Felko finds a strange brass clock in the cellar and, with Amelka’s help, opens a door to a time that should not exist. The moment the hands begin to spin, the house disappears.
Felek thought the afternoon had been sentenced to boredom. Rain tapped at the windows, his parents had banned the computer, and the whole house seemed to be sighing with him. With nowhere else to go, he drifted downstairs into the cellar, where old boxes leaned against the walls and cobwebs hung like torn curtains.
That was when he saw it.
On a shelf between dusty jars stood a brass clock the size of a dinner plate. It was too heavy to be ordinary, with strange little buttons around the rim and symbols instead of numbers. Felek lifted it with both hands and turned it over. Scratched into the metal underneath were words he could barely make out: You who sometimes rule, do not be afraid of mysterious ways.
“What on earth are you?” he murmured.
The cellar door creaked. Amelka appeared on the stairs, her hair still damp from the rain and her eyes bright with curiosity. She was a year older than Felek and never looked at a locked door, a hidden passage, or a suspicious noise without wanting to investigate.
“What have you found?” she asked.
Felek held up the clock. “Something very weird.”
Amelka crouched beside him, studied the symbols, and grinned. “It looks like a machine from a science-fiction film.” She pointed at the largest button. “Shall we?”
Felek hesitated only a second before nodding.
Their fingers pressed the button at the same time.
The clock shuddered in his hands. Its hands spun faster and faster until they became a silver blur. A thin whisper rose from inside it, so faint Felek could not tell whether it was a voice or the wind. The air turned sharp and cold, carrying a strange metallic smell.
Then the cellar vanished.
Felek was falling, though there was no floor beneath him, only flashes of light and fragments of impossible places: dinosaurs beneath dark trees, knights raising swords, smoke-belching trains, shining towers, and flying machines that streaked across the sky like silver birds.
The spinning stopped with a jolt.
He and Amelka landed hard on something warm and dusty. Above them stretched a sky tinted purple at the edges. In the distance stood buildings unlike any Felek had ever seen, all glass arches and crooked towers. The brass clock lay beside them, ticking once, twice, as if nothing strange had happened at all.
Then shapes began to gather in the hazy light.
Some wore the bronze helmets of ancient warriors. Others stood in sleek, shining clothes that looked as if they had been stitched from moonlight. Every face was turned toward Felek and Amelka.
A voice rang out across the strange square.
“Welcome, time travellers. Your trial is about to begin...”