The riverside smelled like opening old albums: damp, dust and something that remembered other years. The rain had torn the mud from the bottom, exposed the bricks of the bridge and dragged the town into a grey hue. I'd been coming here after school for a week, but today Mik pressed a torch into my hand and said we'd go below, under the very bottom, where the water usually stands and where no one goes down, because why should they. - 'For this,' I replied before he could finish. - To see what hums in the bricks. - It's not the bricks that are humming, Lena, it's your head - he snorted. - And the river. I smiled, even though my wet hair was sticky at the nape of my neck and my jeans were soaked like a sponge. The bridge over the Bridge had connected the two banks for over a hundred years; most people saw it merely as a shortcut across town. I saw red veins of joints in the bricks and a worn spot on the stone lintel, just at hand height. As we descended the concrete steps to the exposed bank, the tarmac went silent, as if someone had screwed on a traffic light. All that was left was the snarling flow of the river and the clatter of drops falling from the edge of the bridge. The lights of the cars reflected in the puddles in angular patches. I switched on the torch. The beam glided over pillars, over old graffiti, over dried panicles of grass tangled in metal bars. - 'Here,' said Mik. - Can you see this? On the stone, just off the ground, someone had soldered a brass plaque long ago. It had been eaten away by rust, but a few letters could be read: WAY 13 - MOSTOWA. The letter "J" was deeper, fresher, as if someone had redrawn it with a flat key yesterday. - Is this some kind of installation? - Mik ran his fingers over the edge of the plaque. - Maybe a city project from years ago. - Or the number of a walkway that isn't a bridge - I said quieter than I intended. The words seemed to stumble over the echo. When the torch moved to the right, the darkness darkened differently. Not like a mere shadow, not like an alcove. It was like a pane of glass inserted into an old wall - transparent but distorting. We took a step closer, and another, until I felt a chill, not the kind from the wind from the river, but one with the smell of needles and snow, though it was far from winter. There was a flat, vertical surface of water in the brick arch, under the keystone where a left lion with a chipped snout had once been carved. It was not running. It pulsed so slightly that you only noticed it out of the corner of your eye when you weren't looking. - 'That's impossible,' Mik muttered. - After all, it will spill over. - And yet it's still standing - I whispered. I stretched out my finger, but did not touch it. Once, a long time ago, I dared to put my ear to the tracks to hear an approaching train before I saw it. The same instinct told me now: don't touch. Listen first. I put my hand to the brick next to the archway. It was rough and warm from a day that had ended an hour ago. And in the water - if it was water - something was singing very quietly. Not a melody. A string of stretched-out sounds that reminded me of winter mornings on the stairwell, when everything seems a little stranger and sharper. Mik snapped the torch to a stronger mode. The beam sliced the dampness into silver strips and stopped on something that looked like letters. Droplets formed on the inside of this vertical sheet, merged into streaks and fused into single words. I read slowly, as my hands became as light as after a run: LENA MIKOLAJ - Awesome. Someone knows our names. I like that more and more - there was nervous amusement in Mika's voice. - Do you have an explainer? Explainer. It's a word we've been using for a year, ever since we started making a makeshift note of things that didn't stick to the rules in the city. Gas lanterns that went out on a dime, not yesterday. Pianos put out on the dump that played when there was no wind. Pigeons that stood evenly on the railing as if counting the breaths of the people walking below. None of this was threatening or even spectacular. It was just different. - Maybe this is supposed to be a mirror that remembers,' I said. - It remembers those who stood here. Us too. - This is the first time we've been here,' he replied. - Unless it counts in your dreams. I didn't concede his point or take it back. I took a step, feeling the mud drag my shoe. The reflection of light in the vertical water shimmered like an old film. There was a thin gap of air left between the smooth surface and the bricks, from which a chill came out. I stretched my hand towards the taffrail less than the width of a notebook. The skin on my hand pinched, as if in response. - Wait - Mik grabbed my wrist. - Let's do it our way. Small steps. Heartless objects. He pulled from his pocket a two-cent coin and a shoelace from his hoodie, which he always carried as a spare. He tied the coin and handed me the end. I grabbed it, feeling the threads digging into my skin. Mik dragged the disc towards the water. The moment the metal touched the surface, it became quiet, like an empty pool. The coin went in smoothly, no splash, no resistance. The shoelace stretched slightly, as if pulling something heavier than it was. When Mik withdrew his hand, the coin slid out of the taffy and came back, dripping, but not with river water. It smelled of resin. - Pine,' he said, surprised. - Can you smell it too? I nodded my head. And then I noticed that a tiny brown needle was stuck on the edge of the coin, between the teeth. Not a pine needle. A feather. Delicate, almost weightless, as if it belonged to a bird we had never seen. The feather didn't soften, as if it were dry, even though it had just come out of the water. - This... - Mik broke off, as if he had run out of words for a moment. - Someone on the other side is carrying the forest with them. The fluorescent lights on the other side of the river flashed. The torchlight shook as well. I turned it over to check the battery, but the diode was burning evenly. It was only then that I noticed that the watch on my wrist had gone off and that the minute that had just lasted ordinarily was now stretching out like a rubber band. The noise of the river sped up and the drops falling from the bridge slowed down. Two at a time hovered on invisible threads, bouncing against each other like balls from a moving Newton pendulum, but not falling. - 'This is a bad idea,' Mik said very softly, but he didn't let go of the shoelace. - Or the best one. Before I had time to reply, there was movement in the taffy. Not from our side. A shadow. Not the outline of someone's face or hands, but... a bending of space. As if someone on the other side had placed a hand applied with its insides to the invisible glass. The water did not splash. It trembled, and the letters with our names sprinkled down like rain, washed away by an invisible wave. Without a word I slid the torch lower. The beam sliced down and brought out another plaque from under the archway, a smaller one partly hidden by algae. As I scraped the slime off it with my fingernail, I read: ENTERING NAMES. WHISPER ONE. - So what, Lena? - Mik swallowed his saliva. - Do you have a name? I did. I'd been carrying a scrap of paper in my jacket pocket for a week with a word I'd written down on the bus, looking at the heavy clouds: the Wanderer. That was the name I had named in my head for the river that changed its rhythm every night. It was not a name from any map. As I took a breath now, in front of this stone arch, I could taste the needles, the cold air and the sudden realisation that this place was a buckle that could tie two sentences together at once. - 'Wander,' I said to the water, more questioningly than emphatically. The surface retreated like a breath. It shrank back a hair, as if sighing. The words did not echo; they were swallowed by the wall. With a trembling hand I touched the brick next to me again. The warmth was gone. Nevertheless, I was not cold. I was as I was before jumping from the pole into the lake: muscles at the ready, head full of air. - Cacophonous rules - snorted Mik. - They will have to be figured out. 'But if the name is given by us, that means...' He didn't finish. From inside the taffrail came a sound that didn't belong to either of our cities. A short, cracking sound, like the crack of an icicle. It was followed by a whisper, so close that it had the texture of fabric. I couldn't recognise the language, but I understood the meaning the way one understands a shout, even though one can't hear the words. He was inviting. Or he was calling. I felt the ground beneath my shoes shift a millimetre. As if the foundations of the centuries-old bridge were trembling. - Lena - Mik squeezed his shoelace tighter. - Let's make a sign. Like we did then by the tracks. So that we know if we're coming back to the same place. From his pocket he pulled out the chalk he usually carried for drawing on the pavement. The white line on the wet brick didn't stick well, but he managed to paint a small spiral, right under the WALK 13 sign. The third turn was smeared by water from a drop that suddenly decided to fall off the bridge. - Ready? - he asked. Instead of answering, I did something that in my mind was the only sensible move. I stretched my hand above the sheet without touching it, and said my name. Not like on an attendance list, not like in a doctor's office, but the way you say a name when you want to anchor it to something real. L e n a. The air trembled. The letters did not appear on the water this time. Instead, dry, dark lines blossomed on the stone next to it, where just moments before there had been only moisture, as if someone had burned them with embers. They folded into a mark I did not know. It was straight and crooked at the same time. I felt it was the same mark Mik had drawn in chalk, but different. A real one. I lifted my gaze and unconsciously took a step. The shoe went into the mud, then slid out of it without a sound. I was an inch closer. Mik too. We also said nothing more. Words had become heavy as stones, and now light things were needed: glances, breaths. The world behind us was shrinking to rain, to torches, to us. The world in front of us was expanding into a doorway that was water and that was not cold at all. And then the sheet collapsed inwards, as if someone on the other side had taken a step - or as if something had come out to meet us. All I saw was movement and a darker streak that glided towards the border between our world and that one, but that was enough to make my heart skip two beats. The air whistled thinly, as if squeezed through a crack. It came to us from inside the smell of needles and something else, metallic like fresh snow on the tongue. And then, before I had time to withdraw my hand or slide it into the depths, a mark appeared on the surface - five parallel lines, imprinted from the other side, which moved towards my fingers faster and faster