Lena and Olek did not plan to become guardians of anything today. They just wanted to help Auntie Rosa clean the antique shop "Under the Stairs" after a huge delivery of books, maps and boxes that smelled of dust, vanilla and rain. Behind the shop window the afternoon sun was seeping in, and from the street came the clatter of umbrellas against the cobblestones, as a soft, silver drizzle hung over Toruń. Aunt Rose's antique shop was everything at once: a labyrinth, a treasure trove and a bit of a ship that sailed through the years. Old globes dangled from the ceiling, rolled-up maps hung between the bookcases, and six clocks ticked in the corner, each in its own rhythm. The quietest of them was the clock with the carved cuckoo, the loudest the one with the pendulum in the shape of a maple leaf. "Just watch out for the crates from the cellar," Rose admonished, correcting the kerchief in her hair. "Someone sent them without a sender, I'll probably account for it tomorrow. If you find anything fragile, call me." Someone had strapped the boxes with straw and thick string. Olek cut the wrapping carefully, until a sprinkling of cobbled pollen came from the wood. Inside lay the collections: tomes with worn spines, a metal thread tin, photographs with jagged edges, and, at the very bottom, a small leather case. "It looks like an eyeglass case," muttered Lena, already feeling her pulse quicken with curiosity. Not glasses, not a pen. Inside rested a pocket watch with a brass lid. It was heavy, cool and shone as if someone had just polished it. The top was engraved with wind roses and a small inscription: "F. Klonowicz, Clockmaker of Toruń". Beneath the inscription were two more things: the coordinates, which Olek read aloud, squinting - "53°01′N, 18°36′E" - and the strangely orchestrated words: "A pair of hands, a pair of dates". "Klonowicz... that's the name of my aunt's great-grandfather," Lena recalled. "She told me he had a workshop at the Bridge Gate." "A pair of hands, a pair of dates?" repeated Olek. "What's that supposed to be?" The watch had a dial as clear as a lake, on which stars and tiny dots were silvered instead of the usual numerals. The minute and hour hands were as thin as needles, and the seconds hand - a red dash - trembled, even though no one was winding the mechanism. After opening the lid, Lena saw one more thing: there was a minimal draught felt under the glass, as if the dial was breathing. "How can it tremble if it's standing still?" Olek leaned closer and then they both touched the edge of the watch at the same time. Something impossibly soft rustled in the air and the seconds hand... moved. But not forward. Slowly, unhurriedly, it began to move backwards across the dial. "Do you hear that?" whispered Lena. Suddenly it seemed to her that all the other clocks in the antique shop had fallen silent, as if they were making room for the one that had taken to reversing the seconds. After a moment, however, she heard something amiss: the cuckoo was calling "cuckoo" backwards, like a recording played backwards, and the pendulum of the maple leaf was slowing down, as if someone had exchanged gravity for jam. "Are you holding it?" Olek squeezed the watch tighter, and Lena felt the metal begin to warm in their fingers. It was as if it was reacting not only to the touch, but to the fact that they were holding it together. When Olek let go for a second, the second hand froze. When they both touched again, it went back into reverse, transparent like a stream that had found an unusual slope in the opposite direction. "A pair of hands," she repeated slowly. "That is, together." "And a pair of dates?" Olek pulled a tiny piece of paper out of the case, wedged between the leather and the lining, with letters that looked like they were written in nibs: "Don't shoot alone. Not after midnight. Not where the bells go silent." "Who wrote that?" Lena felt a shudder, but it wasn't a shudder of fear, more the kind that comes just before a great mystery. At the back of the antique shop was a room that Rose referred to with an indulgent smile as "the storeroom". In reality, it was a chamber into which strange objects were collected: northern compasses, telescopes, cigar boxes from towns that were no longer on the maps. In the middle of the floor - what Lena had always thought of as decoration - was a metal circle stuck in a board, filled with brass, like a medallion hammered into the wood. It had no inscriptions or latches; at least until that moment. For when they turned the second hand back to a full minute, the brass circle on the floor trembled and made a very quiet, very low sound, like the purr of a cat in the resonance box of a cello. The hair on their arms stood up. A thin line - like a scratch - appeared on the brass, running all around it, and then another, cutting through it at an angle. The lines glowed with an amber light. "Lena?" Olek looked around reflexively. Aunt Rose was just now chatting at the counter with a gentleman in a checked coat; they were discussing old atlases. No one was looking into the depths of the warehouse. "I think... it's reacting to him," Lena whispered. "To the watch." "Or at us." Olek swallowed his saliva. "On two people." "And for some space." The girl stuck a note in her pocket about the bells. In Toruń, the bells were not silent. They rang at full blast, the bugle carried from the Town Hall, and every day a bunch of tourists lined up under the Town Hall Tower. "What if it should be in the tower? That's where the bells are and... they go silent when they're not ringing." "And the coordinates?" Olek pulled out his phone and typed the numbers into the maps. A dot flashed just a few streets away, towards the river. "That's the neighbourhood. Maybe even right here." As if to confirm, the circle in the floor trembled once more, this time more insistently. Throbbing golden circles passed over it, like a drop of water thrown on a hot frying pan. The air in the warehouse thickened, dust specks rose, began to dance in a spiral. The watch in Lena's and Olek's hands vibrated slightly, as if a motor inside was trying to detach itself from the axle. "Don't wind it yourself. Not after midnight. Not where the bells go silent," Olek repeated in a half-hearted voice. "But it's only sixteen o'clock." "And we're two." Lena felt her voice sounding strange, as if it were bouncing off an invisible tome. Aunt Rose's head leaned out from behind a bookcase of astronomy books. "Are you all right?" she called out. "I heard something... buzzing." "Yes, it's just a box!" Lena exclaimed, trying to sound light-hearted. As Rose disappeared, Lena looked at the brass circle again. If it was only a box... The light on the rim had thickened, now resembling thin, shimmering water. On its surface flashed something that looked like a reflection - not of their faces, but of someone's knee-length trousers and button-up shoes. "Did you see?" Olek took half a step back, but didn't let go of his watch. The second hand was just touching the number XII - red, sure, ready to leap back for another minute. As he moved, the sounds in the antique shop changed: the street clatter of umbrellas slowed down, the whisper of conversation at the counter was like an unexpected breeze in the paper leaves. "There's someone there," Lena said so quietly that she could barely hear herself. "Or was. Or will be." "I can't believe you're saying that," muttered Olek, but his eyes were shining. He wanted to understand, as he always did. He wanted to put together what seemed impossible to put together. A small circular inscription suddenly appeared on the metal rim that had not been there a moment before: three digits, lit up from underneath, like on an old counter: 1-9-0. The light flickered and the digits began to change slowly: 1-9-1, 1-9-2... until they stopped at 1-9-0-1 and glowed brighter, as if it were the answer to a question they had not yet had time to ask. "A year," Olek understood. "It shows the year." "A pair of dates," he added. Lena looked at the dial of the watch. On the outer rim, which she hadn't noticed before, a second wreath of numbers ran in thin engraving - months and days, microscopic but now sharp, illuminated by a warm glow. The needles didn't just turn back time in seconds. Something in the mechanism kept counting. The weight of moments. The air in the shop frowned, like the surface of a lake when someone throws in a pebble. Little things began to leap: a note card floated and stuck to the lamp, a pen slid under a book by itself, and a map of Prussia slid off the shelf and unrolled with a rustling sound. "Lena, if this... if this opens," he said. Olek swallowed the rest of the sentence. "Do you hold? On three?" "On three," she repeated. Their fingers clenched tighter on the cool metal. Lena's heart thudded fast and loud, as if trying to catch up with the second hand. Three. Two. The circle glowed so brightly that the whole shop went out for a moment, as if someone had blinked the eyeballs of the antique shop itself. The watch beeped quietly like a sparrow under the eaves. One. From within the light came a sound that had no right to fit in here: the clatter of hooves against stone and the distant whistle of a locomotive, but the kind of sound you don't hear any more - high, dragging, alien and familiar at the same time. Then a shadow appeared - the slender silhouette of a boy whose outline was like that of an old photograph. He raised his hand. There was as much attentiveness in his gesture as... request. "Hello?" rang out from the rough depths, uncertainly but clearly. "Can... anyone hear me?" The second hand vibrated one last time, hovering a hair ahead of XII. The circle in the floor until it rumbled through the boards. Lena and Olek exchanged glances that did not contain all the questions of the world - and then the first, short, sharp bell from the town hall tower rang out, piercing through the rain, through the glass, through the trembling light in their hands.