Clockwork Kingdom

You stumble through a hidden door in your grandmother's basement and discover a magical kingdom where everything runs on gears, springs, and enchanted clockwork.

You are eleven years old, and your favorite thing in the world is taking stuff apart to see how it works. Clocks, radios, old phones -- if it has gears or wires inside, you want to look at them. Your grandmother thinks this is wonderful, which is why she invites you over every Saturday to help organize her big dusty basement full of ancient junk.

'Just don't disassemble the furnace this time, dear!' she had called from the kitchen as you thumped down the stairs. 'I won't,' you had promised, though you were already eyeing the back wall where she kept the really old stuff.

'Boxes, boxes, boxes,' you mutter to yourself, sliding a crate of moth-eaten quilts aside. 'There has got to be something interesting back here.' Today starts like any other Saturday -- dust to sneeze at and the smell of cinnamon tea drifting down the stairs. But then your fingers brush something cold and metal behind the boxes. A little brass door, no bigger than a microwave, set right into the basement wall.

'No way,' you whisper. 'How have I never seen this before?' Warm golden light spills from the crack beneath it. You glance up at the ceiling. 'Grandma is busy upstairs. She will not even know.' You pull the door open, and the light pours over you like sunshine.