Lena was seventeen years old and impatiently counting the cold days until Christmas Eve. She lived in a seaside town where the wind from the sea sharpened the snow like glass. Although she liked almond gingerbread and the smell of conifers, she was less fond of the family legends. Most of all the one about the thirteenth bell, which is said to ring out only once a century. A clock with brass hearts hung in the old town hall, and the bells counted the town to sleep. Great-grandmother used to say that the thirteenth bell wakes up the wanderers from the north and the desires hidden in the ice. Lena always shrugged her shoulders until she found an envelope sealed with a fir branch in the attic. Inside was a mapbook made of parchment, a thin magnetic needle and some disturbing words. She read aloud, though the room sounded only a clock: Don't lose the pulse of midnight, Lena. In the market, a Christmas tree stood like a sail, the stalls smelled of cinnamon and the lanterns smoked amber. Kacper, the neighbour from the loft, patted Lena on the shoulder and shouted at the carol singers. You've heard about that clock, which is being shaken again by storm pressure, as if a cog has come unstuck. If it strikes thirteen, it's said to open the passage to the pier, and right at midnight. Lena snickered, but from then on the mapbook warmed her pocket like an invisible candle. In the evening, she spread the parchment on her desk and the needle trembled, although the room was tightly closed. The edge of the drawing showed a town, a lighthouse and a sign resembling a puce-eyed compass. When she touched the ink, the parchment rustled as if a thin river of glass flowed beneath it. Then a sound came from the stairwell, not a bell, but a short metallic spurt, like an announcement. Lena opened the door and saw snow on the doormat in the shape of a precise thirteen-pointed star. Christmas Eve had arrived with a bright moon, though a heavy veil of gloomy drizzle was pushing in from the sea. Lena put on her cloak, thrust her mapbook into an inside pocket and set off towards the market square. Bells were ringing from the tower, the crowd waited, and Kacper winked communicatively from under his cap with a foxy pom-pom. The clock chimed one o'clock, two o'clock, until twelve o'clock, when the wind quieted suddenly and the needle trembled in a heartbeat. In the darkness between the last sound and the silence, the thirteenth strike shone and the map began to glow. The lights of the square dimmed, as if someone had turned a knob, and rows of dots lit up on the pier. Kacper whispered that these were approach signs, and pointed to the map, which drew a glowing staircase on the water. Lena set foot on the first plank, and the needle turned, stopping at the dark north line. In front of them, the surface of the sea spread out like a curtain of ice, and a bell sounded from the depths.