At night, when the sirens of the factories quietened down, Mira returned to the studio above the former bindery. The city below her sounded like a closed shell, full of whispers and trains. A letter from her grandmother was waiting on the table, made of paper as thin as breath. It wrote only: "Drawer eleven. You've known the key forever." She tugged at a necklace with a small feather that she had once considered an ornament. The desk was oak, scratched with lines that looked like sketches of unfulfilled roads. The first drawer gave way reluctantly, the second purred, the third slammed shut on its own. The eleventh, touched with a feather key, sprang quietly open, as if it had been waiting for a long time. The cool smell of ozone, ink and violets after the rain came from inside. Mira leaned in and the wooden sides pulsed with soft light. Inside lay a map, but it represented nothing, only movement. Lines swirled against gravity, rivers flowed vertically and the banks reached the centre. Mira thought of a childhood meadow and for a second the panicles bloomed on the parchment. Then the image slid further away, showing an archipelago named "Where the touch does not reach". An as yet unheard melody floated over the waters, listened to by the digits themselves. Plaster sprinkled from the ceiling, forming the word "Hurry", quickly dispelled by a draught. The clock in the corner retracted its hands and fell silent, as if it was inappropriate for it to tick. The ink from the map flipped into the air, drawing the door, right where nothing hung. Someone on the other side whispered her name, as if two different hearts were speaking at once. "Miro" - it sounded warm and unfamiliar. Her grandmother's warning resounded in her memory: "Don't open it if you know everything". She knew almost nothing, so she started packing her pockets. She slipped a pencil, a magnifying glass and a thin thread that always returned to her hand. She added a compass pointing not north, but the nearest question, quivering like a wing. She wrote on a piece of paper: "If I come back late, don't close the window to the birds". It sounded like a joke, but her palm was already slightly sweaty. The doorknob painted itself with ink and the bulging droplet trembled like a heart in her throat. The door swung open to the thickness of a fingernail, letting out a chill that smelled of paper bark and night pine. Mira saw a bank of book spines and a sky wiped to a chalky shadow. Something rolled from under the threshold: a silver thimble engraved with the letters M.W., which she never wore. The thimble stopped by her shoe and stood on the edge like an alert beetle. "You only have one question for the entrance," a voice whispered. Mira took a breath to ask.