The wind carried the taste of salt and wet rust as Mr Richard's little boat glided over the foamy crests of the waves. On the horizon, like a seal stuck to the edge of the world, loomed an island with a lighthouse-a red spire with a black crown galore, a stubborn light on a sunless day. - 'A wild body of water, Ms Kalina,' muttered the fisherman, squinting his eyes. - Since the lighthouse went on automatic, nobody looks there. Why do you need it? Kalina slipped her fingers into the fabric of her blouse to warm her hands. She had been photographing places like this for years; the empty buildings had a quietness about them that she missed in the city. But she didn't tell the fisherman about it. She showed him a foiled print from an old negative: a man wearing a lighthouse keeper's cap, holding a metal cylinder decorated with a small drawing of constellations and a pair of numbers inscribed in the margins. - This man died in sixty-eight," she said. - The cylinder had not been found. And the coordinates did not match any map of the time. The institute asked for documentation of the lighthouse. Don't you yourselves feel like checking what was left there? Mr Richard snorted, as if chasing the thought away, and then was already silent. Igor, who had kept quiet so far, took a folded map out of his rucksack and pressed it against the deck. He was a cartographer, with his eyes always focused barely past what the rest of the world was looking at. - 'If this cylinder had been some sort of container for notes, it might have had a storage compartment in the lighthouse,' he said, weighing his words carefully. - 'It hasn't been permanently manned for a dozen years or so. If there's anything left ... it's waiting. The boat entered the shadow of the island. The water had calmed down in a natural cove, from where one could see the path leading from the stone platform to the door at the foot of the lighthouse. Lichens, greenish and yellow, were eagerly growing on the wall and the metal fittings glowed dully. Somewhere in the grass a cormorant fluttered, drying its wings in the wind. - 'I've got work to do on the nets until dark,' said Mr Richard. - 'I'll be back at twenty. As the sea permits. - He made this sound as if he were making a promise and an immediate appeal to fate. They were left alone: them and the building, which wheezed with a draught when Kalina pushed open the heavy door. Inside, it smelled of old oil, salt and dust. A draught sounded on the staircase, winding around the shaft like a metal vine. On the walls, however, plaques were still arranged legibly: "Switchboard", "Workshop", "Archive". - 'First the archive,' Igor pointed out. - Then the years from the lantern one by one. They entered a low room with bricked-up windows. Binders and nautical journals piled up on shelves, some tied with linen ribbons. Spiders draped tiny, obedient nets over the ledges. Kalina pushed back the mug holding the boxes of maps and untied her soft, slippery sleeve on the table. She touched the cover of a journal from 1966-1968. The words, written in even handwriting, spoke of wind gusts, the state of the sea, screws that need replacing and coffee that has run out. And then-as if someone's pen had slipped, an off-the-charts note appeared between the headings: "shadow shift on Fresnel disk, correspondence with sky map over equinox, check ring at base". - See? - Kalina moved the journal back towards Igor. - The equinox? September, then. - Igor concentrated, running his finger over the dates. - That's when they did the measurement ... And they entered some sort of mark in the technical log. Strange. They climbed higher, taking steps carefully up the cast-iron steps. At the top, in the lighthouse, the famous Fresnel lens, like a glass spiral, continued to fold the light into sharp bands. All around, under a thin layer of dust, there were still tools lying around: a spanner, a wire brush, a tin with a scratched label. And then there was the ring: a wide, steel one, set at the base of the column holding the rotating mechanism. It was smooth, but when Kalina wiped it with her sleeve, tiny nicks emerged from under the dust. - 'A star motif,' muttered Igor. - Can you see Orion? And something like a compass line.... No, not a compass. That's the azimuth of the star on the day of the equinox. Kalina raised her gaze. Outside, the clouds were rushing low, clinging to the wave line. She pulled out her camera, took a few pictures of the striations on the steel, then stood up to time the position of the mark on the ring with the view out the window. As she moved half a step, a line, hitherto pointless, merged perfectly with the line on the outside sill. It made her feel colder. - It leads,' she said quietly. - I don't know where it leads, but it leads. They returned to the workshop. In a cupboard, behind a row of bottles of dried varnish, Igor found a rolled-up roll of parchment. He unrolled it carefully. It was a map of the island, drawn by a hand that knew every stone of it. A semi-circular cove and something like a corridor under the cliff were marked on the shore. Next to it, instead of a caption, was a small, meticulously plotted drawing-arrangement of stars, the same as on the ring. - 'Someone used to install something here,' pronounced Igor, as if afraid to demoralise the silence with too much awe. - Perhaps a measuring point, perhaps.... - he broke off. He smiled at Kalina briefly. - Let's check the bay. The way down led between dwarf hawthorn bushes. Twigs snagged on their jackets, leaving thin white scratches. Kalina looked around reflexively for frames, but this time she was much more interested in what they would find. On the beach, the stones were slippery to the point that they seemed greasy from the water. The waves came up short, thick, and immediately receded, as if fighting their own momentum. - 'An unnaturally strong tide,' said Igor, bending with the map so close to his eyes that he was almost touching it with his nose. In the semi-circular indentation of the cliff, where the bay encompassed them in shadow, they found a ring embedded between the stones. It was almost the same diameter as the ring in the lighthouse, nibbled by salt, with pieces of seaweed caught on the side. Next to it, under a peeling layer of moss, someone had once drawn a line that now, when rubbed away, shone brightly like a scar. - This needs to be unhooked," Kalina stated. She took out a rope and a snap hook from her rucksack. - If there's a flap here ... maybe it will give up. - We'd better be careful - warned Igor. - The area washed up, the boulders busy. Push down and that's all they saw of us. Nevertheless, he gripped the ring with her. Their hands snapped on the cold metal. The rope tightened as they walked a few steps towards a more stable stretch of beach. Kalina felt every muscle in her forearms defy the salt and friction. Igor angled himself up, found a hollow with his foot, wedged himself in. On three. One. Two. Before the 'three' could be said, the sea made a move that sailors dream of: it moved away at once a few metres, revealing a wet, black bottom against the pale sky. A cold breeze flowed towards them from the bay, as from an open icehouse door. - Can you feel it? - Kalina asked in a whisper. - 'I feel as if someone has removed a cork,' replied Igor, and his voice sounded harsh, without humour. They pulled. The ring vibrated, and the stones next to it rattled. Something beneath them crackled, as if a rusted latch had given up after years. Kalina heard a sound utterly incongruous with the beach: a metallic reverberation, short and clear, carrying across the piled rocks like a note from a hollow, huge string. - 'One more time,' said Igor, and although his hands were as sure as ever, something in his eyes resembled a frightened bird. They came down with the weight of their bodies in the opposite direction, taking advantage of the incline. The rope groaned with a muffled swish, their boots jammed in the seaweed, they took half a step and felt the whole slab beneath them give way. The bay fell silent so that all that could be heard was their breaths and the clatter of small pebbles shifting under their soles. An even cooler breeze gushed from the dark crevice that opened between the boulders. It carried with it the smell not so much of the sea as of a long-closed place: the dampness of stone, the smudge of something metallic, and the a distant, pulsating echo-as if from deep within the cliff, beneath the layers of rock, someone had switched on an old mechanism that suddenly remembered duty. Kalina looked at Igor. They didn't need to speak: what there was to do was clear. The hole was wide enough to slide arms and head in there. The rope inside dangled, touching something that didn't sound like sand. - I'll go in first,' she said. - You hold and we count the steps. If it breaks, we try to rescue ...' - she paused, as out of the corner of her eye she noticed a fresh scratch on the edge of the ring that hadn't been there a moment ago. As if someone had run their fingernail over the metal from the inside. - Wait. - Igor leaned in, listening. From deep below their feet, something answered with a short, steady thud. Once. A pause. A second time. And after a moment, a shadow parted, as if a distant, pale blue flash sparked in the gloom....