Seventeen-year-old Lena lived in the Port of Brzeszcze, where the fog smelled of salt and the streetlights blinked out of sync. Instead of photographs, she collected sounds, writing them down in a notebook like a map that no one but her understood. For months, she had been waking up at 3:07 a.m., when the city made a quiet, electric murmur, reminiscent of inhalation. On this morning, the murmur turned into a distinct shaking of the air, as if someone was opening a closed, huge notebook. Lena knew that on this day the map would finally open its mouth and answer a question that had gone unspoken for years. On the wall opposite her window, a graffiti fish peeled away from the paint and moved its tail. - Can you see it? - asked Iwo, who always spoke in a half-hearted voice, as if he didn't want to awaken the slumber of the street. The fish swam along the gutter, leaving a wet trail behind it, although not a drop had fallen. They descended into the street and followed it until they reached the closed depot, whose gate was held by a chain. Silver veins ran along the cobblestones, as if someone had sewn threads from the morning sky into the stone. The chain itself moved away like a curtain, and the square spilled out with blue light, cool as morning. In the depths stood a tram with a number that had never been used in the Birch, similar to an arrested thought. The door opened, revealing a seat of yellow velour and a book bound in a greyed sailcloth. There were no words on the pages, just a dot moving to the rhythm of Lena's breathing. Iwo gripped the book carefully, as if holding a lamp with an underwater, whimsical flame. Wires dangled from the ceiling, the lamps flashing in series, resembling the code Lena knew from dreams of maps. - 'This is the city writing to us,' said Iwo, making no attempt to sound reasonable, as reason was increasingly failing. The dot suddenly spilled out into a line, then into circles that first delineated a street, then created one. Outside the window, beyond the hall, appeared an alley they didn't know, narrow but leading somewhere definite. An old, stubborn certainty lit up in Lena's head that imagination was not an escape but a direction. They moved along it until they came across a door battered with tickets, stapled together, smelling of rain and ink. Dust fell from above, forming letters that disintegrated before they could read them. Under Lena's hand, the paper trembled like the skin of a drum, and on the other side someone pushed back the curtain. The tram in the hall rang alone, and then the book lit up, showing their names written in motion. The door swung open a millimetre, and a hand slipped out of the darkness, holding a key with a symbol missing.