Three classmates turn a school science day into a chaotic experiment that produces an unexpected visitor, a missing hat, and a map to somewhere nobody meant to open.
It began on Monday morning at eight o'clock, when Maks, Ida, and Bartek pushed open the door to the school science lab. The room smelled of paint, dusty books, and something faintly mouldy that lived in the far corner and clearly had no respect for the holidays.
It was the last week of term, which meant Mrs Wiesia had decided on a terrible and brilliant idea called Crazy Experience Day. Everyone was allowed to bring something from home and make an experiment out of it. Maks arrived with a clay modelling kit, Ida with her great-grandfather's lucky hat, and Bartek with a plastic flamingo he had once rescued from a hedge outside the school.
"All right," said Mrs Wiesia, passing out pink-rimmed safety goggles. "Let the scientific madness begin."
Maks mixed the coloured liquids until they fizzed like fizzy sweets gone wild. Ida, mostly for a joke, set the lucky hat on top of the test tube. Bartek tried to help, missed the pipette completely, and snorted a yellow liquid straight up his nose. He let out such a thunderous sneeze that the flamingo toppled off the table and landed with a crack on the floor.
Then the flask glugged, the clay bulged, and the hat began to spin. Something rose out of the mess with a wet squelch and a dramatic wobble. It was round and muddy, with one bright eye, Ida's hat perched at a jaunty angle, and the flamingo stuck out where one arm should have been.
The creature blinked at them and said, "Who ordered the golem-burger?"
For one second, nobody moved. Then all three of them burst out laughing so hard Maks nearly dropped the flask. The golem did not seem offended. It clomped across the lab, leaving slippery footprints and the occasional cucumber slice in its wake, as if that were the most normal thing in the world.
Then it stopped, bent down, and tugged Ida's hat off the floor. Something small and folded slipped from the lining. The golem opened it with muddy fingers.
It was a tiny map.
The smile on its face widened. It muttered something they could not hear, then marched straight to the dusty storeroom door under the lab. The old handle creaked as the golem pushed it open, and from the darkness inside came a strange sound, like whispering mixed with rattling jars and one very annoyed sneeze.