Szewska Street in the Old Port had its own breath: it smelled of dust, salt from the bay and baked croissants from the corner patisserie. On this evening, however, the street's breath was unnerving, ragged with flashes. A thunderstorm was lighting up on the horizon, and Lena and her cousin Maks were running, clutching rolls of damp posters to their chests. They were supposed to hang them up before Reading Night in the library, but the sky had chased them down an alley, under an iron sign bent into the word: Found and Saved. - Have you ever seen this place before? - Lena asked, wiping drops from her forehead. - 'Never. 'And I pass by here every day,' replied Maks, who spoke quickly, as if trying to catch up with his own thoughts. The narrow door had a milky glass pane, scratched like a map of rivers. On the other side, a light could be seen - warm and uneven, like a candle flame. Lena pressed the handle. A bell rang above their heads, but it sounded as if someone had yawned and said: at last. The smell of the interior struck them at once - a mixture of polish, rust and something sweet, maybe old lavender. Shelves piled to the ceiling. Buttons, coins, key rings rested in jars. On the counter lay a fountain pen with a cracked cap, and next to it an alarm clock with a dial cracked like the glaze on a teacup. In the corner, like a curled-up cat, slept a typewriter, and under the window stood a chest with brass corners, strapped with a leather belt. - Hello? - Maks called out. - Is anyone here? Only the muffled rumble of a thunderstorm answered them. The light blinked, the collage of shadows on the wall shifted lazily. Lena slipped her hands into her sweatshirt pockets to warm them. She touched something cold that hadn't been there before. She took out a thin key, all dark metal, with teeth as delicate as a drawing. She looked questioningly at Max. - 'Where did you get it? - He asked. - I don't know. Maybe it fell off the counter? - She replied uncertainly, although no ghost of her pocket was at the counter. - I didn't quite fall off. More - I shifted - muttered the bell above the door, dragging out the vowels as if he was in a hurry. Lena and Maks petrified. - Did you hear that? - whispered Lena. - 'I heard it, but I'd rather not know what I heard,' replied Maks, and a wide smile alone kept his lip trembling. - Oh, young ones, young ones - the alarm clock buzzed, tuning out the clues. - When the thunder cracked for the first time and the signboard steamed up, the usual silence here ceases. We have one hour to breathe in voices. - Don't scare them from the entrance, Felix,' the fountain pen rebuked him. An ink dot rolled out of its cracked cap and hovered in the air, as if breath could have a colour. - Hello. I'm Hortensia. You look like you know how to listen. - And I'm a Nord," added the compass hanging on a strap by the shelf. Its pointer twitched and turned like a panicked sparrow. - Your direction has just become complicated. - This is a joke, right? - snorted Maks, peering around the corners. - Hidden speakers? - 'Speakers are for speaking in someone else's voice,' reflected the mirror standing on the counter. - We prefer our own. And we can only use it for a short time before we have to rely on the touch, the shimmer, the creak of the hinges again. Lena felt the key in her hand grow warm, as if someone had breathed into it from the inside. - 'If this is a dream, please don't wake me,' she muttered, but her muscles were already working independently of her head. It was as if a whole map of the shop had drawn itself inside her, with thin paths leading to a single point. - To the chest," said Nord, without waiting for a question. The compass pointer stopped like a hammered nail, straight towards the brass corners under the window. - She's not talking to us. She's... twitching. For a long time. Another bolt of lightning flashed from behind the dirty glass. In the shop, all the shadows disappeared for a second, as if someone had taken them off their hooks, and then they were back in place, but a little differently. Alarm clock Felix grunted and coughed out a rusty note. - 'One hour,' he reminded dryly. - And it's already been ten minutes. If you have the courage and a pair of good ears in you, listen to what you can't hear and yet is there. - 'Felix likes to speak in riddles,' said Hortensia with a touch of cordiality. - But he's got one thing right: we've been waiting here for years for someone who won't run away at the first sentence. Someone who will help us ... sort out what has been left unsaid. Maks raised his eyebrows. - Arrange, not resolve? - He asked. - Words have their order, objects too. Sometimes someone mixes them up," the mirror replied, showing for a moment not their faces, but the planks of the floor as if seen from above. - Let me see that box - said Lena quietly, although nothing inside made her think. Just that warmth in the key, rippling like a breath. They approached slowly. The chest was dark, made of wood that had once been smooth but now had a network of tiny scratches. Dust had settled on the brass rivet caps like golden moss. The leather belt was fastened with a buckle that looked as if it remembered foreign hands. As Lena knelt down, the shop became so quiet that the distant dripping of water in some pipe could be heard. - 'Don't touch unless you feel it's your way,' the Nord warned, but he didn't sound hostile. More like someone saying: watch the corners. - We never opened it - added the pen. - There was someone here once who tried, but the key didn't pick him. Lena swallowed her saliva. The key in her hand pulsed. She closed her eyes and saw the shape fitting into the handle - not in her imagination, but in something akin to a memory of a hand she couldn't remember. She also heard something else, like the rustle of a page being turned in a draught. Like a whisper behind a bookcase. - Did you hear it? - She asked in a half-hearted voice, without opening her eyes. - 'Nothing,' whispered Maks, but his hand involuntarily tightened on the frame of the chair next to him until the wood groaned. Then all the clocks in the shop - not only Felix's alarm clock, but also the chain clock and the wall clock with the porcelain flower - started ticking simultaneously, in unison, like hearts that had suddenly found a common rhythm. The storm thundered closer, like a drum. - 'You have to open it,' said the mirror, reflecting Lena with a depth in her eyes that she had never seen in herself. Lena took a breath, slipped the key into the buckle. For a moment it resisted, as if it needed to recognise whether she had permission to do so. Then it twitched, slightly, and the metal in her fingers clasped a thin note as the teeth glimpsed the inner edge. Lena twisted it a little. Click. Audible, clear, throughout the shop. In the same second, the light above the counter dimmed, as if someone had turned it down with a knob. Somewhere in the depths, behind the backroom, a board creaked. The bell above the door tightened its spring, but did not dare to make a sound. The Nord's compass stopped exactly between the letters S and W, then began to spin in place, faster and faster. - 'Someone's coming,' whispered Hortensia's pen, and the ink dot hovered in the air again and fell to the paper, drawing a shape resembling a crossed-out circle. The handle of the street door moved slightly, metal against metal, a quiet crack. Felix's alarm clock began to count down wordlessly - Lena heard it like the tinkling of time in her temples: ten, nine, eight.... The lock of the box cracked and let go. The lid vibrated, lifted by the thickness of a fingernail, and from the darkness beneath it gushed air cool and fragrant with something Lena couldn't name. The handle of the street door moved again, harder. A shadow appeared on the milky glass. - 'Lena,' Maks said very quietly, his voice hovering halfway. - 'There's someone on the other side. All the subjects held their breath. The key in Lena's hand pulsed like a heart. The lid of the box began to lift, millimetre by millimetre, and on that side of the glass a shadow took a step.