On a rainy night, Lena drove the zero line through the city by the bay. In her lap she held a sketchbook from which coloured scraps of maps protruded. In her coat pocket she carried her grandmother's brass key, as heavy as a sentence she had not yet completed. Ever since she was a child, she had been drawing shortcuts that weren't there and then finding them on foot. On this evening, the shortcuts scabbed her fingers more than usual. The tram spit out the last passengers and fell silent. The conductor, a woman with hair like cold fluff, walked down the middle and looked at Lena. Small star-shaped buttons glittered on her coat. - 'If you know what this key is, please use it today,' she said quietly. A droplet ran down the glass and stretched into a line on Lena's map, though it shouldn't have. Lena slipped the key into the slot under the seat where lost tickets usually hide. The metal clicked, not like a lock, but like a decision made. The windows fogged up simultaneously and the pair formed three sentences, like rules and regulations on the edge of a dream: Don't borrow other people's paintings. Write down what you create. Don't feed the Void with fear. The tram started, but the world outside the glass was no longer a city; the streets were ragged with chalk and the sky was composed of paper pockets. A boy in a yellow jacket and fingerless gloves was waiting at a stop she didn't know. He pulled a pastel from his pocket and put a line in the air; the line hovered, twisted and became a thin ladder. - 'I'm Kaj,' he chuckled. - Someone is sucking the ideas out of the neighbourhood. White spots are left where nothing sticks. When you fall in, you forget the words. I need a map before everything falls apart. Lena closed the sketchbook and glanced at the conductor, who no longer looked ordinary. She held in her hands a ticket with a date that had not yet arrived. - 'Emptiness gets hungry when the questions start,' she muttered. - But it gets even hungrier when you're afraid of it. Behind the glass emerged a tenement familiar to Lena from her childhood, but its windows were painted with egg white, as if someone wanted to soft-boil the world. A moth the size of an umbrella dangled from the roof, clear as an unspoken sentence; each flutter smeared the colours like chalk under water. The floor of the tram vibrated, and a quiet sound cut through the air as if someone was braiding a braid. The doors opened onto a staircase suspended above a sea of paper, and the smell of the first day of school wafted through. - 'Lenko,' spoke a voice from below, completely impossible, yet recognisable. Kaj took half a step back and slipped the pastel behind his cuff as if it were a wand. - 'Don't come down if it's not your imagination,' he whispered, too serious for his age. The key in Lena's hand grew warm and pulsed with the rhythm of her breathing. Someone had left a star-shaped shoe mark on the first step, which faded with every passing second. White dripped down the wall, spilling like milk about to trickle out. The tram groaned and the lights in the middle of the carriage went out. A voice from below called out a second time, this time asking for help.