In Silver Bank, a town smelling of salt and freshly baked croissants, the lighthouse towered over the harbour like a white crayon stuck in the sky. Every day at seven o'clock in the morning, the seagulls held a noisy meeting above it and the boats returned from fishing with tendrils of foam on their beaks. This is where Lena lived - eleven years old, red hair tied up with a black cat rubber band and pockets always full of little things: buttons, strings and... bits of time. No, this is not a joke. Lena collected time in the strangest ways, although she herself had no idea she was doing it until recently. It started the day her grandmother gave her a metronome. A wooden one, with a chipped horn and a silver pointer that moved in an even tick-tock, like the calming breaths of a lantern. "It will take you further than you think," - Grandma said, slipping the metronome into Lena's hands. "But remember that further doesn't always mean faster." In the evening, Lena set the metronome on the windowsill. Outside the window, the mast ropes wobbled and she could hear the gutters leaking after a short rain shower. She set the silver pointer in the middle and flicked it with her finger. Tick. Yes. Tick. Yes. She felt something like a tingling sensation in her fingers every time the tic went into her ear. She took a deep breath, counted aloud to eleven and... the world paused. This was not the silence she knew. It was something denser, as soft as cotton wool that you can spread with your fingers. The drop of water that fell from the tap hovered just above the sink like a glass bead. The seagulls froze in mid-air with their wings outstretched. Even the words whispered by the wind came back to him as if ashamed. Lena could move, breathe, touch a drop (it was as cold as ice), and the world around her stood still for eleven long, wonderfully stretched seconds. Then it returned to its normal pace, as if someone had pressed the PLAY button. The next day, Lena came running to school with a metronome in her backpack and a great, disobedient joy that was still out of control. She told only one person - Maks. Maks lived a floor down, rode a skateboard and knew all the shortcuts between the harbour and the ice cream parlour. He also had something in his eye that said: "I see more than I say". "Let me see." - he said as soon as they found a spare room on the third floor, full of maps, plastic globes and paper models of planetary orbits. Lena pushed the pointer of the metronome. Tick. Yes. Tick. Yes. She took a breath, counted slowly to eleven. The world disappeared in a soft pause. The paper aeroplane that Maks had just released froze against the ceiling. Maks touched it carefully, as if he was afraid he would break something. The plane acted as if it was suspended by an invisible thread. "Oh my," he whispered. "What a chad." "Only for eleven seconds," - Lena replied, watching as the drop of ink on his finger refused to fall. "I checked. And only three times a day. Then I get a headache." So they made it a rule. Rule one: no stops on stairs. Rule two: no stops at pedestrian crossings. Rule three: no stops for fun when someone is holding something very hot or very heavy. Rule four: we don't tell anyone - except the two of them. They didn't have to wait long to try. On Friday, the whole school was going to the auditorium to meet Mrs Dabrowska, a doctor of physics from the planetarium. Ms Dabrowska wore green glasses, talked about the stars as if they were her cousins, and brought a moving exhibition: models of comets, a meteorite you could touch, and a huge screen with a projection of the night sky. The auditorium smelled of fresh paint and wet jackets. Students whispered, giggled and shifted in their chairs, creaking like old ships. Above the stage ticked a large clock that liked to be five minutes late. On this day, however, the hands held up bravely. Lena sat down next to Maks; the metronome - wrapped in a rag bag - was in her rucksack, which she placed under her feet. When the aurora borealis flashed on the screen, Lena felt warm around her knees, as if a small heater had warmed up in her rucksack. The metronome trembled. Before she could bend down, the hand of the big clock above the stage stopped with a quiet click, and the whole world did what she could already recognise without missing a beat - it hovered for eleven seconds. But this time it was different. Something new cut through the silence like milk: tapping... tapping... regular footsteps. Lena raised her head. A boy in a red hooded sweatshirt was moving between the frozen students. He had a blue backpack with white lightning bolts and his hands in his pockets. He was grinding the floor with his shoes like someone coming back from a long run and not about to explain himself. As he walked past, he looked straight at Lena. He wasn't surprised. He smiled the way people smile when they recognise another human being on the same rare frequency. He bent down, slipped something into the side pocket of her backpack and, without looking back, disappeared backstage. At the same moment, the pause ended. The clock rushed again, someone sneezed, Ms Dabrowska applauded: "And now look at the milky way!" Lena felt her heart pounding in her throat. She bent down and took out a piece of paper. The writing was in capital letters, simple and sure: "Flow. 19:07 Railway Bridge. Come with who you want." "Someone wrote to you?" - whispered Maks, nudging her with his elbow. Lena handed him a piece of paper. "I saw him. He was walking when everyone was standing." "So you're not alone." Maks smiled, but something that resembled a shadow also flashed in his eyes. "Shall we go?" "Together." - Lena replied. As the sun began to sit hard over the water, Lena and Maks stood at the exit to the Railway Bridge. Up close, the bridge looked like the metal skeleton of a whale that had come ashore and fallen asleep between the riverbanks. The rails gleamed like freshly polished silver spoons, and the lanterns on either side of the quay lit up one by one, as if someone had snapped their fingers in an even rhythm. Maks wore a bicycle helmet on his head ("Just in case," he explained) and slid a torch over his forehead. Lena hid the metronome in the inside pocket of her jacket. The wind smelled of damp steel and needles from the park across the river. "Why 19:07?" - she asked, looking at her watch. "Maybe something happens when twelve gives way to thirteen and the sum of the digits changes." Maks shrugged his shoulders. "Or it's a regular hour, because that's when the planetarium programme ends and the boy manages to arrive." "Flow!" - repeated Lena, savouring the word. It sounded like something watery, but not quite wet. What do you call something that moves other than a river and is not a wind? They set their feet on the metal bars of the bridge. Here the sound changed to something sharper, springing. Each step gave them a clink! into their ankles. It was approaching 7:07 p.m., and something small, almost imperceptible, was happening to the water: the waves had stopped gouging evenly. It was as if someone had dragged an invisible finger across the surface, creating a narrow, straight crack along which the drops moved a little faster. "Can you feel it?" - Asked Maks, "The air like before a storm." Lena nodded. She touched the metronome in her pocket. It was warm, as if someone had just held it. The pointer, although the metronome was not shot, trembled slightly. Tick... yes... tick... yes... But something about the tick-tock was out of tune. The rhythm was gently, almost kindly, receding. On the horizon, a train rumbled by. Far away, above the harbour, great cranes blinked their red lights like sleepy eyelids. 19:06 and forty-five seconds. 19:06 and fifty-seven. 19:07. The world did not stop, not immediately. First the light from the lighthouse spilled out, as if someone had stretched it with their hand into a longer strip. Then the air trembled - not like from a truck driving over the spans, but like the string of a guitar that had not been touched, but still decided to respond. Lena held her breath, but did not push the metronome. Something was already happening anyway. Something bigger than her eleven seconds. From the space between the spans came a sound she had never heard before: a soft whisper, as if a lot of people were pulling back a curtain of silk at once. A thin streak of light appeared in the middle of the bridge. At first it was as pale as milky breath, then it grew clearer, drawing a line across the air that could not be touched, but which acted on the skin like a cool draught. "Can you see it?" - Maks asked, leaning forward a little. "I see it," - replied Lena, and the metronome in her pocket stopped trembling and suddenly... clicked. The pointer shifted on its own, as if someone from outside had grabbed it gently and moved it. The streak in the middle of the bridge swung open like a zip. A few grains of sand fell out from inside - they didn't fall immediately, they hovered, turning lazily, shining with a light that was nowhere to be seen. Someone on the other side of the bright crack took a step. The soft thump of a sole against the truss could be heard, though no one was standing in front of them. "Lena. Maks." The voice was calm, young, unhurried. He knew their names. Maks squeezed Lena's sleeve. "We're not alone." - he whispered, although they both already knew it. First the hand in the red sleeve slipped out of the bright crack, then the tip of a shoe. The metronome in Lena's pocket rang out clearly, as if in a dream that one suddenly remembers until the end. Instead of the usual tick-tock she heard: eleven... ten... nine....