The City of Sculpted Winds lay on the edge of a cliff, where the sea became silver and the night a flake of glass. Tenements, bound together like ivy, climbed the slopes, supporting the sky with copper roofs. Above it all was the tower of the astrolabe, girded by a ring of star signs that, on a clear night, could shine like real constellations. Lena Gromnicka climbed into Mistress Mira's studio every day, just below the clock mechanism. The smell of ink and dry parchment was like a compass for her; it guided her confidently, even when the stairs creaked like old wings. She was a cartographer's apprentice - young, but with an assured eye and a hand that could tame the chaos of the landscape. She was seventeen, a self-sharpened nib and a gift that no textbooks described: when she looked at maps, she heard them. Lines sang the stretched, flat notes of rivers, points were silent with the polyphony of stars, and crossroads blinked with short, hard knocks. On this evening, everything sounded different. The song of the city plan was jagged, as if someone had ripped it in half and sewn it back together with threads of ice. - 'Late tonight,' muttered Mistress Mira, not taking her eyes off the instrument box. - The wind is turning. Sew the map more carefully than usual. Lena placed her rucksack on the table and pulled out the roll of parchment she had found that morning in her mother's box. The box, which no ordinary keys could open, had only surrendered to the meteorite key Lena wore on a string under her shirt. The key, heavy and cold, suddenly became warm, and the lid slid out by itself, as if it had been waiting to be touched for years. - 'This is not our handwriting,' Mira remarked as Lena unrolled the parchment. On the surface, smooth as frozen water, was a wind rose whose petals were arranged with tiny stars. Each line of the grid was as delicate as a hair. - Where did this come from? - From Mum's box,' Lena replied quietly, as if uttering an incantation. - It was locked, until now. In silence, they both watched as the ink of parchment trembled under their breath. The wind rose moved - not like a drawing, but like something alive dragging itself along after a long sleep. The petals expanded, and the directions north, south, east and west scattered into smaller ones that escaped definition. In the centre appeared a sign that Lena did not know: a star with thirteen arms. - 'It seems to be a city, but not as we know it,' Mira whispered cautiously. - 'See,' she pointed with her pen, 'Ingredients Street branches off where she never dared. And here, on the Travelling Arcade, stands something that looks like a door in the wall. A door without a wall. A door without a wall. The barely graspable sound of the words trembled in Lena's ears, like a chord that didn't know whether to end in major or minor. Ivo rushed into the studio, with mud on his shoes and hair that lived a life of its own under his cap. Ivo was a year older than Lena and had a heart that opened as easily as locks. To him, every mechanism was a story; every cogwheel tooth a comma, every spring a shout. - 'The clock is wrong,' he fired instead of a greeting. - The hands went back half an hour. I heard it. The sound was... - he paused, searching for the word. - As if the metal was trying to grunt. - 'Metal doesn't grunt,' replied Mira with a smile. - Sit down and rinse your eyes in the tea. When it backs up, it means it needs to be reminded where the front is. As much as she wanted to snort with laughter, Lena couldn't take her eyes off the map. Now she could see more. The street that wasn't there stretched from the Light House all the way to the shadow of the tower, and the passage on the Travelling Arcade pulsed like a heart under the skin of parchment. As she touched her finger to the edge, the meteorite key under her shirt trembled and heated up so that it almost burned her. - What is it doing? - Ivo was already standing beside her, too close as usual, with a curiosity that smelled of tar and lavender from his uncle's workshop. - Oh, damn... - he bit his tongue, glancing at Mira. - Excuse me. This is... beautiful. - And dangerous,' Mira added dryly. - Don't move. We don't yet know where it came from or what it's for. After sunset, the wind did indeed turn. Soft skylights emerged from the mist over the sea, as if someone had sprinkled a handful of sparks on the water. The city seemed lighter, less sure of its own weight. As the clock struck nine times, Lena stood up. - I'll go to the Arcades,' she said before she had time to think about it. The words flowed out of her like a river that had finally found the right channel. - I need to see that door. Mira captured her with a gaze in which there was both the mud of the earth and the glaze of the stars. - Don't go alone,' she said after a while. - And take this. - She handed Lena a small lantern made of blue glass. - It only shines in places where it shouldn't. It will come in handy. - I'm coming with you,' Ivo announced, as if the decision had been made all along. - And don't say no. The Travelling Arcade at this hour was almost empty. Strings of drying herbs beneath the ceiling smelled quietly, and stalls slept under sheets like piled-up sand dunes. Models of aircraft dangled from the ceiling, their propellers as motionless as wings frozen in flight. Lena lit a blue lantern. The light was out of the ordinary - it didn't dispel the gloom, but marked thin lines in the air, like writing that someone had forgotten to complete. - Where? - Ivo whispered, as if someone might be eavesdropping on them. - This map showed here... Lena felt the key tremble again against her heart. Warmth moved under her skin like a wave. She stopped at a wall of white sandstone, on which there was nothing but delicate roses and spiderwebs in the cracks. Yet the lantern flashed - the light focused as if someone had put a comma there. And they saw an outline: a doorframe that cast no shadow, a star-shaped door handle and a vertical crack, barely visible, like a scar from a strong word. - It's not there - Ivo raised his hand and withdrew it in mid-motion. - And there it is. - Like everything that doesn't want to be found - Lena replied, more to herself than to him. She took out the key. Under the light of the lantern, the number of tiny inclusions in its surface multiplied, arranging themselves into a cipher she couldn't read. She directed it at the slot. It fitted - all too well, as if someone had cast the key according to the shadows in the wall. A clock chimed over the city. Once. Second. A third. And on and on, with the indifferent persistence of a mechanism that never made a mistake. And yet, at the eleventh strike, the air vibrated as if someone had stretched invisible strings. The twelfth sound developed into a long ribbon, in which Lena heard something that might have been a whisper. Then the space gained depth, as if the city had lost its own perspective for a moment. The clock struck the thirteenth time. No one knew where the sound came from. Passers-by stopped with their mouths open, the mist jumped up like a panicked fish. In the tower, where Mira was putting her hands into the toothy heart of the city, something must have creaked. Lena felt the key in her hand grow heavier, as if taking a breath. - Can you hear it? - Ivo was already speaking in just a breath. She heard it. Not just the metal that suddenly decided to grunt, as Ivo would put it. She heard the map changing its tune. She heard the Arcades moving a hair's breadth away, so little that only the lantern gave it away, casting a shadow where there never was one. And she heard her name, dragged through a slender crack, whispered like a sentence whose ending was yet to fall. - Lena. Not a question. Not a cry. A statement. As if someone on the other side was checking that the sound of her name matched the key she was holding. - Who's there? - she growled more reflexively than boldly. - Show yourself. The silence that came was heavy with vibrations and light with potentials. She rubbed her thumb over the star-spangled door. Cold. Real enough to leave a mark on her skin like snow. - Lena, we don't have to... - Ivo hesitated, which was unlike him. - We can go back for Mira. - She sent us for the light,' she reminded him, but she knew that wasn't true. Mira had sent them for caution, not light. However, the lantern was now shining as if it had something to say. Lena slid the key in. The lock did not squeak. Rather, it breathed, as if it had not had time to do so until now. Something under the stone moved with a deafening tic-tac-toe that no clock made. As she turned the key, the white veins in the sandstone began to glow brighter, merging into shapes that resembled constellations. First the familiar ones: Swan, Orion, Carriage. Then others that no one with sane eyes would draw in the sky: Pinwheel, Fish on the Rise, Thirteen Feathers. - Look - Ivo touched Lena's shoulder and froze. Lines shimmered in the glassy smooth surface that pretended to be a wall, as if on parchment. It was not a mirror. It was a map. Moving and full of light. In it they could see the Avenue of the Travellers from above, the drops of mist becoming balls of glass lanterns, the silhouettes of passers-by - magnified and flattened, as if each was a sound in the score of the city. In the centre of the drawing - the two of them: a girl with black hair and a boy with a cap pulled over as if to protect him from something more than rain. When the sound of the thirteenth bell finally dissolved into stone, the door sighed. The gap widened to the thickness of a hand, then two, then... A chill rushed into their nostrils, where they smelled suspiciously of ink, as if the entire space on the other side had been written, not built. - No turning back, eh? - Ivo tried to joke, but his voice dropped to the ground and rolled into the darkness like a button. Lena took half a step. No bricks, no hinges. Just darkness, in which she could hear soft hisses, like slender feathers mussing parchment. And that whisper, close again: - Finally. Lena's heart dipped a sound she didn't know. The key fell out of her hand and did not fall, but hovered in the air, turning slowly. The lantern trembled, as if its wings had grown. For a second, Lena was sure she saw something familiar on the other side, completely out of place - her mother's slanted handwriting, outlined with a trembling nib across the dark paper. The letters glittered like fish scales. Then, at the end of the passage, in the depths where there should have been nothing but nothing, there was a flicker of movement. Like a silhouette, what consists of dust and light. A shape not tall, yet upright with such certainty that the whole city, seemingly, moved discreetly away, making room for it. Lena tightened her fingers on the edge of the light. And this someone - whatever it was - raised his hand, outlined with it in the air the shape of a star with thirteen arms and slowly....