The forest closed around them like a fist.
At first the path was a clear dirt track, brown ribbon through the pines. But as they pushed deeper, the trail dissolved into roots and moss, then into nothing but shadows.
“We’re still on it,” Jonas insisted, hacking at low branches with his trekking pole. “Look—someone’s been here before.”
Anya squinted at the ground. The faint prints he pointed to blurred into leaves and mud. “Or it’s just deer. Trails vanish out here. You know that.”
Behind them, Pavel shifted his pack and muttered, “And swamps don’t wait for arguments. Smell that?”
The air had changed—heavy, sour, damp. The pines thinned, giving way to birch and alder. Underfoot, the soil sagged, water pooling in bootprints before they could take another step.
“Perfect,” Anya sighed. “Forest and swamp. The worst combination.”
The silence of the woods grew thicker. Branches rattled though no wind stirred. Mosquitoes whined in ears. The smell of wet earth clung to their clothes.
Jonas pushed ahead again, impatient. “We can cut straight through. The map shows dry ground on the other side. It’ll save hours.”
Anya grabbed his sleeve sharply. “No. Straight lines in a swamp are lies. You’ll sink before you see the end.”
She crouched, tracing the ground with a stick. “We need to zigzag, use the trees as stepping stones. Follow the higher ground where moss grows pale. And never, ever step on the greenest patches—they’re floating mats.”
Pavel grimaced, staring at the endless green-black ahead. “So it’s a maze.”
Anya nodded. “Exactly. And the maze punishes hurry.”
They moved in single file, Anya leading. Her eyes scanned the ground more than the horizon, searching not for a path but for signs of safety: pale moss that meant firmer soil, clusters of reeds that marked water beneath, the roots of old birches that rose like ribs above the muck.
“Step only where I step,” she warned. “If you can’t see what’s under the moss, don’t trust it.”
Jonas grumbled but followed. Behind him, Pavel tested every patch with his pole, pressing down before shifting his weight.
The forest swallowed sound. Each footfall made a wet sucking noise. The smell of rot was everywhere, rich and clinging. Mosquitoes rose in clouds whenever they brushed a branch.
At first, the rhythm held. Step, test, step. Branch, duck, step. They advanced slowly, the swamp protesting but letting them pass.
Then Jonas broke the rhythm. Frustration snapped his patience. He stepped sideways, away from Anya’s line, onto a patch of green that looked firm.
The ground gave way instantly. His leg sank to the knee, icy black water swallowing him with a sound like tearing fabric.
“Jonas!” Anya hissed, lunging. She grabbed his pack strap as he thrashed. “Stop moving! You’ll sink deeper.”
Pavel jammed his pole under Jonas’s arm, levering him sideways. With a sucking roar, the swamp released him, leaving his boot dripping and caked in slime.
Jonas coughed, pale, spitting curses. “It looked solid.”
Anya’s eyes flashed. “That’s the trick. Swamps always look solid until they take you.”
For a moment, no one spoke. The forest pressed close, as if listening.
Finally Pavel broke the silence. “From now on, we stick to the line. The maze doesn’t forgive shortcuts.”
Jonas, still shaking, nodded. “Lesson learned.”
But the look in his eyes said he wasn’t sure he’d forget the feeling of the swamp pulling him down.
They halted on a patch of firmer ground, a little rise where the birches gave way to spruce. The smell of the swamp still clung, but here the soil held their weight.
Anya dropped her pack. “We need tools. If we keep going blind, we’ll be swimming.”
Pavel unslung his hatchet and nodded at a fallen spruce. “Dead wood’s light but strong enough. We can cut sections for stepping.”
Jonas grimaced. “What, like a bridge?”
“Not a bridge,” Anya said. “Islands. You lay them one by one. Step, move the back one forward, step again. Slow, but safer.”
For the next hour they worked. Pavel chopped, Jonas hauled, Anya directed. They built a small pile of makeshift planks—some thick branches, some flattened logs stripped of bark. Each piece was heavy with water, but lighter than a body stuck waist-deep.
When they moved again, the system took shape. Anya tested the ground with her pole. If it sagged, Jonas slid a log forward, laying it flat. Pavel steadied it, then Anya crossed. The others followed, one at a time, pulling the rear log forward.
It was tedious. Sweat soaked their shirts despite the cool air. Mosquitoes feasted on their wrists and necks. Every few meters, one of them cursed, but the curses came like a rhythm—part of the work.
Still, progress was real. They crossed sections that would have swallowed them whole, the logs sinking but holding long enough. Each placement felt like defiance against the swamp.
At one crossing, Jonas hesitated, eyeing the trembling mat of moss. “If we drop this one, it’ll sink.”
“Then let it sink,” Anya said. “Better the wood than you.”
By the time they reached another rise of dry ground, their arms ached, but their spirits rose. Behind them, the swamp stretched like a green ocean. Ahead, the trees thickened into fir again.
Jonas dropped his plank and laughed, breathless. “We built our own road.”
Pavel smirked. “A road made of lies and dead spruce. But it worked.”
Anya allowed herself a smile. “That’s how you move through a swamp. Not by fighting it, but by tricking it into thinking you’re lighter than you are.”
Past the swamp, the ground firmed, but the forest grew denser. Spruce and fir pressed so close their branches tangled like wire. The air smelled sharp with resin, and the light dimmed, green shadows folding over them.
Jonas lifted his compass and frowned. The needle spun, wavering, never settling. “It’s busted.”
Anya peered at the dense trees. “Not busted. The ironstone under us is pulling it. Happens in some forests.”
“So what now?” Jonas asked. “Pick a direction and pray?”
Pavel shook his head. “Not pray. Think. In forests, you use what doesn’t lie.”
He crouched, brushing moss from a trunk. The moss grew thickest on the north-facing side, where sunlight was weakest. He stood and pointed. “That way’s north.”
Jonas scoffed. “Moss on trees? That’s your science?”
“Not just moss,” Anya said. She tilted her head, listening. “Hear that? A woodpecker. Always hunts in open glades. And the wind—feel it? It’s moving cooler from the west. Combine signs, not just one.”
They walked, testing their theory. Every hundred meters Anya stopped, checked moss, listened, and adjusted course.
Still, the forest toyed with them. Paths appeared where deer had walked, then vanished. Deadfall forced detours. The thick undergrowth twisted their line until even Pavel muttered, “Feels like we’re walking in circles.”
“Circles are what the forest wants,” Anya said grimly. “That’s why we mark.”
She cut a branch, notching trunks with quick diagonal slashes. Every ten steps, she marked again. Soon, a faint breadcrumb trail of scars followed them, proof against the tricks of the green maze.
By late afternoon, the canopy thinned. Shafts of sunlight broke through, glinting off something distant—reeds, water, but flat, unmoving.
“Lake,” Pavel said, relief in his voice.
Anya exhaled. “Good. Open ground means sky. And sky means direction.”
Jonas grinned, shaky but real. “Finally, something the forest can’t hide.”
But in his eyes, the memory of the swamp’s pull and the forest’s lies lingered, a warning carved deeper than any compass needle.
They reached the lake’s edge as the sun slid low, turning the water bronze. The air smelled cleaner here, free of rot and sour mud. Pines stood tall along the shoreline, giving way to open sky that felt like a blessing after hours under the suffocating canopy.
Jonas dropped onto a boulder, pulling off one boot to pour out swamp water. “I swear,” he muttered, “the ground tried to eat me alive.”
“It did,” Anya said with a half-smile. “That’s what swamps do.”
Pavel crouched by the water, rinsing mud from his hands. “But we made it through. Not by force—by rules.”
Anya ticked them off on her fingers:
“One — test every step before you trust it.
Two — avoid the greenest moss; it floats, it doesn’t hold.
Three — use planks, branches, anything to spread weight.
Four — mark your path so the forest can’t trick you into circles.
Five — read the signs: moss, wind, birds, the shape of trees. Trust the patterns, not your panic.”
Jonas leaned back, gazing at the sky’s first stars. “Feels like the forest was a maze built to break us. But…” He shrugged. “We cheated. Built our own exits.”
Pavel smiled faintly. “Not cheating. Just remembering it’s not our world—it’s the swamp’s. We just borrowed the rules long enough to pass through.”
The fire they lit that night smoked heavily, but its glow carved out a small island of safety on the shore. The sounds of the forest softened into distance, no longer pressing on their nerves.
Before sleep, Jonas murmured into the dark: “Next time someone says ‘shortcut,’ I’m going to laugh in their face.”
Anya, half-asleep, replied, “Good. Because in swamps and forests, shortcuts don’t exist.”
And with that truth, they let the night take them, the maze behind them, the sky wide and honest above.