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Amelia couldn’t believe her eyes. The sundial lay on the floor. She was just glad it had landed on the rug.
Luther bent over to pick it up, but Dave stopped him. “Wait, you gotta check if it’s broken. If it is, you shouldn’t touch it or it might break worse.”
Luther scowled. “Since you’re such a geologist and all, why don’t you do it?”
“A geologist studies rocks,” Dave said. “You’re thinking of an archeologist.”
Dave leaned in for a better look at the sundial. He craned his neck, looking past it at something under the bookshelf. He reached for whatever it was, his hand coming out with the small wooden cow that Grandpa Joe had almost dropped earlier. Dave stuffed it absentmindedly into the breast pocket on his mummy costume.
“What’re you doing?” Amelia asked, shocked that Dave hadn’t put it on the shelf. “Put it back!”
But Dave was already focused on inspecting the sundial and didn’t seem to realize that he was basically stealing the cow.
The sundial was about as big across as Amelia’s forearm, from her elbow to her wrist and had a spike coming out of the middle. It was made of a thick piece of brownish gold metal that was turning green with age. Amelia thought most people would have said it was really old, but with Grandpa Joe, there was no telling.
Dave breathed a sigh of relief, but then swallowed nervously. “It’s fine.”
Amelia knew he was trying not to let them see how worried he’d been. She was about to tell him to put the cow back on the shelf when some writing on the sundial caught her eye.
“What’s that say?” Amelia asked, pointing at the right side of the sundial.
Dave looked at it again. “Today.”
“There’s something on the other side,” Luther said.
“Yesterday,” Dave replied.
“’Yesterday,’” Luther began to sing. “’All my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they’re here to stay.’”
“Wow, keep your day job,” Dave said. “Can you help me get it up?”
Luther knelt down and put a hand on the sundial.
“Wait,” Dave said. “Amelia, help us. I don’t want it to slip.”
“It’s not gonna slip,” Luther said. “It’s not heavy. I can pick it up myself.”
“You can knock it over yourself, too,” Dave shot back.
“Okay boys, just stop,” Amelia said, kneeling. “I’ll help. Let’s get it back on the shelf and get outta here. I don’t want anyone to know what happened.”
The three of them began to pick it up. It was heavier than Amelia thought it would be, but not hard to lift with the three of them. As they did, Amelia noticed the spike in the middle of the sundial cast no shadow, even though the light was on.
She was just about to say something when they heard the creak of someone walking down the hall.
“Hurry!” Amelia urged, elbowing Dave.
As she did, the cow in Dave’s pocket slipped out.
They all watched in horror as another one of Grandpa Joe’s priceless artifacts fell to the ground that day.
The cow hit the top of the sundial, right on the word Yesterday.
Without warning, the room around them began to grow. Amelia gasped as the bookshelves stretched to the size of skyscrapers. The ceiling seemed to extend like it was covering the sky and Grandpa Joe’s desk looked like a mountain. Amelia looked down and realized that it wasn’t the room that was getting bigger, she, Dave, and Luther were all getting smaller. The floor was rushing up to meet them, and as she got closer to it, Amelia could easily see the grain of the wood in each floor plank.
Amelia’s hair flew all around her and Dave and Luther wore looks of surprise as they got smaller and smaller. Compared to them, the sundial seemed to grow. It spread out like a giant sheet as they held onto it, feeling like they were moving farther apart as they got smaller.
A moment later, the lights flashed out.
Then, without warning, everything was much brighter. The sun was shining in their faces.
They were outside.
Amelia let go of the sundial in surprise. It fell, bumping her leg as it did, back to its normal size and looking just as it had before. No, not quite as it had a moment ago, Amelia realized. She thought she could see a faint line glowing on the left side of it.
A breeze rustled her hair.
Amelia blinked. She looked around, then down at herself. She felt her normal size again, everything else seemed to be the right size too. She was still in her Cleopatra costume, but they were not in Grandpa Joe’s study any longer.
Amelia pointed at the sun hanging low in the sky. “Guys, what is going on?”
“I have no idea,” Luther said. “But I’m pretty sure us suddenly being outside means there’s something very, very weird about Grandpa Joe.”
“Well, whatever just happened got my costume all tangled up.” Dave grunted as he tried to untangle several strips of cloth that had come undone.
Amelia looked around. They were surrounded by hills, dotted with scraggly palm and pine trees, rough shrubs, and grass that came well above their knees. There were a handful of small huts on the hills in the distance, but she couldn’t see any other people. Not far from the clearing and a little to their left the ground sloped down sharply, almost as steep as a cliff.
Amelia smelled the salty sea nearby and crinkled her nose in confusion. “What happened to Grandpa Joe’s study?”
“We were there just a second ago,” Dave said, still working at the strips of cloth, which were now a knot around his feet. “We were picking up the sundial together, and then, well, whatever this is happened.”
“Careful there, mate, you’re making the knot worse,” Luther said.
Amelia turned all around, trying to get a better look at where they’d found themselves. It didn’t make any sense. They’d been inside a house just a moment ago, in the middle of a city, in the afternoon. Now they were outside in the middle of nowhere and the sun hung low in the sky.
Amelia turned around again, still trying to make sense of it all. As she did, there was a quiet rustle of something moving through the bushes.
“Someone’s coming!” Amelia whispered, waving at the boys to crouch down as the wind blew tiny flecks of sand into her face.
Luther crouched, but Dave fell to the ground, air rushing out of his lungs, costume tangled more than ever. Amelia turned to help him.
“I’m not sure, Amelia–” Luther started to say when something white and grey blurred through the grass and shrubs. “Hold on, I just saw something move over there!”
Amelia snapped her head to where Luther was pointing.
“That’s weird,” Luther continued. “I think it was a–”
Luther gasped as someone leapt from the bushes. “—a girl?”