The rain drummed against the windows, as if it wanted to get inside the library at the market square. It smelled of dust, bookbinding glue and the spines of books that remembered more than many adults. Nina, an eleven-year-old sixth-grade volunteer, lifted her baseball cap and shrugged the droplets off her shoulders. On Wednesday after school, she always came to help out at the 'Forgotten Things Showcase'. The display case stood at the end of the corridor, just before the narrow reading room, under a shell-shaped hanging lamp. Piled inside were everything and nothing: a pairless glove, a green scarf, a scout badge, a small compass, a fountain pen in a gold holder, a yellow pea umbrella and several bookmarks, one of which had a maple leaf stuck to it. At the top a cardboard box with the words: "FOUND - WAITING FOR OWNERS". - Precise, please! - squeaked something from under the scarf as Nina tilted the glass. She froze, as she had done so many times before. Whispers were not always heard. Only when the librarian blinked slowly, as if she too wanted to sleep, and when Mrs Rose, the soft-booted librarian, was busy with something else. - Precisely, or how? - Nina asked in a whisper, juggling labels. - 'Don't crumple it, don't smear it, don't throw it on the bottom like anything else,' an indignant voice from the yellow umbrella. - I have delicate ribs! And my name is Melusina, while we're here - added the umbrella, fluttering the material. - 'Melusina loves drama,' someone spoke up in a deeper tone. It was the metal compass that flashed softly. - I'm Bernard. I always point north, but today I'm also pointing poise. - North, south... what's the difference. What matters is that we have a case," interjected a thin, ironic voice. The maple leaf bookmark leaned out from under the pen. - Ginger. I wasn't lost, I was forgotten. There's a fundamental difference. Nina smiled and carefully corrected the items. Hearing their voices was like having an extra sense; a bit like having the library speak to her in several languages at once, and she understood each of them without a dictionary. - 'Ninko, another quarter of an hour and we'll be closing,' Mrs Rose leaned out from behind the bookcases. She had grey short hair pinned up in an owl-shaped pin. - Finish your signatures and you can go out the back door. Leave the key in the basket. - Sure! - exclaimed Nina and leaned over the display case again. - 'A quarter of an hour,' snorted someone with an insult to majesty. The old clock standing at the end of the reading room, proud as a ship's captain, rattled its hands. - It calls me Klemens. Someone oil me up, because time does not like to be interrupted. - Mr Klemens, we'll rest as we need to,' Nina reassured him. - What's the matter, Ginger? The bookmark trembled and creaked slightly, as if straightening a page. - 'A book has disappeared, my book where I live,' she said almost with dignity. - 'The Book of Passages, bookcase 7B, shelf four from the bottom. No one has borrowed it, and yet it is not where it was. Yesterday I barely had time to dodge when the spines shuffled like cards. - 'Shelves don't go,' Nina remarked sensibly, although she had learned in the library not to say 'never' about things that look impossible. - 'This one walks,' said Bernard compassily, blinking the brass. - And it doesn't walk by accident. Someone is asking him to. - Mrs Rose? - Nina reflexively looked at the shadow moving at the lending table. There, however, only a cup of tea was steaming. - 'Not Mrs Rose,' burbled the pen in the gold holder. - Wenceslas. Please don't touch the nib, I'm picky. And I say it's not her. One hears things at night. The thud of shoeless footsteps, pages turning over on their own, and something clanging on the frame of a 7B, like a rusty bell. - And I smell a draught that isn't a draught," added Melusina. - Air that smells of printer's ink and... sea salt? A shiver ran through Nina's back, not of cold but of curiosity. Regale 7B stood against the wall, just below the window that overlooked the markets and the pigeons. It held the 'Unusual Journeys' section, where she liked to sit. - 'Ginger, do you know where your book lies exactly? - she asked. - 'I always get hung up on the chapter 'Fixed and moving passages'.' - The bookmark buzzed with a clunk. - And on the inside cover is a stamp with an owl, the same as Mrs Rose's pin, only smaller. Next to this stamp was pressed ... a certain key. I don't know where it went. - A key? - repeated Klemens and tapped the pendulum. - Sounds serious. Time is running out. Nina looked around. A dictionary of foreign words, as big as a cushion and just as heavy, lay on a stand. Something was pulling her towards it. She carefully opened the first page. The paper rustled. The dictionary grunted significantly. - 'Clean hands, please,' he said in the voice of the teacher who knows everything better. - 'They're clean,' Nina assured her and slid her fingers down the margins. Something tiny clattered against the tabletop. Brassy and cool. An owl-shaped head key rolled onto her palm. There were tiny notches on the wings, like feathers. - O! - snapped out Nina. - 'That's what we're looking for,' Ginger fluttered from the takeover. - 'He's from 7B. I've seen it used before, but... I won't say by whom, because I was hidden between the lines. The rain slowed down, as if listening in with them. Mrs Rose was putting on her coat in the vestibule and extinguishing the lights painstakingly, one by one. - 'Ninko, I'm going out the back to the storeroom, emergency outside, front closed. Stay a while longer if you must, then lock from the inside. You know the key - she called out, already from the corridor. - And feed the cat! Mr Orzech meowed as if he were made of cotton wool. - Good! - answered Nina, and as Mrs Rose's footsteps moved away, she looked at Showcase. - Just help me not to make trouble. - Those who make trouble are the ones who make trouble,' replied Bernard philosophically. - We're just telling the story. - And we are warning - added Wacław. - It would be good not to get dirty. Mr Peanut, a brindle cat with amber eyes, poked his head out from under the armchair and purred. He climbed onto the bookcase with a leap as light as the spine of a book, perched on 7B and looked Nina straight in the eye. - 'Stop rushing me,' she hissed at him half-jokingly. - 'I want to know too. Bookcase 7B gave the impression of being quite ordinary. Maple veneer, shelf numbers taped evenly, "Do not move" notices. Except that on the side rail, the one on the wall, someone had long ago cut out a tiny rosette. Nina never noticed it. - Here,' said Melusina. - I can feel the air moving. When Nina put the key to the rosette, the owl's head fitted like a claw to the cover. The metal was cold, yet when she touched it, it became warm, as if it had just been placed in someone's hand. The key trembled and... turned on its own, clicking so softly that probably only Mr Nut and Clemens heard it. From the shelves came a whisper that was not a single whisper, but a whole barrage of whispers: hundreds of voices of letters that for a moment decided to descend to the floor on the scales of the boards. The light of the lamp above the Showcase flicked on, and the floor under 7B twitched as gently as a page twitches under a pen. - 'If it opens now, don't stand in the clearance,' Bernard advised. - North said: be careful. - Thank you for the wisdom of the obvious,' sighed Wenceslas. Bookcase 7B groaned. Not loudly, just like an old fiddle that decided to say 'ah'. The side slats moved away a hair, then a finger, then a whole palm. A chill blew from beyond them, smelling not so much of the cellar as of ink and distant places: as if somewhere further away someone had opened a book on the beach and the wind from that side of the world had blown it into their library. - 'Oh dear,' whispered Nina and took half a step back. - 'Do you see that? - We can see and we can't see - replied Ginger seriously. - 'It's a passageway, and passageways are not looked at like exhibitions. Passages are used or not. Mr Peanut jumped off the ledge and started circling by the gap, placing his paws carefully. Clement paused the pendulum for a fraction of a second, which in his case meant a great shrug. - 'Ninko,' Melusina called out quietly from somewhere below, from under the umbrella. - You have to go now. Before it stops. Because if it snaps, it will be waiting for night, and night can be... well, longer. Nina tightened her fingers on the key still stuck in the escutcheon. She breathed evenly, as if before jumping into the water. Her heart was beating fast, but not from fear. Rather from that pleasant uncertainty when anything could happen. Then something creaked on the other side of the bookcase. Not the kind of creak that wood makes, but a quiet clatter, as if someone had also touched the rosette from inside. Mr Peanut wagged his tail. The display case trembled with glass. And from behind the shifting wall, from the darkness, came a whisper that Nina had never heard before: - Don't open. Or open - but quickly. Someone is already coming.