Most people have to go through a portal if they want to visit the Otherworld. Then they have to travel from wherever the portal delivers them to their intended destination. But Effie had a magical calling card – her most precious boon – that transported her directly outside the ornate gates of Truelove House, in the extremely remote and highly secretive Otherworld village of Dragon’s Green, where her cousins Clothilde and Rollo lived with the wizard Cosmo and looked after the Great Library that was housed there.
At least that was what the calling card was supposed to do. But for the first few days that Effie’d had it, she hadn’t been able to get it to work at all. Just taking it out did precisely nothing. Effie had tried again and again. She had gone to all the portals she knew – including the Funtime Arcade and Mrs Bottle’s Bun Shop – and tried taking out the card in each one, but that hadn’t worked: she’d just ended up making the acquaintance of a lot of extremely shady people who wanted to offer her unbelievable sums of money for it. She’d tried sitting in her bedroom in darkness and silence and reading out the address on the front in a very solemn voice. Nothing.
Despairing, she’d eventually asked the card what it wanted of her.
To her surprise, it had replied.
It’s almost impossible to relate completely in any written language what the card actually said about what you do with a portable portal – they are, in fact, so rare that there are barely more than five left in each of the known worlds – but gradually Effie got the knack.
First, you have to find a natural, magical place where you definitely cannot be seen (behind the hedge on the village green near the old Black Pig pub had proved to be a good spot). Then you have to clear your mind. This is not easy. Then, looking only at the card, you have to sort of knock on its door (which sounds a bit odd, but is the closest way of describing how it feels) and wait for a reply. Keeping your mind completely clear – which is hard to do for more than a couple of seconds, but Effie practised a lot – you then have to wait while the card sort of magically frisks you.
After all, not just anyone could go to Dragon’s Green. Indeed, one of Rollo’s jobs in Truelove House was finding new ways to keep people out. Once Effie was cleared for entry, and while still keeping her mind blank, she had learned to sort of melt downwards – a bit like going underwater – and thus move from one dimension into the next. She always came out in a sort of grey mist just outside the gates to Truelove House. The guards, who now knew her well, then unlocked the gate and let her through.
So Effie had developed rather a pleasant habit. Each morning on the way to school she took out her calling card and popped off behind the hedge to spend a couple of happy days in the Otherworld. Time passed a lot more quickly in the Otherworld, a quirk that meant Effie’s two days there amounted to only about forty-five minutes in the Realworld. When her time was up, Effie would hurry away to the portal by the old willow tree on the Keepers’ Plains (her calling card only brought her to the Otherworld – she had to go back to the Realworld through a normal portal like any other person) and emerge in her school field five minutes before registration. It had taken a bit of practice to get the timing of this right, which had led to several detentions and a rather stern letter home.
But those first few times Effie had been to the Otherworld had been the very best days of her life so far. Effie’s beautiful cousin Clothilde had made her two silk jumpsuits – one in silver and one in a very dark blue – because everyone in the Otherworld wore loose, flowing clothes. It was always midsummer in the Otherworld – or so it seemed to Effie. The days were bright and warm enough to swim outdoors, but the nights were cool enough for an open fire. The complex time differences between worlds meant that Effie never knew precisely when she was going to arrive at Truelove House, but she usually got there in time for supper, which her cousins often ate by the fire in the large drawing room. After that, each day would begin with breakfast in bed, brought by a cheerful woman called Bertie. Effie usually had a large, soft, homemade croissant, porridge with cream and honey, and a whole pot of strong tea. Then she was free to do whatever she wanted, as long as she stayed in the house and grounds.
Some children might have taken advantage of the time difference and used the stolen time in the Otherworld to catch up on their homework. But Effie preferred to lie on the lawn reading Otherworld books, eating Otherworld cakes and dreaming of Otherworld adventures. Lunch each day was a picnic by the stream at the bottom of the garden, with dragonflies of every possible colour skimming the clear water. Clothilde occasionally took some time off in the afternoon to swim in the pool with Effie, or to walk with her in the nearby woods. But usually Rollo would come out and find Clothilde and take her back to the Great Library, where something important and secret seemed to be going on.
Effie wasn’t allowed in the Great Library until she had the mark of the Keeper. Even though she’d passed the test that meant she could have the mark, she couldn’t actually get it until Pelham Longfellow came back from the island (which was the Otherworld word for the Realworld). When Pelham Longfellow returned, he was going to take Effie to Froghole to get her mark and to do some shopping. Effie was also due to have a special consultation to determine her ‘kharakter, art and shade’, whatever that meant. Well, she knew what kharakter was: that was her main ability as a true hero. But the rest was a mystery.
From snatches of conversation Effie had picked up, it seemed Pelham Longfellow was very busy trying to uncover a big conspiracy brewing in Paris, or maybe London. Effie had meant to ask if she could help him in some way, but she hadn’t seen him for ages. She longed to be of some help in the great fight against the Diberi. But even though she had killed the powerful Diberi mage who had attacked her grandfather, no one seemed to want her to do anything else.
Sometimes Effie went up to the very top of one of the towers in Truelove House to see the wizard Cosmo, who had said she could use his small personal library whenever she wanted. It was here that Effie found books to read on the lawn: adventures of true heroes from long ago, strategy guides for fighting demons and monsters, or tales of the Great Split. Cosmo had talked vaguely of things he might teach Effie when he had time. ‘Another language,’ he’d said recently. ‘Map reading. Meditation. Depending on your art and shade, of course. But not until after the Sterran Guandré has passed.’ Effie had heard the words Sterran Guandré a few times recently. She had been planning to ask Clothilde what they meant.
But the last time Effie had visited the Otherworld she had accidentally overheard a conversation between Clothilde and Rollo that she had instantly known was about her. Perhaps she shouldn’t have stayed to listen – eavesdroppers never hear good about themselves, after all – but she had.
‘Her place is not here,’ Rollo had said. ‘Why do you keep encouraging her? Especially now that we hear of this new conspiracy on the island, and with the Sterran Guandré so close. Griffin is no longer there to watch what’s happening around the northern portals. She should be doing something. And she can’t be of use on the island if she squanders all her energy here giggling on the lawn with you.’
‘She’s a child,’ said Clothilde, sighing sadly. ‘She should not have to bear all this responsibility. And we already know the conspiracy is around the southern portals. She can do nothing about that.’
‘For some reason the universe has chosen to give her this “responsibility”,’ Rollo had said. ‘We should be training her to be useful. Although I don’t know how exactly a true hero is supposed to be of use to us – why couldn’t we have had an interpreter, an explorer, or another engineer?’
‘But . . .’
‘And the girl needs more lifeforce, not less. Being here just drains her. I think perhaps we should tell her about . . .’
‘We can’t.’
Before anyone could say anything else, Effie had heard footsteps – probably Bertie’s – and ran. She hurried upstairs to her beautiful room with the now familiar smell of old sun-warmed wood and fresh linen, and changed from her