The courtyard smelled of warmed chestnut and cinnamon. A tall chestnut tree cast patches of shadow on the cobblestones, and above, on the third floor of the townhouse, a star-shaped skylight glittered. Below it, by the dark blue-painted display, hung a signboard: 'Bookshop under the Star Window'. The letters shone as if someone had just polished them, although no one was standing nearby. Mira stopped in the middle of the courtyard. She was eleven years old, with a sketchbook under her arm and pockets stuffed with pencils. She loved to draw what wasn't there - and then, laughing, she tried to explain to Tim why the 'not-me' needed outlines too. Tymek, his cousin a year younger, wore a small sound recorder around his neck, which he called the Listener. He collected the sounds that escaped others: the buzz of an overblown neon sign, the gurgling murmur of a radiator, the clatter of rain in a drainpipe when the rain was gone. - 'This signboard creaks in E minor,' he announced gravely as the wind gently moved the board. - Can you hear the tonality of the signboards? - Mira asked, raising her eyebrows. - I hear what I want - replied Tymek with a smile. - And that star on the roof has its own rhythm. The door of the bookshop opened noiselessly, as if the air had pressed it open. Inside, it smelled of paper, dust and something else - like orange peel in winter. In a chair by the window sat Mrs Lila, the owner, with her hair up in an impossible bun and wearing earrings shaped like tiny comets. - Just in time,' she said, without lifting her gaze from the book. - Today the light is particularly patient. - Light can be impatient? - muttered Tymek, but Mrs Lila only pointed at the spiral staircase leading to the mezzanine, just below the skylight. The mezzanine was like a shelf in a huge wardrobe. Between the bookcases stood a long crescent-shaped table on which lay atlases, sketchbooks and maps, and in the middle of the table, an empty book with a soft graphite cover. It had no title. When Mira touched it with her fingers, the cover was warm, as if it had been lying in the sun. - 'It's probably a stamp album,' Tymek stated, but curiosity sounded in his voice. He turned on the Listener. A quiet buzzing came from the speaker, which did not match any device in sight. Mira opened the first page. It was empty. The second - also. The third ... on the third, words appeared, as if someone had chalked them on the underside of the paper with a marker: "Hello, who looks into the white. I am waiting." - Anyone here? - Timothy looked around, but the bookshop was silent, and Mrs Lila, still downstairs, was turning the pages in her volume as if she knew the words were appearing right now. Mira swallowed her saliva. - After all, it's paper. Paper doesn't write. Thin lines trembled in the margins as they formed letters: "Paper listens when you hear it." - 'Strange,' whispered Tymek, and the Listener vibrated against his chest. He registered a soft sound, something between the rustling of wings and the whisper of a clamour. Mira took out a pencil. - 'If he's listening, I'll draw him something,' she said and quickly sketched a swift, a bird with sharp wings and black eyes that she always admired in summer. A few strokes, a little shadow under the wing, a glint on the eye. She peeled the pencil off the paper. The drawing moved. At first very tentatively, as if it twitched from a draught. Then the swift fluttered its wing a second time, a third, and then the thin line under its claw ripped out of the page, leaving a tiny, glowing mark. The bird swooped down from the paper as if cut from a beam and flew around the skylight, scattering crumbs of light behind it. - Can you see it? - Tymek spoke in a whisper so thin that the Listener didn't know whether to catch it. The swift did a dizzying arc, as swifts can do, and hovered just above a bookcase on which golden letters formed the inscription: "Atlases of places that don't exist". He stomped his tiny claw on the back of one of the books as if he were drumming on a door. One, two, three. - He wants us to look in there,' Mira understood, although she had no idea how she could be sure. They moved the books around. The atlases were heavy, smelling of undiscovered lands and the smoke from campfires over water. Behind them appeared a narrow, vertical gap - too even for coincidence. A wooden strip emerged from the gloom that was not the back of a bookcase. It was the backs of very old volumes, arranged to form a sort of door. Instead of a handle - a brass star worn out from touch. - 'This must be a decoration,' whispered Tymek, but his fingers, before reason had time to protest, touched the brass. It was cool and smooth. The spines of the books bore the titles: "A Guide to the Breaths of the Wind", "Encyclopaedia of Silence", "How to Enter Where There Was No Entrance". When Mira ran her hand over them, the letters moved like fish under a sheet of water. At the same moment, the skylight on the roof, starry and crystalline, dimmed and flashed. In the sky, in broad daylight, a thin milky sickle appeared for a split second. Like a second moon, it hung precariously over the rooftops. - 'And that's not normal anymore,' snapped out Tymek. The listener squeaked quietly and fell silent, as if holding his breath too. The empty book on the table opened to a new page without anyone's help. More words flowed onto the paper, stretching like a ribbon: "He who draws, leads. He who listens, opens. Brave silence is sometimes the key." Mira looked at the swift. The bird perched on her shoulder, light as a flicker. It stared up at the star-spangled bird, its paper - and also paperless - wing tingling Mira through her sweatshirt. - Brave silence... - repeated Tymek and turned off all possible sounds in the Listener. It became so quiet that they heard their own hearts: boom-boom, boom-boom, like two drums far apart. Mira embraced the brass star. It was no longer cold. Before she could turn her hand, someone - or something - moved the handle from inside. A gentle tremor passed through the wood. The swift flew up, circled and flew straight into the tiny opening just below the star, disappearing inside. - Hello? - dared Tymek, as the silence proved heavier than he thought. Something crackled quietly from deep inside, as if a jar of sand had been knocked over. A narrow trail of silver grains spilled out from under the door and immediately began to form tiny letters. Mira tilted her head and read silently: "Almost there." The mezzanine floor seemed to lengthen. The lines on the wooden floor rippled like calm water. A skylight spilled light so bright across the bookcases that every grain of dust looked like a miniature planet. Mrs Lila downstairs turned a page and said in a half-voice, as if to someone sitting right next to her: - Remember to trust your own hands. - Ready? - Timek asked, and the same gleam danced in his eyes that Mira had seen when he dreamt of something. - And you? - She replied, feeling that her fingers knew what to do on their own. She turned the star. Castle sighed, as if relieved. A deeper silence fell - one that no longer frightened, but waited. The door vibrated and swung open to the width of a draught that brought the smell of pine needles and something else they didn't know the name of. Something bright flashed behind the crack. Someone took a step - or a shadow pretended to take a step - and an outline formed on the threshold that resembled a question mark. And then from inside, very slowly, someone began to push the wing further away....