Festus Grimm sipped from a huge mug of steaming coffee.
‘Not long now,’ he said to Effie, after scrutinising his watch. He chuckled. ‘Once I popped back to the island for half an hour to get a copy of the Gazette and a Cornish pasty and then missed the window altogether. Had to wait another twenty-four hours. Or whatever the exact equivalent is here. Still, if you’ve got a good book with you . . .’ He patted the green cover of The Repertory of Kharakter, Art & Shade.
‘What’s it about?’ asked Effie.
‘Ha!’ said Festus. ‘Life. Personality. Everything. However much I think I know about myself, I always come back to this, the absolute classic on the subject of the self and personal development – not that everyone sees it that way, of course. Have you had your consultation?’
Effie shook her head. ‘Not yet.’
‘I suppose you’re still a bit young. But it’s good for travellers to know their art and shade as early as possible, I think. Helps you develop. Shows you a few special skills you were not aware you had. Of course, Otherworld children sometimes have their consultations before they’re even ten. How old are you?’
‘Eleven.’
‘Hmm. Well, you’re probably ready. I’d get a good consultant, though. Not one of the fortune tellers in the market.’
Effie remembered that Pelham Longfellow had promised to take her for a consultation in Froghole. But, of course, for that to happen, Effie would have to get back to Truelove House. And to do that, she’d have to get her box back from her father with her precious calling card in it. And to do that, she’d have to find a copy of The Chosen Ones. How complicated life was.
‘What exactly is an art?’ asked Effie. ‘And what’s a shade?’
‘How long have you got?’ said Festus, with a kind smile. ‘You should have come here a couple of hours earlier. We could have whiled away the evening indulging in amateur kharakter analysis and plotting our precise arts and shades.’ He chuckled. ‘Your art is simply your secondary ability. Everyone has one.’
‘What’s yours?’
‘Ah. The thousand-kruble question. My kharakter is true healer. Do you still say “true” before your kharakter? It goes in and out of fashion. I’ve always been a healer in some form or other, although as I usually heal with words rather than potions I wondered for a time if I was a witch, or even a mage. In the end, I had an Otherworld consultation that finally confirmed me as a true healer. But my art? For a long time I thought I was a guide. I was head of a whole team of psychologists in a hospital on the island. I’d travelled between worlds as a young man but eventually decided to give it up – with quite a lot of encouragement from the Guild. People used to believe that it was dangerous to do as we do and travel regularly between the worlds, so I stopped. But I was never happy as a manager. I liked actually healing people. But, more than that, I itched to travel again. When I travelled, I always collected rare books, knowledge and so on. For a while I wondered if I was a scholar. But in the end I realised I was an explorer – of places and of knowledge.’
‘So you can be wrong about your abilities?’
‘Oh yes. A lot of people get them quite wrong. It’s easier on the mainland, where they take it all a lot more seriously. Schools there are all about discovering and nurturing your true abilities. If someone fails at something, everyone is happy for them because they have found something to cross off their list. For example, if a boy is awful at sport everyone congratulates him on not being a warrior and he is simply given an extra music or chemistry class to see if he is in fact a composer or an alchemist.’
‘How many kharakters are there?’
‘Twenty,’ said Festus. ‘Well, if you include wizard, which not everyone does. Otherwise, nineteen. Of course the really interesting thing is the combination of kharakter and art. That’s what makes people unique.’
‘What combination do you think I am?’
Festus smiled kindly. ‘You wear the Ring of the True Hero, and you’re a plucky little thing. I heard about how you defeated Leonard Levar. It’s rare to be a hero, but that surely is your kharakter. As for your art . . . That’s more difficult. You can sometimes buy do-it-yourself kits in the market, but they’re not that accurate. You need someone who can read a test properly. But at a guess . . . Maybe you’re an explorer like me?’
‘Does your art give you magical abilities, like your kharakter?’
‘Of course. And you can use all the boons, too. The best thing I ever did was to discover I was an explorer. Once the universe knows you know . . . It’s hard to explain, but I suddenly found an explorer’s boon – a compass – and my life completely changed.’
Festus took out of his pocket a small, silver globe that looked like a huge ball-bearing, except that it had a silver hinge and a little latch.
‘It’s an antique,’ he said, proudly. ‘Here. Have a look.’
Effie picked it up, but it would not open. It started to grow hot, and heavy. She put it down just as her fingers began to burn. The boon clearly did not want her to touch it.
‘Seems like I’m not an explorer after all,’ she said.
‘Oh well, one to cross off the list,’ Festus said cheerfully. ‘But you can still look.’ He opened the silver casing and showed Effie what was inside. There was a needle, like an ordinary compass. But instead of north, south, east and west, the compass points said ‘danger’, ‘knowledge’, ‘pleasure’ and ‘charity’.
‘From the nineteenth century,’ Festus said. ‘It guides me on my adventures.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Effie, a little sad that her art was not also explorer and that she could not have a compass like this one.
‘Thank you.’
‘So what’s your shade?’ asked Effie.
Suddenly, in the distance, a cock crowed, and a faint pink light started to drift into the room. Day was breaking somewhere in the universe, somewhere nearby.
‘Aha,’ said Festus, standing up. ‘Time to go. We’ll talk about shades next time perhaps. Happy travels, young hero.’
As Festus walked off quickly towards the door to the Otherworld, Effie suddenly wanted to go after him and tell him all about how she had been expelled from her magic class and ask him what to do about it. But it was too late; he was gone. She drained her hot chocolate and went to be scanned.
At lunchtime Wolf, Lexy and Raven met up in Griffin’s Library to talk about Maximilian and Effie and where they might be.
‘Do you think they’re together?’ asked Lexy.
‘I hope so,’ said Wolf. ‘And I hope they come back soon. I need Effie for tennis this afternoon. None of the guys can hit the ball as hard as she can. And we did say we’d work on getting our strength up.’
Wolf was trying to sound cheerful, but secretly he felt his insides twisting up. He didn’t like it when people went missing. Like his sister, for example. Wolf wasn’t that bothered about his parents, who’d both abandoned him when he was very small. But he had never understood why his mother had taken his baby sister when she’d gone, leaving Wolf alone with his cruel uncle. Wolf longed to see his sister again. Her name was Natasha, but that was all he could really remember.
‘I’m scared,’ said Raven.
‘Why?’ said Lexy. ‘I’m sure they’re all right. They’ve probably gone to get some information on the Sterran Guandré. I heard my Aunt Octavia talking about