When Lena first crossed the threshold of Aunt Regina's antique shop, the smell was as thick as plush - a mixture of polish, dust and tea that no one had drunk. The signboard above the door, a golden leopard with its tail curved into a comma, glinted with the acidic light of neon from the street. The antiquarian shop "Under the Leopard" pulsed with the quiet presence of things. Things that were waiting. The evening was cool and damp. Raindrops clung to the windows like pin-pricks. Lena pushed back the bolt, the bell above the door honked and the silence came to her like a cat - soft, rubbing against her calves. She switched on the main light. 'Main' here meant: half a whistle. The bulbs, like old actresses, gave as much as they wanted. "Well, at last. We thought you'd never come back to us again," - said Mrs Leopard, a tall floor lamp with a mottled lampshade. Its body, wooden and smooth, had indentations like the waist of dancers from old posters. Lena smiled reflexively. The first time she heard Mrs Leopard's voice, she had dropped a bunch of keys and had to collect them from the floor for a quarter of an hour. Now she knew: this place has it. Things talk. Some are better to talk to in the evening, others at midday. The floorboards like to listen. And the mirrors... the mirrors have opinions. "I'm going back. This is my home now," Lena replied, taking off her coat. - "Although I still feel like I'm entering someone's head." "An antique shop is always someone's head," interjected Mr Szelest, a turntable from the corner by the shop window. Polished, with a flap that opened like an insect's wings, he pried open the usually silent door. - "The shelves are scrolls and the thoughts are laid out here on paper. Ready for an inventory?" "Ready. As ready as I can be." - Lena sighed and looked around. On the left wall, books piled up, from novels in canvases to forgotten diaries. On the right - glass, metal, ceramics, trinkets from a time that liked to hide behind a curtain. In the middle stood a table with an oak top, outlined like a map of roads that someone had once washed away, but not quite. A lamp with an enamel shade hung above the table, but it was Mrs Leopard who ruled the light; she cleverly spilled it where it was needed. "Before we begin, I have something pleasant for you," murmured Countess Fajansa, a tea service in a display case whose cups had rims as thin as an eyelid. - "Treat yourself to a breath of bergamot. It has stayed with me since the last guest." Lena smiled, leaned over, and opened the display case with a key with a dragon-shaped keyring - key number three, for display cases. Things liked order and names. Each had its own number. Three, Seven, Nine for the cellar. She already knew them by heart. In the back of the shop, under the double-faced clock, stood the largest display case, as old as the flat. Its door was heavy, glazed, with a brass leaf-shaped lock. Lena called it the Cabinet. Aunt Regina used to say that objects that 'bring the weather with them' went into the Cabinet. She never said more. For a week, the Cabinet had been covered with green fabric, as if someone had isolated a sea urchin. Lena had not yet opened it. She still lacked the courage or, rather, the time. Today she decided to see what was there. "Before you touch the Cabinet, listen." - hissed Erika quietly, a typewriter resting on the bottom shelf of the island by the cash register. Its letters were like teeth: even, smart, ready to fire. - "During the night someone blew. The draught brought whispers. Not ours." "A draught brings everything light," snorted Mrs Leopard, but she dimmed a tad, as if ashamed of her own caution. Lena approached the Cabinet. The fabric was cool, damp at the edges. She tilted it open. Inside, on the bottom shelf, lay a black wooden chest with mother-of-pearl inlay - the ornament resembled endless loops, like waves looped over a metre of sea. Next to it - a box of rare feathers, an old fan with an image of a peacock, and a palm-sized metal case with no markings. "I don't remember you sounding so low". - said Lena half-heartedly into the trunk, feeling a quiet murmur come from within, like the purr of a cat, but more wooden. "Because I wasn't talking to you until now" - spoke back the trunk in a bass, dry, like the click of a lock in an empty flat. - "I was waiting for your ear." "Do you know where my key is?" - Lena asked, not forcing herself to be surprised. - "The Cabinet set is Seven. It's gone." "Disappeared to someone, not to you," interjected Mr Pendulum, a cupboard clock that usually pretended to be absent. Now, however, its ticking had something Kantian about it, like a consideration of time. - "Someone borrowed it. Keys like to borrow. And this case doesn't like parting." Lena ran her finger along the edge of the brass lock. The chill of the brass wanted to get under her fingernails. Next door, in the semi-darkness, Mr. rustle uninvitedly let out three sounds from his tuba, like someone grunting before saying someone's name. "Don't play when no one is dancing". - muttered Mrs Leopard to him. "I can't do otherwise," replied the gramophone. - "When this trunk talks, I hear old records that no one has recorded." Lena looked around. The street had quietened; the rain had turned to a fine dust. Outside, people were passing by, but their footsteps sounded like belated applause. Inside, the shop seemed tighter. The air thickened, as if someone had poured molten glass into it. "Don't open it yourself," chimed Erika suddenly, without touching it, her arm itself pushing out the same letter N four times, and another E, until it formed a word Lena didn't feel like giving up. - "Don't open it." "Alone? But we are after all." - Countess Fajansa rang the saucers lined up in even formation like a small orchestra. - "Why are you so anxious, my dear machine?" "Because the case is watching," replied the mirror by the door, known as Miss Scratch, from the long, thin scratch running across the centre of the panel. - "It has its eyelid on the other side. And the eyelid is blinking." Lena leaned over the metal case. It was without decoration, plain, of the kind that seems empty only because they want a person to think so. She tried to lift it. The weight took her by surprise - as if she was holding in her hand a peaceful bird that could fly away, but hadn't yet.</n "Who borrowed Seven?" - she asked, not taking her eyes off the objects. Before anyone could answer, a bell rang above the door, the same bell that had rung in greeting. Now, however, its sound was protracted, trembling, as if someone had crossed the threshold twice and was hesitating between leaving and entering. "Locked with a bolt," whispered Mrs Leopard, dimming the light so that the outlines of the premises became clearer. - "Road ahead - occupied. Way back - also occupied." "Someone is calling us from inside," announced Mr Pendulum, and his ticking quickened by a breath. Lena looked at the door. The bolts - two of them - were stuck in place. The glass reflected her face, but instead of one, she saw three: one illuminated by the lamp, one twilighted, the third blurred like a memory. Reflexively, she reached into her pocket for a bunch of keys. Three, Nine, Five... Seven was missing. "Regina always said that if something disappears, it will come back when you stop looking" - muttered Lena. - "Or when you start to really care about it." "Things have a way of doing that too." - said Professor Nickel, a shiny nickel-plated kettle who spent his days at the coffee machine. - "Some come back through people. Others - through sounds. This castle will come back if it hears its own name." "And what name does it have?" - she asked, though she didn't quite believe the kettle theories. "You can hear them. After all, you can already hear all of us," replied the trunk, lower, more serious, as if he wasn't speaking but turning over old images within himself. Lena closed her eyes. The antique shop was breathing. Each shelf had a rhythm, each book a whisper. In that breathing, in that hum, a thread could be picked out. A quiet, metallic name, as simple as the sound of hitting a table: "Siewemka" - not "Seven", but something between Pi and S, as if the key were diminishing itself. She opened her eyes. Miss Lynx crackled with light, as if someone had turned on a little aurora dust inside her. The bell went quiet, but echoed through the beams of the ceiling. Mr Szelest braved a single bowlegged stomp of the needle arm, though the needle was still gone. "Okay," - Lena said, setting the case down. - "I'll call you what you want. Seedling, where are you?" Something clattered under the table. The furniture responded with a crunch, but not the usual kind - not the anger of wood that doesn't like the cold. It was deeper than that, like the short snort of a horse hearing a bow. Lena knelt down. Sliding her palms under the tabletop, she brushed the dust - warm. It should have been cool at this time of day, but it was warm, as if someone had just walked by, dragging dry, bright speckles with them. She pulled out a book that didn't look like it belonged here: a thin volume with a maroon cover, no title. Someone had scraped the letters off the spine long ago. She put her fingers between the pages. Something metal, tiny, bumped against her fingernail. She took it out. A key. Not the Seven. A Sev - tiny, with an unusual head resembling interrupted circles. It trembled in her hand the way laughter trembles when one is tired. "I obediently returned," Siewemka said in a thin voice. - "But I did not come alone." Mrs Leopard dimmed to a remnant, as if someone beside her had taken the air. The bell above the door fell completely silent, but a sound that Lena only knew from the movies came from behind the Cabinet, where the curtain stood - the soft, long slide of something heavy on the wood, as if someone was moving a bolt from inside that she had never seen before. "Don't open it yourself," Erika repeated, and the machine's arm came down, leaving one long, pale 'N' on the paper. Lena tightened her fingers on the key and slowly, unhurriedly, faced the Cabinet. In the semi-darkness, she saw that the inlay on the trunk moved like a school of fish. And then, without touching the lock, she heard someone's breathing on the other side of the glass, even and close, as if someone had been waiting inside for a long time, with his cheek against the very glass