Tymek and Lena find a hidden portal beneath an ancient oak on the edge of town and step into a strange world where the forest, the sky, and even the rules of nature are different.
Tymek had a habit of noticing things other people missed. That was probably why he and Lena were wandering through the Old Forest instead of doing something sensible on a hot summer afternoon.
The woods at the edge of Green Corner were thick with shade, and the great oak at its centre looked older than the town itself. Its trunk was wide enough for three children to link arms around, and its roots pushed up through the earth like knuckles. Tymek and Lena had come looking for old traces of the people who once lived there: a broken sign, a buried box, anything that might turn an ordinary day into something better.
Then Lena stopped so suddenly that Tymek nearly walked into her.
"Look," she whispered.
At the base of the oak, between two roots, the ground had sunk into a perfect круг-shaped hollow. Light pulsed there, pale blue and cold, like moonlight trapped under water. It shimmered, twisted, and curled in on itself, as if something deep below the roots was breathing.
Tymek crouched down before he could stop himself. The air above the hollow prickled against his skin. He reached out and touched the glowing surface. His fingers vanished into it at once, not wet, not burning, just gone, as if he had dipped them into mist.
Lena sucked in a sharp breath. "Tymek..."
He pulled back, staring. The blue light rippled harder now, widening in slow circles. This was no buried tunnel, no hidden spring. It felt like the kind of thing they had only ever read about in stories.
Lena grabbed his hand. Her grip was warm and tight. "Together," she said, trying to sound brave.
Before Tymek could answer, the hollow yawned open.
The world tilted. Leaves, sky, and roots whirled into streaks of colour, and the ground vanished beneath their feet. Tymek had just enough time to hear Lena shout his name before the spinning light threw them out into a place that did not belong to their world at all.
They landed in a clearing ringed by silver-leaved trees. Above them hung a strange sky with two suns, one white and one gold. Somewhere nearby, something sang in a voice too high and clear to be human, and beyond that came the beat of enormous wings.
Tymek pushed himself up slowly. Lena was already staring ahead, frozen.
A figure hovered in the air in front of them, light as a drifting leaf. Its wings were transparent, like glass, and its eyes shone an eerie green.
"Who are you," it asked, its voice ringing through the clearing, "and what have you come to seek in our world?"
Neither Tymek nor Lena knew how to answer. And behind them, with a soft click, the portal under the old oak closed.