Olive and Tom discover a strange mirror in their grandmother's attic, and when the glass begins to change, something inside it notices them back.
Olive had always loved old things. Their grandmother's attic was her favourite place in the whole house, with its sloping beams, moth-eaten blankets, and boxes that smelled of cedar and dust. That afternoon, she climbed the creaky stairs with Tom trailing behind her, his phone forgotten in his pocket the moment she heaved open the lid of a trunk.
Beneath a stack of faded curtains lay a mirror taller than Olive was, wrapped in a sheet so thin it seemed to breathe. Its frame was carved with twisting marks that looked less like decoration and more like warnings.
"Come and look at this," Olive whispered.
Tom came closer, squinting at the carvings. "Those aren't letters," he said. Then he leaned toward the glass and jerked back so fast he nearly bumped into the trunk. "Wait. I saw something move."
Olive frowned and reached out. The mirror was cool under her fingertips, but the surface gave a little, like skin over water. A pale shimmer spread across it. She touched it again.
The attic vanished.
For one breathless second, the glass filled with a different world: black trees rising like crooked umbrellas, a greenish sky hanging low and heavy, and a path disappearing between roots that curled above the ground like fingers. Tom grabbed Olive's sleeve.
"Olive," he breathed, "that's not our attic."
A soft rustling came from the mirror, though the room around them was still. It sounded like leaves whispering to one another, or someone speaking very far away.
Then a slender figure appeared in the reflection. She wore a dark cloak that seemed to ripple even though there was no wind, and her eyes glowed gold in the dim light. Slowly, she lifted one hand and pointed past them, toward a gate standing deep in the green forest.
The mirror flared so brightly Olive had to shield her eyes. When she lowered her hand, the figure was still there, waiting.
Tom's fingers tightened around hers. Neither of them moved.
And then, from inside the glass, the cloaked figure pointed at them again, as if she were asking them to follow.