When Simon and Lena spend the holidays at Aunt Ada’s old house, an attic discovery gives them strange powers and points them toward a hidden staircase no one has mentioned before.
Simon and Lena had expected another ordinary holiday of rain, puddles, and being told to keep quiet indoors. Instead, their parents dropped them at Aunt Ada’s house on the edge of town, a tall, weather-worn place with sagging shutters, whispering floorboards, and an attic that looked far more interesting than any room below.
On the afternoon the storm settled in, Simon leaned against the stair rail and grinned at Lena. "Come on," he said. "If the weather’s going to trap us here, we might as well explore."
Lena hesitated only until another clap of thunder rattled the windows. Then they climbed the narrow stairs, ducking under cobwebs and stepping around trunks, broken lamps, and stacks of yellowed books. In the far corner, half-hidden beneath a blanket of dust, Lena found a small wooden box. Inside lay an old compass with a pale, shining needle. The moment Simon touched it, the attic seemed to breathe. The needle whirled, the compass glowed blue, and a voice drifted through the room, quiet but clear: "Only the brave can discover what this house hides."
Simon blinked. A tin soldier on a shelf gave a little jump and slid toward him without being touched. Lena gasped and stared at the wall beside the trunks, where she could suddenly make out shapes moving behind the plaster, as if the house had become transparent in patches.
"Do you see that?" she whispered.
Before Simon could answer, the compass jerked in his hand and pointed at the back wall of the attic, where a narrow staircase was appearing in the dust, step by step, as if it had been waiting there all along. Neither of them had ever heard of it. Then, from somewhere above the dark door at the top, came the sound of footsteps.