In Wrzosowice, the fog not only sat in the fields but also whispered across the roofs, as if it had something to tell anyone who got up early enough. That morning, Lena got up at dawn and pushed back the heavy curtain in the attic room. Through the window she could see the river, which curved just outside the garden, lay quietly between the reeds and disappeared behind the poplars. Rosa's grandmother's house stood on a slight rise, crooked and burly, with a porch that creaked like an old fiddle. - 'Everything talks in this house,' stated Kacper, suddenly appearing with a thermos of cocoa and Basil the cat under his arm. - The stairs say 'be careful', the floor says 'don't jump', and the pantry door says 'cheese only after dinner'. Lena snorted with laughter. The tomcat jumped nimbly onto the windowsill and set his ears towards the garden. He was almost all black, only the tip of his tail was white, as if someone had dipped a paintbrush in milk. They had moved in a week ago. Mum was painting the kitchen a buttery colour, Dad was putting up the bookcases in the living room. Lena was eleven years old and had an infinite number of questions she hadn't had time to ask her grandmother. Her grandmother was left with a house, an orchard with old apple trees and an attic that was said in the village to be bigger on the inside than the outside. This couldn't be true, but you never know with Wrzosowice. That afternoon, Lena and Kacper found the entrance to the attic behind a perfectly ordinary cupboard. A ladder with a rope that had to be pulled twice because the first time it just snorted and fluttered with cobwebs. The attic smelled of dust, lime honey and raindrops that lapped here in memory, even though the roof was airtight. Silver threads shimmered under the beams; later it became clear that these were not cobwebs, but thin gutters of light streaming down from the window like ribbons. - Oh dear... - Kacper spread his hands. - It's an exhibition of clocks. There were clocks as small as a matchbox and as big as a sideboard. Pendulums that were silent; hands shaped like feathers; dials painted garnet and gold. One of them walked backwards and counted down "just now" instead of "soon". The other had tiny moons on the dial instead of numbers: new moons, sickles, full moons. In the middle of the wall hung the strangest clock. It almost didn't fit in the frame. Its dial was dark blue and dotted with tiny stars that really twinkled. Beneath them, among the painted clouds, tiny waves could be seen, not painted at all. - 'This one's looking at you,' said Kacper quietly, though it made no sense. On the box under the clock lay an envelope sealed in wax with a fern imprint. Lena stroked the wax with her finger. The wax was warm, as if it had just run off. - Read it! - Kacper hurried her, but Lena first looked at the envelope from all sides. On it was the inscription: "For Lena Nowicka, age 11, Guardian of the Hours (temporary)". - Guardians of... what? - she repeated, laughing uncertainly. Under her fingers, her heart began to thud too fast. She pushed back the lacquer and slid a sheet of paper written in pen out of the envelope. The writing was even, with breaths between words, as if each word had the time it deserved. "Leno, if you are reading this, it means that the house has decided that the time is right. Not all clocks count down the same. Some count minutes, others count dares, and the one you're looking at counts transitions. Wind it on the new moon at midnight - three full turns with a silver key - and you will see where the wings of the house really grow. Remember the silence between the chimes. If you hear the thirteenth, don't run away. Have a light with you. Rose" - Grandma was... - Kacper broke off, searching for the right word. - Well... amazing. - She always put a scarf on before she did her magic on anything,' Lena chuckled reflexively, then burst into a blush. - I was joking. It's just a letter... However, in the box, besides the letter, rested a silver key tied with a red ribbon. Next to it stood a jar labelled "Dawn, July 1989". - a pale light trembled inside, as if someone had trapped a piece of morning - and a small tin labelled "Echoes (unnecessary, but nice)". Without thinking, Kacper opened the tin and jumped back as a few sounds spilled out with a pleasant clang: "hello!", "pssst!", "here I am!", which rolled like glass balls and disappeared under the cupboard. - 'Can you be a bit more serious? - hissed Lena, but she couldn't hide her smile. - The new moon is tonight. That one sentence made the air in the attic thicken. The jar with 'Dawn' twitched, as if to answer. The clock with the moons on the dial moved the hand half a candle wax high. - 'At midnight everyone is asleep,' Kacper remarked. - Your parents, too. We have a thermos of cocoa, torches... and Basil is brave. The cat, as if he understood, perched himself on the key-box and entangled the white end of his tail in a red ribbon. It was a long time until midnight. Lena helped in the kitchen, peeled apples and listened to her mum humming 'Daisy grew field' and her dad trying to work out where to hang the kitchen clock, since there are already a hundred clocks in Grandma's house. After dinner, she packed a torch, notebook, pencil, cocoa and blanket in her backpack. She looked in her grandmother's wardrobe some more; the coats smelled of bergamot and fresh snow, although snow in June should not smell. At exactly eleven forty-five, Lena and Kacper tiptoed past her parents' room and pulled the cord from the ladder. The attic welcomed them in semi-darkness. Torchlight danced across the beams. Basil climbed up first and sat in front of the dark blue clock, like a guard in a black coat. Lena put her hand on the box. The metal of the key was cool and smooth. The clock was silent, but you could get chills just from watching the stars on the dial slowly move along invisible orbits. - Are you sure? - Kacper asked. - 'No,' answered Lena honestly. - But I am curious. She picked up the key. Searching the case with her torch, she found a small heart-shaped socket to the right of the four stars. She inserted the key and immediately felt a gentle resistance, as if the clock was wondering if it was definitely her hand. Then the resistance disappeared. Lena turned it once. A quiet murmur came through the beams of the attic, like the purr of a cat, only huge. A second turn. The air held its breath. A third turn. Something clicked. The hands stopped at the invisible hour between twelve o'clock and nothing. A bass "boom" spilled across the room - the first chime. Lena and Kacper exchanged glances. There was silence between the chimes, thick and soft as a blanket. In that silence, Lena heard things she hadn't noticed before: the way the sap circulated in the wood, the way the river outside the window carried particles of light, the way Basil shifted his paw to avoid stepping on the echoing letter 'pssst'. A second chime. Next to the clock, on the wall, a line flashed, as if someone had drawn with chalk made of moonlight. The line grew, forming a rectangle the height of the door. Third chime. There was a whiff of salt and lemon, although they were a long way from the sea. The fourth chime. The stars on the clock face dropped a millimetre and hovered above the floor, like a swarm of sparks that can't decide whether they are light or insects. - Have you got that light? - whispered Kacper. Lena nodded. She took a jar labelled 'Dawn, July 1989' out of her backpack. Her hand trembled. She removed the lid. A milky, gentle dawn light came from inside the jar and spilled across the attic, evenly, just as it used to spill over the meadows when her grandmother got up early to bake yeast cakes. The fifth chime. Droplets of light clinked with the chalk line of the door on the wall. The sixth chime. The doorknob, which hadn't been there before, began to draw itself out of nothing, as if someone was remembering what doorknobs look like. Seventh chime. The door took on texture - they saw wood grain, tiny scrapes, a tiny comma-shaped crack. - Look! - Kacper pointed to the floor. Shadows of boats ran across the planking under Lena's feet, but they couldn't be felt, only seen, as if they were sailing on the other side of the light. - Transitions... - he broke off, biting the edge of his sleeve. The eighth chime. Someone on the other side of the door sighed. Ninth. Basil ruffled his fur, but didn't run away; instead, he sat down by the edge of the light and stared intently, as if reading in fine print something that wasn't written. Tenth. In the corner, right next to the box, the hands of the smallest watch suddenly turned and went forward, as if taking a hand. Eleventh. The door in the wall moved, not scissor-like like a normal door, but like a sail catching the wind. - 'Lena,' said Kacper very quietly, and in that one word was everything: fear, excitement, question. The twelfth chime. The doorknob flicked and dropped, as if someone on the other side had just laid a hand on it. The air grew cooler. Everything paused for a heartbeat. The thirteenth chime. It was no louder than the others, but it had something about it that made the hairs on the back of Lena's neck stand up - a sound that echoed like footsteps in a place she had not yet entered. The door swung open a hand's width. A narrow beam of light slipped out from inside, not dawn, but deep and blue, like the colour of a dark lake just before a storm. Lena felt the dampness on her face and the taste of something new on her tongue, something she didn't know how to name. - 'Please show the light,' said a voice from inside, calm, slightly hoarse but smiling. - And tickets, if you have any. Kacper looked at Lena. The jar of 'Dawn' was glowing in her hands. Basil twitched, as if ready to jump. The door moved once more, opening for another breath. Just beyond the threshold something flashed, like metal in motion, and a silhouette flashed in the blue....