‘Here! This one!’ Gergő shouted. ‘Hold the chain tight!’

The mirror broke in two, its distorted surface reflecting the silhouettes of men as they bent over for the chain. They all grabbed the metal, and Hugó’s heart started to race; he was scared he was about to have a heart attack, this close to experiencing the heart of the harvest.

Gergő shouted, ‘Heave-ho!’

The men were pulling the chain as one, but it barely yielded.

‘Harder!’ one of the men screamed.

‘Heave-ho!’

Hugó gave it his all, he didn’t even care if his hernia came out again; he only heard from far off, through the sound of his own struggling, that another mirror shattered. He felt that whatever was hiding in the depths was slowly giving in to the men’s raw strength, and this only made him strain himself even more; he no longer pulled with just his muscles, but with his mind, his thoughts as well. At last the earth moved, and in the light of the lanterns the larva burst forth from the depths. It pushed itself forward on its short, articulated legs. There was no need to pull any longer.

It was a catch.

The men let go of the chain; one of them jumped on the larva, while two men on each side tied up the legs with plastic cords. Hugó was panting but felt like laughing. He saw the larva as a fruit of his physical exertion and felt instant gratification.

A third mirror broke in the distance.

‘To the chain!’ shouted Gergő, and the men set out to drag the next larva from underground, from nothingness to life.

While her father wrestled again with the depths of the earth, Emese stepped up to the first larva. It was one-and-a-half meters long; Emese would have just fit inside it. The chain disappeared into its body through a hole. She hoped that the larva had found some pleasure in swallowing the bait; although according to some, the larva is the bait itself, only transformed, enlarged, turned into the seed of life.

The women grabbed the larva and turned it upside down. Erzsébet took the drill in her hands and pointed the end of it against the larva’s skin.

‘What are you doing that for?’ Emese asked.

‘If I don’t make an asshole for it, it will die later on, dear. Every animal needs an asshole, didn’t you know that?’ She smiled sweetly at the girl, then with a quick movement she drilled a hole into the larva and expanded the opening with a knife. Black blood dripped onto the ground.

‘The mouth is no problem, it was created when it took the bait. But we couldn’t manage without the other hole. That’s where you put the essence in.’

Emese nodded, but she felt sick to her stomach at the sight of the wriggling larva. The next larva was pulled out of the earth, and yet another mirror cracked in the distance.

It went on for hours.