In Birchwood on the Ore, the clocks were a minute late, as if the town itself was trying to extend the day. Lena lived above her father's clockmaker's workshop, in an old building with a celadon staircase and balustrades slicked by generations of hands. In the evenings, when her father stripped the time down to its springs and wheels, the flat smelled of grease and coffee. And Lena heard something else: a quiet, insistent tick-tock that didn't belong to any of the clocks. That September afternoon, the wind carried the chill and smell of wet leaves from the river. Bednary Street, where the antique shop, the bakery and the town library were, looked like an illustration from a history book. The library had a zinc roof, glass doors and a stained glass window depicting a bird folding its wings into the shape of letters. Lena had been looking at this bird for a long time. It had an eye made of round glass that seemed to blink in certain light. That day, Lena carried a book under her arm, bound in a cloth cover. It was not from the library. It was from Lucia's grandmother's box, which her father had only opened after the move. On the spine in gold letters was written: \´Shadow Atlas of Birchwood´. It opened only on some of the pages, keeping the rest firmly closed. In front of the entrance to the library stood Oskar, a classmate. He wore a red hoodie, had a rucksack wrapped in pins and had this strange ability to appear in places where he shouldn't be. \"Here again?" he asked, peeling himself away from the railing. \"Not again, but finally," - Lena replied. - "I want to ask Sophie about this atlas. Something is wrong with it." \"There is something wrong with every one of your books." - muttered Oskar, but he followed her inside. The interior of the library was as quiet as ever, but not the usual schoolyard quiet, just an air full of breathing pages. Mrs Sophie, the librarian with her hair piled up in a high bun, was sliding a reader's card across the countertop like a skilled illusionist. A large clock with a pendulum was ticking on the wall. It had a metal dial and black enamel numerals. \"Good morning, Leno!" - said Mrs Sophie without surprise, as if she had a list of her guests' thoughts. - "And that redhead is probably Oskar." \"Good morning." - muttered Oskar, unmasked. \"I have a book." - Lena started and slipped it over to him, "The Birchwood Shadow Atlas." - "but it ... won't open all the way." Mrs Sophie put her hand on the cover. At first gently, as if on a child's shoulder, then more firmly, as if she were examining the pulse. The clocks in the room moved at the same second. The pendulums stretched to one side, stopped, came back. \"The Birchwood canvas." - she said quietly. - "Good for caches. Where did you get it?" \"From Grandma Lucia's box." Mrs Sophie lifted her gaze. Something in her face softened and her eyes, usually cool as porcelain, grew warm. \"Lucia..." - she repeated. - "She once brought a map here, which never coincided with reality. The streets changed places, the river flowed the other way. Some say that this city remembers itself differently than we do." \"What does that mean?" - Oskar slipped his hands into his pockets. - "That if I go to school tomorrow, she won't be there?" \"It's a pity he's only moving her to other dimensions." - muttered a voice from a chair by the window. It was Hania, the quiet girl from the first bench. She stood up, slipping her headphones off her ears. - "Yesterday I saw the bird from the stained glass window move its wing." Lena felt a shiver go through the muscles in her neck. Since she'd moved here, more things had blinked, moved out of the corner of her eye or changed shape slightly when she wasn't looking. At first she blamed it on stress. Now she wasn't sure. \ÒCome after closingÓ. - Ms Sophie said suddenly. - "If your atlas stubbornly keeps its guard up, there is a place where they can convince the reluctant." \"After closing?" - Oskar until he stopped pretending he didn't care. - "Really?" \"Seriously?" - nodded Sophie. - "Just don't touch anything without asking. This is where certain things touch back.\n" As the sun went down and the shop windows became black screens reflecting the lanterns, Lena and Oskar returned outside the library. The door was closed, but a stained-glass bird had its eye lit up. Oskar shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his sweatshirt, as if that would keep him from getting into the trouble he himself was attracting. The door opened silently. Mrs Sophie was waiting in the semi-darkness of the reading room, holding a candle. As they entered, she closed it behind them, and her movement made the air vibrate - like when someone covers a window during a draught. The clocks in the room stood simultaneously, like soldiers at attention. \"Where is this place?" - asked Lena, feeling the sound of her own voice reverberate differently off the walls. \"Downstairs." - replied Mrs Sophie and led them behind the counter, through a narrow doorway that not even Oskar had noticed during the day. The staircase descended in a spiral, there were recesses in the wall with card catalogues. At the end of the corridor hung a clock with no hands, just shadows that wandered across the dial as if telling their own time. \"The Underground Reading Room," - said Mrs Sophie, stopping in front of an oak door worn down like the most frequently touched pages of a book. - "A place for texts that don't fit in during the day." \"Sounds ... illogical." - muttered Oskar, but his eyes were wide open. \"That's enough." - admonished him, Lena feeling a sudden seriousness. Atlas was warming her through the fabric of her bag, as if she was carrying a thermos flask by her side. The door gave way at the third press of the handle. Behind them was a room with tables on lion's feet and lamps with green shades. In the middle stood a large lectern on which lay a map of the city. Not an ordinary one - its streets, bridges and parks moved as if the view was from a bird's eye view, and a bird was blowing against the wind. The River Ore rippled, making tiny circles where it entered under the bridge. \ÒLay down the atlas,Ó - Ms Sophie said. - "And don't look at me, just listen to the city." Lena placed the "Atlas of the Shadows of Birchwood" on the desktop. The cover twitched, like a cat's fur under her hand. The candle flame lengthened and lit blue for a moment. \"I said 'Underworld'." - Mrs Sophie reminded in a whisper. - "They like it when you talk to them normally, but you have to start by saying hello." \"Good morning, Brzezino" - snapped out Lena, foolishly and sincerely. A sound that could not be named passed through the room. It was not a rustle or a crackle, or even a sigh. Rather, it was as if someone had turned a page of a very heavy book. The atlas opened. First by a centimetre, then by two. The pages resembled flaky pastry, with a light dusting of dust. There were no street names on the fold-out, only shadows - trees, chimneys, people. The shadows were stark, like at midday, but by candlelight. \"Amazing!" - whispered Oskar, leaning over the lectern. - "Look, it looks like our townhouse. I... look! Someone on the roof is waving." Lena reflexively looked at the map. Indeed, a slender shadow of a man was moving on the shade of their tenement. He waved his hand towards them and then slowly pointed to a spot on the map - a small, dark rectangle between the river and the library. The water tower. \"He's inviting." - Lena hazarded. \"He's inviting us for trouble." - corrected Oskar, but he didn't sound like he was going to refuse. At that moment the lamps went out. Not quite, but burning on the edges of the glass, like the end of a sentence without a full stop. The clocks on the walls began to move, each in a different direction, and the clueless clock at the entrance glowed with shadows, as if someone had rocked the night inside. \ÒQuietly,Ó - said Mrs Sophie, although her voice was half a tone higher. - "Do you hear?" They heard too. A whisper that echoed neither of them. Not a word, not a sentence, just a repeated name, softly, as if to the ear, from each wall at once. \"Lena" - it sounded. Oskar moved his hand as if to shield it at once from the world that suddenly claimed her attention. - "If it's a joke, it's very well prepared." - he hissed. \"It's not a joke." - replied Ms Sophie. - "It's an answer. They sometimes speak. And sometimes they ask. The atlas doesn't show things for nothing. If he pointed out the water tower..." Lena felt the quiet tick-tock she'd been hearing for weeks accelerate, like a nervous step on a staircase. She took her grandmother's locket out of her pocket - a small oval casket of glass and brass, full of dust that reflected a small rainbow ray in the summer sun. At the moment, the locket was warm. Gentle, firm. \ÒLucia wore it at the entrance downstairs,Ó - Mrs Sophie said without being asked. - "Open it." Lena lifted the lid. Inside, instead of a photograph, was a pen. Not a bird's, but a metal one, a stylus, like one for writing with ink. The tip was bent, as if someone had struck it against a hard old board. Oskar whistled quietly. - `Don't tell me it's a key'. \"I won't say it's a key". - replied Sophie. - "I will say that there is a door in this building that only understands written things." As if in confirmation, the map on the desktop moved faster. The river shimmered, roads narrowed, widened, disappeared underground and returned, as if the city were repositioning itself on a long, stone elbow. \"The water tower has an entrance from the library." - Oskar sounded alternately horrified and delighted. \"It doesn't. Miewa." - corrected Ms Sophie. - 'When the north wind blows and when someone who can read the city asks. But we don't go outside. It's shorter here." She picked up the candle and walked over to a wall of shelves. One of the shelves was shallower than the others, and there was a plaque hanging against it: COLLECTED RIVER. Someone had erased the letters so that the text was lost like footprints in wet sand. \"Here!" - whispered Mrs Sophie and, without warning, slid the metal pen from the medallion into a narrow gap between the boards. The wood trembled. The air in the room suddenly became heavier, like in a tram when all the windows are closed. The bookcase moved away, revealing a low door. On their surface someone had carved a sentence: \`Where the sentence ends, the road begins'. Lena felt she had heard this sentence before. Her grandmother had whispered it when they were still lying on the balcony in July and counting satellites. - "This..." \"Yes." - confirmed Mrs Sophie. - "You two are better suited there than I am. Go, but come back before the shadow clock closes for the second time. You have the pen. You have an atlas. More than that is not necessary. And remember: don't say things you don't want them to become true. This is where words like to grow." Oskar swallowed his saliva. - "And that's it?" \"One more thing." - she added, as if remembering a trifle. - "If something asks for your name, give it to them. But be careful what you give in return." The door was heavy, but the pen in Lena's hand guided her like a stylus across chalky paper. The metal left a thin, glossy line on the wood. With each stroke, the wood became lighter, as if the pen was writing a passage rather than drawing. Beyond the threshold it was cooler. There was no smell of dust, just something like fresh air after a storm. The corridor led downwards, curving gently. The walls were of brick and something that wasn't brick, but a hard, dark plane in which the candle was reflected as if in a mirror. The reflections were barely shifted - as if these walls had thoughts of their own. \`If we turn around now and go back, no one will call us cowards'. - Oscar said. - "Well, almost no one." \"They've already heard my name." - replied Lena surprisingly calmly. - "I don't know if it's possible to turn away from that." They didn't manage to say anything else. At the end of the corridor something flashed. First like a shadow passing along the wall, then like a broken beam of light in the water. A door with iron rivets appeared. It had a rusty padlock and a round window, like in old ships. Behind the thick glass it was completely dark. \"I think that's it." - whispered Oskar. - "The water tower. From the inside. See that greenish tarnish? It's like on the tanks." Lena took out a pen. She lightly pressed the tip against the padlock. The metal trembled, cracked with thin veins, like ice when you put your foot on it. Something inside responded with a dragging, low sound. As if someone had woken up after a very long sleep and was trying to remember who they were. The clocks in the room above them moved at once, even though they weren't here. Lena felt it in her stomach. The padlock swung open on its own and fell to the floor without a sound. The pen in Lena's hand got so hot that she had to squeeze it faster to avoid dropping it. Behind the door something breathed. Briefly. Definitely. And then: \`Lena'. - this time not in the walls, not like an echo. Almost by ear. On the other side of the glass, something moved like water touched by a drop of ink. Lena looked over at Oskar. His eyes said: \`Don't do that'. Her hand - it didn't matter what the eyes said - reached for the circular handle, and the stained-glass bird above, though no one could see it now, folded its wings into a letter that no one had time to read. The handle was icy. When it moved, the air became heavier, as if the whole corridor had taken a deep breath. The door began to swing open, millimetre by millimetre, and a faint glow came from the darkness behind the glass - not the light of a candle, not a lamp, something cooler and deeper. Something that remembered water and feathers and this city before it had a name. Lena tightened her fingers on the pen one last time. On the other side of the door, just inside the unsealed crack, she could see....