Olive and Max find a hidden world behind their grandfather’s strange watch, where colours are vanishing from the valley and someone in silver is coming through the mist.
Olive had always known her grandfather kept odd things. His cupboard was packed with brass keys, cracked compasses, feathered pens, and a pocket watch that never seemed to tell the right time. Yet whenever Olive passed it, the watch caught the light and flashed with all the colours of a rainbow.
On a wet afternoon, while rain tapped hard against the windows, Olive and her younger brother Max were rummaging through the cabinet for something interesting to do. Max was the one who found the watch. It was lying open on the top shelf, as if someone had just set it there in a hurry. A pale glow pulsed from inside it.
“Olive, look,” Max whispered, eyes wide. “It’s shining.”
He reached out before she could stop him. His fingertip brushed the metal, and the watch gave a sharp, bright flicker. The cabinet shuddered. The teacups on the shelf rattled. Then the room lurched sideways, as though the air had turned to water.
Olive grabbed Max’s hand. The world spun and folded around them in a rush of colour and cold wind. For one wild second, it felt as if they were falling through a curtain made of velvet and lightning.
When the motion stopped, they were standing in the middle of a vast valley washed in impossible light. Hills rolled away in every direction. Trees sparkled with blue leaves, and a river glimmered like glass. High above them, strips of rainbow colour hung in the sky like torn ribbons.
But pieces were missing.
Great gaps had opened in the colours, and the edges of the rainbow were fading as if someone were wiping them away.
A small green-haired rabbit burst from behind a rock and skidded to a stop at their feet. He wore a striped scarf and had dust on his nose.
“Help!” he cried. “The colours are disappearing. The valley is losing its light, and the path home will vanish too if you don’t find it quickly!”
Olive stared at him, unable to decide whether to run or ask a hundred questions. Then a strange metallic sound rang out from the mist beyond the trees, slow and steady, like footsteps from something that knew exactly where they were.
The rabbit’s ears flattened. Olive looked up. Through the pale mist, a figure in a silver cloak was coming closer.