Summer nights in the harbour were as bright as an oversized aquarium, though the lanterns were fading. Lena, the bicycle courier, spun slowly through the dormant quays, hearing her own brakes like crickets. Gulls slept on dahlings, hedgehogs crossed paths with dignified persistence, salt smelled of tar. A magpie sat on the railing with a bracelet in its beak and watched too intently. The magpie flapped its wing, snapped its beak and dropped a curled leaf, bound with hair. On the leaf, pale as dawn, she could see letters arranged from fish scales. 'Can you hear us?" it sounded, although Lena wasn't sure if she was reading or hearing. Rooks sat on the cable like notes, and a stray dog and a red cat watched without blinking. A vixen came out of the shadows with a glove in her mouth and placed it by her wheel. Lena once bandaged a swift that had fallen from the sky, though no one had asked. The old ladies in the tenement said that the animals remembered debts, but made theatrical faces while doing so. A bone whistle rolled out of the glove, smooth as a river pebble, cool and a little trembling. On the shore it was engraved: 'Come at midnight, Tram Depot, Hall C. Don't come alone.' Lena looked at the magpie, who nodded completely humanely, patiently and seriously. At eleven fifty-eight she was already standing outside a red brick hall with windows like skeletons. The interior smelled of dust, ozone and wet dog's wool, although no one barked. Moths glided along the steel beams, cats, dogs and two heron-like books walked on the floor. A seal's head emerged from the channel by the grille, and a scarred raven sat on the railing. 'Silence' he croaked, and silence indeed lay on the concrete like soft fur. A deer rolled out of the path along the tracks, huge, with sides cut by old glass and red leaves. It stopped and the ground beneath Lena sighed, as if remembering heavy trams and snow. A fawn turned its head from the ceiling, and the whistle in its pocket moved slightly on its own. A voice, not from its mouth but from the iron of the rails, rang in her bones: 'The seven-day-old has arrived. We need a messenger from yours.' All eyes warmed her skin like lamps, and the hall door slammed open from the wind. Something metallic began to glide along the tracks behind, whispering rust and time. Lena squeezed her whistle as a shadow slid out from under the oldest carriage and said her name. She couldn't see a face, just two phosphorescent specks, like a cat peering from under a table. 'If you leave, the others will choose for you' rang out now from the side of the dead station clock. On the other side of the hall, the vixen raised her tail like a flag, and the whole menagerie took a step forward.