Lena lived under a lighthouse that winked over the harbour like an impatient old eye. She was seventeen and preferred the night tides to school bells and breaks. In the lighthouse library, she arranged maps by colour, listening to the paper humming like waves. Grandma Halina used to say that not every coastline liked to be drawn to the end. Since childhood, she had seen tiny flashes in the shell jars, like the smiles of a closed storm. On that September afternoon, an envelope sprinkled with salt fell on her desk, without a stamp or address. The ink glistened like wet asphalt, and the letters lined up evenly, as if breathing. Come midnight to the former slipway, bring Halina's brass token, Archives of the North. A cutout of a map, on which one entire port street was missing, was inserted. The ink smelled of water from the bottom, and the salt creaked as she straightened the folded corner. A deputy appeared on the story, a man with hair like wet grey seaweed. The chalk itself added dates as he spoke, and the calendar spilled across the ceiling in stars. - 'Don't lose the token, Lena,' he said, without turning away from the blackboard, as if he wasn't the one speaking. Lena clamped a hand on the back of her neck, pretending to scratch herself, though her skin baked with cold. In the evening the wind carried the rusty smell of ropes from the harbour, and the lantern winked over the water more often. Grandma was away at the sanatorium, so all that played in the house was the radio and an old map of the Baltic. In her paint trunk she found a brass token, heavier than it looked, with an engraving of a wave and a lighthouse. When applied to the map, the street that was missing darkened like wet sand after a low tide. The incline was enclosed by a grid, but behind it was a wall of boulders, not quite real. As Lena brought the token closer to one stone, the air beeped like a rearranged microphone. The phone flicked on, showing 23:59, then went off, leaving a map on the screen with no background. The water in the canal rose upwards, as if someone had pulled an invisible, rusty chain. The stone moved away millimetre by millimetre, revealing a gap from which a cool light blew. From the depths came a quiet rustling, like pages being turned, and the snarling beat of an invisible clock. The bay quieted suddenly, as if the city had held its breath and the seagulls had disappeared into the darkness. Lena slid the token into the circular hole, felt the warmth of the metal, and light spilled over the stones. Just behind her, someone whispered in her voice: Don't open, and a second click echoed through the wall.