The Wrong Way Home - Leshy
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The frost came early that year, and the mushrooms came with it.
Marek followed his uncle Tomas along the deer path with an empty basket knocking against his hip. He was eleven years old and proud of it. He had begged for two weeks to be brought along, and now that he was here, he meant to prove he had been worth the trouble.
At the edge of the trees, Tomas stopped. He took a heel of black bread from his coat pocket, set it on a mossy stump, and stood there a moment with his hat in his hands.
"For the Old Man," he said.
"There is no old man."
"There is an old man." Tomas put his hat back on. "The forest is his. We only borrow it."
Marek waited until his uncle had walked ahead. Then he took the bread off the stump and ate it. It was good bread. He was hungry. He was eleven.
The morning went well enough. They filled the basket halfway with chanterelles and Tomas showed him how to cut the stems clean instead of tearing them out. Around midday they came to a birch with a split trunk, the two halves leaning apart like a man shrugging.
An hour later they came to it again.
Tomas said nothing, but he stopped talking after that, and he began to walk faster.
They passed the birch a third time.
That was when Marek noticed the light. The sun had been over his left shoulder all morning. Now it was over his left shoulder still, except that they had turned around twice. The forest had gone quiet in a way he had never heard before. No birds. No wind in the canopy, though the branches above him were moving.
"Uncle," he said.
"Keep walking."
"Uncle, my legs hurt."
"Keep walking, Marek."
Then Tomas called to him from somewhere up ahead, past the birch, cheerful as anything. "This way, boy! I've found the road!"
Marek looked at his uncle, who was standing right beside him, and whose mouth had not moved.
Tomas turned white. He grabbed the boy by the collar and shoved him back down the path. "Go. Do not answer it. Do not look at it."
So of course Marek looked.
Off among the pines stood a tree he had counted a hundred times that day without ever once counting it. It was taller than the rest, and it was leaning down toward them, and it had a face. Its beard was green moss and its skin was gray bark, and its eyes were the color of sunlight coming through leaves, the kind that moves when you move. Its coat was buttoned up the wrong side. Its boots were on the wrong feet.
Everything in that forest had a shadow. The pines. The stump. The boy.
The tall thing had none.
Marek's father had told him the trick once, on a winter night, the way you tell a child something you do not really believe. He could not remember most of it. He remembered enough.
He tore his coat off and dragged it back on inside out. He kicked off his boots and jammed them onto the wrong feet, left on right, right on left, hopping in the wet leaves like a fool, sobbing, expecting a hand on his neck at any second.
And the forest laughed.
It came from everywhere at once, from under the ground and up in the branches, a huge, wheezing, delighted laugh, and every bird in that wood went up at the same time. When Marek opened his eyes the birch was behind him, the path was straight, and he could see the yellow of the wheat stubble through the trunks.
He walked out of the forest at dusk with his coat inside out and his boots on the wrong feet.
His mother was at the door before he reached the fence.
"Where is your uncle?"
Marek is an old man now. His hands shake and his eyes have gone poor, but every autumn, before the first frost, he still walks out to the edge of the trees and lays two pieces of bread on that mossy stump.
One for the Old Man of the Forest.
One for Tomas, in case he is still walking out there, and in case he passes close enough to be hungry.
Some mornings only one piece is gone.
Some mornings, both.
Known as Leshy in Russia, Lesovik in Ukraine and Belarus, Borowy in Poland, and Lesnik in the Czech lands, the Old Man of the Forest is no devil. He is a landlord. He keeps the wolves, hides the deer from hunters, and tangles the paths of anyone who takes from his woods without asking. Leave bread on a stump. Ask before you cut. And if the trees start repeating themselves, turn your coat inside out and switch your shoes, because the one thing the Leshy cannot resist is a good laugh.
Wear the warning
Leshy - Forest Guard T-shirt | $42
The Old Man of the Forest, printed on Bella + Canvas 3001. One hundred percent Airlume combed and ring-spun cotton, side-seamed unisex fit, soft enough to sleep in and sturdy enough to walk home in. Evergreen, Vintage Black, True Royal, and Heather Team Purple. Sizes S through 4XL.
Consider it your bread on the stump.
