The rain was nibbling on the windows of the Oak City Library and the corridors smelled of dust, lemon wax and old paper. Lena liked the smell better than chocolate. Olek claimed that it smelled as if someone had dried the summer between the pages of the books and was now carefully rearranging them. Nika shrugged her shoulders, but always sat closest to the window so she could see the drops racing across the glass. Mrs Owl, or rather Mrs Sowczynska, had glasses so round that they reflected all the skylights from the ceiling. At her belt she carried a bunch of keys on a thick blue string. Today the keys rang louder than usual. - 'You're in luck,' she said, handing Lena a roll of maps. - We are opening the Map and Globe Reading Room today. I can entrust you with something special: sorting city plans. But be warned. - She sighed theatrically. - We leave the shelves numbered seventeen alone. There's nothing there. - Then why number them? - muttered Olek, who couldn't help asking questions. - To know where there is nothing," replied Mrs Owl with a gleam in her eye. - And now... to work. The reading room turned out to be another world in itself. The carpet was covered with wind roses, maps hung on the walls with captions so small they tickled the eye. Globes stood on pedestals like silent planets, and everything was watched over by a clock with a pendulum, which rocked like a metronome in a piece that was just beginning. Lena placed an atlas of the seas on the table and began to leaf through it passionately. Olek immediately slipped between the bookcases, looking for shelf seventeen - because, after all, nothing was so tempting as a place where supposedly "there is nothing". Nika turned a brass protractor with an engraved geranium flower in her hands, wondering who had decorated it like that and why. Shelf seventeen was no different from the others, perhaps only dustier and quieter, as if the air had stagnated beside it. The number was painted in white paint on a tiny sheet of metal. Olek pressed his ear to the wood and was stunned. - Do you hear? - he hissed, waving at the girls. They pressed their ears to the shelf. There was a very soft hum coming from inside, similar to that heard in a shell. Only this noise had a... rhythm. Like breathing. - A draught? - prompted Nika, although the windows were closed and the curtains immovable. - 'Or waterworks,' she added, but a shadow of uncertainty sounded in her voice. Then Lena noticed that there was a small, almost invisible keyhole stuck in the side wall of the bookcase. Around it, the wood was smooth from the touch of so many hands that must have reached here over the years. And the floor beneath the bookshelf had a scratch that didn't match the rest of it - a zigzag reminiscent of a line on an old map, a mark from a door that likes to open. - Mrs Owl? - she called out. - And what's this... - Oh, this? - Mrs Owl glanced up and smiled in such a way that funny, cart-like wrinkles appeared at the corners of her mouth. - This is a reminder of the old days. There used to be a book crane here, but it's no longer in operation. - She lowered her voice. - And if it worked, it wouldn't be here either. - There's that flash again. Before Lena had time to ask further, the phone on the counter rang. Mrs Owl moved back into the office, the rustling of her skirt disappearing among the shelves. At the same moment, Olek found something under the map folding table - a rusty, flat pendant on a string. The number 17 and a miniature wind rose were stamped on the pendant. A key? No. Just a pendant without teeth, with a round eyelet. - I think it's a part from... - he started, but didn't have time to finish because Lena pressed the pendant into the keyhole. It didn't fit at all. And yet... something moved. The wood groaned politely, like a door that had been commanded not to speak. The rustle in the shelf turned into a quiet murmur. The clock on the wall tapped twice as fast as if its heart had been quickened. An orange sunset blossomed on the windowsill - the rain eased off and a golden glow slipped streakily into the room. - 'Look,' choked out Nika, pointing to the lower shelf. On it stood an atlas the colour of a faded sky. It had no author, no title, just a blue line embossed on the spine, meandering like a river. When Lena touched it, the skin on the cover was slightly warm, like a stone lying in the sun. They opened it at random. The pages were almost blank - white, with a barely visible shimmer as if from mist. Only in the very centre of each page was a tiny, convex wind rose. - An atlas that forgot it was supposed to show something,' Olek muttered. - 'Or he doesn't want to show it to just anyone,' replied Lena, running her finger over the rose. Suddenly her finger became damp, even though she had not touched anything wet. A thin, dark blue line flowed across the surface of the page. It stopped, grew into a network, into a tangle of paths and rivers, bloomed with names written in writing so fine that they had to bring their faces closer. Yet these were not names they knew. No Warsaw, no oceans they had learned about at school. There was the Haven Beyond, the Street of Inverted Shadows, the Lake of No Reflection and the Flea Market of Clouds. - 'It's a joke,' Nika remarked, but less confidently now. Atlas twitched. The wind rose trembled like a frightened moth. In the margins, in small writing, words began to appear. Lena read them in a whisper, the way one reads a recipe so as not to miss a single ingredient: - To open the passage, place the atlas on the shelf marked with the same number as the key ring. Three hands, one touch of a rose. A sunset of light. Quieter than a whisper. Further on? Further you will go on your own. The children looked at each other. Outside the window, the sun was laying down terrazzo on the wet leaves, right in front of shelf number seventeen. Mrs Owl was still talking, obscured by the office glass. The clock rocked faster and faster. - 'This is silly,' whispered Nika, but she held out her hand. - 'On the count of three? They picked up the atlas carefully, as if it were bread taken out of the oven, and slid it onto the shelf. In the golden light they looked a little like figures from a painting. They put their hands to the wind rose. Simultaneously. The clock struck once. And then something happened that Lena would remember even if she were a hundred years old. The shelf moved away quietly, like a page in an album, revealing a space that shouldn't be here. Not a dark tunnel, not a cellar. A staircase. But not ordinary stairs - steps of lettered characters, each carved from a different font, sparkling with tiny, busy dots. It smelled of salt, chalk, leather bindings and something else that could be called the smell of the faraway. A light breeze blew from inside, with scraps of strange tickets swirling about, some with stickers in the shape of clouds. On the first step lay a coin. It was not gold, it was not silver. It was unlike anything they had seen before. On one side it had two suns, on the other a boat that flowed along the backs of the letters like waves. The coin moved and rolled towards Lena, stopping perfectly by her shoe. - Is this some kind of show? - Nika tried to sound matter-of-fact, but the skin on her hands had gone goosebumps. - 'We don't have tickets,' Olek pointed out, although he knew it wasn't a theatre. - Maybe that's what the tickets are - Lena nudged the coin with her finger. It was cool and pleasantly heavy. The atlas on the shelf vibrated, and a new line flowed across its page, right towards the stairs. Somewhere in the depths, where the marks went, a bell rang. Three times, briefly, as if to depart. Everything trembled so slightly that they weren't sure whether the trembling came from the ground or from themselves. - You have five minutes to close the reading room! - called out from afar Mrs Owl, but she didn't sound like she was talking to them. Rather, it was as if she was repeating an overheard message that exists independently of her voice. The pendulum of the clock suddenly hesitated on the wrong side, as if it wanted to see what would happen if it didn't come back where it should. Olek slid his foot onto the first step. The letter it was made of bent slightly and stretched out like a spring. - 'Hello,' he called out inwardly, though he hadn't intended to. - Is anyone there? A whisper answered them, very close and yet as if carried from far away, from many places at once: - Faster. Before the sun stops remembering where the window is. The coin flashed and floated an inch above the floor, as if someone invisible had pulled it on a thread. Out of the corner of her eye, Lena noticed that the shadows of the globes on the wall no longer matched their spheres - they cast different, longer shapes, as if the globes wanted to leave their bases. - 'This is absolutely the strangest thing...', Nika began, but cut off as a chill similar to that felt on the shore of a lake at dawn came from the depths of the stairs. With it came sounds: the creaking of sails, the clatter of wheels, the murmur of conversations in an unknown language and laughter, short, casual, not at all threatening. Yet the hairs on the back of Lena's neck stood up, as the laughter ended in a whisper very clearly her own name: - Lena. Olek swallowed his saliva. Nika clamped her hand on a railing made up of a series of joined question marks that clung to each other like a real chain. - Mrs Owl? - tried again Olek, but only the quiet music from the phone answered him in the office. Somewhere, far away, another streak of gold flashed by, the last one. The stairs lit up from below, and in the light appeared the outline of a silhouette walking towards them: slender, attentive, covered by a cloak sewn from fragments of maps on which glimmered the names their eyes had just taught them. At the edge of the cloak, where the fabric touched the steps, words scattered and lay back, like waves. A silhouette stood on the third step. A gloved hand, on which a tiny silver wind rose was sewn, extended towards them. The hand was calm, as if inviting them to dance. The wind brought the smell of something sweet and sharper at the same time, like caramel with a hint of smoke. - 'Finally,' said a still unseen voice. - Do you have the atlas? The clock stopped for exactly half a second for the first time since their entrance. The pendulum hovered in the air and then pushed the silence forward. Lena squeezed the coin. Olek put his foot out a millimetre. Nika drew in a breath and suddenly, very close, in the semi-darkness of the stairs, something flashed like a fish's eye as it turns under the taffrail. And then the bookcase vibrated - not from their touch, not from the gale outside the window, but as if someone else from inside had laid a hand on the same wind rose, on the other side of the wood.