The waterfront smelled of wet brick and heated copper after the rain. The tram, which usually rattled under the windows, today rolled more gently, as if the city wanted to give Zosia Chmura's studio a moment's peace. The signboard above the door - thin italics carved into the metal: "Clockmaker" - glistened in the grey water that slid down the glass. Lena stood on a stool and cleaned the glass in the display cabinets. She liked it, even though no one forced her to do it. Tick-tock, tick-tock - the sounds overlapped, forming a chorus in which she could distinguish the voice of each watch. The one in the green envelope wheezed like a breathless dog. The old Fukuyama pocket watch, tiny and stubborn, clicked evenly like a school journalist recording grades. And on the wall, under a cast-iron shelf, hung a stocky regulator that always slowed down after twelve o'clock, as if it were going for a nap of its own. Lena was fourteen years old and had her heart set at four seconds. That's what she thought, ever since she discovered that when she holds her breath, the world stands still. Not forever, not without limits. For four heartbeats, with pennies. She tried once to make it to five. She woke up on the floor, with lips like ice, and a promise made to herself: no bravado. She even wrote rules in her notebook so she wouldn't be tempted. 1) Not at school. 2) Never when someone is watching. 3) Not for just anything. Nevertheless, she helped herself sometimes here, in the studio, where no one could see her, because Grandma Zosia would go down to the basement to get the springs, and customers came in rarely and not everyone was patient. All she had to do was take a breath and let the dust hang in the air like a bunch of goldfish, and the tiny screws stopped rolling around on the tabletop. Once she caught an entire mug of coffee in the air before it had time to break - and that was the strangest thing: the heat was still moving through the liquid like a forgotten melody, even though everything around was already silent. This morning was ordinary. The air was lightly electrified from the humidity and the wires that ran over the street under the sky like black lines in a checkered notebook. Lena was winding the cloth around her fingers when the bell above the door rang. A courier stood in the threshold, wearing a jacket sprinkled with a fine drizzle. He handed over a parcel wrapped in brown paper and covered in a dense grid of stamps. - To Mrs Sophie Chmura,' he said, checking something on his phone. - A signature? - 'Grandma will be here soon,' Lena replied, but the courier was already turning back, as if chased by another address, another clock. He left the package in her hands, heavy, with an unexpected soft sound inside, as if someone had closed the direction of the wind inside. There was no sender. Only the calligraphic: "Clockworks. For your own hands." Lena placed the package on the countertop. The material of the paper trembled under her fingers. Whenever something bothered her, she always did the same thing: she closed her eyelids and counted to four. It calmed things down. This time the counting was mixed with curiosity, which played in her chest like a rough double bass. She cut the paper open with a knife. Underneath was a wooden case, smooth, dark brown, with scratches like river maps. The lid opened reluctantly, revealing a brass-framed pocket watch. It was not beautiful like the new models. It had scratches like battle stories, and the hands were as thin as patience in a maths class. Instead of a glass window - a polished amber, inside of which microscopic bubbles glittered, as if a night storm had closed in. The clock was ticking, but not like the others. She could hear it immediately. Instead of an even beat, it had a rhythm of its own: two quick beats, a pause, one long beat. In the background, something else. A quiet, almost undetectable tremor that was not a sound, more like an impression on the skin. Lena put her watch to her ear. The air took on the taste of birch sap and metal. - 'Don't move, Lena,' Grandma Zosia spoke up, leaning out of the back room. Her forehead was caked with dust from her work, her eyes shone with open vigilance. - 'I don't know this one. Let me see. Lena moved her hand away, but the amber window seemed to catch her eye. Before she could place her watch on the soft cloth, an unexpected spasm of silence swept through the room. In an instant, all the clocks held their breath. The hands stopped, some at half a millimetre, like dancers standing on tiptoe. - What is it... - Grandma moved to the wall, ready to touch the regulator. Then a huge, viscous panic rumbled. The clockmaker always said that time only argues with those who try to catch up with it. And here time just stopped, as if someone had pulled the brake. Lena wasn't thinking. She drew in a deep breath until her ribs hurt, and let four seconds do their thing. She hoped it was for a moment, that it was only in the studio, that it could be fixed. In a single silence the dust hung back, the drops on the glass stopped streaming, and even the light, so it always seemed to her, became denser. The silence was different from usual. It had an edge. It made her flush. Instead of a smooth inhalation, she felt a foreign weight in her lungs. All the ticking had drifted away, except for one: amber. It was still alive, at a pace no watchmaker had set. The bell above the door faded and froze in a half twitch. The door swung open, staying in a position that statecraft hated. On the threshold in a frame of half light, half shadow stood a boy. She did not know him. He had a windbreaker unbuttoned, from under which a grey sweatshirt protruded, and a skateboard under his arm. Drops of water stuck his eyelashes together in a fan. Was he older? Perhaps slightly. The strangest thing was the eyes - not the colour, not the shape, just the way they looked: not at her, but through the still world, as if at something translucent. That should have stopped him. He should have stood in the doorframe, like everyone else, like the tram outside the window and the bird hovering over the tracks. And yet he moved. He slid his foot into the middle of the studio, as if touching the surface of a lake, testing whether the ice would hold. He looked at the bell hanging in mid-motion, touched it with his fingertip. The metal did not ring; it only trembled, like a fish that had not yet decided whether to return to the water. Lena felt the beeps in her head - the points with which she was counting down her own limit. One. Two. Three. Agreed, she thought, panicking silently: now I should let the air out. But curiosity held her tighter than reason. The boy had removed his hood. His hair was dark and stuck to his temples. With his hand he reached straight for the amber watch, without hesitation. He did not look at his grandmother, who stood motionless by the regulator with her hand outstretched - in that strange, borrowed-from-silence pose. He was looking at Lena. And there was something disconcertingly familiar in those eyes, like the echo of his own footsteps in an empty corridor. - 'Take a breath as I speak,' he said, and his voice penetrated the silence, though it shouldn't have. He spoke normally, a little huskily, like someone who had been debating with someone in the wind for too long. - Not before. Lena almost gasped for air in surprise. No one had ever heard her in this stratagem, no one could meet her between seconds. No one but him. - Who are you? - she threw out in a whisper that wasn't a whisper at all, because whispering didn't work here. It made no sense. Her cheeks were beginning to burn, her lungs were burning with a soft fire. - 'Iwo,' he replied shortly. - 'Take it easy. You have four. It's different with me. I can manage. He reached for the watch without touching her hand. The metal purred with something that resembled thunder beneath his fingers. Outside the window, the sparkle that had hitherto hung like a golden bean on a tram line receded a millimetre. Lena was pricked all the way behind the bridge. She took a step back, but the stool she was standing on did not react to this decision of the world. - Why did you bring this? - She asked, and the question, like everything here, was thicker and heavier. - Me? - Iwo smiled where the corners at his mouth barely twitched. - It has come to you. It holds you inside. Just like mine did to me. - I don't understand. - Eh - he made a short 'eh' in which the whole of November fit. - You understand more than you think you do. You already know that you are not alone here. Four. The numbers in Lena's head flashed red. Tension spilled over her muscles, helplessness like a chill under her shirt. She should breathe. A reflex told her to part her lips. Iwo nodded, as if reading her thoughts, and touched the amber with his thumb. Inside the watch, between the bubbles of trapped light, something dawned strangely, dully, like the moon on the surface of a lake. - 'Now,' he said. - 'But before you get the sound back, listen. When the exhalation returns, something else will return. The dust particles around them trembled, like strands of feathers in a gust of almost wind. Outside the door, the tram stood across the flash, Lena's face reflected in its window - upturned, younger by a fraction of a heartbeat. The bell above the door vibrated for the first time, as if it was about to make a sound at last. Grandmother Zosia - motionless until now - raised her eyes in an instant as if she were looking straight at them. Iwo lifted the lid of his watch a millimetre, and the seconds hand took an obscenely long step backwards. With lungs full of fire and a head full of questions, Lena felt that here was the beginning of something that could not be cleaned with a cloth or hidden under glass. She tightened her fingers around the wheel of the case, and Iwo lifted his gaze as if he had noticed something over her shoulder. A pattern began to be drawn on the glass from the street - thin lines of steam formed a shape she had once only seen in a star atlas. Someone from outside, unseen, slowly moved a finger across the cold glass, drawing her name. - 'Leno,' Iwo spoke up, almost silently. - 'Everyone is about to hear the city really ticking. In the same second, somewhere high up on the tram line, a spark burst into two, like a razor-cut blob, and each went off in a different direction.