Rain was streaming down from the eaves as Maja Radecka unlocked the door of the antique shop Under the Crescent on the corner of a narrow cobbled street. The key, old and heavy, tapped a familiar rhythm in the lock: one, two, pause, one. On the other side, the old doorframe crunched and the aroma of dust, bitter coffee and paper that remembered hands not of this time hit her face. Inside, twilight reigned. Maps piled up on the walls - seas no longer so shaped and cities yet to be invented - and boxes full of stamps, notebooks and postcards waited beneath them. Henry the cat, narrow as a tabby, dragged himself up on the counter and slid a ball of string to the floor, as if checking gravity. - 'There you are,' said Emil, the shopkeeper, leaning out of the back room. He was wearing a jumper the colour of a cloth-trimmed globe and had the look of someone reading dates from spots on paper. - 'I've got something strange for you. It came from an auction, with no mention of the author. Apparently it once belonged to an itinerant cartographer. - He disappeared for a while and came back with an object he was carrying like a child. He placed it carefully on the table. The leather binding breathed dully, the embossing depicted a crescent moon and wind roses swirling in a manner too modern for its supposed old age. The title, embossed above the faded gilt, read Atlas of Uncharted Shores. Maja immediately felt her grandfather's brass compass trembling in her pocket - the same one that had refused to cooperate in the museum cellars for years, but now moved the needle as if someone had blown. - 'Yesterday, after it was closed, something rustled inside it,' Emil added, almost in a whisper, as if he feared the walls had a memory. - I thought it was the pipes. But there are no pipes here. Not like that. Maja muttered something reassuring, but her heart began to beat faster. Her profession as a paper conservator had taught her to believe in reason and glues with the right pH, but since childhood she had had a weakness for maps that pretended too well to be just a picture. Her grandfather used to take her to the train station, where they counted the steps between platforms and checked what the compass showed in the tunnel. "The cities have left lungs in the underground". - he would say, and Maja would listen, although at the time she didn't understand the warning. She opened the atlas. The page rustled, though it was not dry; on the contrary, the paper had the dampness of morning mist. On the first map she saw a coastline she knew not from any archive: high, wild cliffs and a harbour named Port of Silenced Voices, signed in calligraphy so intricate as to be inhuman. The wind rose trembled minimally, like the pointer of an instrument before a storm. Between latitudes and longitudes someone had written in pencil: 50°03'N 19°56'E - and added indistinctly: if you turn it over, you will hear. - If I turn around? - muttered Maja. Emil shrugged his shoulders. - I haven't tried - he admitted. - Old things can be memorable. She slipped off her gloves and very carefully moved her hand over the paper. The air over the map was cooler, like over water. She flipped the card over. On the other side was a white drawing of something that resembled a cross-section: as if someone had cut open the map to look inside. Along the back of the card was a fine, winding line, not matching the geographical grid; it looked like a microscopic crack in the ice. Maja leaned over and saw that the line was not drawn. It was a shadow cast by something that shouldn't be here. Henry the cat became still, and then a quiet noise that had no source crept into the shop. It didn't sound like street rain or a distant tram. More like a breath learning a new shape to squeeze through. The edge of the sheet of paper lifted a fraction of a millimetre; a crisp smell of salt wafted from under the paper, as deep and distant as the north wind. - Can you smell it? - Emil asked, swallowing his saliva. - It's... The sea? - 'It's the paper,' she replied, although she didn't believe the sound of that answer herself. She brought the compass closer; the needle made a lazy half-circle and stood up, pointing not north, not south, but the centre of the crack. - 'Maybe it's a mechanism,' Emil added, already more to himself. - Some magician's trick, from the age of automatons.... Maja slipped a magnifying glass out of her pocket, the same one she uses to look at paper fibres when she looks for signs of repairs. She put it to the crack. She saw not a single crack, but two edges that looked like glass in their transparency. And between them - movement. A slow rippling of shadows, like when you look down from a bridge onto a river and can't tell if it's the water flowing or the world. - 'Don't touch,' Emil said. - It will still all get carried away. - 'If it's a rip, I need to know if it runs along the fibres,' she replied professionally, as if the words would protect her. But there was another truth: Maja wanted to touch, because the paper called to her with a chill she knew only from autumn mornings at the Baltic Sea. She put her fingertip to the very edge. The matter of the page was springy and surprisingly cool under her finger. And immediately, gently, a microscopic droplet flowed onto her skin. Not water, but the taste of salt, so pure that her goosebumps jumped. Emil cursed under his breath, and Henry snorted as if someone had blown on him. - 'I'll get a towel,' the landlord chuckled, and moved away with a step that resembled flight, though he still feigned caution. He disappeared into the depths of the back room, where crates remembered their former owners. Maja was left alone with the atlas. The whispers intensified. They weren't human, they didn't form words, but the certainty that someone was saying something was impossible to ignore. She placed her hands on either side of the crack, as if calming the agitated paper, and tried to take an even breath. She remembered her grandfather's words, "Not everything that is a map is for going back". The overhead light in the shop went out. The bulbs trembled, as if the electricity had run out for a moment. However, a slight glow began to shine from the very centre of the atlas, spilling across the desk and illuminating the dust in the air in the shape of tiny galaxies. Bookbinding knives, paper bandages and paintbrushes - the whole arsenal for treating cracks - glanced up from the drawer next to them. Suddenly they seemed childishly useless. In the margin of the page she spotted an inscription that hadn't been there before: Don't hit - listen. The letters stepped out of the paper as if someone had just peeled them off the underside. Maja tightened her fingers on the edge of the tabletop; she felt the atlas pulling her towards it, not violently, but rather by a kindly force of invitation that was hard to refuse. - Maja? - called out Emil from the back room. - That cloth you like.... I can't get it... oh, there it is. - His sentences broke off on his breath. He returned, holding something else in his hand: an old railway torch with green glass. - I found it along with the atl... - He broke off as he saw the light on the table and what Maja was holding. - Don't make any sudden movements. - I won't - she whispered, to herself. - I'll just... I'll listen. She turned her head minimally and pressed her ear closer to the crack. A sound came from inside the atlas, as if someone was rocking buckets in a well, but instead of a sloshing sound she heard a quiet tread on dry leaves. Immediately afterwards something rustled, as if pages were being turned very, very far away. The smell of salt gave way to the smell of resin and smoke from a bonfire burning in a place where bonfires are not allowed. - How long can this go on? - Emil asked, as if time was measured by tea and could be added. - 'Until the first step,' replied Maja, herself not knowing how she knew this. The compass in her pocket wobbled more violently, and then something clicked - a sound that belongs to padlocks, latches, mechanisms opening or closing. The edges of the crack parted by a hair. Inside - a black depth, not darkness, but a colour yet to be conceived. On its surface appeared a tiny, silvery spot, like fish scales. - 'No,' said Emil, but it sounded as if he was saying it to himself, in the mode of an idle adult whine. - It's not ... - he broke off, because on the other side something flashed and disappeared, like a smile at the entrance to a tunnel. Maja touched her finger right next to the crack, examining the texture of the paper. The spilling light quieted, the world hovered. The sound of sirens on the Vistula came through the window, but once, twice and stopped. Even the rain seemed to gather in itself, counting drops. Emil stood, not blinking. Henry's cat arched its back, its tail ruffled like a brush. Then someone knocked in the atlas. Three times, briefly, like a man who knows the agreed signal.