Chapter 3: The Thread Unravels

I spent the next few days turning the phrase over in my mind. Check the sky. Not the ground, not the past, but something above. I thought of the photograph of the windowless building. There was no sky in that image—just a flat, gray wall and a door that seemed to lead nowhere. But maybe the sky was the key to finding the building itself.

I pulled out the dictionary again, the one with the penciled note in the margin. I had bought it years ago, and now it felt like a talisman. I read the phrase aloud: "Grok ir grok sinsttos dskna bet ji perdsug trapi." The words had no meaning I could grasp, but their rhythm was familiar, like a song I had heard in childhood. Juokas had hummed it once, sitting on the fence by the tree. I remembered his secret smile, as if he knew something I didn't.

That night, I took the photograph and went to the roof of my apartment building. The city lights blurred the stars, but a few bright ones punched through. I held the picture up to the sky, framing it against the darkness. Nothing. I tried tilting it, turning it sideways. Still nothing. But as I lowered it, I noticed something I had missed before: a faint reflection in the windowless building's door—a sliver of light that seemed to come from above. I squinted. The reflection looked like a shape, a curve that might have been a crescent moon.

I went back inside and scanned the photograph at high resolution. I zoomed in on the door. There, in the polished metal, was the ghost of an image: a tree, its branches reaching upward. My breath caught. It was the same tree from the field—the one with the carved letters. The building had a reflection of my starting point. But that made no sense unless the photograph was taken from a specific angle, at a specific time.

I searched online for the building's location using the tree as a reference. I mapped the field, the old road, the line of hills in the distance. Then I used a sky simulation tool to check the position of the moon on the date written on the back of the photograph: "The beginning." That date, I realized, was the same summer I had met Juokas. The moon would have been a thin crescent, low in the sky, casting a light that could have caught the door just so.

I drove back to the field the next morning. The grass was wet with dew, and the air smelled of earth and wild thyme. The tree stood alone, its bark now gray and peeling. I knelt where the metal box had been and pressed my hand into the soil. The ground felt different here—looser, as if it had been disturbed. I dug with my fingers and found a second box, smaller than the first, wrapped in oilcloth.

Inside was a piece of paper folded into a tight square and a small brass compass, its glass cracked. The paper was covered in handwriting I didn't recognize—a woman's hand, elegant and hurried. It read:

"If you are reading this, you have found the thread. The phrase is not a riddle but a map. 40% is the angle of the sky when the sun touches the horizon on the longest day. Stand at the tree and face the setting sun. Walk the number of steps equal to your age when you first heard the words. There, you will find the next piece. The thread must be followed in order. Do not skip. The numbers matter. —M."

M. Juokas's mother. The woman in the photograph. She had been here, leaving signs for someone—for Juokas, or for me. I checked the date on the note: it was written three years after the letter I had found. She was still alive, still leaving clues.

I looked at the compass. The needle wavered, then settled. I stood and faced west, where the sun would set. The longest day was weeks away, but I could return. I folded the note and placed it back in the box, then reburied it. I didn't want to take it away from its home. But I memorized the instructions.

As I walked back to my car, I felt a shift in the air. The sky had clouded over, and a light rain began to fall. I looked up, and for a moment, the clouds parted, revealing a patch of blue so bright it seemed painted. A bird crossed it, wings steady. I thought of Juokas's secret smile, of the way he hummed the phrase as if it were a lullaby. He had known. He had been part of this all along.

I got into the car and sat for a while, the rain drumming on the roof. The thread was real. It was pulling me forward, and I had no choice but to follow. I started the engine and drove away, but this time I left a mark of my own: a small stone placed on the tree's roots, a sign that someone had been there.

That evening, I received a second email. The subject line was a single word: "Soon." The body contained a time and a date—the longest day, sunset. I didn't know who sent it, but I knew where I would be.

I closed my laptop and looked out the window. The sky was dark now, but the stars were emerging, one by one. I thought of the phrase again, the strange syllables that had haunted me for so long. "Hrono.? trauka .cripto 40%." Maybe it was a name, or a command. Maybe it was a promise. I didn't know yet. But I was learning to trust the thread.

And somewhere out there, Juokas was following it too. I could feel it, like a pulse in the earth. The story was not over. It was only just beginning to make sense.