In summer, the Silver Cliffs pretended that nothing bad could happen here. The air blew the scent of iodine and wet wood, seagulls laughed from on high, and the waves crashed against the stone breakwater in a regular rhythm like the clatter of a clock that hasn't been able to stop for a long time. Lena walked along the quay, with her rucksack banging against her hip, and wondered how this town could be so loudly silent. "Retro-Fale" was housed in a former boat shed, converted into an antique shop full of memories from other people's lives. The books smelled of dust and salt, and the vinyl records had rubbed covers with the sun burned through the years. It was run by Mrs Wera, Lena's neighbour, with thin hands and an eye that immediately picked out the most precious things among the ruins. - Are you looking for something specific, Lena? - She asked, moving a bundle of old maps. - Actually... yes. - Lena took a breath. - Stuff from Jerzy Ostrow. The name hung in the air like a flag in the wind. Jerzy Ostrów, an oceanographer who years ago went to sea with a notebook and a reel-to-reel tape recorder. He left memories in the town and a few items sold "for safekeeping" when the research started to fall apart. Lena had long since stopped deciding whether George was brave or foolhardy. All she knew was that he was her grandfather. Mrs Wera nodded and without a word led Lena deeper into the room. She stopped at a sheet metal box, into which none of the keys hanging on nails matched. - 'I found this last week behind a bookcase, it must have slipped off,' she muttered. - If it helps you put anything together, take it. So many years it's been lying here. Lena slid her fingernail under the rusty latch. The box gave way with a groan. Inside lay a tarpaulin-wrapped notebook with a thick, impregnated cover on which salt had left white stains. On the first page, between the coffee stains, was a drawing: three arches coming together at one point. Not a coat of arms, not a trademark. More like something that arises from boredom on the edge of a map, if the hand knows more than the head. - May I? - Lena lifted her gaze to Ms Vera. - Take it. And come back tomorrow to tell us what you found there,' replied the neighbour with a half-smile. Outside, Ivo was already waiting, leaning against the quay railing. He was wearing his older brother's stretched-out sweatshirt, his headphones hanging around his neck like a necklace of plastic. When he saw the tarp, he raised an eyebrow. - Did you find a treasure or another map for the laundry? - he chuckled, but his eyes did not hide his curiosity. - 'We'll see,' Lena said and they sat down on the railing where the wind scattered their hair. The notebook creaked as she opened it. The notes were not romantic ascents about the sea. Full of dates, coordinates, temperatures, short sentences. The symbol from the cover repeated between the notes and something else - a column of numbers that didn't look like ordinary co-ordinates. Ivo swiped his finger across the lines, blinked and pulled a phone with a navigation app out of his backpack. - 'These aren't pure degrees and minutes,' he muttered, typing into the screen. - 'You've got an offset of... oh please. - He smiled crookedly. - As if someone didn't want to hit the point, just his shadow. - In the shadow? - repeated Lena. The wind pulled at her hair again. - Where is it anyway? Ivo turned the screen towards her. The green dot of the town was lagging far behind. The end point was drawn at the edge of the island, by the Lighthouse Rock - a black tooth sticking out of the water like a knife blade. - 'The lighthouse,' Lena whispered, although she wasn't sure if she meant the building or what it was that still glowed in the memory of the locals. For as long as she could remember, the lighthouse had been switched off. Officially: because of the landslide, the cracks, the risks. Unofficially: because not everyone likes the light peeking below the surface. By evening, Lena and Ivo had moved their fingers over maps and sentences, until finally a plan emerged between the lines. The lowest tide was that night. It was possible to walk to the lighthouse in wellingtons if you knew the path through the rocky bottom and weren't afraid of the sea crashing in early. Ivo had a radio scanner, repaired with his own hands after he smashed it on his skateboard. Lena had head torches, powerbanks and a determination that she didn't define by a love of risk, just a need to see if her grandfather's silence could still tell her something. - 'If we'd been caught at the lighthouse...' began Ivo, as the sun was already dropping and the sky was turning paper pink. - 'We'll say we brought flowers,' Lena interrupted him. - For the forgotten lights. He couldn't remember the last time he had laughed so much. Their laughter bounced off the breakwater wall and rolled towards the beach like a pebble let loose down the curves. Night came quickly, with the rasp of boots on wet boulders. The lighthouse loomed at the edge of the world, its silhouette cut from the sky like a charcoal drawing. The fence around it had been cut long ago by someone who had no patience for prohibition. Although the waves were still ankle-deep, the path exposed by the tide led straight under the concrete base of the building. Dark green seaweed slipped under the soles. - 'Be careful,' muttered Lena. - 'It always gets more treacherous here when you're standing with your back to the sea. - And you always talk like someone from a survival guide - replied Ivo, but slowed down. Inside, it smelled of rust and salt. The door to the main corridor was ajar, as if someone had only gone out to smoke a cigarette for a moment and then forgotten to return. To the left, a staircase piled up with winding steps that remembered the weight of many steps. To the right, a room with a broken window and the remains of a table on which someone must once have stacked maps. - Do you remember? - Ivo pointed to a drawing carved with a knife in the railing of the stairs. Three arches coming together at one point. Lena slipped her hand into her pocket, into a cold notebook. Blood rustled in her ears. - 'He was here,' she said, without having to pretend to herself that she was happy to confirm something she felt anyway. The stairs creaked as they climbed into the operating room. They found traces of the lantern's previous life along the way: porcelain insulators, burnt-out bulbs, warning signs. The window looked out directly onto the black mirror of the bay. There was a table in the middle, and on it something that didn't fit the neglect: a box with a lid on which a metal emblem - the same as in the notebook - was stuck. Someone had taken care not to cover it with sand or damp. Someone was coming back here. - This is... - Ivo suspended his voice, as if he was afraid that naming anything would frighten the rest of the world. Lena lifted the lid. The metal squeaked. Inside rested an old transmitter, a model from the days when radios had tubes inside and green eyes reacting to the signal like a pupil to light. The cables were wrapped in a rag pressed into a corner, the batteries looked to have been replaced recently. - If it works... - Ivo was already kneeling by the panel, his hands were quick and careful at the same time. - 'We'll connect the powerbank to the inverter. Don't ask where I got it from. - I never ask - Lena replied. She sat on the edge of the table, the headlamp illuminating their faces with an uneven, cold circle. There were several pieces of paper lying on the tabletop, clinging to the surface like ivy to a wall. Six numbers written in neat handwriting: a sequence she knew from her notebook. As the device came to life, a quiet buzz filled the air. The green eye lit up, penetrating and dead at the same time. Ivo turned the tuning knob, a hum flooded the room. Waves also roared somewhere in the cable, as if the sea could not let go of a single breath. - Can you hear it? - Ivo pressed the receiver to his ear, then handed it to Lena. It was no ordinary noise. Something flashed between the whiteness of the sound, repetitive like the clatter of a train behind a tunnel. Short, short, long. A pause. Numbers. The same as on the cards. Then a pause, the broken off end of a word that could mean anything. Lena didn't know much about codes, but she could recognise a string that wasn't random. - One more time,' she said, more to herself than to Ivo. - One more time. And it came back. A sequence, like a ticking. At the end, something more: a hoarse fragment of a sentence, like the memory of a forgotten song. - Barkas seven... status... return... Then silence, after which the noise seemed louder. - Barkas? - Ivo crinkled his eyebrows. - Is that the name of the craft? A project? - He glanced at Lena. - Jerzy sailed a barkas? Lena bit her lip. In her notebook she had found the word once, in the margin of one of the maps. No comment. Just the letter 'B' drawn like a flag by a lamppost. And then the voice came back. Already without the digits. No crackles to justify that Lena had misheard. Quiet, distorted, as if it came out of the bottom of an aluminium cup. - Lena... The room became so quiet that they could hear their own breaths. Ivo looked at her, his eyes as wide as coins. - Did you hear? - She whispered, though she knew he had. - I heard. - Lena, if you can hear it... - The voice was hoarse, each word passed through teeth of distortion like a comb. - Don't go back to... The signal was cut by a dry crackle. At the same moment, somewhere below, in the stairwell, there was the sound of metal against metal, quiet and precise, like a key hitting a banister. Lena and Ivo froze. The noise in the headphone was increasing again, but now it was mixed with another sound: the breath of a building that was no longer dead. From below came the rustling of footsteps, heavy and purposeful. Someone had entered the lighthouse, or perhaps had finally decided to leave.