Snow was falling softly on Kazimierz, as if someone was shaking a huge sieve over the roofs and balconies. Warm amber lights burned in the windows of tenement houses, and the smell of gingerbread was coming out of some staircase, elsewhere of borscht, baked apples, honey. Maja opened the heavy living room window wide, let in the frost that had settled with glitter on the curtain for a moment, then closed it again, pressing the lock. The curtain moved once more and froze. - How's it going, kitchen captain? - Tymon came in from the hallway with a bunch of wooden pot pads and pine needles in his hair. - 'The borscht is ready, the ravioli are waiting, the carp is frolicking in the jelly,' replied Maja with a smile that was a little sticky but softened whenever she looked at the table. The white tablecloth lay perfectly, the plates gleamed, and eleven candles burned in the middle in a variety of candlesticks: brass, ceramic, in thin yoghurt glasses from the nineties. The twelfth place was covered most carefully. A wafer lay on a linen tablecloth and a sprig of rosemary on top. The cutlery had been polished by someone so that the entire chandelier was reflected in the spoons like a dozen lost moons. Grandmother Stefania, wrapped in a shawl the colour of morning coffee, sat in an armchair by the chest of drawers and turned the dial of the old radio. Out of the crackling, swishing and startled squeaks emerged a soprano, followed by "God is born" - a little breathlessly, as if they were singing from behind a snowy curtain. Grandma closed her eyes and swayed almost invisibly. Maja stared at an envelope lying on the dresser, next to a timekeeping clock with a wooden pendulum. The envelope was cream-coloured, with a tiny navy blue postal emblem, and today's date in the top right-hand corner. The address was written in pen, handwritten, in a handwriting that could not be mistaken: a large J with a swirl, falling y. Two years had passed since Grandpa John had passed away, and yet it was his letters, his ink, his typeface. In place of the seal - a spot, as if someone had sealed the envelope with an iron. - Shall we open it? - Tymon stood next to Maja, chewing on a piece of poppy seed cake that he had unobtrusively cut from the tin. - The first star is already there. I have the proof in the astronomy app. - 'Without the app you can see,' replied Maja and touched the edge of the envelope with her finger. - But yes... now. The paper hissed quietly as she ran the letter knife over it. Inside was a sheet of paper, a yellowed sheet with thin lines, and something heavier that thudded softly against the dresser top. A small brass key, tied with red thread. "May!" - began the letter. - "If you are reading this, it means that Christmas has come where it needs to go again. Put the twelfth candle in the chalice and place it opposite the old mirror. Position the mirror so that it can see the window. At midnight they will knock three times. Don't be afraid. Ask your guest to the table. It is not me you are looking for, but yourself. - J." Maja read the sentences silently and then a second time out loud, as if checking to see if they would take on a different meaning. Tymon reached out for the key, but withdrew it because the metal was icy. - 'Someone's playing a prank,' he muttered. - 'Or... Grandpa made them earlier. You know, he could have left it with a friend at the post office. - 'Grandpa didn't do jokes at Christmas,' replied Grandma Stephanie without opening her eyes. - But he liked puzzles. Put that key on the tablecloth. Let him remember the house. Maja took the mirror from the wall. It was oval, in a walnut frame, with a slight scuff at the bottom from many hands. As a child, she used to stare into its depths to see more than just her face. It had always seemed to her that there was a second window hidden in the silver, one that didn't need a key. She set the mirror on the dresser so that opposite it was a window facing the street. Tymon brought a wine cup, clear, made of thin glass, and placed a candle in it. Maja adjusted it with devout concentration, her fingers a tad trembling. She turned off the electric light and the living room sank into the browns and ambers, the twinkle of the lights on the Christmas tree and the warm circles of the candles. - 'You should light it,' said Tymon. - 'Since the letter was to you. Maja broke off a piece of sulphur from the end of the match. The fire lit at once, eagerly, and when it touched the wick in the cup, the flame took on a strangely cool hue for a moment. Not blue, rather glassy, like fire seen through a layer of ice. It trembled, leaning towards the mirror as if greeting it. And then it lit normally, warm and bright. - So what? - Tymon looked around, as if expecting a choir of angels to leap out from behind the sofa. - 'Now we eat,' decided Granny. - Nothing comes to empty bellies. They sat down at the table. They told each other dozens of times what had gone before - how Maja had refused to eat the carp and surreptitiously slipped it into her pocket, and then couldn't find her coat for a week; how Grandpa Jan, still young, had brought home a Christmas tree so big that the branches had to go through the window, and half the neighbourhood had held them so they wouldn't fall out into the street. Now they talked about all this as if it were a warm map that one spreads out on one's lap so that one does not forget where to go back to. At one point the radio went silent. There was no crackling, no buzzing, just silence. In this silence, the pendulum clock vibrated, once, a second time, as if contemplating its next step, then stood still. The pendulum was swung a little to the left, like a finger put to the lips. - 'No exaggeration,' Tymon stood up, snapping at the case. The clock didn't respond. Maja glanced at the window. The snow was falling more thickly, the streetlights had turned into milky patches. In the mirror she saw the reflection of the Christmas tree lights, a trickle of wax and... something else, something that didn't fit in the corner of the room. It was as if, just over her shoulder, a narrow corridor with fish-scaled tiles began. The staircase of their townhouse had just such tiles. The mirror now reflected not only them, but also the metal handrail with a scratch on the fourth step - the one where Maja had once fallen in her haste while carrying a pot of wolfberries. - Do you see that? - she whispered, and Tymon looked up and stifled a gag reflex. - I see. The flame in the cup leaned again, not in drag, but as if listening. Maja felt something change in the air - as if the whole flat drew in air and held it, waiting. She rested her hands on the table top. She felt a slight vibration under her fingers. She put her hand on the key for a moment - it was less cold, as if it had had time to get to know the warmth of the tablecloth. - 'What time was it supposed to be? - asked Tymon more quietly, glancing at the hands of the clock, which, though motionless, still said: twenty-two past eleven. - 'Midnight,' replied Maja, but she too looked at the commemorative display watch hanging on the wall. This one indicated 23:58 and also stopped. The snow had not stopped falling. Somewhere far away a tram rang, with a muffled, almost polite sound, like a wish for 'merry'. Grandma Stefania rose from her seat and walked over to the table. She took a wafer from the twelfth place setting, handed it to Majka, and Majka broke off a tiny piece and lifted it, as if she were greeting someone not yet seen. The first knock was soft, three quiet thumps like touches of fingers. It sounded neither at the door nor at the window, but somewhere in the middle of what they saw in the mirror. Maja looked at Tymon. The man nodded and reached for the chain they usually put on at night. The second knocking was clearer, a tad higher, as if someone was already on the landings, just off their floor. The sound rolled around the flat and died away on the curtain. Maja walked up to the door. A chill beat from them like a vague winter question. She heard her grandmother whisper behind her back: - Don't be afraid. Whoever it is, they won't go hungry. Maja's hand hovered over the chain, which something jerked slightly from the outside, not hard, rather firmly. On the table, the key twitched and rolled towards the edge. Maja turned reflexively to catch it, but the flame in the cup shot up suddenly, in a thin, noiseless tongue, and its light reflected in the mirror so brightly that for a moment they saw more: not just the tiles and the railing, but the outline of a shoe stopped just before their threshold, the scrap of a garnet-coloured coat, a hand rising to another knock. The third sound was not loud, yet it pierced the room like a silver needle. This time it did not come from wood or metal, but - Maja was sure - from the very surface of the mirror. The air thickened, the chain tightened like a string, and the key slipped out of her fingers and fell, clattering against the dance floor one, single time. Maja grabbed the bolt, looked at her brother and