Glass Harbour was waking up as the mirror waters shed the night chill. Glassmakers were putting up crates, fishermen were tarring boats and clocks were ticking unevenly. Lena, a fourteen-year-old bazaar goer, ran between the stalls like a wave. She carried a pack to the Tower of Time, where silence sounded like a crowd. In her pocket was her grandmother's compass, always silent, always cold as glass. That morning, everyone whispered about the thirteenth beat the lighthouse keeper had heard. The clocks in town knew twelve, and thirteen supposedly belonged to the shadows. Lena feigned indifference, but the compass in her pocket trembled like a frightened bee. The Tower of Time stood by the pier, with the glass windows sounding at every tug of the wind. The door was ajar, although the Tur guard always closed it before noon. She tiptoed in and smelled dust, salt and bitter lavender. The clocks hung like jellyfish, their pendulums rippling, but the hands stuck in half-motion. Someone had left a damp footprint and a seagull feather on the milky glass stairs. Lena slid her pack behind the counter as the silence tightened like a string. She heard one, a second, a third thump and then ten more, very slow ones. The compass flared under her fingers like an awakened beetle, and pointed downwards. Water glistened under the grating in the floor, although the tower had no cellars. She looked through the gap and saw a sunken clock, bigger than a fisherman's barge. A rune was burning on its dial, identical to the scratch on her compass. The water rose unexpectedly, touched the grating and whispered: Lena, open the passage. Her heart pounded in her neck, but curiosity was faster than fear. She touched the runes on the compass, and the glass beneath her feet began to crack like ice. A voice, unfamiliar, soft and impatient, stuck together from the thirteenth beat. - 'Guardian,' it said, 'time has come back for its own and it will not wait.' The grating sprang open and the water formed a staircase, slippery as freshly burned glass. From the dark depths, a gloved hand made of scales floated out, stretched towards her. Lena tightened her fingers on the compass and took the first step down.