Lena only drew maps at night, when the city moved at its quietest and hardly breathed. She kept an oil lamp, a graphite stylus and a cardboard globe in her studio above the rooftops. She was learning to eavesdrop on staircases, because staircases betrayed hidden passages that the plans did not cover. Sometimes she would feel a gentle movement move from under the paper, like a warm breath. She would tell herself it was a draft, but there was already a folder waiting in the drawer with the words: New. One dawn the postman brought an envelope without a stamp, smelling of ozone and chalk dust. Inside lay a thin sheet that, against the light, revealed a grid of streets unknown in any register. In the margin was the sentence: 'Don't write down the world that is trying to write you down by itself'. Lena turned the sheet over and saw the coordinates, crossed out in soft graphite, leading to the Street Without Yesterday. She didn't know such a name, though she flipped through the city's volumes as others flipped through their calendars. So she went before the sun climbed higher, the folded sheet kept in her coat pocket. Tenements watched her through the windows, and signboards sounded foreign, as if someone had changed the alphabet overnight. The steps by the Market Street played three notes, which usually meant a shortcut, though today they sounded more cautious. Waiting at the corner was Teo, a clockmaker who collected discarded seconds in tea boxes. He raised his eyebrows and put his finger on the sheet music the way one applies a stethoscope. "Can you hear it beating?" - he asked in a whisper, as if he didn't want to panic the drawing. Lena put her ear to it and heard the rhythm, not even, but accelerating at the junction of two streets. "Today the map breathes faster" - muttered Teo, pointing to a gate that never had a number. A dark corridor led between courtyards where laundry hung like clouds from a heavy sky. At the end, instead of a wall, the same paper as in his pocket rippled in the sourceless light. Lena touched the surface and the coolness wrote her fingerprint in the smooth white. Ink emerged from the depths, tracing the rectangle of the door, the hinges and key in the form of a note. "If you open it, time may repeat itself." - whispered Teo, but he didn't sound confident. The card in his pocket warmed up suddenly and the street behind him grew quiet, as if holding its breath. Lena grasped the drawn key, which felt cold and real, and then something knocked from inside. From inside came the smell of wet chalk and distant rain, as if it were raining inside the map. The door rattled and the letters that formed her name and the date appeared on the surface. Teo took a step back, shook the box of seconds, and they all chimed like glass rain. "They're choosing you." - he said, looking at her the way one looks into a mirror from across the water. Lena picked up the key to the inked lock, and on the other side someone whispered her name clearly.