the breath of a very heavy sleeper.

Rokytka grew even quieter.

The stench came as the second blow. Ozone, sharp and metallic, as after a thunderstorm, but stronger. Beneath it lay scorched clay, wet ash, and something else for which Harjin had no word. It drew him toward the field beyond the baulk, whence the light had come and where a different darkness now stood — denser, low, with mist clinging to the ground.

He walked.

He hadn't planned it. His legs simply kept going, across the baulk, across the wet ditch, across the stubble that crunched beneath his boots like brittle bones. He crossed the field like a sleepwalker, his eyes fixed on the spot where the air was still trembling above the grass. More from tension than from heat, which was not of this world.

Or not entirely.

The depression was not large.

By day he would have missed it. A slightly deeper spot in the grass, a circle of scorched earth with a grey center from which a thread-like vapor was still rising. The edges were singed black, but shallowly, as though the fire had burned through quickly and died out on its own.

Harjin bent down.

In the hollow lay a body.

Small, white, wet. Curled inward, folded like a parenthesis, with its paws pulled to its chest. Its fur was matted with moisture and a fine layer of silver dust, as though it had walked through a thick mist that had condensed upon it and stayed. Its chest rose and fell.

It was breathing.

Harjin stared at it.

A Chihuahua. Tiny, fragile, with beige patches along its spine and on its ears. One of its front paws clutched the air, claws spread, as if catching onto something that wasn't there.

Or that was there, but Harjin couldn't see.

Then the animal moved.

Just a little. Its head turned in his direction, slowly, as if in a sleep. It opened its eyes. One was dark and alive, brown like wet earth, and focused on Harjin with a precision that startled him. The other was light. Milky. Clouded like a little pond across which a frost had passed, leaving a dull film on the surface through which the bottom could not be seen.

It was not dead. It was simply looking elsewhere.

As if a gleam from the place whence it came still lingered within it.

Harjin let out a breath.

He knelt in the grass, amid the dampness and the scent of burning, and reached out his hands. Slowly. As slowly as one reaches for something that might be a dream and which one knows not whether it will dissolve at a touch.

His fingers first touched the fur along its back, then more cautiously beneath its belly. The animal shuddered, but did not pull away. It emitted a sound that was neither a bark nor a whimper. Rather a sigh. Scarcely audible, like steam escaping from freshly heated metal.

Harjin picked it up.

The body was light. Less than he had expected, as if a part of its weight remained in the hollow or in the place from whence it came. But it was warm. Strangely warm. Not feverish. Rather as if the body merely carried heat received from elsewhere and was now surrendering it into Harjin's palms, into his skin, into his bones.

He drew it against his chest.

The animal did not resist. It did not curl up like a puppy that does not yet know peace. Instead, it settled, as if it knew it had come to the right place. Its head sank into the crook of Harjin's elbow. The milky eye closed. The other remained open, and Harjin felt it upon him, calm, watchful, as though checking whether he was losing himself.

Harjin got up.

His hands were covered in stardust. It had settled in the creases of his palms, in the lines of his fingers, on the skin around his nails. He did not wipe it off. He stood in the middle of the balk and looked down at the animal in his arms. The air around him was quiet, without wind, without birds, without a train.

Then the fireflies lit up.

Not all at once. Not like a signal meant for him. Just one, low to the grass, near the hollow. A golden flash that lit up, went out, and lit up again. Then a second one a bit further away. A third. They circled slowly, without hurry, without direction, as if letting everyone do what they had to do.

Harjin watched them for only a moment.

Then he lowered his eyes back to the animal.

No stream of thoughts formed in his head. He didn't think about where it came from, how he would explain it, or what would happen next. His mind was quiet, almost empty, like after great exhaustion when the body knows there's no point in hurrying.

He knew only one thing.

He wouldn't put it back.

The word came on its own.

It was a word that sat inside him as if waiting—quietly, unhurriedly, all this time—for the moment it would be given a body to which it would belong.

Amaril.

He didn't say it aloud. He only felt it inside, like the vibration of a low note resonating in his ribs.

Amaril.

The animal in his arms gave a deep sigh and moved its paws, as if stretching from a dream that had just ended. The milky eye remained closed. The living one watched him.

Harjin turned.

Behind him, he left a depression, scorched earth, wisps of steam. He left the smell of ozone, slowly thinning in the night air. He took a step across the stubble field, then across the ditch, then back onto the balk.

He walked towards the Rokytka, along the grass, along the water. The way back was no different from the way here—the same limestone of the pebbles, the same dark strip of the stream, the same trees at the edge of the forest. But Harjin walked it differently. More slowly. More carefully. As if something inside his weight had shifted and he had to re-estimate his balance.

Amaril breathed in his arms regularly, with small pauses. It was a rhythm Harjin did not know, but he began to listen to it.

Over the hill behind the viaduct, Prague glowed with its orange backlight, distant and indifferent. The Rokytka flowed. The birds were apparently still asleep and not singing.

And Harjin walked home.

Halfway there, Amaril stopped looking and closed both eyes.

Harjin slowed down. He settled her lower on his forearm, loosening his grip so she could breathe more easily, but without letting go. With his left hand he supported her beneath her hind paws, which hung down like tiny weights. Her fur wrapped around his fingers, still damp, cool on the surface, and beneath it warmth, enduring and calm.

He raised his eyes to the road.

The viaduct was behind him. The sound of the train had vanished long ago.

He thought of the apartment. Of the low ceiling, the window facing the little garden, the spruce behind the glass whose branches cast shadows on the wall differently in every season. Of the floor that creaked in one spot—the third plank from the door, on the left. Of the grey rug by the bed, slightly worn down in the middle.

He thought of all that and knew he was about to bring something there for which there was no prepared place.

But a place would have to be made.

A bowl.

A blanket.

Warmth.

Amaril.

The house beneath the spruce was two streets further, past the bend where the old linden tree dropped its leaves earlier than the other trees on the street. Harjin walked that way every day—out in the morning, back in the evening—and the journey took him five minutes or twenty, depending on how his legs felt.

Now it lasted longer.

He walked slowly, his boots barely lifting off the pavement, his head tilted down toward the creature in his arms.

Amaril did not open her eyes. But she was breathing. Harjin felt it under his palm, the steady rise of her chest, as light as the movement of grass in the wind. Each inhalation was small. Each exhalation a little warmer than the one before, as if her body were waking from a chill, from the shock of the fall, from a journey that must have been long.

Harjin did not wonder whether he would carry her home. That question never arose in him. His body had decided for his mind back on the ridge, the moment he lifted her and felt her warmth. His mind followed later, quietly, without protest.

At the street corner stood an old lamp with a yellow light that felt less like illumination and more like a warning. Harjin passed beneath it. In the light, the tattoo on his face showed for a moment — lines and dots, a map leading to no place on any map. Then it vanished back into the dark.

Amaril let out a soft, rustling exhale.

Scarcely anything.

But Harjin heard it because he was carrying her so close to him.

The garden gate clicked quietly. Harjin knew it by heart: where it stuck and where it had to be lifted slightly to clear the step. He walked through with Amaril in his arms and the gate clicked back into place behind him. The spruce tree stood in the place where it had always stood. Its branches reached close to the window and at night cast shadows that moved even without wind, as if the tree were breathing.

Harjin had not looked at it for a long time.

He walked toward the door.

He found the keys in his pocket, cold and heavy in his fingers coated with stardust.

The door gave way.

Inside, it was silent. The same air as always, a little dry, with the scent of old wood and cement. Today, however, Harjin perceived it differently. Like the air before an event. Before an addition. Before the moment when a place begins to turn into a relationship.

He laid Amaril down on the rug by the bed.

She curled up even tighter, paws tucked beneath her, tail wrapped around her body. She did not open her eyes. She was breathing.

Harjin knelt down beside her. He rested his hands on his knees and watched. There was little light in the apartment — just a strip from the street through the garden window. In that strip, Amaril appeared white to the point of translucence, as if the light had passed through her instead of bouncing off her.

He reached out and touched her with one finger behind the ear. The fur there was softer, almost silky, and warm. Amaril did not flinch. She only exhaled.

He sat there until he understood that he had to bring water.

In the kitchen, he took a shallow pot, poured a little water into it, and brought it back. He set it on the floor next to Amaril. Then he went to the wardrobe, pulled out an old woolen sweater, and folded it next to the pot into a shape that didn't feel like a nest. It was just a folded sweater.

But at that moment, it made sense.

Amaril didn't move.

Harjin sat down on the floor with his back against the edge of the bed. He raised his hands and looked at them. The stardust was still on his fingers, a fine, glittering layer that crumbled as he moved like salt or powdered sugar. But it didn't fall to the ground. Instead, it vanished into his skin bit by bit, as if the one who had left it there was taking it back.

A day will come, Harjin thought.

But even that wasn't a complete thought. More like a feeling, the distant rumble of a train that would arrive one day. Now there was the night and the animal and the silence. The depression in the grass remained somewhere behind him, empty and smoking, and a name sat inside him like a key in a lock.

Amaril opened her eyes.

First the dark one, which focused instantly on Harjin as if it had never been closed. Then the second, milky, slower, like a window only gradually opening. Both gazes were aimed at him, but each from somewhere else.

Harjin didn't move.

Amaril tilted her head slightly. A minute shift, the kind an animal makes to say it is watching you, measuring you, deciding.

Harjin waited.

Amaril stood up.

Slowly, hesitantly. First the front paws, then the back, then her whole body, unstable yet present. She took one step. Then a second. She reached Harjin's hand, which lay on the carpet beside his thigh, and rested her head upon it.

She stayed like that.

Harjin didn't have time to think. His hand turned palm up on its own to support that small head. Beneath his skin he felt warm fur, steady breathing, the tiny bones behind her ear.

I won't let you go.

It wasn't about words. It was deeper, lower, from the fold beneath the ribs where the things we cannot name settle. Harjin didn't formulate the sentence in any way. He only felt it in his palms, in his fingers, in skin coated with the remnants of stardust.

A promise without witnesses.

A promise without a voice.

The spruce outside the window quivered. A gust of wind swept through its branches, and their shadows swept across the glass, across the floor, across Harjin and Amaril. Then they were gone.

The silence returned, deeper than before.

Harjin remained sitting with his hand on the floor and Amaril on his palm.

The night still had several hours left.

Morning came quietly.

Harjin woke up on the floor, his back still leaning against the edge of the bed, his lower back stiff. The blanket he had pulled off the bed during the night had slipped to the floor. Amaril was lying beside him — not on his hand, but close, about ten centimeters from his knee, curled up with her snout buried under her hind paws.

Her chest rose and fell gently.

Harjin didn't move.

Dawn was beginning to break outside the window. A grey, misty Hloubětín morning, with birds waking up in the spruce tree and on the fence. Harjin heard them, their gentle calls, one after another, as if arguing over the order. The voices floated into the apartment in a thin layer, through the glass, through the wall, through the silence.

Amaril flicked her ear.

Small, triangular, beige at the edge. In her sleep, she curled back a little and then forward again, as a response to the birds.

Then she woke up.

She raised her head and opened her eyes. She looked at him without fear, without tension, without that constriction that small animals have when they still don't know if the world will hurt them.

Harjin sat down closer.

Slowly, so as not to startle her.

Amaril watched him. Then she got up, stretched—front paws forward, hind paws out to the sides, her whole body forming a long arch—and gave her tail one short twitch. Not sharply. Just as a sign that Harjin couldn't translate, but understood with his body before his mind.

She walked over to the shallow bowl of water and had a drink.

Harjin remained sitting.

His hands were clean this morning. The stardust was gone. Only the impression of it remained. He looked at his fingers—ordinary hands, somewhat rough, with working joints—and then dropped them into his lap.

Amaril turned away from the water.

She walked across the carpet and sat down beside his knee. Not on him, not quite close to him. Beside him. With a centimetre of air between herself and his trousers. She looked at the window. At the spruce tree behind it. At the grey light, which was beginning to be less grey.

Harjin looked in the same direction.

They both sat for a moment, without moving, without a word, with the birds behind the glass and the day beginning.

He did not know what would come. He did not know what that animal was, where it had come from, why the hollow had yielded it to him precisely, and why the name had come without thought like something long since ordained. He did not know what would remain of that night in the grass by the Rokytka and what would remain of it within him.

He only knew what he had felt in his hands when he lifted her.

Warmth.

And now, as she sat beside his knee and the morning light caught on the spruce tree, he felt something else. The weight of what had been entrusted to his care.

Harjin stood up carefully so as not to disturb that quiet morning nothingness.

He went to the kitchen.

He would have to buy a bowl. Today. As soon as the shop around the corner opened. And food, the right kind, not just anything. And something soft to sleep on, instead of that old sweater which didn't look like a nest, but must have felt like one during the night.

While standing by the sink and waiting for warm water, he heard tiny footsteps behind him. The gentle clicking of claws against the tile.

Amaril came into the kitchen.

She stood by his feet and looked up from below, with one dark eye and one light one.

Harjin bent down.

He scooped water into his palms and held it out for her. Amaril drank carefully, with small pauses, as if she were tasting the liquid first and only accepting it afterward. Water dripped from his fingers onto the tiles.

None of it was magnificent.

But it was exactly the way it was supposed to be.

Harjin wiped his hands on a dish towel and walked over to the window. The spruce tree was still standing. The branches weren't touching the glass, but they were close—within the distance of one good gust of wind. He pressed his palm against the pane and stayed like that for a moment, with the cold beneath his hand and the tree on the other side.

Day was breaking outside the window.

Amaril came in quietly and sat down at his feet. Not facing the window, but with her back to it. She looked into the room like a guard who had taken her post before she was asked.

Harjin didn't pick her up.

He just laid his hand down, near her head.

Amaril leaned into it.

The house beneath the spruce was for now only a direction.

And for the first time, Harjin felt that he could walk in that direction.