01_-_The_Alchemyst

Josh glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “Told you those video
games weren’t a waste of time. The only way not to get lost in the maze
games is to watch for clues, like patterns on the walls or ceilings, and to
keep a note of your steps so you can retrace them if you need to.” He stepped
out into a corridor. “And if I’m right, the main door should be…there!” he
finished triumphantly.
The twins fled across the vast open field in front of the huge tree house,
and made their way to the tree-lined pathway that led back to the car. Even
though night had fallen, they had no problem seeing. The moon hung bright
and low in the heavens, and the sky was filled with an extraordinary number
of brilliant stars, which combined with a swirling band of silvery dust high
in the sky to give the night a peculiar grayish luminescence. Only the
shadows remained pitch black.
Although it wasn’t cold, Sophie shivered: the night felt wrong. Josh
pulled off his hooded sweatshirt and draped it over his sister’s shoulders.
“The stars are different,” she muttered. “They’re so bright.” Craning her
neck, she looked up into the heavens, trying to peer through the branches of
the Yggdrasill. “I can’t see the Big Dipper, and the North Star is missing.”
“And there was no moon last night,” Josh said, nodding to where the full
moon was rising huge and yellow-white over the treetops. “No moon in our
world,” he added solemnly.
Sophie stared hard at the moon. There was something about it…
something wrong. She tried to identify the familiar craters, and then felt her
stomach lurch with a sudden realization. Her hand, when she pointed
upward, was trembling. “That’s not our moon!”
Josh looked hard, squinting against the glare. Then he saw what his
sister was talking about. “The surface is…different. Smoother,” he said
softly. “Where are the craters? I can’t see Kepler, Copernicus or even
Tycho.”
“Josh,” Sophie said quickly, “I think we’re looking at the night sky as it
was thousands of years ago, maybe hundreds of thousands of years ago.”
Sophie tilted her head and looked up. Josh was startled to see that the