The school observatory was silent, as if the metal dome had been holding its breath for a very long time. Lila was left after the trial competition, all alone, sorting out old mirrors and unused filters. The largest mirror, mercurial and whimsical, reflected too much for an empty roof, even moving patches of light. Between the street lamps one could see the outline of towers that could not be found in the town. It repeated itself exactly at every seventh blink of the lamp, like an echo picking its time. Lila knew all the glass in the building because her father restores stained glass in cathedrals. He had taught her that reflection not only shows but also obscures, and selectively, and never trusted convenient shortcuts. So she gathered up the fogged tiles, wiped them with her sleeve, and slowly waited for the next flash. This time the towers rose, and a trackless wagon sailed across the sheet, silvery and silent, like in her father's story. Letters appeared on the condensation, spelled backwards, yet understandable for sure. You read from the unwritten page, she flashed as she turned the plate sideways, as if turning a key she had missed for years. Then a map was delicately delineated on the glass with an injured frost, floating in several layers. One grid ran across the empty schoolyard, the other reluctantly pressed into the reflections themselves. The lines overlapped, as if the world behind the mirrors was parallel but discordant in angles, with a slightly shifted rhythm. In the corner faintly flicked the sign PORT OF SHADOWS and a sign resembling a closed eye with an anchor. Lila returned after dark, with the key to the dome and a notebook in which she had glued maps together. She opened the bolts and the night slid in like a cool, black canvas. The din of the boarding house came from below, but here only the quiet clink of brass rings sounded. She placed the plate on the mercury, as drawn, and the rim of the mirror thawed into water. In the taffrail, as if at an oblique angle to the roof, the street moved away, full of white trams. Before she could decide anything, the echo accelerated and a whistle, shorter than a breath, came from the harbour. The water-mirror bulged, forming an arc on which a compass arrow sparkled. An eye sign flicked on the edge, now open, like an eyelid just before a word. The lift bell on the other side rang three times, and someone whispered her name. As she stretched her hand above the surface, another rose from the depths of the mirror, waiting to be touched.