A wind with a taste of salt and rust blew in from the harbour. The old waterfront tower had cracked windows and such rusted numerals on the dial that from a distance they looked like the remains of charred leaves. Once, fish stalls and brass whistles were set up in its shadow, and at half past twelve the mechanical heart beat so loudly that it calmed even the seagulls. Now the clock had been silent for years and only in storms did anyone swear they heard a muffled ticking in it. Lena first saw the tower from the top of the dyke, carrying under her arm a sketchbook that had belonged to her grandmother. It was heavy with pages, with edges as worn as the pockets of old coats. On the first page were words written in slanted script: "Passages open between seconds". Below - a drawing: a circle with four dots around the perimeter and a mark that resembled an inverted figure eight inscribed in a hexagon. The mark formed in Lena's mind as she sat on the cool wall and sketched the silhouette of the tower. She couldn't chase away the feeling that she had seen it somewhere before. Not in a book, not on a blackboard, but... in the light. In that strange reflection, when the sun hides behind the clouds for a moment and then comes back and everything seems to have a double outline. - Here again? - Iwo climbed the wall effortlessly and sat down next to it, swinging his legs. He was fifteen years old and had a ragged jacket from whose pocket some screwdriver was always sticking out. - 'I told you there were old pendulums hanging inside like huge silver tears. - 'It's not about the pendulums,' Lena replied, without lifting her gaze from the sketch. - See. She moved the sketchbook so that he could read the sentence on the first page. Iwo fell silent. He didn't talk much about Lena's grandmother, although he knew her well; over the last summer holidays he sometimes came to her for handfuls of sugar sultanas and stories about the ships she had seen in her youth. - 'This looks like...' he began and broke off, taking the sketchbook carefully, as if he was afraid of leaving fingerprints. - I know - whispered Lena. - The same mark is on the face of the clock. I saw it yesterday when the sun was retreating behind the clouds. For a moment it appeared under the number twelve. As if someone had burned it into the glass. Iwo turned towards the tower. The clock was just a patch of brightness in the clouds, but Lena remembered exactly: the thin outline of a scattered figure eight, a hexagon and four dots that, like drops of water, settled around the perimeter. - 'All right,' said Iwo after a while. - 'We'll go in. - There are chains on the door. - They are old. At the bottom of the tower hung a sign: "Entry prohibited. Risk of collapse." Lena hesitated only for a moment. As she caught the cool metal of the chain in her fingers, she thought of her grandmother's hands, stained with ink and flour. Of the book she had left her without a word of explanation, like a thread leading through a maze. Her fingers were clean, unaccustomed to such iron things, but Iwo pressed the wire into the gap and moved his wrist as he had done hundreds of times, and the chain fell with a deafening jaw. Inside, it was as cool as a tunnel corridor. The walls smelled of dust and drops of water fell slowly, counting time instead of the absent clock. On the first platform someone had left a used torch. Iwo moved without asking, as if he knew where to put his feet so it wouldn't creak. Lena followed him, counting the stairs. One hundred and nine, one hundred and ten. The mechanism was in a stone chamber just below the dial. Dark grey gears gripped the air, chains hung motionless like tired snakes. In the corner, next to a box of iron keys and a thread of cobwebs, stood a pendulum - dead long, ending in a tarnished ball. The dial on the inside was milky, as if it still held its former glow. - 'Oh dear,' slipped out Lena. - Look. On the milky glass, just below the number twelve, a mark from a sketchbook was outlined. It wasn't perfect - as if someone had chalked it with a fingernail, pale and almost invisible - but it was there. And although nothing moved, Lina had the feeling that the mark was trembling slightly, as if it breathed the same air with them. - 'This is no ordinary ornament,' muttered Iwo. - 'Look at these guides. There's a ring here. He approached the dial and, resting his hands against the cool glass, ran his fingers along the metal frame. Indeed - cut into the perimeter ran a thin ring with four deeper points, evenly spaced like the quarters of a compass. Lena reached for her sketchbook; the symbol agreed to the millimetre. - Grandma had written about 'transitions' - she said, feeling her heart begin to fight rhythmically against the silence. - 'I don't believe in things that can't be touched, but...' - Here you can,' Iwo replied. - Sometimes things work before you understand them. The affair dragged on until dusk. They went out to get tools - Iwo came back with a rucksack full of keys, thin gloves and a small headlamp torch, and Lena brought a knob radio she had once got from her grandmother. When she turned it on, she usually ended up with songs from the south or the weather for sailors. This time, as soon as they crossed the threshold of the tower, there was a different noise in the speaker. As if someone was whispering rows of numbers from afar. They sat on the floor of the chamber, their shadows vibrating from the headlamp light. Lena unfolded her sketchbook and began to compare lines. Among her grandmother's drawings were several pages written in words without context: "north wind", "four points", "stop, go back, let go". Between the notes, someone - the grandmother? - pressed a tram ticket from a city whose name Lena did not know. Everything smelled of long-dried ink. - Do you hear? - Iwo turned to the radio. - 'That's no ordinary noise. There was a ticking coming from the old speaker, independent of the silence of the mechanism. It was as if, elsewhere, the clock ran continuously and their device caught its breath. Then, as if someone had pressed a button, at once a simple melody - a few notes repeated three times - and a voice sounded in the speaker. Not clear, distorted, but young. - 'Thirteen... thirteen... thirteen,' it said and fell silent. The chamber became very quiet. Lena felt the skin on the back of her neck tighten like parchment. - 'Coincidence,' she muttered, but at the same moment the air went into a fine tremor. The wind hit the tower wall and surrounded her with a long, low whistle. From the north. She could smell salt and the promise of rain. - The north wind - repeated Iwo and looked at her. - Do you want to try it? Lena took a breath, like divers do before diving in. She moved her fingers to warm her palms, put on her gloves and approached the dial. The metal ring had four tactile pawls. She grabbed it together with Iw. Together they moved it slightly to the right - click. Downwards - click. To the left - click. When they touched the fourth point, they were stopped by a sudden resistance. - 'Someone sealed it,' said Iwo quietly. - 'Or maybe there's something missing. Lena looked at the sketchbook. In the margin, in small letters, her grandmother had written 'between seconds - when the hands twitch'. - 'Hints,' Lena pronounced, turning the word on her tongue as if it had a flavour. - Except that here nothing moves. - Maybe it should. Iwo opened the key box and leaned over the mechanism. For a long moment he listened, touched the chains, moved the gears gently, as if stroking a dormant animal. Then he put his hands under the pendulum and pushed it slightly. Once. A second. The metal sighed. The pendulum moved, hesitated, came back. Nothing more. - 'One more time,' Lena asked. The pendulum gently hovered above the air and began to work. Slow movements filled the chamber with a deafening rhythm. At the same moment, the radio chimed and the voice rang out again, clearer, as if it were bringing its mouth closer to the speaker: - Now. The ring gave way. The clasp popped into place with a quiet, satisfying sound. The dial lit up from within. Not like neon, more like the milk through which a Saturday morning shines. The hands, motionless for years, twitched. First a second, then a minute. They flowed backwards, causing a tickle in the stomach, like the sudden start of a train. The air thickened. Lena felt the sound, the smell and the light begin to have the same temperature. The disc retained its milky hue while becoming transparent. The shadows of the harbour cranes had moved somewhere far away, but their contours were different: softer, rounded, as if someone had built them out of wood rather than steel. For a moment, in another sky, two pale streaks flashed by - two moons or two fish scales suspended at cloud height. - Can you see it? - whispered Iwo, moving his head closer to the glass. His breath left a haze on it that did not immediately disappear, but dissolved like glittering ink. Lena did not respond. She stared at the dial as something there - on the other side - began to take shape. A narrow street where the stones were a shade of wet garnet. A lantern, unlike any she knew, with thin wings instead of a shade. And a gate made of wood so dark it was almost black, in whose grain lurked a familiar mark: an inverted figure eight in a hexagon. The radio wailed a sudden short note, like a cut violin. There was a sound from the stairs that cut through their concentration: metal on stone, fast, controlled. Someone was below. Not a seagull, not the wind. Someone who knew where to put their feet. - Are we closing? - Iwo looked at or through Lena, into the shield where the light pulsed ever brighter. Instead of an answer, they heard a whisper. Not from the radio, not from behind the door, but from the glass itself, as if a layer of light was speaking to them. - 'Lena,' said the voice. Clearly, softly. A voice that seemed to have known her name forever. In the same second, the hands vibrated more violently and the dial began to ripple like the surface of water as a stone falls vertically into the depths. A shadow appeared in the ripple. A silhouette, at first flat as if cut out of paper, then thicker, more real, reaching a hand towards them, as if the glass was just a fragile membrane. Someone on the stairs accelerated. Footsteps bumped against the metal rest just behind the wall. Radio thirteen repeated like an echo. And Lena, holding her breath, could already clearly see the fingers of that hand on the other side - and a crescent-shaped scar on her thumb, identical to a scar she remembered from her childhood on someone's hand.