In Toruń, autumn smelled of gingerbread, wet bricks and the first chill from the Vistula. Lena walked along the ramparts, carrying a rucksack heavier than usual, as if, in addition to her books, she had also packed a few too grown-up thoughts in there. The planetarium had already closed for the night, and the windows reflected the moon stretched over the city - incomplete, as if someone had bitten it from the side of Philadelphia Boulevard. After Grandma Sophie's funeral, the silence around was stretched like an elastic bandage: seemingly everything held together, yet every movement hurt. The box she was given was carefully polished, made of light wood. It had a cleverly hidden clasp, which Lena found with her fingers without looking, as if the memory of the hand knew more than the head. Inside lay a small brass disc with moving rings, a thin leather lanyard and several envelopes tied with a faded ribbon. The disc was delicately etched with constellations and words in Latin: "Tempus non dormit". Lena liked Latin for the sound, not the rules. The sound rolled in a whisper, as if the metal was reciting something that had long since ceased to be a prayer. She opened the first envelope. The writing was slanted, vivid, too sure to belong to someone frightened. "Leno," began Uncle Marek, the one always spoken of in a half-hearted way, "if you are reading this, it means that Zosia has decided that you have matured. There is a place in Toruń where time is looser than elsewhere. I call it the junction by the Vistula. I was looking for it when I disappeared. I am still looking for it. The puck with the compartments is not an ornament. It's a key." Further along went diagrams, arrows and small annotations in the margins: "set north star", "date: 18 October" and: "The Leaning Tower, fifth brick from the bottom, third from the corner - warm bricks remember". Lena swallowed her saliva, feeling her throat constrict at once. Uncle Marek was the thread in the family that no one ever finished because the thread either snapped or tangled into a knot at the slightest mention. She put the puck in her jumper pocket, slipped the envelopes back into the box and then took out her phone. - Kaj? - she said as soon as she heard the click so characteristic of declined invitations to sensible things. - I need your brain and your winter hat. - In that order? - rang out the laughter on the other side. - What has happened? - Grandma left me... something. And letters from Uncle Mark. I want to check it out today. Under the Leaning Tower. Will you come with me? A brief pause, as if Kajetan - Kay to everyone but his mum - was just flipping the mind map over. - Sure. Fifteen minutes? He came in fifteen minutes and two seconds, with his cap pulled over his ears, wearing fingerless gloves, with a rucksack from which a handy screwdriver protruded. He always carried something with him that could be opened, dismantled or repaired, as if the world consisted of things waiting for a second chance. - 'This is a nocturnal,' he said after a brief inspection of the brass disc. - The kind of medieval clock that tells you what time it is, if you can read the stars. But this one... this one has something strange. - He turned the instrument, pointed out an extra ring with engravings of the months and one with tiny graduations that didn't match any sky atlas they knew. - It was as if someone had converted it into a ... passage map. You know, the kind of device for navigating, but not over water, but over... - he paused, as Lena raised an eyebrow whose tongue asked: over what? - What you can't draw on a normal map - she finished for him. - Come on. I'll show you the letter. They read it, standing under a street lamp on the corner, with steam flying from their mouths, as if they were saying something that immediately turns into a cloud and falls to the pavement. Kaj listened, and his eyes didn't so much grow bigger as become like a mirror in which the movement of the hands was reflected, even though the nearest clock hadn't had hands for years. - 'If it's a knot, it could be a draught,' he muttered. - You know, like in a rope when someone on the other side jerks hard. It can pull you in or let you out. - Or untie what we should have untied a long time ago,' Lena said, and only then did she feel how much she wanted to hear Uncle Mark's laughter, the one with the cough at the end. The Leaning Tower was as dark as a switched-off screen, but its line still stabbed into the sky at the wrong angle, like a typo in a sentence written by an architect. The wall was cold and rough. Lena counted the bricks from the corner, stooped down, brushed away specks of sand from the grout fifth from the bottom with her finger. Where the letter told her to look, there was a sort of too-even polishing mark, as if someone had touched the place for years. - Ready? - She asked, and Kaj nodded. - This is what we set up. According to the note, Marek had the rings aligned: the month - October; the date - the eighteenth; the 'Polaris' pointer to match the tiny notch in the hour scale. Lena turned first one, then the other, and the metal responded with a quiet, almost breathy sound that was no match for objects. Rather, to living things. As the night sky stretched between the rooftops, she and Kaj pressed their nostrils to the air like animals: there was something else in it besides cold and damp. A thin, invisible note of scent, reminiscent of old parchments, and behind it - something that bit at the throat like the smoke of a tallow candle. - Can you hear it? - Kaj asked. - Like a... buzzing? Not from the car. From somewhere in the wall. Lena pressed the nocturne against the brick, exactly where her finger had left a warm mark. The metal suddenly became heavier, as if someone had poured water into it. The ring with the months itself moved a millimetre, then another; the pointer to "Polaris" stopped without a mistake. The world became harder and softer at the same time, like a sponge into which a needle is poked. The sounds of the city went grey - conversations fell silent, the distant laughter from under the café in the market square blurred, and other sounds took their place: wooden wheels on cobblestones, the clack of something metal, the quick step of heavy boots. The brick under Lena's fingers was no longer just warm. It trembled. A thin line shone in the joints, like a luminous ooze dragged with a brush. Kaj moved his hand away, but did not retreat, but stood closer. - 'Lena, this puck is doing something it has no right to do,' he said very quietly, as if his voice could make it run more or break it. - If we let go now, it will snap and there will be no second attempt. If we don't let go... - he didn't finish, but they both knew what hung between them and the wall anyway: the additions about not coming back after the same amount of time as you came in. Lena felt as if a steel thread was pulling her deeper into a painting that no one had painted. She held the ring tightly, but it now had a will of its own within it. A date flashed between the rings. Not their present one. "18 X 2003" - The day Uncle Marek stopped answering the phone. He stopped being a picture in an album and started being a lack. At the nape of Lena's neck, a different wind lifted the short hair. It wasn't there before; it smelled of horse sweat and wet wood. The wall trembled, as if someone had pushed it from the inside with an elbow. One of the bricks moved back slightly. A line of light along the joint stretched into a thin rectangle that suddenly took on depth - not like a door opening, more like an eye looking around. A shadow swept across the gap, followed by something Lena at first took to be smoke. But smoke doesn't have fingers. It was fingers, dirty, with a chafed nail, that hovered for a moment on the edge of a shifting brick, as if someone on that side was catching their balance. - Can you hear me? - the voice that came from the centre of the wall was unlike anything a loudspeaker could emit. It was not loud, yet penetrating, right down to the bone. "Lena?" Kaj reflexively placed a hand on her shoulder, firmly. - It sounded like... - I know," she whispered. Her heart beat in a half-collimated rhythm: once fast, once slower, as if tuning to someone else's metre. In her nostrils was the smell of old smoke and horses, in her eyes a wet gleam from a light that didn't match the street they knew. - If I withdraw my hand, it all shuts down. - If you don't withdraw it, it will open wider,' Kaj replied. There was no compulsion in his voice, just fact. - Decide. The brass disc in her hands twitched again and seemed to pull. The rectangle of light widened. A section of the street flashed in the centre: not cobblestones, but stones larger and uneven, someone's coat falling into the frame, a shout from afar, not about them, but as if behind them. On the other side, in a burst of time, something - someone - moved violently, as if also having just realised that this moment would not come a second time. - Lena! - This time she heard her name clearly, with a rasp of consonants, as if the speaker's lips were chapped. - Don't touch... The word broke off, like a severed string. The brick twitched dangerously; the wall drew in air and let it out with a hiss. All around them, all the small, deferred noises began to return, one by one, but as if they wanted to get in front of something: the squawk of a seagull, distant horns, footsteps somewhere far away, then close by. A shadow of some movement broke into the light. The fingers on that side darted towards the edge again, gripped it more securely. Someone on the other side pushed with all their weight, and on their side every atom of air strained, waiting for a decision. Lena found Kaj's gaze. There was night in his pupils and something else - a reflection of light that could not exist in this age. She tightened her fingers on the brass disc. And then, before she had time to say anything more, the brick under her hand gave way and someone's hand slid out of the gaping hole, rough, very human, searching....