At last the glade is empty. I am trembling. They are all in my heart now, and the sack is heavy. This part always makes me feel like I might explode. I fill in the holes and scatter debris over the soil until it looks like marmots have been here, or rabbits maybe. Nothing but nature taking its course. I pick up the sack gently.

We go deeper into the woods. The trees end at the lake to the west so I take a different direction. Even now, all these years later, I don’t want to go near the lake.

I must find the right place. The gods can’t live just anywhere. The beam of my flashlight dances over the ivy and dry brush. It’s so warm tonight, the forest seems to be giving out heat. It spirals out from the trunks of the cedars, rises from the leaf litter. I take my sweater off. Midges and mosquitoes hover over my exposed arms and neck in gray clouds, but do not settle. Bats circle us, swooping so close their soft bodies graze my cheek. Tree branches spring away at my touch, clearing a passage before us. When I stop for a moment to catch my breath, a brown snake slides affectionately over the toe of my boot. I am part of the forest, tonight. It holds me in its heart.

I hear the spring long before I see it, the glassy trickle of water on stone. I can’t tell its direction; the sound seems to come from all around, as it often does, deep in the forest. I turn off the flashlight and stand in the dark. The sack shifts, uncomfortable against my back. Something sharp nudges me in the spine. The gods are eager. They want a home. I go where they tell me, through the catching bramble and bush. The half-moon is bright now; the clouds have cleared overhead. Without the flashlight I can see the forest in its night colors, silver-etched in delicate lines.

There is the gleam of pale bark ahead. White birches grow here, the bone trees. This is the sign I have been waiting for; I’ve found the place.

The spring leaps out of black wet stone, runs shrill and fast in its narrow channel, overhung by long fern fronds. Above, in the rock wall, there are dark crevices. Each hole is just the right size and shape to hold a god. One by one I slide them into their new homes. I shake a little as I do it—it’s hard to hold so much power in my hands.