I woke up at dawn and slipped out of the house. It was still dark as night, and I was afraid I would trip over something and alert my dad. I shivered in the cold. I regretted not having smuggled a sweater out as well. I met Karcsi at the end of the street. He was holding a spade and a shovel. I had the storm lamps with me in my rucksack. I took the spade from him and we ran towards the fields. I prayed for rain so we would get stuck in the mud and have to abandon the plan. My prayers weren’t answered, not then, not ever. We ran, and after a while I felt that we were a good distance away from the houses. The distance a person goes to dig a birthhole.

‘It’s a good spot,’ he whispered in a shaky voice. You could see he was nervous. We lit the storm lamps and placed them on the ground. Karcsi grabbed the spade.

‘Don’t just stand there. Help me!’

And just like that he dug the spade into the earth.

I started digging too. I thought we’d talk while we worked, but there was no chance. Karcsi worked obsessively, like a machine, piling the dirt up by the side of the hole. I didn’t want to lag behind, so I worked even harder than him. It took less than half an hour before we were up to our waists in the pit, sweating and panting.

Digging had never been so easy. I was hoping it wouldn’t work, that the dirt would be too thickly intertwined with the roots, that it would be full of gravel and stones, that it would be hard like concrete and that by morning we’d collapse from exhaustion while only standing ankle-deep in a ditch. I was wrong. If anything, it got easier and easier with each shovelful.

The horizon glimmered with bluish light, and we were already up to our shoulders in the pit.

‘This will be good enough,’ Karcsi said, throwing his spade out of the hole, then climbing out of it himself.

We sat down for a little while by the freshly made pile. I took out a sandwich and handed it to Karcsi. Ham and cheese. I had brought one for myself too. For a while we just ate quietly.

‘What if you’re wrong?’ I asked him finally. ‘What if it was only a dream? If it was only a dream and they didn’t come back to you?’

He swallowed a mouthful.

‘Then I’m wrong.’

I didn’t ask anything else after that.

Karcsi studied the pile in the lamplight, reaching into it every now and then to pull something out of the dirt.

‘There they are,’ he said.

I leaned closer to see what he was talking about. It was the roots, the thin, white threads that connected everything under the ground. Karcsi was smiling now.

‘It will work,’ he said. ‘I know it will.’