Lucja and Bartek find a strange clock in their grandmother’s attic. When they try to wake it, the hands whirl and the attic vanishes, dropping them into a street that should not exist.
Grandma Marianna’s attic always smelled of dust, old apples, and the leather of suitcases that had not been opened in years. Lucja and Bartek loved it there, especially on rainy Saturdays when the garden turned into a puddle and there was nowhere else to go. They were digging through a chest full of hats when Lucja froze.
In the shadow between two tall wardrobes stood a clock they had never noticed before. It was nearly as tall as Bartek, made of dark wood, with a cracked face that looked like a spiderweb. The hands were stuck at 17:44. Below the dial, someone had carved one word into the wood: Mystery.
"Look," Lucja whispered, stepping closer. "Why would anyone write that on a clock?"
Bartek leaned in and brushed dust from the front. A small flap clicked open near the side, revealing a silver keyhole and a tiny button marked START.
Lucja frowned. "I don’t remember this being here."
"Maybe it’s broken," Bartek said, though his voice had gone quiet too. He took an old key from his pocket, the one he had found in the garden last spring and never thrown away. "What if it fits?"
The key slid in as if the clock had been waiting for it. Lucja barely had time to draw a breath before Bartek turned it.
The hands jerked. Then they spun faster and faster, blurring into a silver circle. The pendulum began to swing with a deep, ringing hum that seemed to shake the floorboards. Tiny sparks of light burst out around them, bright as sparks from a firecracker.
"Bartek—" Lucja grabbed his sleeve.
The attic lurched. The chest, the wardrobes, the dusty rafters all seemed to tilt away at once. A bell crashed through the silence so loudly that Lucja flinched and shut her eyes.
When she opened them again, the attic was gone.
She and Bartek were standing in the middle of a wide cobbled street. Horses clopped past in dark carriages. People in long coats and strange hats hurried by as if they belonged there. Lucja’s fingers tightened around Bartek’s hand.
"Are we—" she began.
A voice spoke close behind them.
"You two aren’t from here, are you?"
Lucja and Bartek turned very slowly.