The school theatre smelled of paint and wet wood after the afternoon storm outside. Lena, a seventeen-year-old third-grade set designer, stayed after rehearsal to fix a cracked backstage. The teachers had turned off most of the lights, leaving only the green emergency lights, which pulsed like breath. Everything sounded louder on the empty stage: the creaking of the ropes, the rustling of the curtain, her own thoughts. She was about to head home, but something in the shadows behind the prop store caught her eye. Behind a rolled-up sheet of painted woodland was a narrow, unmarked door that Lena couldn't remember. The wood was painted with blackboard paint, and instead of a handle they had a porcelain knob the size of an apple. Above them someone had written in chalk a short sentence: type the word, open the world. A short, grated piece of white chalk lay on the threshold, as if waiting for her. Lena parried quietly, recognising it as a joke from the older technicians, and picked up the chalk. With hesitation, she wrote a single word on the black paint: Light, brittle as dust. As if someone had slid out a thin knife of sunlight, the hinges sighed and a honeyed glow poured in through the crack. The air was warmer and smelled of lilac after the rain, although the corridor was chilly. Lena quickly, albeit shakily, added another word, almost without thinking: forest. A sudden, damp gust blew from inside, a fern slipped underfoot, and the eyes of a fox twinkled in the green twilight. She slammed the door and stepped back, feeling her heart trying to pierce her jumper. She couldn't just walk away after something like this, though reason begged her to leave. So she wrote another word, more careful than the previous ones, this time close: Peace. Inside, the desk lamp flared and she saw a room so similar to her childhood room that it made her clench her throat. On the coffee table stood a paper boat with a pen scratched out with the word LENA, exactly as she had done in second grade. In the corner ticked an alarm clock set to an impossible hour, pounding out a rhythm in tune with her pulse. On the inside edge of the wing, under a layer of dust, someone had carved a warning: Don't say names. Before she could say anything, from that side someone whispered her name, draughty as the noise in a shell. Two words were spontaneously written on the black surface: Especially hers. The phone vibrated without notification and the screen reflected her face, paler than usual. - 'Rehearsal,' she said, wanting to tame the absurdity, and outlined the word with a trembling hand. The chalk got hot, escaped from her fingers and rolled under the door, which slid out from under the threshold a thin envelope stamped: Last rehearsal. Inside lay a ticket to the balcony of their theatre, dated today, with the seat marked with the number from her card. Someone on the other side took three soft steps, then knocked evenly three times, like a metronome. The porcelain knob warmed and twitched, as if someone had touched it from the inside. - 'Leno, if you come in, don't tell...' - rang out at his ear, and the lock began to turn slowly.