Oliver and his friends slip into an old clockmaker’s workshop and find a strange clock that turns the wrong way, opens a rift of green light, and whisks them into a mysterious world.
Oliver had always liked the forgotten places in town, but he had never had a reason to be this brave. That reason arrived with the rain, drumming hard on the roofs and streaming down the narrow streets as he hurried along with Marta and Boris. They were heading for Mrs Leokadia’s abandoned workshop, the one people whispered about whenever evening came early and the shadows grew long.
The door gave way with a tired groan. Inside, the air smelled of dust, oil, and something sharp and metallic, as if time itself had been stored there for years. Clocks crowded every wall and shelf: tall clocks, small clocks, pocket watches with cracked lids, cuckoo clocks with still beaks. They all ticked, but never together. Some hurried, some hesitated, and somewhere in the back of the room, something tapped softly, like fingernails on wood.
Boris stopped in front of a clock with a dark brass face. “That one’s wrong,” he whispered.
It was. The hands moved backwards.
Marta bent closer. Faint marks curled around the edge of the dial, thin as scratches and neat as writing. Oliver lifted his hand, but before he could touch the glass, the clock gave a low murmur from somewhere deep inside it.
“Are you looking for answers that no one knows?” it asked.
They jumped back so fast Boris nearly knocked into a shelf. The clock flashed green. Light spilled across the room, bright and cold, and the tapping turned into a rushing sound, like wind tearing through a tunnel. Then the floor vanished.
When Oliver could breathe again, the workshop was gone.
He was standing on a damp shore beneath pale blue trees, their leaves glowing softly in the dark. A lake stretched out before them, smooth as glass. Above the water, hanging between the branches like it belonged there, was the same clock - only now it was enormous, its face looming overhead, its hands jerking backward with a shiver.
A sound drifted from inside it. Not ticking. Not tapping.
Words.
Oliver stared up at the clock, his heart pounding, when Marta caught his sleeve and pointed into the trees.
A figure in a wide-brimmed hat had stepped out of the shadows and was walking straight toward them.