The Sundial in the Cheese Cellar

High in the hills above the village of Dunmere, a door is cut into the rock. Behind it lies the oldest cheese cellar in the valley. It runs deep into the mountain, cool and dark, and it smells of milk and moss and patience.

Jana is fifteen, and she has been the cheesemaker's apprentice for two years. Her job is simple. Every morning she walks the long shelves with a lantern. She turns the heavy wheels of cheese and brushes the dust from their rinds.

Her favourite part of the cellar is the entrance. Just outside the door stands a stone sundial, half sunk in the grass. It sits in the shadow of a huge overhanging rock, where the sun has never once touched it.

That is the strange part. The dial has no sunlight, and yet its shadow moves. Slowly, all through the day, the thin black needle creeps from mark to mark. When it reaches the notch carved like a wheel, the cheeses inside are ready.

"Nobody knows who made it," the cheesemaker likes to say. "It simply works."

But this week it does not work.

On Monday morning, Jana finds the needle stuck halfway round the dial. It does not move all day. On Tuesday it is still there, like a finger pointing at nothing. Down in the cellar, the wheels stay pale and sour. The cheesemaker walks the shelves with her hands behind her back.

"The midsummer market is in three days," she tells Jana at dinner. "Every cheese in this cellar was meant to be ready. If the dial will not wake up, we will have nothing to sell."

"How do we wake it?" Jana asks.

"My teacher once told me that the stone is thirsty for sunlight," the cheesemaker says. "It was made for a single touch of true sun every hundred years. I never believed her." She sighs. "I think I should have."

Jana lies awake that night, thinking about the huge rock. It will never let the sun in. Unless the sun is carried in.

In the morning she runs down the hill to her friend Mabel. Mabel repairs clocks in the village and talks to each one like a pet.

"A mirror," Mabel says at once, when she hears the problem. Her eyes light up. "We need a big, flat mirror. We climb the cliff above the overhang, catch the noon sun, and bounce it down onto the dial."

"Where do we find a mirror that big?"

"The hall has one. It hangs behind the stage." Mabel is already pulling on her boots. "It belongs to everyone, so it belongs a little to us."

By midday on Wednesday, the girls are dragging the great mirror up a goat path. It is heavier than a calf, and it is wrapped in an old blanket. Every few steps it slips. Every few steps they argue about whose turn it is to hold the heavy end.

At the top of the cliff, they stop to breathe. Below them the valley lies spread out like a green map. Directly beneath their feet, hidden by the overhang, is the grey dial with its stuck black needle.

"It is half past eleven," Mabel says, squinting at the sky. "Hold the mirror up. Not like that. Higher. Tilt it a little more."

Jana tilts. A blinding white circle of light leaps from the glass. It flashes across the valley and swings wildly over a field of sheep. They cheer.

Then the blanket slips from the frame. The old wood groans. The corner twists out of Jana's fingers, and the mirror tips forward over the edge.

"No!" Mabel shouts.

It falls for a very long time. Then it hits the rocks below with a crash. A thousand silver pieces fly across the grass.

For a moment neither of them speaks. The sun is almost directly overhead.

"That was the plan," Jana whispers. "That was the whole plan."

"It was a good plan," Mabel says in a small voice.

Jana sits down on the warm stone and puts her face in her hands. The sun climbs another notch, and the needle below stays frozen. There is less than half an hour left. At noon, the sun will pass behind the ridge, and the cheeses will miss the market.

Then Mabel kneels beside her. She is looking at the pail by Jana's feet, the one that carried their lunch up the hill. Its lid is made of bright copper, scrubbed to a shine by two years of Friday mornings.

"Jana," Mabel says slowly. "How many pails does the dairy have?"

"Eleven. Why?"

"And what are the lids made of?"

Jana looks up. She understands before Mabel finishes. "Copper," she says. "All of them. I polish them every week."

"One mirror was too big and too heavy," Mabel says. "But a chain of small ones could reach anywhere."

They do not stop to be careful. They tumble down the goat path, shouting at everyone they meet. In the dairy yard, the cheesemaker stands by the broken glass with her hand over her mouth. She listens to the new plan without a word, and when it ends she only nods once.

"Eleven lids," she says. "Quickly, then."

The church bell rings a quarter to twelve. By then, eleven children stand in a long line up the hillside. Each one holds a copper lid, and each one looks very serious. The first child stands on the cliff top, where the sun is fierce. The last one crouches on the ledge at the edge of the overhang, close to the shadowed dial.

Mabel runs up and down the line like a conductor. She whistles, points, and tilts a lid here and there with two careful fingers.

"Left a little," she calls. "No, your other left. Now hold it. Everybody hold!"

Jana stays at the bottom, next to the sundial. From there she can see the whole chain, a glittering ladder of copper climbing the hill. Her hands are cold. She sees the first flash of light jump from lid to lid, from the cliff to the ledge.

"It is coming," she whispers.

The final lid swings round. A thin gold line slips under the overhang. It crosses the cool grass and settles on the stone like a hand.

For a long moment, nothing happens. The children hold their breath. The cheesemaker's lips move silently, as if she is counting.

Then the black needle shivers. It lifts, trembles, and begins to turn. It slides over the dial faster than any shadow has a right to move. It passes every mark, one after the other. Then it stops with a small, solid click in the notch carved like a wheel.

Down in the cellar, something sighs. It is a soft, deep sound, like a long breath let go. The cheesemaker is already running through the door with her lantern, and Jana follows her.

On the shelves, the pale wheels are turning gold, one by one, from the edges to the centre.

Later, the children go home with their lids, and the afternoon is quiet. Jana sits by herself on the doorstep. The golden line has faded from the stone. Mabel has fallen asleep on the grass with a copper lid on her chest. It rises and falls with her breathing.

The shadow of the needle rests in its notch. Behind Jana, in the cool dark of the cellar, a single lantern burns. The wheels of cheese sit patiently in their rows, ripe at last.