Nela took the night train to the mountain village after receiving a tin tin containing her grandfather's notes. Inside lay a brass compass that ignored north, stubbornly pointing to the highest ridge above Sarnia Pass. The notes mentioned a station that had been abandoned since the war, and something called the Clock of the Vidder hidden within its walls. She wanted answers about his last trip, ending with a postcard with the laconic sentence: 'Open skies, return urgently'. The train whizzed by on the foggy platform, where the lamps burned low and crows watched from the frosted wires. The stationmaster, Victor, leaned out of the doorway and studied the compass with an intrigued, almost watchful furrowing of his brow. "The road is clear, but time can be fragile here," he said, handing her a map with a faded red border. In the margin someone had written in pencil: 'Windward entrance, 9:17 a.m., listen for bells'. What kind of bells, she thought, since no bells had been rung here in the mountains for many years, except behind the clouds. The path climbed a steep slope, smelling of juniper and the wet steel of the railway rope, rusty as memories. As the wind carried the mist, the compass trembled and the pointer staggered loops as if exercising courage. At nine seventeen she stood by the station wall, smooth as an eyelid, with thin notches left by the old apparatus. A buzzing sound came from inside, three beats, long pauses, and another, distant as memory. Nela pressed the notes against a crack in the wall and the lines converged to form a simple pattern of waves and arrows. A wind-pushed panel gave way, revealing a narrow corridor, smelling of ozone and old paper, cool despite the summer day. A faceless clock swung from the ceiling, with a pendulum made of a brass logarithmic rule. The pendulum struck once more, and a drawer in the wall with a label slid out: 'L. Crow - trial key'. In the drawer lay a key with a strangely serrated back and a short tape recorded in a rough, familiar voice. "If you get here, remember not to follow the sound, though it tempts," the voice said, and then the recording crackled. Footsteps rang out above the corridor, quick, counting stairs, though the station should be empty at this hour. Nela lifted the lamp and set foot on the first step down, when suddenly the light went out. A sound like the sea came from the depths, and the compass pointed downwards so decisively that it made her palm bake. In the darkness she lit a flint with her fingers, but the wind from below blew the sparks away, as if the hillside itself had blown. A shadow flashed overhead, and somewhere out there the rope of the railway swung, creaking with an even, measured rhythm. The dial-less clock began ticking backwards, the key in her hand twitching and warming up, as if something was beckoning it. "Don't follow the sound," she repeated, though the sound swelled, turning into words, forming her name in an unfamiliar accent.