Each story is rooted in real local history and landmarks
A child touches the keys of the Valere organ, and each note opens a vision of a different century -- the canons chanting beneath the vaulted ceiling in 1437, the desperate night of the 1788 fire when the wind miraculously spared the hill, the Reformation that silenced organs across Switzerland but never reached this summit. The child must play one note from each century to keep the organ's memory alive for another 600 years.
Valere and Tourbillon, personified as two sisters perched on twin hills, once watched over Sion together. But after the catastrophic fire of 1788 left Tourbillon in ruins while Valere stood untouched, the sisters stopped speaking. A child must climb both hills, carrying messages between the proud basilica and the heartbroken ruin, to mend their quarrel before a new storm gathers over the Rhone valley.
A child discovers a carved stone warrior half-buried in a Sion park, its triangular dagger still sharp after 5,000 years. Following the dagger's strange carvings, they travel back to a Neolithic village on the banks of the Rhone, where the community is raising a great dolmen before the summer solstice. The child must help lift the capstone into place, learning that even the heaviest burdens can be moved when an entire village pulls together.
A child finds a carved wooden head at a market stall in Sion's old town. When they drive a nail into it, they're transported to 1510 and witness the showdown between the fiery Georg Supersaxo and the powerful Cardinal Schiner. Carrying the mazze through the streets as citizens hammer in their nails of defiance, the child discovers that democracy was once a wooden head, a handful of nails, and the courage to say 'enough.'
A mountain village above Sion has lost its water -- the ancient bisse has run dry. A child must follow the old channel path along dizzying cliff faces and through crumbling tunnels, repairing each broken section and learning the name of every family in the consortage who once kept it flowing. Only when every stone is back in place and every name remembered will the water return.
A child's toy cannon rolls down a hill in Sion and lands on the old Simplon road. Following it through time, they meet the engineers building the first highway over the Alps -- blasting through rock, spanning gorges with massive bridges, and racing against winter. The child must help a mule team navigate the seven rock galleries before the first snowfall seals the pass for the season.
On a hot, dry market day, a child in Sion smells smoke. Suddenly they are reliving 24 May 1788 -- racing through narrow streets to warn neighbors, rescuing a stray cat from the walls of Tourbillon as the Foehn wind howls, and watching in awe as the very same wind that destroys the castle miraculously pushes the flames away from the basilica of Valere across the valley.
In the Maison Supersaxo, a Nativity figure in the great rosette ceiling winks at a child. Pulled upward into the wood and paint, the child enters the year 1505, where the sculptor Jacobinus Malacrida is racing to finish the magnificent ceiling before Supersaxo's grand banquet. With gold leaf running low and the feast approaching, the child must help carve the final rosette and place the coat of arms before the guests arrive.
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