CHAPTER 8
Brygida could feel it before she saw it, soothing like a gentle embrace. It was the familiar sweet scent of spring, the calls of redpolls and siskins, and the shallow-hilled landscape that rolled into home. As they approached the village, her heart swelled upon seeing it. She was home at last.
The Mrok woods were bursting with green life; the dandelion roots and nettle leaf that she would harvest with Mamusia at this time of year would be in bloom. When she’d been a girl, they had braided crowns of globe-flowers to wear in their hair, and even Mama would laugh and play with them. On warm spring days, she would dip into the Skawa River and or its stream that fed into Mroczne Lake and let the cold water rush over her.
What she would give to run to the forest, to the cottage, to
