Grandma Kalina's lighthouse stood on the edge of a cliff, so close to the sea that when the waves were high, their breath hung over the grass like mist. It had a peeling red door and a glass crown that hid a huge old searchlight. Overhead, seagulls circled and down below roared stones, rolled by the water like beads in the palm of your hand. Lena had come here for the first time in many years. She was eleven years old, her hair tangled like wet string and a mark on her knee from a bicycle capsize. Her younger brother, Tymek, was nine years old and wore a baseball cap that he turned according to his mood - the visor forward when he was cautious and backward when he was feeling brave. Grandma Kalina was no ordinary grandma. Instead of napkins on chair backs, she had wind charts, and instead of pots of geraniums, she had jars full of ambers that contained tiny air bubbles like mini cauliflowers. The lighthouse, she said, was not just a building, but the ear of the shore that listens to the sea. That morning the sky was so clear that the water seemed like glass. Lena and Tymek sat on the concrete wall, sucking on lemon slices sprinkled with sugar. Grandma disappeared into the storeroom next door, where she kept everything "just in case". "If the wind comes from the north, you'll hear it first in the railing," she said, patting the cast-iron parts of the stairs. - "And if it's from the south, you'll smell the needles, even here by the sea itself." Lena rolled her eyes, but only a little. She liked listening to her grandmother mix the ordinary and the extraordinary into one story. Tymek, meanwhile, stood up and leaned against the wall. Something flashed there in the gap between the bricks. "Lena, look! Something's glowing!" They pressed their fingers into the narrow crack. After a moment, Tymek pulled out a dirty metal thing. It was a small compass in a brass case. The lid was shaped like waves and the letter "K" was engraved on the back. "K for Kalina?" - Tymek asked. "Or maybe like the captain?" - prompted Lena and wiped the glass with her sleeve. The compass needle twisted and... stood not north. Not south. It didn't point to either side of the world at all. "It's pointing... down," whispered Tymek. At that moment there came a draughty, quiet sound from inside the lighthouse. Not a bell, not a whistle, more like a sigh given out by the glass, longing for the light to come on again. "Grandma?" - cried Lena. But instead of Granny, the wind answered. Suddenly it blew down from nothing, although the sky was still calm. He squatted on the gallery around the lamp, then floated down the stairs. He flicked the pages in his notebooks, knocked over a light measuring tape on the windowsill, stomped under the door of the storeroom and finally, as if satisfied, fell silent. Grandma Kalina came out of the room, carrying a tin biscuit box. She had streaks of dust on her face and a smile that said: "I've found something to fill the afternoon with". "And you? What do you keep in there?" - she asked, looking at the compass in Tymek's hand. Lena told about the crack, the letter "K" and the needle that refused to behave like an ordinary needle. Grandma nodded slowly. "My grandfather was called the Warden of the Falochron. He had a compass that supposedly reacted not only to midnight, but to whatever was calling home. Maybe that's the one..." Tymek blinked. "What do you mean: it reacted to whatever was calling?" Grandma didn't answer immediately. She opened a tin box and dumped a handful of trinkets on the table: old buttons, string, a rusty screw, a small sheet of paper with an illegible drawing and a key - also brass, bent into the shape of a wavy line. "It goes in pairs," she muttered. - "The key and the guide. One without the other can be stubborn." "Guide?" - repeated Lena, wrinkling her nose. "A thing that shows you the way. Sometimes it's a lantern. Sometimes a compass. Sometimes a person." They walked inside the lighthouse. A wide, winding staircase ran up and down, but Lena had the feeling that there were more stairs today than yesterday. It was as if the staircase had grown larger by one turn. The air smelled of salt and heated metal. An old map stood on the mezzanine floor. Usually it was calm, but today the tiny drawings of the waves seemed to tremble. Lena stopped. At the edge of the map she saw a tiny, drawn lighthouse that she didn't remember seeing before. Right next to it was written in small letters: "Ear of the Shore". "Grandma... who wrote that?" "I don't know. This map changes... sometimes. When the weather's like it is now," Grandma replied, as if she were talking about something that was as ordinary in her house as a jar of jam. On the highest platform, Lena approached a large glass. Inside it were immersed the past years: all the storms, mists and glows the lantern remembered. For a moment she had the impression that she saw a ship sailing inside it, a tiny one with a white sail. She shook herself off. "If the needle is pointing down, then maybe... we should go down," Tymek stated, running his finger over the compass. The needle did not move. So they descended, one by one. The stairs grew colder with each step, and the smell of salt mingled with grease and a little forgotten dust. In the basement of the lighthouse there were a few wooden boxes, felt blankets and an oil barrel that Grandma had converted into a table. There was a door at the back wall. They were always closed, painted the colour of wet rock. "This door leads towards the cliff," the grandmother explained as Lena approached. - "We used to go out there to check the foundations before the sea gained more voice there." The compass in Tymek's hands twitched. The needle, hitherto calm, jumped slightly. Not to the right. Not to the left. Downwards and... towards the door. "Do you have a key?" - asked Lena, and Grandma raised her eyebrows as if someone had asked her for sugar in her tea. "I do." The brass key fitted perfectly. The lock creaked, but not the way ordinary locks creak. This one creaked like the gills of a fish taken out of the water for a moment. The door opened about a hand's width. Behind them was darkness. Not thick and scary, just the kind that waits for light to tell what it hides. "I'll go ahead." - decided Grandma Kalina, though her eyes were gentle, there was something in her voice that did not bear opposition. They took three steps and stopped. Under their feet was no longer a brick floor. There were stairs carved into the rock. They led down towards the cliff, but not where Lena would have expected - not outside, but underground, as if someone had laid a stone tunnel under the cliff. "Is it safe?" - hissed Tymek, sliding his cap forward with the visor. "The stairs are as old as these waves," replied Grandma. - "But they listen. You have to walk with light steps." The air became more humid. Lena could smell seaweed, although she couldn't see any. On the left side of the wall, rock infiltrations flourished, which looked like birds' wings in the torchlight. On the right - drawings. Someone had long ago scratched into the stone the outlines of a whale, then a net, then a boat that had too big a sail, as if it were childish. "Who did this?" - asked Tymek in a whisper. "Someone who had the time and heard the same thing I did," - replied his grandmother just as quietly. "What do you hear?" - Lena also lowered her voice, though she didn't know why. "A cry." She didn't have time to add anything else, because the tunnel suddenly widened into a small cave. In its centre was a well without water, framed by stone. Above it hung a brass bell, smaller than the church ones, but heavier than it looked - you could feel it in the air, which trembled around it like heat over hot sand. "The Guardian Bell," said the grandmother. - "It is silent when there is no fog. And today... there is no fog." Only now did Lena notice that every noise of the waves arrived here late, like an echo sent on its way and turned back to its starting point. The compass needle began to tremble faster. It wasn't just pointing downwards - it was shaking, as if someone had nudged it with an invisible finger. "Grandma?" - Tymek shifted his weight from foot to foot. - "Is it just me, or... is the bell breathing?" It sounded ridiculous, but Lena felt it too. The bell was not dead. Around it, the air moved rhythmically, barely perceptible, as if someone on the other side of the thin skin of the world was taking a breath. A crackle. Somewhere ahead, further than the grotto, something hit the rock. Not like a stone. Like metal against metal. "Stay behind me." - Grandma raised her torch. The light cut through the darkness and came upon a stone archway. Behind it began an even narrower corridor. Its walls were damp, but every few steps someone had embedded round, smooth amber tiles into them. Inside them smouldered trapped specks of sunlight. Lena felt her heart speed up. Every speck of amber reflected her face, tiny and serious. She thought of all the stories she had heard as a child: the drops of ancient storms written in amber, the singing of whales carried by the stones. The corridor ended with a door unlike any other. They were of wood, but could not be touched. The air in front of them was cooler, like near ice, yet smelled of salt water and something sweet, like caramel made on fire. "It doesn't lead outside," Grandma whispered, glancing at the compass. The needle stopped trembling. She stood confidently, as if saying: "Here." Tymek swallowed his saliva. The cap landed with the visor backwards. "If this is... calling, what is it calling for?" - he asked. Before anyone could answer, the bell above the well moved on its own, slightly, barely perceptibly. And it sounded in one quiet tone, so low that Lena felt it not in her ears but between her ribs. The door in front of them trembled and flared at the edges like flared wires. Grandma Kalina lifted the key. Lena and Tymek grabbed each other's hands. Outside, high above their heads, the sea darkened, although the sun still stood high. "Ready?" - asked the grandmother, inserting the key into a lock that had not existed a second before. The lock clicked. The door breathed. And a whisper came from the depths that knew their names the way only family people and very old places know them: "Leno... Tymek..." Something on the other side began to move.