Whispers in the trees: #FollowMe

By Jana Kyclova, Tadeusz Michrowski, Éva Vancsó and 2 more

What makes a book a bestseller? First of all, an author who is imaginative, creates three-dimensional characters, and has something to say about the world. But what can five authors from five different countries collaborating together achieve?
A novel five times better!
Our heroine, Laura, is a career-driven woman. But, one day, her life — and career— spirals out of control when her boss informs her that he has discovered she is being charged by the police for a crime she knows she didn’t commit.

Laura has no choice but to investigate the allegations amidst increasing pressure from her boss who is threatening to end her life-long career in a matter of days for the sake of the company’s reputation. Everything seems to point to Sarah, Laura’s scattered, whimsical twin sister who runs the second-hand bookshop in a small town she and her sister inherited, and whom Laura has not seen in years. While there, the past that Laura has tried to run away from, resurfaces.

When Laura visits her sister’s home to confront her, she finds that Sarah is missing; the only thing left behind is a mysterious diary – the first clue in a series that leads her on a road trip across Europe. At each destination, Laura is compelled to complete tasks which lead her to revisit who she once was – a part of herself she has tried so hard to forget.

Laura’s race against the clock leads her to old friends and new acquaintances where no one is who they seem. Not knowing who to trust, Laura knows that she has to let her old self take control and reawaken forgotten abilities.

This is it: a truly 21th century-novel, created through the collaboration of five young authors. This interesting experiment set out to prove that, together, we can do more! Could this form of joint literary creation renew the way novels are written? You be the judge, dear reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Europe Village Ltd.
• Release date: Feb 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9786150071985

Book preview

Publisher.

PROLOGUE

Laura remembered Sára’s eyes. She recalled the way the shadows discoloured her sister's irises that day as the sun began to set behind the crown of the tree.

Let’s go! Sára whispered.

They took off running, one after the other. All they left behind were some toys and their footprints, smudges in the soft soil beside the Danube River.

The girls shouted, and the sound of their laughter was carried away by the wind. They ran across the cobblestones that meandered through the streets of the town and disappeared down the alleyways between tall buildings, blinded every now and then by the sunlight which filtered down through the rooftops and green leaves. They ran next to each other, shoulder to shoulder; over steps, between the tables of a cafe, jumping over the paintings of a local artist on display in the street. Their warm skin brushed against their shirts with each bound.

People turned their heads to look after the girls who passed by like ghosts, running through to the very heart of the city. Under the stone cross that cut the sky with its iron thorns, then past the Church of the Annunciation, where bearded Serbs bowed their heads before a wall of religious icons; past the second-hand bookshop, over market stands hung with watercolour landscapes, and even further, until Laura felt the damp grass beneath her feet once again. The air she forced into her lungs burned and her over-worked muscles grew heavier; she was starting to lose momentum. Laura fell half a step behind her sister. Then one more, and then another.

Afterwards, she would always remember the shining strands of Sára's hair and the tiny sparks of light that danced upon it when she turned her head to make sure Laura was keeping up.

Her breath whistled through her lips and she could barely keep her balance as she struggled through the grass and clumps of flowers. Sára did not seem to be affected. She ran, leaping into the air as light as a sprite.

Laura wanted to stop and shout, Wait! She took a deeper breath.

Now they were running through the artists’ colony, on the narrow pavements, winding among low buildings nestled next to each other. From behind small windows one could hear a sculptor working on a piece of wood with a hammer and chisel. And then the sisters came to a green space within the artists’ colony, where a wide circle of fallen leaves lay, crunching softly beneath their trampling feet. Sára stopped, sweat on her skin glistening in the light of the setting sun. The tree stood before them. It towered above the cube-shaped houses, leaning slightly to the right as if burdened by the weight of the clouds.

The tree meant a story; a journey. The tree was a magic shared only between the two of them.

Sára jumped up, her small body rising into the air. She clung to the tree’s thick, rough branch, her fingers finding gaps in the ancient bark. She swung herself backwards and then forwards, until she could reach the branch with her feet. Then she quickly wrapped her legs around the lowest branch and hung upside-down like a bat.

Come on! She stretched her hands out towards Laura.

No.

Give me your hand... said Sára gently.

I’ll make it.

You know you can’t. Come on.

Laura ran towards the tree and used the trunk to bounce off, gaining a few centimetres, which allowed her to catch hold of a rough part of the tree slightly above her. She dug her fingers and nails into a burl on the trunk, but did not have enough strength to pull herself up or swing like Sára had. Laura hung there for a moment, clenching her jaw, but only felt her muscles weakening. Slowly, she began to slip. The rough bark caught painfully at her fingernails, and she felt like she was about to fall. She would tumble to the ground, perhaps scraping her knees on the way down, probably at exactly the same moment that one of the residents from the artists’ colony would decide to have a cigarette and be a witness to her stupidity.

She felt weightlessness; her stability went away as she started to fall… But then something grabbed her wrist.

Sára. Already there, perched on the branch.

Her strong hands pulled Laura up and suddenly everything was easier. Soon they were on the lowest branch, and from there...

Race you to the top, Laura whispered, throwing herself forward to gain a momentary advantage over her sister.

Small branches scraped the skin on her arms and exposed calves, but with each step, more and more light permeated the crown of the tree. She saw only knurl-edged leaves in front of her, already starting to fade with the coming autumn. She heard Sára’s laughter behind her.

Finally, the tree no longer towered over her; she stood at the top, on the last branches capable of supporting the weight of her body. The leaves thinned out. Around them stretched the wide horizon revealing its entire palette of colours: the green hills and the towns, dark in contrast to the half-circle of the setting sun, then the dark blue of the Danube, almost as if it spilled from between the distant buildings of Budapest. And the objects that were much closer, things that were home: the white beaches of the river bank as it gently entered Szentendre, green islands, burnt in the summer sun; irregular, colourful houses from the time of kings and archdukes. The noise of distant voices, conversations and shouts, indistinct, turning into the hum that sounded almost like the town breathing. And among all of it lay churches, young and old, just minutes before the bells would ring for the evening mass, like the heartbeat of a giant. All of it saturated with the smell of the wind, the first sign of evening approaching.

But here, among the tree’s crown, the sisters quickly forgot about everything surrounding them. Something else lived here; something that caressed them as softly as the hand of a guardian just before sleep. The race to get here ceased to have meaning; the beating of their hearts slowed. Laura felt a touch on her hand and she shivered.

Sára. Silently, they smiled at each other.

The leaves rustled in the wind.

The crown of the tree was like a nest, and they were like two small birds. There was not enough space for anyone else. It seemed as if another person, even if only a bit heavier, would have fallen, breaking branches along the way. The tree grew with them.

They looked at each other and neither one spoke. There was no need for words.

The whisper of the wind was speech enough, and the rocking branches their cradle. Sitting down, they held each other’s hands and closed their eyes, and only then were the first words finally spoken. The tree’s crown was the only place for this. The tree meant a story.

A long, long time ago... began Sára.

...there lived a finch, Laura added after a moment’s thought.

Two!

Two finches, who built their nest on the roof of a crumbling house.

Whenever a storm came, it would blow the slates away until the roof became more and more narrow...

...and after each storm, the finches would move their nest further away from the edge.

Further and further away.

...but the roof kept getting smaller.

Laura’s fingers gripped her sister's hands and their voices became harmonised, the gaps between their sentences becoming smaller and smaller. The timbre and tone of the words they spoke becoming more similar. The story... came to life.

The wind carried the scent of ozone and the leaves seemed to rustle louder before the approaching storm. For as long as Laura’s and Sára’s eyes remained closed, it was so. The story and their imaginations grew within them; they were increasingly less present there, in the tree, but more in the details they told each other.

And when there was barely any of the roof left and the nest all but teetered on the edge...

…one of the finches flew away.

It made a nest far away in the crown of a tall tree, which no storm could break...

…but the other finch didn’t want to leave.

The other bird stayed because it couldn’t imagine how both of them could fit together in the new nest.

So the finches parted...

And then a storm came and the wind blew.

And then something happened.

Years passed, and Laura could no longer remember how the story had ended.

She only remembered how she had shivered in the sudden chill, how she let go of her sister’s hand and her own abrupt movement with which she caught her balance.

She remembered Sára’s eyes at that moment, pupils dilated in fear.

HUNGARY: BUDAPEST

1.

There was a white envelope waiting for Laura when she got home.

She noticed it in the morning as she was leaving her penthouse - someone had posted it through her letter box. She held the envelope in her hand for a second, tapping it with a shiny, red painted nail. Then, her long unadorned fingers opened and let the letter slip into the metal basket next to the door.

This was not a day for envelopes such as this.

Laura pressed her thumb against the plastic panel and waited for the beep which informed her that the alarm to her penthouse was armed. Running down the stairs, she almost forgot about the envelope.

Long hours in the city centre offered plenty of distractions. Laura spent hours visiting company after company around different buildings in Budapest’s business district where her green eyes reflected the colours of video presentations for marketing campaigns she was responsible for. Her handshake was confident and firm, the grasp made even stronger by evenings spent training at the climbing club. She was congratulated on her work performance many times, accepting each bit of praise with the same, practiced smile she had developed as an intern, which seemed like a lifetime ago.

When evening fell, Laura finally emerged from the last double-doored conference room - the last meeting of the day. She hid herself in the lift and pressed the button for the ground floor. As the numbers lit up one by one, she removed the clips from her hair and turned around to face the smudged mirror.

The reflexion showed a woman in her thirties, with a storm of red hair, green eyes and a pale, girlish face that was well hidden underneath make-up, which had begun to wear away after the long day. The coat, white shirt and long black skirt she wore made an impression, one she had learned how to make from books that taught people that what they say matters less than how they say it, which was marginal in comparison to how they looked.

She heard a buzz coming from her purse. A text message. She took out her phone and read the message quickly, then raised her eyes to the mirror again.

She could not let the mask slip just yet.

Laura looked thirty, but was, in fact, younger. She felt tired and didn’t quite like the freckles on her nose – like on a child – and she wasn’t fond of her mass of barely tameable hair. It did not matter. Laura took a deep breath. She pinned her hair back, touched up her make-up and, before the 0 for the ground floor had lit up, replaced the professional, trained smile she wore like a mask.

She forgot about the white envelope. Almost.

The offices of the marketing company, AdvertMe, were located in the city centre on the uppermost floors of an old patrician house. Its roof had been raised, making room for a few extra lofts, which were currently occupied by foreign corporations. Not a single night went by in which there wasn’t a light shining in at least one of the windows. The company’s HR department encouraged trainees and prospective employees by saying they would ‘feel right at home here’. In a sense, this was true. Many of them spent far more time behind their AdvertMe desks than in their own homes.

Laura parked in the very centre of the spot reserved for Ms L. The round headlamps of her Mini reflected in the windowpanes opposite; the letters on her number plate could be seen below: Laura-1. The sheen of the car’s red paint reflected the pale light of the street lights.

An older man in a black jacket with a security badge opened the door to the building. The screen at his station flashed with colour; a gameshow on the hunt for local talent.

Laura reached into her purse to look for the pass, but the man just waved his hand and pressed a button on the desk. The display flashed green and the glass security door opened.

They’re waiting, he said.

She paused and gave him a questioning look.

They?

You know, people in the office… He stopped abruptly. Or was it supposed to be a surprise? He hit his forehead with his palm. "It was supposed to be a surprise! I’m sorry, it’s just that every night you… So, I thought… I don’t know."

Laura raised her hand, to stop him

That’s okay, she said. Surprises are for children, Mr... she hesitated.

For the last few years he was the only security guard that had been admitting her into the building almost every night, but his badge only read security and did not show his name. She had never thought to ask what it was.

I just happen to be late, that’s all, she concluded, walking towards the lift. Have a pleasant evening.

She couldn’t stop fiddling with her phone as the lift took her up. Laura often did it – as she believed – to be able to notice messages quicker. She took a deep breath. She expected the meeting to be one on one, but it didn’t matter. In the end it was about her and Henrik.

Before Henrik went into advertising, he had spent a few years working in PR on successive foreign missions for the Hungarian armed forces, polishing press releases in the silence of windowless bases. There was nothing of the soldier in him, however. He even slouched like a lazy civilian, but odd shifts and unexpected briefings had become second nature to him.

The doors to the lift finally opened and Laura was greeted by a long corridor. The walls were hung with awards. This was where every employee and client would first get to know the company; Henrik intentionally organised this Versailles of the business world – built to impress – here.

AdvertMe is like a living organism. It has an identity, character and pride, he would say.

Because of this, it was its own best advertisement.

It would be hard to point to a diploma or silver plaque that Laura had not helped obtain. None of them, however, bore even a trace of the letters: Ms L. Only AdvertMe and AdvertMe again, and possibly the names of the bosses and partners, such as Henrik’s and Szilvia’s. She watched the reflection of her eyes in the frames as she passed, then finally slid her phone into her pocket and knocked on the door. As she opened it, she thought about how the plaques on the wall in the corridor would soon bear her name, too.

Welcome, Laura.

There was no champagne or cake. Henrik stood, facing the window, his back toward her. The working space was very minimalistic – just a silver laptop, a few pens on the shiny plastic desk, metal safe with face recognition device in the corner and that was all. No plants or other non-essential details. Only the walls were filled with gadgets from the biggest campaigns – brands advertised by some of the biggest celebrities. Henrik’s motto was: Measure success with impact, not rewards.

Climbing or cruising the roads? he asked.

Customers, Henrik. I was getting our contracts done.

I thought I gave you a day off.

You did.

Henrik turned to face her. He was always shaved – military style, but this was the only part of him that was army-like. His suit was flashy blue, bordering between professionalism and a pop star at a concert; he countered this contrasting impression with an elegant, classical burgundy tie and a Rolex watch from the Day-Date collection, worth more than Laura’s car.

Henrik – a product on his own.

Tell me... he said, his expression stony. When did you first start dreaming of becoming a partner at AdvertMe?

She remained close to the door, studying him more closely. Energy buzzed beneath her forced mask of calm.

I never dreamt about it, Henrik.

So you went even further—

I planned it, she interrupted, walking towards the desk. Dreams are for children. Come on, cut the bullshit.

He smiled.

Always in control, right?

She allowed herself to respond with a smile. For a while they just looked at each other, like boxers in the ring. Henrik was standing in front of her, leaning over the desk. His watch was shining brightly in the light of a bulb.

If I had a daughter, he said. I’d pray to God she wouldn’t be like you. He took a seat in his leather chair behind the desk. He pulled something out of one of the drawers.

But if she was? Laura asked.

If she was like you, I’d be the proudest father in the world, he concluded, taking out a thick folder. The shareholders have tentatively agreed to make you a partner at AdvertMe...

He brought out several files of papers – visibly copies of each other. He laid them side by side.

I think you can call them in, she said.

You know? He shook his head. Oh, of course you do. They’re waiting in the conference room.

He rolled a pen towards Laura. Legalese and Latin terms cluttered the document from the very first page.

If you want I could lead page by page. Most of it just—

Oh, I’ll be perfectly fine. Thank you Henrik.

He rolled his eyes.

Of course you will. He stood up. I guess I’ll go and tell them they don’t have to sit in the dark anymore.

Please do.

He went towards the door, but stopped.

Let me be the first to offer my congratulations… Partner, he said before leaving.

For a moment Laura was alone. She sat down on a white plastic chair. Henrik always said that he didn’t want them to be too comfortable – that visitors to his office shouldn’t feel as if they were the ones in control.

The agreement was more of a form to be completed than an actual contract, with blank spaces left for Laura to fill in the information about herself – the new, future partner. As she read it, it occurred to her that the devil never seemed to have a good lawyer when making deals for souls in the movies. AdvertMe certainly did.

Yet, something was wrong.

All the papers on the desk seemed fine and the cold metal pen in her hand felt as if it belonged there, at that place, at that time. But something wasn’t right.

Of course! she said aloud, gathering all the documents and leaving the office.

Through the glasses in the corridor she could see people waving at her. There was champagne and cake.

Péter had a little paper trumpet in his mouth and a loose company t-shirt with AdvertMe’s logo. The text below read: How about AdvertYOU?

Laura waved at them but didn’t enter the conference room. Instead, she opened the door to her own office and, as she was closing it, she saw Szilvia’s face wrinkle in a look of uttermost surprise.

Laura’s office was the architectonic twin of Henrik’s, but… More filled out.

The walls were barely visible from behind the diplomas that adorned them. Business school in Prague, a post-graduate degree in Vienna, marketing courses in London, certificates from Berlin and Paris. They all had her name on them, some written in intricate golden letters. All were in English. There was only one award in the room that deigned to be in Hungarian. It stood on a safe – the same face-recognition model as Henrik’s. It was a small, rather unprofessionally made, silver cup – a man hanging on a climbing wall. The inscription on the Plaque was partially hidden behind a pen holder, but the visible part indicated that it was a prize in a climbing club contest.

The one thing her office lacked compared to Henrik’s office was another chair. Laura met with clients in the conference room and as for anyone else… She didn’t like it when people lingered in her space for longer than necessary.

Laura walked across the office and sat behind her desk to review the documents. Now everything was perfect.

The truth was that Laura had been expecting good news for months. In recognition of her services, the shareholders were going to agree to make her a partner in the company. For months they had been putting off making the decision and outdoing themselves with elaborate excuses, and for months Laura had been defending herself with chart after chart showing increasing growth.

Everyone agreed to pretend that it was about the business, but it was really about what went on behind the scenes. There had been a dispute between her and Szilvia – the same Szilvia who was, at that moment, waiting in the conference room ready to congratulate Laura on her promotion.

Szilvia was responsible for taking AdvertMe to Hungary. Together with Henrik, they had expanded the company’s Budapest branch. She was avant-garde and cooperated with experimental graphic designers and painters at a time when the benchmark for a TV advert was a half-naked lady in a bubble bath, advertising a meat factory. Szilvia was a legend.

And then came the internet.

Szilvia still insisted on overly artistic, pompous compositions which contradicted the contemporary rules of consumer profiling and targeted advertising. She refused to use new media channels – to her, bloggers were immature kids at play. She felt collecting customer data on the internet was unethical long before legal changes made it complicated.

Laura knew those methods were necessary. It