The Stranded

Book I of III

Book One: The Stranded

Christopher G. Nuttall

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https://mewe.com/page/5cd32005dc9f631c9973f058

Cover by Brad Fraunfelter

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All Comments and Reviews Welcome!

Contents
Cover Blurb
Prologue: England, 1524
Chapter One: Mystic Albion, Now
Chapter Two: Mystic Albion, Now
Chapter Three: Mystic Albion, Now
Chapter Four: Mystic Albion, Now
Chapter Five: York, England, Now
Chapter Six: York, England, Now
Chapter Seven: York, England, Now
Chapter Eight: York, England, Now
Chapter Nine: York, England, Now

Cover Blurb

Centuries ago, the magic left our world ... and the magicians went with it, stepping into the Gates to Mystic Albion and leaving OldeWorld - Earth - forever.  Since then, the two worlds have remained separate, until now.

Three young magicians, experimenting with dangerous spells, find themselves accidentally transported to the world their ancestors fled.  Finding friends and allies, they try to blend in as they struggle to find a way back to their home, unaware that danger lurks in the shadows of a very alien world ...

... And that they are already running out of time.

Prologue: England, 1524

The Sacred Grove felt ... dead.

Anne shivered, despite herself, as she reached the edge of the clearing and peered at the sacred stone.  The air was warm, yet so devoid of life it chilled her.  Moonlight speared from high overhead, casting the scene into sharp relief.  There should have been magic in the air, as she’d seen when she’d been a little girl visiting the shrine for the first time, but instead the air felt barren.  Something tore at her heart as she stood and watched, tears at the corner of her eyes.  The prophecies and prognosticators and everything else insisted that this was the last chance, that if she – and she alone – wasn’t in the clearing when the moon reached its zenith, their world would be doomed, but what if it was already too late?  What if ...?

She shuddered.  Her grandmother had known magics, magics the world hadn’t seen for decades.  Her great-grandmother had known magics beyond her daughter’s dreams.  Her ... their world was dying.  The magic was slipping away.  And Anne was here, alone, in a desperate gamble to save a world that might already be doomed.  Once, the shrine had known magic, like the hundreds of others scattered over England that had pulsed with light and life and everything else that had given the Folk meaning.  Now, it might be the only shrine left.  And ...

Anne took a breath, then shrugged off her robe.  Skyclad, she stepped across the circle and into the clearing.  The world seemed to hold its breath as the moonlight illuminated her.  She hoped, praying to all the gods of her ancestors, that she wasn’t imagining it.  The magic grew harder to use with every passing month, with spells she’d been taught only a few short years ago no longer workable, even by the strongest of the Folk.  And the Burners were coming for them, as the prophecies foretold.  

Their world was doomed.  They were doomed.

She pressed her fingers against the sacred stone, feeling something against her bare skin.  Magic?  She closed her eyes, muttering words she’d been forced to memorise in preparation for this night.  The old women, her tutors, had drilled her time and time again, insisting it had to be absolutely perfect.  They couldn’t afford a mistake.  And yet, doubt assailed her as she finished her chant.  It was hard to believe that anyone was listening.  The days when the Folk had been able to call on the power of nature, to heal and to harm in harmony with the world, were gone.  The universe had become barren.  The wonders her grandmother had known were gone.

Anne slumped against the stone, her thoughts churning as despair threatened to overwhelm her.  She’d failed.  No one had answered.  Tears splashed on the stone.  She’d have to go home and tell the old women it was over and ... and what?  She didn’t know.  It was the end ...

... And then the world shifted.

A flash of alarm nearly brought her to her feet.  Someone – something – was behind her.  It was standing so close she could feel its breath on the back of her neck.  She wanted to stand up, to turn and face the being she’d summoned ... the being she felt, now, had been there all along.  And yet, her legs refused to move.  She couldn’t even turn her head.  She almost panicked, despite everything she’d been taught.  The being felt more ... real than the world around her, as if it was the light and she the shadow.  It was hard, so hard, to keep herself calm.

“You could not gaze upon my face,” a voice said.  It was male and female, young and old, airily light and deadly serious ... a chorus that echoed through the air and beat against Anne’s mind.  “And yet, you call upon me?”

Anne swallowed, fear washing down her spine.  The Good Ones were gone.  She’d called something worse, far worse.  And yet, they needed help.

“Great One.”  Anne’s mouth felt dry, yet she dared not stop.  “We need your help.  We beg for your aid.”

“This world is turning away from the light,” the being said.  It spoke dispassionately, as if it cared nothing for the destruction of Anne’s entire world.  “The magic is fading.”

“Yes.”  Anne wanted to scream.  “We need your help.”

She couldn’t see the being, but she could feel the cruel smile behind her.  “And if I give you my aid,” it said, “what will you offer me in return?”

Anne gritted her teeth.  She’d been cautioned there was no hope of sympathy, let alone goodwill, from beings so inhuman they were dangerously unpredictable.  It wouldn’t help the Folk out of the kindness of its heart.  It didn’t have a heart.  But it would bargain.  Perhaps.  It was the only hope her people had.

“Anything,” she said.  She knew the folly of making such promises, but what choice did they have?  Time was not on her side.  The moment the moon started to set, the being would be gone.  “Help us survive and prosper and I will give you whatever is in my power to give.”

There was a faint hint of a chuckle behind her.  “The magic is leaving this world,” the being said, as if she didn’t already know.  “I cannot keep it from slipping away” – it paused, just long enough for her to feel despair once again – “but I can assist you to open gates to another world, a place where magic remains strong.  You can go there and live there and regain the magics you thought long lost.”

Anne shivered.  “And the price?”

“You would have been wiser if you’d asked that earlier,” the being said.  The amused condescension in its voice made her grind her teeth, digging her nails into her palm to keep from snapping back.  She’d heard it before, from a father who saw her as nothing more than a pawn to be married off as he pleased.  “To do what you wish, I require an anchor to tie me to your world.”

“I ...”  Anne composed herself.  “I will do whatever you wish.”

“The king’s marriage is without male issue,” the being informed her.  “You will marry him.  You will bear his child, who will rule the country.  The gates will open when that child is on the throne and close, for a time, shortly after your blood no longer sits on the throne.”

Anne blinked.  She hadn’t been sure what to expect, but ... marry the king?  It was unthinkable.  The king was married to the love of his life, a woman who had already borne him a daughter.  And yet, she had heard disturbing rumours.  The king wanted a son, wanted him so desperately he was prepared to do anything, even put his wife aside, to get a legitimate heir.  Anne hesitated, torn between fear and something she didn’t care to look at too closely.  If she made the bargain ...

Her voice sounded weak, even to her.  “My son will rule the country?”

“Your child will rule, in time,” the being said.  “And your people will be safe.”

“Then I will do as you ask,” Anne said. She wasn’t sure how she’d do it, but she’d figure it out.  She had to.  “My people need to leave now, before we lose everything.”

“You do,” the being agreed.  Power sparkled around them as the bargain was made.  “And there is one other thing ...”

Anne shivered, helplessly, as the being whispered in her ear.  She’d always been told the future was in flux, that predicting the future allowed her to alter it, but now ... she knew, on a level she could not deny, that her future was now fixed.  The bargain would hold true.  She would bear the king’s child, walking a path she could not escape, a path leading directly to her death before her people reached the promised land.  She would never see the world she’d saved ...

... And, as the moonlight faded, Anne Boleyn wept.

Chapter One: Mystic Albion, Now

“I’m telling you, this will work!”

Richard frowned as he studied his friend’s notes, struggling to read as the air carriage lurched from side to side.  He’d never quite gotten used to flying in a rich man’s carriage – pitchforks, as were traditional for men, were so much safer – even though he had to admit the carriage was a great deal more comfortable.  The passengers were not in control of the carriage, leaving that to the complex network of spells woven into the wooden-and-dragon-skin wings.  It just didn’t feel safe.

“Brains, you’re using your own spell notation again,” he said, as he scanned the parchment sheets.  “It’s confusing.”

Brains – his real name was Hiram of Hardwick, but everyone called him Brains – shrugged expressively.  “I had to invent half the notation for myself,” he said.  “If anyone else is doing research into magical topography, specifically how it interacts with gate spells, they’re keeping it to themselves.”

Richard sighed, well used to his friend’s tendency to plunge into research without thinking of the need to explain his findings.  Brains was a genius by any reasonable standard.  The only reason he wasn’t the top student at Gatehouse was that he couldn’t be bothered doing anything that involved interacting with other students, at least outside the classrooms and research labs that made up a third of the school.  He didn’t care.  He’d never put his name down for Head Boy, let alone made a show of proving he could handle the job.  He lived and breathed for pushing the limits as far as they would go.

And that’s why someone needs to keep an eye on him, Richard thought.  Someone has to remind him to eat, every so often, and to try to keep his notes in order.

He sighed again.  Brains was the rarest of magicians, a Head and a Heart in one body.  He could make the intuitive leaps of a Heart and then back them up with the peerless logic of a well-trained Head.  His detractors had made snide remarks about jacks of all trades and masters of none, but his combined talents gave him insights into magic that few could match.  Richard was a Head and he knew that, given time, his plodding approach to magic would yield results, yet Brains was capable of moving ahead by leaps and bounds.  It didn’t bother him.  His friend was a good person, and life with him was never boring, even though it could be dangerous.  It would be a long time before anyone forgot the trip into Always Summer, or the scolding they’d received when they’d returned to school.  If Brains hadn’t been such a rare magician, and his family not so important, Richard feared the affair would have ended very badly.  

His lips twitched.  They were both seventeen, but beyond that their appearances had little in common.  Richard was brown-haired, Brains was blond; they both wore school robes, yet Richard wore his with style, while Brains looked as if he had a habit of sleeping in his clothes without even bothering to cast cleaning and ironing spells on his outfit before heading to class.  Richard was the commoner and yet, people had a habit of mistaking him for the aristocrat.  It was perhaps fortunate, he reflected, that Brains didn’t care.  

“You may have to explain your notes to me,” Richard said, with a sinking feeling.  Brains’s explanations were always fantastically detailed and practically incomprehensible.  He wasn’t trying to mislead, when he explained, but he understood the material so well he didn’t quite grasp that everyone else didn’t.  “And then we’ll need to translate them into something everyone can understand.”

Brains nodded, although he looked mulish at the thought of going back over the material instead of charging into the unknown.  Richard was good at convincing him to break the explanation down to the point anyone could understand it, provided they had a good grounding in applied magical theory.  It was one of the reasons Richard had been fostered by Brains’s family, after they’d met at Gatehouse.  Richard had been told the family oracles had foretold he’d be someone important, but he suspected it wasn’t true.  The problem with predictive magics was that everyone, certainly everyone who was anyone, had access to them too, making the future dangerously unpredictable as forecasters moved to change the futures they foretold.

And so I have to make myself important to them, he thought, with a mixture of irritation and acceptance.  Not all of them are happy with me working so closely with Brains.

He put the thought aside as he worked his way through the parchments.  Brains had been digging into advanced magics for years – Richard was a good student and he still found it hard to keep up – and he’d been digging into the spells behind gates.  He’d wondered why it was so hard to open them in certain places and so easy in others and, undaunted by the lack of prior research, started trying to figure out the answer.  If he was right ...

“It’s like building a bridge,” Richard reasoned.  “The greater the distance between the two sides, the harder it is to build the bridge and, at some point, you just can’t muster the effort you need to build it.”

“At some point, the power requirements go well beyond your ability to produce,” Brains agreed, in a tone that suggested Richard’s explanation was right and yet wrong at the same time.  “But if there is distance, where is it?”

Richard frowned.  That was a good question.  It was easy to open a gateway between Dùn Èideann to Londinium, but much harder to open one between York and Bolton even though the two towns were much closer together.  Logically, it should have been the other way round.  Magic bent the world out of shape – Gatehouse was far bigger on the inside than the outside – but there were limits.  Surely.

“I think we don’t understand the true nature of magical topography,” Brains continued, tapping the parchments.  “Imagine you’re standing on the lakeside, looking at the lake.  To you, the lake is a flat surface.  You don’t see the bottom and so you don’t know what it looks like.”

“You might jump in the lake and hit the bottom because you think the lake is deeper than it actually is,” Richard said.  It was rare for Brains to come up with an analogy of his own.  He wondered, with a sudden spark of jealousy, if his fiancée, Helen, had suggested it.  “Or sail across the water and hit a rock, lurking under the surface.”

“Precisely,” Brains said.  “So tell me ... what rocks are lurking under the surface of magical topography?”

He launched into a long and complicated explanation, drawing in observations from both earlier researchers and his own experiments.  Richard reached for a notebook and hastily jotted them down, resolving to turn them into something a little more readable later.  Brains wasn’t given to worrying about people funding his research, but Richard had to.  Brains’s family had invested a great deal in both of them, over the last few years.  They wanted some kind of return on their investment.  And Richard wanted a position of his own.

“And I think we should be able to solve the problem,” Brains finished.  “If we can make it work ...”

Richard felt a thrill of excitement.  It wasn’t easy for a village-born lad like himself to make an impression, no matter how talented.  The thought of creating something everyone would use ... he smiled as the carriage brushed against powerful magical currents and lurched again.  No one would hold it against him if all he really did was translate Brains's vastly complicated notes into something actually workable.  Hearts jumped ahead, everyone knew; Heads filled in the blanks afterwards.  There was nothing shameful, he’d been told, in taking an idea and making it work.  As long as he didn’t claim all of the credit, he’d be fine.

Helen won’t be pleased, he thought.  But she’s a Heart herself.  She thinks I’m taking her place, yet she can’t do what I can.

He shook his head as the carriage started to lose altitude and glide towards Gatehouse.  The school always took his breath away, even after being a student for nearly six years.  The castle itself was immense, wrapped in so much magic that it was hard to tell what it really looked like.  The human eye just couldn’t make sense of the interdimensional structure, a blur of towers and keeps and arenas and things that were simply incomprehensible.  Raw magic flowed around the building, currents of power streaming through the Land of Always Summer and vanishing into the distance.  A shadow fell across the carriage as a dragon flew overhead, untouched and untouchable.  The Dragon Riders were up early, bonding with their mates as they ploughed through the sky.  Richard had wanted to be one of them, but no dragon had wanted to bond with him.  He didn’t regret it.  Much.

Small flecks zoomed around the school, coming into sharp relief as they came in to land on the rooftop.  Men riding pitchforks, women riding broomsticks ... snapping spells at each other as they practiced before hurrying to class.  Richard smiled and waved at a trio of younger students flying with the squeamish determination of children soaring under their own power for the first time.  Stronger magicians could fly without a broom – Brains’s father had boasted he often flew from one end of the land to the other – but it would be a long time before Richard mastered the art.  His spells were solid – it was the main advantage of being a Head – yet he lacked the raw power to levitate more than a few inches above the ground without a pitchfork.  

The magic crashed over him as they landed, the box doors slamming open to allow them to escape.  Gatehouse was the centre of magic.  The very first Gate – the one that had allowed the Folk to escape OldeWorld and flee to Mystic Albion – had been opened at Gatehouse.  There were others, hidden under the Princely Castles, but they were far less important.  Gatehouse, the first to open and last to close, had once been the key to the world.  In a sense, it still was.

Brains caught Richard’s hand as their carriage flew off, returning automatically to its master’s hall.  “We need to go to the library.”

“I think we need to visit the Great Hall first,” Richard said, wryly.  “They have to welcome us home.”

He saw Brains’s expression – his friend looked as if he’d bitten into something sour – and nodded in understanding, even as he led the way down to the hall.  The annual welcome speech for older students was boring – the Merlin, the head of the school, had a tendency to drone on and on – yet failing to attend would mean a demerit and probable detention.  Brains might get away with it – the staff hadn’t been pleased when he’d outsmarted the anti-cheating wards designed to make students actually serve their detentions – but Richard certainly wouldn’t.  The Merlin would probably come up with something new and horrific, just to teach everyone else a lesson.  Too many other students had tried to follow in their footsteps.

And most of them failed, Richard thought.  They didn’t realise how Brains ducked the spells.

He smiled at the memory as they made their way into the hall.  It was huge, so huge the hundred seventeen-year-old students who made up the year looked small compared to the immensity of the room.  The glowing lights overhead cast the chamber into sharp relief, drawing his attention to the podium in the centre of the hall.  The spells running through the air ensured that the audience always saw and heard the speaker, whichever way he was facing.  It was hard to avoid listening, although it didn’t stop students from trying.  The important information was always conveyed by letter, sent two weeks before the students returned to Gatehouse.  Privately, Richard had always suspected the Merlin wanted a good look at the students before classes resumed.  The headmaster was supposed to be very good at spotting students who felt like fish out of water and making sure they got the help and support they needed to grow accustomed to the school.

The doors slammed shut with a loud BANG.  Richard jumped, even though he was used to the effect.  The podium, empty a second ago, was suddenly occupied by the headmaster.  The Merlin – a middle-aged man with long dark hair and a short beard – stood there, his eyes seeming to peer deeply into Richard’s soul.  It was an illusion, but it held Richard still.

Brains nudged him, breaking the trance.  “Helen isn’t here.”

Richard blinked in surprise.  Brains rarely paid attention to anyone – out of sight, out of mind – even his betrothed.  It was odd for him to even notice Helen was missing ... Richard glanced from face to face, confirming his friend was right.  Helen was going to be in some trouble when she finally reached the school, unless she’d been delayed for some reason.  The Merlin would probably send her straight to detention.  And yet ...

His heart sank.  What had happened, while he’d been away?  What could have happened, to make Brains take notice of Helen?  Perhaps his family had been nagging him again or encouraging Helen to do the same.  There was no point in asking Brains.  He might be a genius when it came to magic and all related subjects, but emotions were a closed book to him.  He hated to think he might be governed by them to the point he couldn’t acknowledge and comprehend his own emotions, let alone someone else’s.  Odd, for a Heart, but part and parcel of what made him who he was.  

The Merlin was still speaking.  Richard dragged his attention back to the older magician, wondering why he had to use ten words where one would do.  They could be on their way back to their rooms by now or heading straight to the library before dinner and bed.  They were old enough, now, to set their own bedtimes.  He was certain there’d be no problems from going to bed after the witching hour.

“And you will have the chance to showcase your abilities,” the Merlin continued.  “This is the start of your final two years at Gatehouse.  Your yearly project will let you show off to potential masters, both your talents and your skills at thinking outside the box.  If you do something new ...”

Richard heard a rustle of excitement rippling through the hall.  Gatehouse had always encouraged its students, particularly the Hearts, to think outside the box, but there were limits to how far they were allowed to go.  Brains had cheerfully broken them, time and time again, yet even he hadn’t gone that far.  Most of his work had been either theoretical or suggested improvements to earlier works, which had been tested elsewhere.  The idea of being allowed to step outside the box and try something new, something wholly their own idea, was intoxicating.  It would be fun.  And who knew?  They might discover something ground-breaking.

“You may pair up, if you wish, or work alone,” the Merlin continued.  “If the former, please remember the rules.  If the latter, remember you must provide a detailed outline of your work tied back to your sources.  We don’t want any confusion over who did what.”

Richard glanced at Brains, who winked.  Whatever they did, there would be plenty of work for both of them.  Richard wouldn’t be hanging on Brains’s coattails, not in the sense he wouldn’t be making a vitally important contribution to their projects, while Brains wouldn’t be getting frustrated by having to go back and explain his work to examiners who didn’t understand what he was saying.  Besides, Richard would have to take the idea and see if they could make it work.  A theory was good, and it might get them a pass if it stood up to scrutiny, but something practical would be far better.  They could write their own ticket, find their own masters ..,.

“And remember, Always Summer is out of bounds,” the Merlin finished.  “I do not want to have to bargain again, not now and not ever.”

He vanished.  The doors crashed open again.  Richard wondered, as the students headed to the stairs leading to the dorms, just what had happened.  There were agreements between Gatehouse and Always Summer, agreements that should have kept students from being seriously harmed.  The entities who lived deep within the forest were inhuman, and yet they always honoured the letter of their agreements.  If something had happened, something that had forced the Merlin to enter Always Summer and talk to the entities ...

“We can make an anywhere-gate,” Brains said.  “I already have the theory.  If we can get it into practice, the prize is ours.”

Richard nodded.  Trying and succeeding would be brilliant.  Trying and failing ... if their theory was good, if impractical, they’d still get plaudits.  His mind raced.  They’d talked little about the future, over the years, but if they actually made the concept work they could go anywhere, do anything.  Magic flowed through the air, all around them, as they hurried up the stairs.  Richard felt his soul lighten as the power brushed against his skin and touched the core of his magic.  It was hard to believe there was anything it couldn’t do.

“Yeah,” he said.  If nothing else, they’d get respect for trying.  He had a feeling most students would look for improvements on well-known spells, rather than striding boldly into the unknown.  The examiners wouldn’t be too impressed with yet another spell to turn someone into a frog.  There were so many of them that even first-year students could cast them.  “If we can get it to work ...”

Brains grinned.  “The theory is sound,” he said.  “We should be able to craft a spellcloud capable of assessing the hidden topography and allowing us to determine a way to compensate, then steer around it.  The trick is actually making it work.”

“And even if we can’t improve the gate spells, we can at least predict where the spells will and won’t work,” Richard said.  It would be nowhere near as impressive as an anywhere-gate, but it would be a valuable contribution to society and one that would give them a good start in life.  “What could possibly go wrong?”

Chapter Two: Mystic Albion, Now

Helen of Burghley was angry.

It wasn’t just that she’d arrived at Gatehouse late, after flying all the way under her own power, nor was it the fact she’d been condemned to wash dishes for a week like a firstie brat who’d tried to tell his tutor that his pet dragon ate his homework.  It was that the boys – Brains in particular – hadn’t waited for her, let alone shown up to history class like students who actually cared about graduating within the next couple of years.  It was infuriating.  She should have been there, she should have been paired with Brains while Richard paired up with someone who might actually appreciate him, but ...

Helen knew, without false modesty, that she was beautiful.  She had long red hair, green eyes, pale skin and a body, even in shapeless robes, that drew the eye.  And she was a Heart, a strong magician from a family of strong magicians.  She could have had her pick of boys, if she’d wanted; she could have started a casual relationship or aimed for a marriage that would have led to strong children who’d carry on the family name, or ... she hadn’t objected, years ago, when her parents had told her she would be betrothed to Hiram of Hardwick.  She hadn’t heard anything bad about him, but ... she shook her head.  It had never occurred to her that Hiram of Hardwick would have a friend so close there was no room in his life for her.

She sat cross-legged on the floor, listening to the tutor droning on about the half-mythical OldeWorld, from where their ancestors had fled so long ago.  Helen already knew the story, as did anyone with enough sense to pick up a history book and read; she knew about Anne Boleyn the Martyr, Henry VIII the Murderer, Queen Elizabeth Gloriana, the one and only witch to sit on England’s throne.  She knew how the story ended, too; James VI of Scotland took the throne, the Gates closed ... no one, not even the greatest scryers, knew what had happened on OldeWorld after the last of the gates snapped out of existence.  King James had hated magic with a passion, seeing no difference between twisted old women casting spells of malice and his courtly astrologers.  He’d been hunting them down even before the gates vanished, separating the two worlds for good.

The tutor’s voice rose, slightly.  He was coming to the good part.  Helen raised her eyes and looked around the chamber.  The classroom was surprisingly comfortable, with the students sitting in armchairs or resting on cushions as the tutor talked about days gone by.  Helen would have appreciated it more if she hadn’t already known the material by heart.  Burghley was an old family, perhaps the oldest.  They could trace their roots all the way back to Roman Britain and beyond, to the gods themselves.  Helen had no idea if her family truly was descended from the gods – the gods had left OldeWorld centuries before the Folk – but it didn’t matter.  Her parents had made her learn about the great deeds of the past, about great magicians who’d served mighty kings and queens with their arts.  She knew she had a lot to live up to, after she’d finished her duty to the family.  And when was that even going to start?

The sooner we start, the sooner we can complete our duty, she thought, crossly.  She wished, suddenly, that her family had chosen someone else for her, someone who would understand and do his duty without an argument.  And once it is done, we can go our separate ways without rancour.

“Helen,” the tutor said.  “Perhaps you would care to elaborate on the Opening of the Gates?”

Helen flushed, mentally kicking herself for showing her boredom too openly.  Master Ranford was a history fanatic, endlessly analysing the books and records that had been brought from OldeWorld and writing long academic tracts on the material that, Helen suspected, hardly anyone outside the history community ever read.  It wasn’t that the material was boring, although there were times it was hard to care about events on the other side of the dimensional divide.  It was that there was nothing new.  How could there be?  The Gates had closed in 1610.  There would never be any contact between the two worlds, let alone missions of exploration to the old sacred sites.  Whatever had happened on the far side, it couldn’t possibly affect Mystic Albion.

“Anne Boleyn made an agreement with an unknown entity,” Helen said.  That was the only interesting part of the material.  No one, not even the greatest of the Folk, knew who or what had made the deal with Anne the Martyr.  There had never been any shortage of speculation, but hard facts were lacking.  Anne, if she’d ever known, had taken that secret to her execution and it had died with her.  “In exchange for marrying the king and bearing the king’s child, the entity gave us the power to open Gates to Mystic Albion and evacuate OldeWorld.  The Gates remained open as long as that child remained on the throne, then started to close when she was succeeded by a magic-hating king.”

She frowned, remembering the odder parts of the story.  The king had been furious to discover Anne had borne him a daughter, rather than a son.  Helen didn’t pretend to understand his anger.  Queen Elizabeth Gloriana had been a strong ruler, one who had saved her country from invasion while ensuring the evacuation of the magic users before it was too late.  Helen herself was descended from the queen’s foremost servant.  Why had Elizabeth’s father been so intent on a male heir?  It made no sense.  Not to her.

Master Ranford scowled.  “And why did the Gates start to close?”

Helen had no idea.  Gate theory was beyond her.  She was no slouch when it came to magic, but – as a Heart – her grasp of theory had always been limited.  It didn’t matter, she’d told herself when she’d received her first exam results.  She didn’t need to know the details, as long as her intentions guided her magic.  Her fingertips tingled at the thought.  She wanted to leave the classroom, hurry down to the fields and let her magic run free.  She wanted ...

Stuart, another student, came to her rescue.  “Master Ranford, what happened to the Folk who were left behind?”

Master Ranford turned to him.  “We do not know.  The magic was going away.  The sacred groves were dead or dying.  The aristocrats amongst them may just have put their wands and charms away, then pretended they’d never known anything about magic.  The commoners might just have remained ... common.  Or the Burners might have wiped them out when the last of their defences failed.  We simply do not know.”

Helen felt cold.  The thought of a world without magic ... she remembered the wonders and glories, from the little sprites that attended upon the festivals to the dragons flying high overhead, and shuddered at the thought of a world without them.  She was a Heart.  Magic was part of her, shaped – perhaps tainted – by her intentions.  The thought of a bland world without magic, of people struggling in the mud to eke enough from the soil to live for another year ... she shook her head.  It was too horrible to contemplate.

Stuart caught her eye, asking her a silent question.  Helen shook her head.  Stuart was handsome enough, and if she hadn’t had her family obligations she might have been tempted to accept his unspoken offer, but she did and she couldn’t.  She owed it to her family to have children – the right sort of children – before her real life began.  And ... she looked down at her lap, trying to hide her frustration.  Where were the boys?

The bell rang.  Master Ranford dismissed the class with instructions to write a short essay on the development of Ancient Roman magic.  Helen could have written it in her sleep.  There were spells to do just that ... she shook her head, recalling horror stories about students who’d tried.  Their essays had made interesting reading, she’d been told, but they had been far too revealing.  And they’d failed, too.

She stood, brushing down her robes, and made her way through the door.  The rest of the students followed at a more sedate pace, some heading for the library and others for their bedrooms or the dining halls.  They were old enough to eat in their rooms, now they’d passed their first set of exams, but the staff did their best to discourage it.  The students were meant to associate with their peers, to develop friendships that would last for decades ... perhaps centuries.  Helen snorted as she passed a pair of younger students, snapping hexes at each other as they ran through the corridors.  She didn’t try to stop them.  Their fun wouldn’t last much longer.  They simply wouldn’t have time.

And where, she asked herself crossly, have the boys gone?

She pressed her fingers against the stone walls, asking the castle for their location.  Brains was easily smart enough to hide from the wards, but he rarely bothered.  Helen suspected he hadn’t even tried to shield himself from prying eyes, something that bothered her at a very primal level.  Brains was the up-and-coming genius, everyone knew it.  There was no shortage of people who’d want to ride to glory on his coattails, people like Richard.  Helen felt a flash of hot anger, and bitter resentment, as the castle told her where to find them.  It should have been her next to Brains, her interpreting his genius for the world.  Richard was ... she shook her head.  She would have forgiven Richard a great many things, but not his close friendship with her betrothed.  It was ... maddening.

The castle’s magics hovered around her as she walked through the door and into the upper dorms.  The corridor was lined with wooden doors, each one heavily warded to keep out unwanted guests and tutors.  Helen was certain the headmaster could break the wards at will – the Merlin was one of the most powerful magicians in the world and the castle was bonded to him – but even he couldn’t crack the wards without making it noticeable.  It was controversial, Helen had been told.  On one hand, the students needed some degree of privacy.  On the other, a student might start practicing dark magics in his bedroom and get away with it for far too long, perhaps even becoming a Sinister.  The authorities were vague on just how much dark magic was required to trigger the alarms.

She stopped outside a door and rested her fingers against the wood.  Brains hadn’t bothered to secure it, damn it.  Richard had woven a complex web of charms into the wood, each one both small and part of a far greater whole.  Helen had to admit, if only to herself, that Richard was a very skilled magician.  He might not have the sheer power she possessed – Helen had more magic in her little finger than Richard had in his entire body – but his grasp of theory more than made up for it.  If he had a chance to prepare for her, if they fought it out, he might be able to give her some trouble.  She refused to consider that he might win.

Her magic billowed around her.  She shaped it, then crushed the protections effortlessly and pushed the door open.  Richard and Brains were sitting at a table, going over what looked like dozens of pieces of parchment.  Others, crumpled and discarded, lay on the floor.  Their beds were unmade – Helen tried not to roll her eyes at the mess – and a large pot of tea, completely untouched, rested on the bedside table.  She had a feeling the boys had forgotten to eat.  Again.  She bit down, hard, on the anger that boiled through her.  Richard should have reminded Brains to eat, damn it.  It was his bloody job!

Richard started, his eyes going wide.  He was surprised, but there was no trace of disorientation on his face.  Helen blinked, then reminded herself Richard hadn’t tied the wards to his own magic.  He hadn’t had to provide the power himself, merely configure his spells to draw magic from the castle and the world beyond.  It was hard not to feel a little envy, even as she was all too aware of the downsides.  Richard’s wards were not solid.  A person of equal or greater skill could unpick them, piece by piece, and Richard would not be any the wiser.  

Brains glanced at her once, then looked back at his work.  Helen tried not to feel annoyed at his disinterest.  Looks weren’t everything – and a skilled witch could make herself look like pretty much anything she wanted – but it still hurt for her betrothed to show so little interest.  There were times when she wondered if he was more interested in men than women, or if he just didn’t care for her personally, even though she knew the truth.  Brains simply didn’t pay much attention to people.  She was still surprised his parents had sent him to school.  Surely, it would have been better to give him private tuition?  He was so lost in his own thoughts, half the time, that it was a wonder he even remembered to get dressed.

Her anger boiled over.  “Where have you been?”

Richard scowled at her.  “Planning,” he said, in a tone she knew was designed to irritate her.  “Where have you been?”

“In class, where you should have been,” Helen snapped.  “Hiram, why weren’t you in class?”

Brains blinked owlishly.  “In class?”

“It was just history,” Richard pointed out.  “You read the books and think about the material, you can pass the class no bother at all.”

Helen glared.  “And you think the beaks won’t notice you’re gone?”

Richard shrugged.  It was never easy to tell what the beaks – the tutors – noticed.  There were subjects students could study on their own and pass the exams, but others that required a great deal of practical work before one could get the qualifications one needed to proceed to the next level.  Helen had spent weeks practicing for her last exam, trying to show she knew how to use her power to conjure objects from raw magic.  She had hopes of becoming a cloud-shaper, after she did her family duty by bearing children, and she needed a good background in conjuring before she could convince a master to take her as an apprentice.  

“This is important,” Helen insisted.  “And why didn’t you wait for me before committing yourself to a project?  And a partner?”

Brains looked ... unsure of himself, just for a moment.  Helen sighed.  Brains didn’t understand how to talk to people, let alone how to present himself in polite society.  He really should have waited for her, to take her as a partner ... people would talk, if they weren’t already.  Helen knew seven of the other partnerships were built on betrothals, the young couples getting to know each other as they worked on joined projects.  She was sure it wouldn’t be long before people started talking about her.

“He didn’t have to wait for you,” Richard said, sharply.  A nasty edge ran through his voice as he met her eyes, challengingly.  “And what could you have brought to the project, anyway?”

Helen shaped the spell in her mind, then cast it.  “This,” she snapped, as she transfigured Richard into a frog.  He croaked in outrage.  She could sense his magic trying to break the spell, but it was futile.  The spell would stay in place as long as she kept her mind on it, crushing his spells beneath a wall of raw power.  “Do you think I’m lacking in magic?”

She ignored the frog’s croaking.  Perhaps it would teach him a lesson about mouthing off , although it wasn’t the first time she’d used her powers on him.  It wouldn’t do more than put him down for a few moments, certainly not do him any real harm.  She didn’t want to hurt him.  Richard was stubborn, she admitted, and devoted to Brains.  The nasty part of her mind wondered if he saw Brains as his gate to a better life.  Richard was a skilled magician, but he wasn’t skilled enough for potential masters to overlook his limited innate power.  It was easier for a Heart to become skilled in magic than for a Head to muster the power to cast more advanced spells.  Brains might be Richard’s only hope of a future beyond common or garden-variety wizardry.

“Brains,” she said, calling him by his nickname for the first time.  “We need to talk.”

Brains met her eyes.  “Turn him back.”

A hot flash of jealousy ran through Helen’s mind.  They were betrothed and yet ... he’d never shown that sort of consideration for her.  She’d always had the feeling his mind was elsewhere when they’d met under strict chaperonage; she’d always suspected her aunties  were wasting their time providing chaperonage.  Brains rarely paid any attention to her, even when she was right in front of him.  It hurt to realise he was showing consideration to Richard.  If it had been she who’d been transfigured, Brains wouldn’t have told the spellcaster to turn her back to normal.

“We need to talk,” she repeated.  “You and I are ...”

“Turn him back,” Brains ordered.  “Now.”

Helen ground her teeth, looking at the parchments to keep from meeting his gaze.  She knew she’d overstepped.  Brains spent most of his time in a haze, completely unaware of the world around him.  Anything that got through that haze had to be bad.  And yet ... her eyes narrowed as she saw the spells drafted out in Richard’s hand.  Gate spells?  If Brains was working on a way to improve them ...

Her heart sank.  Whoever she wound up partnering with, there was no way they could match something like that.  

She turned and marched for the door, carefully not looking at Richard as she lifted the spell.  If she was lucky, he’d be under the table and bang his head when he returned to human form.  It didn’t matter.  Her blood boiled as she left the room, slamming the door behind her.  Brains and Richard would take the prize and she, his betrothed, would be a laughingstock.  And who knew what would happen then?

Good question, her thoughts mocked.  And you are really going to hate the answer.

Chapter Three: Mystic Albion, Now

Richard fought down the urge to panic, again, as Helen cast the spell.

It was hardly the first time she’d enspelled him.  Nor was it the first time he’d had his form warped and twisted, his body turned into an animal or an object without his consent.  He’d spent months, like every other student, staring into a focus mirror until he knew his body and soul to the point he could keep a grip on his mind, even after suddenly finding himself turned into a frog.  But there was something deeply humiliating about Helen doing it.  She had never liked him, for being the one who worked closely bringing Brains’s work to the masses, and she had no trouble keeping him trapped in an animal form.  No matter how he tried to shape his spells, it was just ... impossible to break free.

His heart leapt, despite everything, as Brains defended him.  There weren’t many people who could face Helen down and most of them, certainly amongst their peers, were too intimidated by her or her family to take the risk, certainly not for him.  Richard had few illusions about his place in magical society.  In theory, all were equal.  In practice, some were more equal than others.  Helen – and Brains, and their fellows – were right on top of the tree, matched only by the few commoners who had more power than they knew what to do with.  Richard had long since given up hope of joining them.  He simply didn’t have the raw power to attract most people’s attention.

Helen turned and stalked out, dispelling her magic as she left.  Richard felt his body shift again, his lungs gasping for breath as he returned to human form.  Helen’s spell hadn’t done any actual harm – she wasn’t fool enough to risk killing him – but it still felt unpleasant.  He took a shuddering breath, wondering – not for the first time – why Helen loathed him so much.  It wasn’t as though he was competition.  Perhaps she was secretly attracted to Richard himself.  It would explain a great deal.

Don’t be silly, he told himself, as he stumbled to his feet.  She could have had you at any moment, or almost anyone else, if she wanted.

It wasn’t a pleasant thought.  Helen was beautiful.  Even angry, with her hair billowing around her as her magic responded to her rage, she was beautiful.  Richard would have asked her to the monthly dance, if Helen hadn’t been ... well, Helen.  Instead, she’d sulked and been generally unpleasant because Brains hadn’t gone with her.  Richard understood – they were betrothed, which made it harder for her to develop any other relationships in public – and he might even have been sorry for her if she hadn’t been so awful.  It wasn’t as if anyone had asked for her to be betrothed to someone who couldn’t hold up his end of the bargain.

Brains met his eyes.  “Are you alright?”

“Just annoyed,” Richard said.  Being transfigured wasn’t so bad.  It was having it done so brutally that hurt.  Helen had swept him aside as if he were nothing more than a yapping puppy or talkative parrot.  “I couldn’t break the spell.”

“She was holding you down by naked force, holding the spell in place by strength of will,” Brains said.  “She’s too strong for you to throw the spell off, not when she’s actually keeping it in place.  If she were to be distracted ...”

“Girls can do two things at once,” Richard muttered.  He poured two mugs of tea and passed one to his friend.  “Or so they say.”

Brains nodded.  “They’re very good at it,” he agreed.  “That’s why many of the stronger Hearts are women.”

Richard nodded and sipped his tea, calming himself.  “Perhaps if she were to be distracted ...”

“Perhaps, but she’s already well-trained in keeping the spells in place even if her attention is elsewhere,” Brains said.  “I think you need to alter your spells ...”

He picked up a piece of parchment and started to scribble down thoughts and ideas.  Richard watched, wondering if the concepts would prove workable.  It was frustrating, in so many ways, to know a magician as powerful as Helen could simply power through all the problems in her spellcasting, to make the spell work through sheer force of will and intention.  He had to get everything right and even then, there was no guarantee the spell would work perfectly.  The slightest mistake – a poorly-planned wand wave, a slightly mispronounced word – and the results would be explosive or, worse, nothing would happen at all.  Helen didn’t have to worry about such things, did she?  She could just wish and the world would bend the knee to her.

And if she loses concentration at the worst possible time, Richard reminded himself, she’ll take one hell of a tumble.

Brains passed him the parchment.  Richard took it and started to decipher Brains’s writing as his friend went back to the gate spells.  The counterspells looked possible, deflecting rather than blocking or cancelling the torrent of magic that held the spell in place, but they’d be tricky to cast without freedom of movement.  It wasn’t easy to cast spells when you were turned into a frog, even though a frog had arms and legs.  But then, it wasn’t as if the frog’s arms were his, although – in a sense – they were.  There was a difference between his soul, the core essence that made him, and his body.  Perhaps the spell didn’t so much change his body as transfer his to a different body.  Perhaps ...

“I think we can get this to work,” Brains said, an hour later.  “All we have to do is gather the right tools, then pick a place to cast the spell.”

Richard nodded as he ran his eye down the parchment.  “Where do you want to start?”

“Here,” Brains said.  “The school was the site of the most powerful gate known to exist.  The local topography must be ... flat, flat enough to allow us to test the spell properly.  Once we get a feel for how it works, we can move the spell elsewhere.”

“I see,” Richard said, silently considering how to turn Brains’s notations into something they could show to the tutors.  “Is it safe?”

Brains looked slightly bemused.  He was brave, but Richard had come to realise, over the years, that Brains was brave because he had no real sense of danger.  He didn’t seem to realise that magic could be dangerous, let alone that it could have dangerous side effects.  Richard was mildly surprised Brains had survived long enough to go to school, although ... he supposed Brains was capable, perhaps without realising it, of minimising the danger as much as possible.  A Heart could avoid dangers that would threaten a Head because their magic gave them what they really wanted.

“It should be,” Brains said.  “The magic oscillations won’t open a real gate, merely feel out the topography.  Once we have a picture of what’s on the other side, in the realm of pure magic, we can start adapting the gate spells to open a proper gate.”

“Somewhere well away from here,” Richard said.  They’d be expelled if they tried to open a proper gate inside the school, at least without permission.  Their expulsion hearing would be the shortest formality on record.  “Unless you want to show it to the tutors first ...”

Brains shook his head.  “It has to be working first,” he said.  “Or else they might take it from us.”

Richard nodded in understanding.  They’d already jumped ahead of everyone else – Brains had done the hard part, Richard had slimmed it down so the average magician could understand –  but a practical result would go a long way towards opening the doors they wanted, if they managed to get it on their own. Theory was important – there was no doubt about it – but they’d be overshadowed by someone who managed to turn their theory into reality.  Brains wasn’t that ambitious, certainly when compared to Helen, yet even he wanted to be the first to make it work.  It would ensure he got the apprenticeships he wanted to take his work to the next level.

“We need to repair the wards around the room,” he said, standing.  “We don’t want someone spying on us, then taking the credit.”

He touched the door, cursing under his breath.  He’d spent hours putting the wards together and Helen had ripped them down in seconds.  It was true they hadn’t been designed to keep people out – merely to keep prying eyes from spying on the chamber – but still ... he shook his head, wondering why Helen hadn’t simply knocked.  It wasn’t as if they would have refused to answer.  Helen would know they were in there and probably get angrier and angrier with every passing second.  And who knew what would have happened then?

She can’t partner with Brains anyway, Richard told himself, although it wasn’t entirely true.  She’s a Heart.  She’ll need a Head if she wants to do anything special, anything beyond the ordinary.

He left Brains figuring out what they needed to obtain and concentrated on rebuilding the wards, piece by gossamer piece.  Helen had done a lot of damage, he reflected crossly, to the point it was easier to dispel the rest of the wards and start from scratch.  They’d done their job – they’d made sure the occupants knew if someone was trying to spy on them – but they hadn’t kept Helen out.  He sighed under his breath.  Older students knew better than to sneak into bedrooms on a dare – it was a good way to get into serious trouble, if the housemaster caught you – but Helen wouldn’t be the only one who might want to steal ideas from Brains.  The threat of a month of detention might not be enough to deter someone from trying.  

They can’t claim whole credit for the ideas, he reminded himself.  But if they can make the ideas work, the headmaster will overlook how they got the idea in the first place.

“I think we need this lot,” Brains said, finally.  He held out a list.  “It shouldn’t take that long to put together, once we have everything we need.”

Richard sighed.  “It won’t be easy, you know,” he said.  The list was incredibly detailed, to the point he dared not leave it lying around for fear someone would work out what they were trying to do just by looking at it.  “Half the stuff you want is on the restricted list.”

Brains smiled, rather sourly.  “There are ways to get around the list, if you ask the right person,” he said.  “But some of the devices we’ll need to make ourselves.”

“Or trade with other students, to ask them to make the devices for us,” Richard added, thoughtfully.  Brains had an allowance that would make a princess burn with envy.  He could buy half of what they needed by mail order, if they couldn’t convince someone to help them in exchange for money or later favours.  “It should be doable.”

“Good.”  Brains’s smile grew warmer.  “Shall we get started?”

“Let me do the talking,” Richard said.  “Actually, let me get everything we need.  You stay and work out the precise spell formula.”

Brains nodded.  Richard allowed himself a moment of relief.  He was supposed to take care of Brains, and letting him do the bargaining was pretty much the exact opposite of taking care.  Brains would happily pay anything their peers asked for supplies, without stopping to wonder if someone had seen him coming and jacked up the prices accordingly.  Richard had grown up in a town, near the farms.  He knew how to bargain, how to offer the bare minimum and let himself be talked up rather than simply pay whatever the seller demanded and discover, later, that he’d been massively overcharged.  It would be safer to handle the matter himself.  Brains’s family would not be amused if he wasted his entire allowance on a runestone worth a couple of shillings at best.

He took the list, then headed through the door.  They didn’t have any classes they had to attend until the afternoon, giving him more than enough time to start gathering the goods.  The school felt unusually quiet, something that puzzled him until he remembered a team of dragon-riders had arrived and were showing off their skills over luncheon.  He hadn’t thought there was any point in going – and Brains, of course, hadn’t been interested – but it would keep everyone busy until the first bell rang, whereupon they’d be running to the dining halls as quickly as possible before the food was taken away and classes began.  No one, absolutely no one, wanted to go to class on an empty stomach.  It would be unpleasant, even if the class was purely theoretical.

The workshop doors loomed up in front of him.  He pushed them open, wincing slightly as the racket assailed his ears.  He was sure some of the blacksmith students had gone to watch the dragons too, but the noise suggested otherwise.  Magic – powerful and old – hung in the air, held in place by chants as the smiths brought their hammers down on hot metal, battering the metal into shape.  He paused to watch a smith finish a charm, the metal glowing with magic, then stepped into the smaller workrooms beyond.  William was there, inspecting a piece of work with a careful – and cynical – eye.  Richard breathed a sigh of relief.  They might not be best friends, but they’d come from the same place – Eddisford – and had been allies, more than once, against the well-born students.  

“Richard.”  William sketched a bow, a mockery of the formal postures they’d been taught in their first year.  “Good to see you again.”

“And you,” Richard returned.  “Did you get a chance to go home?”

“I did,” William said.  “Old Fuller is still holding on, but he says the moment I’m qualified he’s resigning.”

Richard nodded.  Old Fuller was the town blacksmith, a man so big and brawny it was hard to believe he was getting on in years.  He’d been the blacksmith for decades, his work wrapped in magic that was perfectly attuned to the land ... it was going to be strange, years in the future, to see William at Fuller’s forge.  Time moved on, even in timeless places like Eddisford.  Richard thought his ancestors, the ones who’d fled OldeWorld, would have understood Eddisford perfectly.  It was just like the towns they’d been forced to leave behind, all those years ago.  

“I need to ask a favour,” Richard said.  “And I can pay.”

“You said the magic words,” William teased.  “What do you want, and how much are you offering?”

Richard held out one of the lists.  He’d copied Brains’s notes, then carefully written out a handful of smaller lists.  No one, not even William, would know everything they wanted.  They’d have to do a little fiddling with the devices, when they arrived, to make them suitable for the task at hand, but it would make it harder for anyone to figure out what they were doing.  Richard had put considerable thought into the lists.  There were no lies on the parchments, but they were misleading all the same.

“I see,” William said, once he’d read the list.  “Let me think.  What about ... two hundred sovereigns?”

Richard snorted.  “How about one half-groat?”

“I’m shocked, shocked, you could suggest so little,” William said, with mock horror.  “How about one hundred sovereigns?”

“How about ten,” Richard said.  “And we want them ready by the end of the fortnight.”

“Fifty, and you’ll have them by the end of the week,” William said.  “I do have other work to do, you know.  They keep expecting me to study.  You’d think this was a school!”

Richard laughed.  “You mean this isn’t a school?  How could I have been so deceived?”

He leaned forward.  “Forty, by the end of the fortnight.  And I want you to keep it to yourself.”

“I see.”  William studied Richard for a long moment, clearly wondering if it was worth asking for more.  Forty sovereigns was a good offer, covering expenses and leaving William with a healthy profit.  Normally, he’d have accepted the offer at once.  “Maybe ... alright.  Forty it is, if you pay the expenses now.”

“Of course,” Richard said.  He opened his purse and counted out the coins he’d borrowed from Brains.  Forty sovereigns was more money than he’d expected to see in his entire life, at least until he’d gone to school and met Brains.  It was galling to realise even a hundred sovereigns was just pocket change, for Brains and Helen and their peers.  “Keep me informed.  You won’t be paid the rest unless you deliver on time.”

“Of course,” William said.  “And good luck.”

Richard smiled, bowed and took his leave.  William wasn’t the only person he’d visit, before it was time to go back to class.  If they were lucky, they’d have everything they needed ready in a fortnight or so.  And then ... he felt a thrill of hope.  The first experiment would be relatively simple – he’d spent hours fiddling with the spell diagrams, making it so – but if it proved workable they could move on forging a proper anywhere-gate.  If Brains was right ...

His smile grew wider as he made his way down the corridor, passing a pair of younger students who still seemed awestruck.  Brains was never wrong.  Some of his ideas were impractical – and some of his theories had proven impossible to verify – but he’d never actually been wrong.  His instinctive grasp of magic was just too good.  Richard would give him all the time he needed to iron out his theories, confident of Brains eventually producing something that could be turned into practical magic.  And there was no way anyone, even Helen, could steal the credit.

She’ll have to come up with something of her own, Richard thought.  And won’t that be a pain for her?

Chapter Four: Mystic Albion, Now

The boys were up to something.

Helen was sure of it.  She’d made it her business to keep an eye on Brains and Richard for the last fortnight, and they were definitely up to something.  Richard had been obtaining all sorts of devices, some freshly forged by blacksmiths and some from the workshops, as well as raw materials from the school’s stores he could turn into something useful on his own.  Helen had tried to figure out what they were doing, but none of the possible answers seemed worthy of Brains’s vast intelligence.  She had a feeling Brains – or, more likely, Richard – was keeping his cards very close to his chest.  He might even have ordered devices and materials he didn’t need to confuse any watching eyes.  Brains certainly had the money to purchase plenty of things he didn’t need.

Paul cleared his throat.  “I think ... ah ... I think ...”

Helen bit her lip to keep from either snapping at him or turning him into a slug, which would be something of an improvement.  Paul was handsome enough for three men, but if he had a single working cell in his entire brain, Helen had yet to see any evidence of it.  That was bad enough, in her view, yet he was also under the delusion Helen had partnered herself with him because she wanted to marry him.  Helen honestly had no idea what she’d said that could possibly have given him that idea.  She was betrothed!  She wouldn’t have partnered with him if someone else had been free.  And even if she hadn’t been engaged to Brains, she would sooner have married a swineherd than a man who was all beauty and no brains.  The swineherd did something useful ...

She felt a sudden twinge of longing.  She’d long-since accepted her duty to her family, on the understanding she’d have nearly a century to do as she willed after she’d borne and raised her children, but ... there were times when she wanted to do something else, to explore or experiment or even do nothing, as long as the choice was hers.  She could almost envy Richard his freedom.  His family demanded nothing.  Brains’s family let him do as he pleased.  And the two of them were up to something.

Whatever they’re doing, they’re planning to do it soon, Helen thought.  It was never easy to read Brains, but Richard was clearly looking forward to something.  The boys had been behaving oddly all week, skipping every class they could to work on their project.  And I’m here, stuck with a guy who’s completely useless!

She glared at the parchments in front of her.  Paul really was useless.  It was too bad he was the only partner left, when she’d started looking.  He had no ideas of his own and couldn’t offer any useful comments on hers.  Brains would have told her, in great detail, what was wrong with her ideas ... Richard, damn his eyes, would have done the same with more enthusiasm.  Helen wouldn’t have minded, not that much.  She knew how to take criticism, provided it was focused and useful.  Paul couldn’t even offer the sneering remarks she’d heard from her aunties, when she’d attended the Summer Solstice.  He was just too thick ...

Helen frowned as a sense of foreboding washed through her.  She’d been taught to pay attention to such feelings, although she’d also been cautioned they could be dangerously misleading.  Foretelling the future was never easy, not when too many people did it and then changed their decisions based on their predictions.  She knew not to take it too seriously and yet, the last time she’d had the sense something was about to change, she’d lost her grandfather to a magical accident.  The feeling wouldn’t go away.  She feared the worst.

She stood, sharply.  Paul gaped at her.  “What are you ...?”

“I have to go,” Helen said, curtly.  She had no intention of taking him with her, not when he didn’t have the intellect to bandy words with Brains nor the power to trade spells with Richard.  She’d spent much of the last week wondering how Paul had managed to get into Gatehouse in the first place.  Surely, the staff would have noticed if he’d beaten up another prospective student and stole their paperwork.  “Stay here and guard our papers with your life.”

“As you please, My Lady,” Paul said, grandly.  “I will defend them with my life.”

Helen snorted as she made her way out of the library and hurried to the bedrooms.  Paul wasn’t doing her any favours – or himself, really.  It was telling that she hadn’t noticed anyone trying to spy on them.  The rest of the class knew perfectly well Paul was incapable of offering anything useful, such as turning Helen’s ideas into something comprehensible.  Leaving the notes around for anyone to see might be more dangerous for the spy than anyone else.  Perhaps they’d die laughing.  

You should have moved quicker, she told herself, picking up speed.  If you couldn’t get Brains, you could have gotten someone with a working brain.

Her lips twitched, the flicker of humour banished by the ever-growing sense that something bad was about to happen.  She reached the dorms and hesitated, unsure if she should find the housemaster or the headmaster or another member of staff.  Brains and Richard would be mad at her – and they’d call her a tattletale, something that would destroy her socially if it ever got out – but she wouldn’t care if it saved their lives.  And yet ... she swallowed, hard, and forced herself to walk through the door.  Richard wasn’t the only one who’d erected newer and better wards to keep out prying eyes.  The air was so heavy with them her inner eye – firmly closed – hurt under the pressure.  She was surprised the housemaster hadn’t made the boys clear out the spells before someone got really hurt.

He’s probably hoping they’ll learn their lesson the hard way, she thought, as she reached their door.  The spells crawling over the wood were stronger than she’d expected, strong enough to slow her down.  Brains had probably helped Richard put them together.  And besides, if he tells them to take the spells down, people will ask sharp questions.

Dismissing the thought, she reached for her magic and forced the door.

***

Richard honestly wasn’t sure, looking at the device in the middle of the room, if they’d made a breakthrough or if they’d simply wasted a great deal of metal, gemstones and other raw materials.  It looked like the inside of several grand pianos, smashed to pieces and then put back together by someone who didn’t quite know what they were doing.  A parchment scroll hummed with magic, quills hovering above to record the magical topography when Brains finally finished fine-tuning the device and turned it on.  Richard checked the spells, time and time again, hoping and praying it worked perfectly the first time.  There was so much magic hanging in the air, surrounding the device, that he feared it might interfere with the results.

“We need something to call it,” he said.  “Something snappy.”

Brains grinned.  “I just called it the Magical Topography Sensor,” he said.  “Do we need anything snappier?”

“It would probably help us convince people to fund more, particularly if we do manage to pair it with an anywhere-gate,” Richard said.  He studied the device for a long thoughtful moment.  He was a Head.  He’d never placed much faith in intuition.  But there was something about the device that just felt right.  “Perhaps GateWeb?”

“Sounds snappy,” Brains said, as if it was of no real interest to him.  “People shouldn’t need to be convinced by snappy names.”

Richard shrugged as Brains stepped backwards and surveyed his work.  

“People are rarely logical,” Richard said, seriously.  “And often, convincing them to do something means appealing to their hearts rather than their heads.”

Brains shrugged, expressively.  “People are strange,” he said.  “Shall we begin?”

Richard nodded.  They didn’t have much time.  He’d done everything in his power to keep the rest of the students from figuring out what they were doing, but the mere fact he’d taken so many precautions had drawn a considerable amount of interest.  His wards had been probed – gingerly – time and time again, to the point he’d had to layer them on with a trowel to be fairly sure they would keep out prying eyes for a few days longer.  He’d even considered making an official complaint, given the spies were trying to see inside their bedroom.  But it would just make them look weak and silly.

“Do it,” he said.

Brains reached forward and touched one of the gems, triggering the spells they’d carefully woven into the stone.  They came to life slowly, the magic field around the GateWeb flickering oddly as the spells slipped into place.  Richard felt a twinge of sudden unease, despite the number of times he’d checked and rechecked the spells.  They weren’t going to do anything, save for feeling out the magical topography.  There was no way in hell they were going to risk opening a gate right in the heart of the school.  The thought was thoroughly absurd ...

His alarm spells twanged.  Someone – a very particular someone – was at the door.  The locking spells were already failing, even though he’d spent hours putting them together after the last time Helen had broken into the room.  He spun around, clenching his fists as the last of the spells collapsed, the fragments of magic vanishing seconds later.  There was no way to shut down the GateWeb, not safely.  Helen was going to see the device in all its glory.  He wondered, as the door crashed open, just what she’d make of it.

Helen stepped into the chamber, closing the door behind her.  She looked ... worried.  Richard was uneasy himself, but ... he’d never seen Helen look concerned for anyone, even herself.  The expression made her look ... different, almost as if she were someone else wearing a glamour. For a moment, Richard wondered if she was.  It wasn’t impossible.  A simple morphing potion could hold the spell in place, long enough to fool someone who didn’t know the person very well.  But the look in her eyes, as she met his, was enough to convince him it was the real Helen.  No one else looked at him and wrinkled her nose as if she’d smelt something awful.

“Get out,” Richard said.  Behind him, the magic was starting to pulse.  He could hear the quill scratching as it started to plot out the magical topography.  “Get out!”

Helen lifted her hand and waved it at him.  Richard had no time to react before every muscle in his body locked solid.  He could neither move nor speak.  He wasn’t even sure if he was still breathing.  He tried to brace himself, then focus on the spells Brains and he had developed over the last week.  If they worked, if he managed to deflect the magic pressing down on him ...

***

Helen hadn’t felt angry or vindictive when Richard had got in her way and ordered her out of their room.  She’d been too uneasy for anything beyond a simple freeze spell.  The ice in her stomach was turning into a bottomless pit, chilling her to the point it was hard to move forward and inspect the device.  The boys had been incredibly busy.  Helen had thought she knew whom they’d asked for materials, even though she hadn’t known everything they’d asked for.  It was clear, just from looking at the web of glowing metal and gems, she’d badly underestimated their ingenuity.  All her speculations were just ... hot air.

She took a breath, sensing the magic flowing around the device.  It seemed to spin in and out of her awareness, travelling to places her mind couldn’t comprehend, let alone follow.  Were the boys trying to expand their chamber, to turn it into a castle?  Doing it inside a building that was already dimensionally transcendent was asking for trouble.  Did Brains think he could nestle his work inside someone else’s or ... or was it something else?  The magic was growing stronger, the spells blurring together ... what was happening?  What was it?

“Brains,” Helen said.  Brains was standing on the far side of the device, studying ... was that a piece of parchment?  Was the whole device designed to communicate with someone else?  It seemed unlikely, but she wouldn’t put anything past them.  “Brains, what is this thing?”

Brains looked up, seemingly noticing her for the first time.  “Helen,” he said, blinking at her in surprise.  “What are you doing here?”

Helen swallowed several answers that came to mind, silently grateful Brains hadn’t noticed the frozen Richard.  “I felt ... I felt as though something was going to go wrong,” she said, slowly.  Brains would understand, perhaps.  He was a Heart as well as a Head, but he was something of a cold fish.  The only time she’d seen any real passion from him was when he’d been hard at work.  “What are you doing?”

Brains looked back at his parchment.  “I’m feeling out the magical topography of the surrounding area,” he said.  His voice was perfectly calm, as if he were ordering dinner or discussing the weather or something – anything – other than a dangerous and illicit experiment that was probably about to get them expelled, if it didn’t kill them first.  “If it works ...”

“Dispel it,” Helen ordered, sharply.  It hurt to open her inner eye – it felt as if she were staring into the sun – but there was no choice.  She needed to know how to shut the device down without causing an explosion.  Perhaps it had been a mistake to freeze Richard.  He could have talked sense into Brains.  “You need to shut it down.”

The sense of unease was almost overwhelming.  She raised her voice.  “Shut it down!”

“It is working perfectly,” Brains said.  He was holding the parchment, watching the quills intently as they passed over the sheet.  Helen was reminded of the quills he’d spelled to write punishment lines, a trick that had earned quite a bit of money until the tutors had caught on and banned them.  “There’s no danger.”

Helen’s intuition insisted there was.  “Shut it down,” she ordered, as she summoned her magic.  There was no time to look for a weakness.  She had to take it apart as quickly as possible.  “Shut it down or I’ll do it for you!”

Brains stared at her, then at the frozen Richard.  Helen’s heart sank.  He wouldn’t listen to her now.  She didn’t even have time to free Richard, to beg him to help.  Her instincts were screaming at her, telling her to run ... she feared it was too late to run.  She’d messed up.  They’d all messed up.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, as she raised her hand.  Brains would be furious and his family would be mad and she doubted it would work out for the best, but she saw no other choice.  It had to be stopped.  “I hope ...”

***

Richard had never quite figured out why precise movements and perfect pronunciation were so important, when it came to casting spells, but it hadn’t taken him long to realise that being dependent on moving and speaking when one was casting spells was one hell of a weakness.  It might be difficult to cast a spell without either, yet mastering the art was the only way to avoid being turned into something unpleasant and left that way permanently.  Perversely, Helen had actually done him a favour when she’d frozen him.  It was easier to concentrate on the magic surrounding the movements, shaping the spells he needed to cancel her magic, when he couldn’t move a muscle.  He paid little heed to the discussion between Helen and Brains as he concentrated, trying to muster his power.  It wasn’t easy.

His head hurt as he put the spells together.  It would have been better if she’d just cast the spell and moved on, but instead she was – intentionally or not – holding the spell in place by force of will.  There was no way he could shift it, even for an instant, without her snapping the spell back into place a second later.  In theory, she had him helpless and yet ... he focused, pushing the spells into place one by one.  Her magic was a torrent, holding him down and frozen.  If he could redirect the torrent and steer the magic elsewhere, get out from under it before time ran out ...

The spell didn’t so much snap as fall off him, the magic pooling on the floor.  Richard barely had any time to pay attention to it.  Helen was pointing her hand at the GateWeb, summoning magic to destroy it.  Richard felt a surge of pure anger as he raised his own magic.  He could hex her in the back, stunning her long enough to complete the test.  He could ... Helen spun around, grabbing the wand at her belt, then ducked as he cast the spell.  The two magics – his and hers – spun together, then blurred into the magic surrounding the GateWeb.  Richard thought, for a horrible moment, the whole thing was about to explode.  The webbing they’d put together was warping out of shape, yet it was holding together.  Barely.

Helen screamed.  “What have you done?”

Richard didn’t know.  The magic was building to a crescendo.  The light was so bright it seemed to burn his eyes, so bright it was blazing through his thoughts.  The entire school shook violently.  Panic raced through him.  He wanted to run, he wanted to flee, but his legs refused to obey.  He couldn’t move.  What the hell had they done?  Where was the power coming from?  The world was warping again, the beds twisting madly ...

“Impossible.”  It took Richard several seconds to realise it was Brains speaking.  His friend had never sounded so alarmed in his entire life, even after some of his more daring experiences had overloaded and exploded.  If even Brains couldn’t stay calm ...  “Simply impossible.”

Richard felt the school shake again.  His thoughts ran in circles.  What the hell had they done?  Were they about to die?  Or ... or what?  The magic was coming together now, taking on a shape that reminded him of something even as it tore at his very soul.  He’d seen it before, he’d seen it ...

The world went white, then black.

Chapter Five: York, England, Now

Janet Mayweather shivered.

The sun was setting, twilight falling over the city.  It was a time she should be at home, with her mother and her brother, rather than walking down the deserted road towards St. Champions Comprehensive School.  Normally, she would be at home, waiting for her mother to get off the night shift and return to her family before they went to bed.  Today ...

“Come along,” Annabelle Jackson said.  “You don’t want to be late, do you?”

Janet looked away, trying not to show the fear churning in her gut.  Annabelle had been her friend once, before she’d found popularity and dumped Janet for being lamer than the nerds and geeks who’d once been the lamest of the lame.  It had hurt to watch her former best friend live a life of being the most popular girl in the school while she was a permanent outcast, mocked and scorned for being alone.  Janet had hoped things would get better, as they grew older, but even at seventeen she hadn’t been able to get away from the taint of being discarded like an old crisp packet.  Annabelle’s offer was the only hope she had of finding a social circle of her own.

She swallowed hard, trying not to retch.  Annabelle had dared her to sneak into the school, after dark, and spend the night within its walls.  All the best girls did it, Annabelle had said; she’d done it herself, years ago, to prove it could be done.  Janet hoped she was telling the truth and tried to pay no attention to the little voice at the back of her mind, the one that insisted Annabelle was lying and the whole dare was little more than a particularly nasty prank.  Annabelle could be cruel, at times, and yet ... Janet swallowed, again.  Would Annabelle, the girl she’d once counted as her best friend, really play a prank that might result in Janet’s arrest?

“They always leave the side gate open,” Annabelle explained.  “You can sneak into the school there, as I told you.”

Janet nodded, trying not to shiver as the wind blew against her bare arms.  The handful of shops and houses surrounding the school were dead and cold, the former closed now that the kids had gone home and the latter abandoned long ago, even by Airbnb.  COVID had played merry hell with York, destroying property values and sending the housing estates on the outskirts plunging into depression and criminality.  Janet intended to leave, as soon as she was old enough.  She already had plans to take out loans and go to university, somewhere well away from her hometown.  Who knew?  Perhaps she might make new friends amongst people who’d never known her as a young girl.

She chewed on a strand of hair, nervously, as the school came into view.  She’d never been considered pretty, except by her mother.  Her brown hair might have been nice, if she’d had the time to take care of it properly, but instead it was ratty, hanging down around her shoulders in strands that suggested she never bothered to wash it.  Her face was covered in freckles, her teeth slightly protruding ... she had begged, time and time again, for dental treatment to fix her teeth, but her mother had never been able to afford it.  The NHS was no help.  No one gave a damn about a young girl’s teeth when there were people in far worse conditions.  Janet knew she should be glad she wasn’t disabled, physically or mentally, or anything else, but it was hard.  She felt, sometimes, as if her life had ended before it had even fairly begun.

Annabelle smiled at her, perfect teeth flashing in the twilight.  “Good luck!”

Janet tried to hide the bitterness within her.  Annabelle was perfect.  Tall and blonde, wearing the latest designer clothes ... Annabelle was practically the queen of the school, the girl who drew attention from everyone.  The teachers loved her, the boys fought for her attention, the girls competed to be in her circle ... Janet’s stomach twisted, painfully, at the dull realisation she was little better than the flock of pretty girls surrounding Annabelle at all times.  She should be at home in bed, dreaming of better days to come, not trying to impress her former friend by breaking and entering.  Janet wanted to turn and walk away, to tell Annabelle she had no intention of ending the day in handcuffs, of having her life destroyed by an arrest record ... she knew she couldn’t.  She just couldn’t.  Annabelle could demand anything, as the price for her favour, and Janet knew she’d pay whatever Annabelle demanded.  It was her only hope.

St. Champions Comprehensive School rose in front of her.  The twilight cast an eerie shimmer over the building, even though Janet had attended the school since she’d been twelve and knew it all too well.  Her classmates had joked the school had been built by a madman and, in the twilight, it was easy to believe they were right.  The core of the school was an ancient manor house that dated all the way back to the Tudors, but the outskirts were modern classrooms, labs and – she shuddered – gym halls.  She wasn’t unhealthy, yet she’d hated gym with a passion ever since she’d hit puberty.  The boys were crude, the girls weren’t much better, the ...

“Here we are,” Annabelle said, as they stopped outside the fence.  The gate looked closed, a small padlock hanging from the lock ... Janet felt a moment of hope, hope she wouldn’t have to go through the dare, before Annabelle pulled the padlock free and hung it from the wire.  “I’ll meet you here at seven.”

Janet glanced at her smartphone, silently checking the time.  Nine o’clock ... she cursed herself, as she shoved the outdated device back into her pocket, for even listening to Annabelle when she’d called and made the dare.  It wasn’t as if her popularity could sink below rock bottom, was it?  She could be at home, in bed, instead of sneaking into the school for a dare ...

“Fine,” she said, reluctantly.  “I’ll see you at seven.”

She pushed the gate open and stepped into the school grounds.  The concrete below her feet was as dead and cold as the rest of the estate – the darkness made it impossible to see the painted lines on the ground – and the school itself was dark, save for a single light burning above the main doors.  Janet glanced back at Annabelle, who was already hidden in the darkness, then started to walk towards the side entrance.  The CCTV cameras had been smashed, long ago, by rowdy students or druggies or ... who knew?  Janet told herself there was no reason to think anyone was present within the school, not even the creepy caretaker and his staff.  The building felt empty.

The sense she was doing something wrong, that she was trespassing in an alien world, grew stronger as she reached the door.  It was supposed to be locked, she’d been told, but the lock had broken long ago and never been fixed.  Annabelle had told her, in great detail, how the door could be opened from the outside with very little effort.  Janet wondered, as she pressed the ruler into position to raise the bar and open the door, why no one had bothered to repair the lock.  The school was as crummy as only a comprehensive school could be, but surely the outdated computers had to be worth something.  Perhaps the headmaster was hoping the building would be robbed, allowing him to claim the insurance and retire on the proceeds.  Or something.  Janet didn’t have any idea of how the system worked.

He doesn’t even own the school, she thought, as she pushed the door open and inched into the building.  And if he did, it can’t be worth more than a few thousand pounds.

She smirked, then peered into the darkness.  The corridors were normally brightly lit, the fluorescents burning even during the brightest days.  She’d heard hundreds of lectures on the importance of saving power and preserving the environment, but it hadn’t taken her long to realise the authorities didn’t care enough to try.  They kept the lights on constantly, rather than give the teachers the power to determine when they should be on or off.  Now ... the corridors were dark and cold, the shadows seemingly moving on their own.  Janet thought she saw something at the corner of her eye, but when she looked into the darkness it was gone.  The darkness seemed to be waiting for her.

A chill ran down her spine.  There were all sorts of stories about ghosts walking the halls, stories that suddenly seemed real.  Janet was tempted, very tempted, to just turn around and walk out.  She could go home, wake up the following morning and sneak back into the school ... and, when she met Annabelle, she could say she’d spent the entire night in the building.  But she didn’t dare.  Annabelle might be watching, from a distance, to see if Janet really stayed inside for the whole night.  It was just the sort of thing she’d do.

Janet hesitated, cursing herself for not having thought to bring a flashlight, then took her smartphone out of her pocket and flipped on the camera light.  It was a second or third-hand device, purchased by her brother from one of his dodgy contacts and then roundly mocked for not being a top-of-the-line smartphone, but the battery was good enough to keep the flashlight on for a few hours.  The shadows drew back, but didn’t quite vanish.  Janet realised her second mistake and swore under her breath.  The school was supposed to be dark.  The flashlight would draw attention if a police car drove past and spotted the light.

She forced herself to walk on, deeper into the building.  The sense of unease, of something waiting to happen, only grew stronger as she made her way through the corridors, glancing briefly into the empty classrooms as she passed.  She was tempted to peek into the common rooms – she was banned, on grounds of terminal unpopularity – but, when she looked, there was nothing special about them.  She’d heard some of the boys bragging about beer, or drugs, or hardcore porn in their common rooms, yet ... she shook her head.  The worst of the boys claimed to have good connections, to be waiting to finish their schooling before they vanished into the criminal underworld, but she was fairly sure they were lying.  Their stories were just too wild.  She’d heard one of them bragging he’d slept with every girl in his year and she knew that was a lie.  She was in his year and she was still a virgin.  No one had shown even the slightest interest in her.

The air seemed to change, just slightly, as she crossed the border between the old and new buildings.  The walls became stone, bearing the scars of an earlier age despite paint and portraits of old boys who’d lived and died years ago.  Janet had never worked out why the school bothered to show the portraits.  It wasn’t as if there was any point in flattering their descendents, in hopes of getting money donated to the school.  Annabelle’s father was perhaps the richest of the school’s parents and he wouldn’t donate anything unless there was something in it for him.  Janet had known him, once upon a time.  He’d always been a very distant parent.

She paused outside Mr. Wilson’s classroom, then walked down the stairs to the basement kitchens.  They were off-limits to students during the day, probably to keep them from realising what horrors the cooks perpetrated on decent food to turn it into the sludge the students were expected to eat for lunch.  Janet’s stomach churned as she peered into the kitchens, half-expecting to see cockroaches or animal droppings in plain sight.  The school was infamous for ghastly food, for meals a pig would decline to eat washed down with water that tasted as if it had been drawn from the local swimming pool.  And yet, packed lunches were banned.  Janet had never understood the pointless cruelty of forcing students to eat terrible food.  If Janet’s mother, a woman who barely had any time for anything other than eating or sleeping, could cook something that was actually tasty, why couldn’t professional cooks?

A ... flicker ... ran through the air, a strange sense of power boiling at the edge of her awareness.  Janet looked up sharply, suddenly convinced she was standing right next to a generator.  The school’s boilers were supposed to be magnificent beasts, but she’d never seen them.  She’d certainly never been allowed anywhere near the computer servers in the IT department.  And yet, she felt something... she hesitated, torn between a desire to run and an urge to see what was making the air feel so strange.  The sense that something was about to happen was growing stronger.  It was ...

She inched forward, leaving the kitchens behind as she reached the very lowest levels of the school.  It was a basement that looked more like a cave, a strange mixture of ancient walls and boxes thrown haphazardly around the chamber ... she stopped on the very edge, suddenly unwilling to go any further.  The shadows were changing, shimmering ... the world turned white, a blinding light so strong she cried out and covered her eyes as the glare burned into her thoughts.  She found herself on her knees, unsure of when she’d fallen, as the light seemed to blaze through her hands and straight into her eyes.  The entire building shook ... for a horrible moment, she wondered if someone had actually blown up the school.  Was she about to die?

The light snapped out of existence, the darkness crashing down so hard it was almost a physical blow.  She raised her smartphone, holding it up to see the devastation in front of her as her eyes adjusted to the light.  The floor had been torn and broken, the boxes had been picked up and thrown everywhere, and ... and there were three people, lying on the floor groaning.  Janet stared, her mind unable to grasp what had happened.  They’d come out of the light.  They’d ...

She ran forward, staring at them.  They were ... bizarre, wearing robes that were a strange cross between monkish garb and wizarding cosplay outfits.  Two boys, one girl ... she felt an odd twinge of envy as she saw the girl, someone more stunning and charismatic, even lying on the ground, than Annabelle would ever be.  Long red hair arranged in the sort of style Janet would never dare wear, floated around her.  The two boys were more normal, despite their clothes, but ... she shook her head as she stared down at them.  Their belts were crammed with devices that looked like items right out of a steampunk world.  She thought she could feel something odd, almost electric, surrounding them.  

A boy – handsome, in a bland kind of way – looked up at Janet, his eyes going wide as he saw her.  Janet flushed, despite herself.  She preferred to dress conservatively – she didn’t have the courage to wear tight shirts or miniskirts – and yet, compared to the shapeless robes the trio wore, she was practically naked.  He opened his mouth and said something, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of it.  The language sounded vaguely like Old English, his accent very similar to the accent affected by guides at York Castle, but she couldn’t make out the words.  It wouldn’t be the first time she’d met a student who didn’t speak English – hundreds of foreign refugees passed through the school, often only staying for a few short weeks or months before moving on – yet she’d seen him and his friends pop out of a blaze of light.  Who were they?  Where the hell had they come from?

The electric spark grew stronger, just for a second.  The boy met her eyes.  “Who ... who are you?”

“Janet,” Janet said, without thinking.  It occurred to her, too late, that she might have been wiser not to mention her name.  She didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on.  “I ... who are you?”

“Richard,” the boy managed.  There was something odd about his speech, as if his lip movements didn’t quite match his words.  “I ... where are we?”

“York,” Janet said.  If she hadn’t seen the light, she would have thought he was playing a prank on her.  How could someone not know where they were?  “What are you?”

“York,” Richard repeated.  He sounded stunned, although it was hard to tell.  “I ... York?”

“York,” Janet said.  She was too confused to panic.  “I think ...”

She heard a clatter behind her, an instant before the lights came on.  Richard looked up, staring at the light bulbs as if he’d never seen anything like them.  His eyes snapped from side to side, taking in the room in total disbelief.  Janet swallowed hard, a grim certainty sinking into her heart.  Richard and his friends were from a very long way away.  She’d seen the light.  It was impossible and yet, she knew they hadn’t been there before the light had carried them into her sight ...

“The police are on their way,” a voice snapped.  Janet shuddered.  She knew that voice.  The creepy caretaker was right behind her.  She turned, slowly, to see the wretched man pointing a shotgun at her chest.  Where had he even gotten the gun?  She had no idea.  “Just keep your hands where I can see them and no one has to get hurt.”

Janet’s heart sank.  She was dead.

Chapter Six: York, England, Now

Richard felt ... groggy.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been stunned.  He’d experienced everything from potions designed to put him to sleep to spells intended to confuse their target and make it impossible to think clearly.  He’d practiced clearing his mind time and time again, trying to ensure he had a good grip on what was actually real before anyone started trying to twist his thoughts out of shape.  He had thought himself immune to any form of subtle mind control.  And yet, he had never felt so disoriented in his life.

The world felt wrong.  It was hard, so hard, not to panic at the sheer wrongness of the world around him.  What had they done?  His magics had interacted with Helen’s magics and they’d both blurred into the GateWeb and ... and what?  Richard had no idea what had happened next, but it was clear something had gone horribly wrong.  The light hadn’t been a good sign.  The fact it had burned into their thoughts was worse.  The headache it had left in its wake made it hard to think, but ... he forced his eyes open anyway.  It was clear they’d caused a disaster.  They might have to move.  The entire school might be on the verge of collapse ...

The school was gone.

Richard stared in shock.  Their bedroom was gone.  They were ... they were in a dark room, illuminated only by a flickering wand in a girl’s hand.  Richard looked at her, his mind refusing to grasp what he was seeing.  Her clothes were ... strange, almost alien.  They covered her body and yet revealed her curves and ... he shook his head, the motion setting off explosions within his skull.  There was no time to stare.  They were somewhere else and that meant ... what?  Richard had seen the spells Brains had designed, then helped him put the incants in place before triggering the GateWeb.  They could not have opened a gate.  And yet, he was somewhere else.

He heard a groan and looked to the side, realising that both Brains and Helen had come with him.  They looked terrible, their faces pallid yet streaked with sweat.  Richard wondered, numbly, if they’d caught the worst of the light.  Whatever they’d done, whatever the light had been, it had clearly attacked them through their magic.  Helen was a Heart and Brains ... they both might have taken it worse than Richard.  Neither of them were in any state to do much of anything.  Richard shaped a spell in his mind as he turned to look back at the stranger.  The magic felt wrong, almost sluggish.  A nasty thought ran through his mind, but he didn’t care to look at it too closely.

“Well met,” he managed.  His throat felt dry, as if he’d been eating sand.  “Can you understand me?”

The look of incomprehension on the girl’s face proved she couldn’t.  Richard swallowed a curse, then shaped a translation spell and cast it.  The magic nearly came apart in his mind before the spell was even cast properly.  It was sheer luck he knew how to cast the spell in the first place.  Brains had taught him, pointing out that being able to speak to foreigners and read ancient tomes was a very useful skill.  And yet, the spells weren’t always reliable.  He reminded himself, sharply, that what he heard might not be what she said.

His throat felt no better.  “Who ... who are you?”

“Janet,” the girl said.  An old name, but not unfamiliar.  The nasty thought Richard had had earlier resurfaced, a worrying reminder of precisely why Gatehouse was called Gatehouse.  “I ...” she continued, “who are you?”

“Richard,” Richard said.  They talked briefly, the words slamming into his ears.  They were in York?  “I ... York?”

His thoughts spun in circles.  Were they on OldeWorld?  It was impossible.  The gates had closed four hundred years ago.  And yet, Gatehouse had been the site of the last and greatest gate of them all.  Had they somehow reopened the gate long enough to fall into OldeWorld ... he looked up, sharply, as the room suddenly filled with light.  It was too bright, bringing back memories of their fall ..., he looked down and around, taking in the sheer alienness of the chamber.  It was such a strange place that it was almost incomprehensible.  The walls were bare stone – that, at least, was familiar – but the smashed boxes on the grounds were beyond him.  Their contents were ... strange, almost impossible to understand.  What were they?

“The police are on their way,” a voice snapped.  “Just keep your hands where I can see them and no one has to get hurt.”

Richard saw a tall man with a straggly beard standing in the entrance, pointing a metal wand at them.  His face was unpleasant, his eyes suggesting a strange sort of anticipation as he gazed at Janet and then Helen.  Richard shuddered in disgust.  The man looked like a Sinister, like the prisoners he’d seen during a brief visit to the Tower of Londinium.  They had been kept in chains, surrounded by enough wards to daunt even the strongest of sorcerers, and yet Richard had been unable to escape the impression they were only biding their time before they escaped to wreak havoc once again.  This man wasn’t even in chains.  And he was aiming a wand at them ...

We have to move, Richard thought.  He had no idea what the police were, but Janet was shaking in her shoes at the very mention of their name.  Sinisters?  Or Burners?  It wasn’t impossible, not if they were on OldeWorld.  Neither Brains nor Helen were in any state for a fight.  We can’t stay here.

He shaped a spell in his mind, then cast it.  The older man staggered and fell to the ground, his wand clattering down beside him.  He had no defences against magic at all, Richard noted.  Richard had been afraid to try anything fancy – he doubted he had the power to turn the man into a frog, even for a few seconds – but it had been enough.  He muttered a second incantation, hoping to scramble the man’s memories of the last few hours.  It would keep him from telling the police anything useful ...

Janet caught his arm.  “We have to get out of here!”

Richard hesitated, then nodded.  Janet was odd, certainly, but she looked earnest.  She reminded him of some of the younger common-born students, the ones who felt out of place and yet determined to try desperately to fit in somehow.  He looked at Brains and Helen, then swore under his breath as he tried to levitate them.  The spell didn’t work.  It was all he could do to cast a spell to lighten them to the point he could toss them over his shoulder and carry them out of the chamber.  Helen would be angry, if she recovered enough to realise he’d laid hands on her without permission.  Richard would almost have preferred it if she had woken up and berated him.  They both looked too far out of it to do anything.  

“Quickly,” Richard said.  “Which way?”

Janet stared at him, then turned and hurried out the door.  Richard followed, trying not to be overwhelmed by the sheer strangeness surrounding him.  The corridors were illuminated by magic, except it wasn’t.  He couldn’t feel anything in the air, save for a faint hum that pressed against his mind.  His magic worked, but ... he swallowed, hard.  If they were on OldeWorld, after the magic had gone away, would his powers regenerate as normal or were the few sparks he had remaining all he had?  No wonder Brains and Helen were so far out of it!  They were so closely linked to the magic pervading the world that having the connection torn away had to be disorienting, far worse than it had been for him.  A trickle of drool ran down his back.  He shuddered, helplessly.  He would sooner have Helen awake than ... he glanced at her, wondering if there was anything he could do.  She might need a mind healer ... were there any mind healers on OldeWorld?  He didn’t know.

The corridors seemed to grow stranger as they picked up speed, heading up short flights of stairs and passing rooms that reminded him of very basic classrooms.  Was this a school?  Or ... or what?  Gatehouse was a school ... perhaps, logically, its counterpart would be a school too.  Or ... he pushed the thought out of his head as he heard a scream in the distance, a howling wail that reminded him of a banshee hunting its prey.  It wasn’t true that hearing the scream meant you were going to die, he’d been told, but if you didn’t run and hide quickly the banshee would come for you anyway.  The nasty part of his mind pointed out that everyone died in the end anyway, even if they never heard the screech ...

“The police!”  Janet sounded as if she was on the verge of panic.  “They’re coming!”

Richard shuddered.  The police had to be the Burners.  They had to be.  Nothing else could explain Janet’s panic.  His thoughts churned, wondering if she was a witch who’d kept her powers secret or ... or what?  He didn’t know, but her obvious fear bothered him.  It was clear she was expecting something a little more severe than a few weeks of detention, or a whipping, or even expulsion.  If the Burners caught her helping them, witch or no, she’d be burned at the stake.

Janet burst through a door and froze.  Blue lights were flashing on the other side of the building ... Richard stared, realising the building was even stranger on the outside.  There was no sense it had been built in tune with the land, no sense of elegance ... it looked as if it had simply been plonked into place, as casually as a farmer might scatter seeds on the fields.  The racket was suddenly louder, a lot louder.  The blue lights meant trouble.

“Move,” Richard snapped.  He cast an obscurification charm and held it in place as best as he could.  It wouldn’t make them precisely invisible – he didn’t have the power to cast a proper invisibility charm – but as long as they didn’t draw too much attention they should pass unnoticed.  “We need to get out of here!

Janet stumbled back into life, running across the playground like a frightened child.  She would have been seen, instantly, if she hadn’t been shielded by the charm.  Richard followed her, trying to keep the spell in place.  Behind him, the blue lights grew brighter.  He thought he heard men shouting, but none of the shouts seemed to be aimed at him.  The police were crashing into the building, not coming after them.

He winced as Janet let out a cry.  The gate ahead of her was shut.  The padlock was closed, ensuring the gate couldn’t be opened without magic.  Janet grabbed the padlock and shook it, to no avail.  Richard had no time to stop and wonder what was bothering her.  He took the padlock and cast an unlocking spell, silently relieved whoever had forged the padlock hadn’t managed to carve runes into the metal to deflect hacking spells.  The padlock clicked open, allowing them to escape.  Richard glanced back – dozens of men in black outfits, illuminated by blue lights, were charging into the school – and then followed Janet down the road.  He hoped she knew where she was going.  The buildings around him were so strange he knew he was completely lost.

His heart sank as they jogged down the road.  The houses looked utterly alien.  The shops ... he shook his head.  This was a different world.  His legs weakened as it dawned on him they might be trapped.  Brains and Helen were disoriented, perhaps permanently.  His magic was gone.  Janet was the only ally he had and ... and he knew next to nothing about her.  If she did have magic, it was so undeveloped he couldn’t sense it ... if this was OldeWorld, and he couldn’t think of any better theory, she might not have any magic at all.  The thought chilled him.  What if his magic couldn’t regenerate?

Janet stumbled to a halt, collapsing onto a metal bench.  “I ... she locked the gate.”

Richard winced.  It looked as if everything had suddenly caught up with Janet at once, as if ... he shuddered.  He’d never known what to say when someone was going through a mental breakdown.  He had the feeling Janet hadn’t been supposed to be in the building at all, which meant ... what?  What had she been doing there?  If it was easier to leave them, perhaps she would ...

He cursed under his breath as temptation warred with human decency.  He knew spells that would ensure she never left them, that she’d be as helpful as anyone could possibly wish ... spells that would make her their servant.  He knew the spells, and yet he also knew that using them would start him on a path that would lead, inevitably, to becoming a Sinister.  It would be wrong to use them, even to make sure Janet thought well of them.  And yet, if she chose to abandon them ... he gritted his teeth, telling himself he wouldn’t cross the line.  The road to hell was paved with good intentions.

Janet shuddered, taking deep, heaving breaths.  Richard didn’t know what to say.  Should he comfort her, or pretend he couldn’t see her distress?  What was bothering her?  A close brush with Burners would be enough to discomfit anyone, but ... this felt different.  He didn’t know what to make of it.  All he could do was wait, and hope, while he checked Brains and Helen.  Their bodies seemed healthy, although the spells he tried to use to check didn’t work, but their minds were clearly elsewhere.  Where?  He didn’t know.

“I’m sorry,” Janet said.  She didn’t sound as if she were talking to him.  “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Richard said, awkwardly.  He didn’t know what else to say.  Helen would have been so much better, if she’d been in any state to talk.  “Really, it’s alright.”

Janet looked at him.  Richard looked back.  Janet didn’t have the elegance of Helen, and her dress sense was hopeless, but there was something about her face that drew the eye, something that appealed to him.  Perhaps it was the lack of perfection.  Janet looked real in a way many of Richard’s peers, male as well as female, couldn’t hope to match.  It was hard to judge her age.  She looked both older and younger than he did.  The fact she was chewing on her hair like a child didn’t make it any easier to work it out.  If she hadn’t had breasts, he would have thought she was a lot younger.

Don’t stare, he told himself, sternly.  Back home, staring too long could get one hexed.  Here ... he didn’t know.  It didn’t matter.  She’s already in a state.

“Mum is going to kill me,” Janet said.  “She really is.”

Richard blinked. That couldn’t be literal, could it?  Killing one’s child would be sure to rebound on the parents, back home.  Murder released a lot of tainted magic.  It was something so dangerous that only a full-fledged Sinister would take the risk.  Here ... he didn’t know.  He felt an odd flush of protectiveness.  Janet had helped them.  He owed it to her to help in return.

Janet met his eyes.  “Where are you from?”

“Mystic Albion,” Richard said.  He didn’t bother trying to be more specific.  She’d probably never even heard of Mystic Albion.  “Where is this place?”

“England,” Janet said.  “Earth.”

Richard felt a cold wind brush against him.  He looked back.  The blue lights had faded.  The streets were empty.  The wind blew a piece of debris towards and past him.  It was hard to escape the sense he was in a dead world, completely alone.  The magic was so weak it was barely even there.  Brains shifted, his lips forming words he didn’t quite say.  Was he trying to cast a spell?  Richard had no idea.  Brains and Helen needed help and he didn’t know how to give it.

“I think ...”  Janet swallowed, hard.  “I think you’d better come home with me.”

“Please,” Richard said.  He had no idea what he was going to walk into, when he reached her home, but it was better than trying to find somewhere to sleep in a very strange world.  “I’m sure your mother won’t really kill you.”

Janet looked unconvinced as she stood and beckoned for him to follow her.  Richard took a firmer grip on his friends and walked after her, trying not to let his eyes fall to her rear.  He didn’t know anyone who’d show off their curves like that, not back home.  And yet ... he had the oddest feeling Janet was dressed very conservatively, for her world.  He wasn’t sure how to put the feeling into words.

“I can’t believe it,” Janet said, so quietly he could barely hear her.  “You ... you’re wizards!”

“Yes,” Richard said.  He didn’t think there was any point in trying to hide it.  She’d seen him working magic.  And yet, her astonishment at what she’d seen worried him.  She wasn’t acting like someone who’d known about magic, even if she’d never seen it with her own eyes.  She sounded more like someone who’d never believed in magic.  “Are there no magicians here?”

Janet glanced at him, then shook her head.  “None,” she said.  She sounded as if she didn’t quite believe herself.  “Magic isn’t real.”

Richard shivered, helplessly.  If magic wasn’t real here, and it was hard for him to muster even a single spark now, how were they going to get home?

Chapter Seven: York, England, Now

Janet had read a story, once, where the main character had been so overwhelmed by everything that had happened to them that the whole affair had taken on an eerie, dreamlike, quality that had made it difficult to stop and think about what was happening.  It had never happened to her until now, until Annabelle had betrayed her and ... and ... she’d met people from a whole other world.  She felt almost as if she were drifting through the world, her feet carrying her home on automatic; she felt too numb to let herself take a breath and try to comprehend what had happened.  Annabelle had locked her into the school – there was no one else who could have closed the padlock – and ... and what?  Had she wanted Janet to be caught?

She glanced back at Richard, feeling a twinge of shame as they stopped outside her house.  It was really a council house, a tiny box-like structure that could be taken away at any moment, if the jobsworths in the council felt the occupants were well-off enough to rent someplace of their own.  She hated the poverty that pervaded her family, even though she knew they were better off than some.  Her father had merely left them, years ago.  He hadn’t been a drunkard, or a child abuser, or any of the other vile monsters that infested the estate, never stopped unless they made their abuses too public.  She remembered the small army of policemen who’d appeared at the school, ready to catch her in the act, and shuddered helplessly.  They’d sounded a major alarm over someone breaking into a school, but not over a husband who beat his wife or abused his children.  It wasn’t fair.

Her thoughts spun in circles as she took the key out of her pocket and tried to put it into the lock.  Her hands were shaking so badly it took her several tries to get it to work.  She’d been a latchkey kid for years, ever since her mother had started working late shifts to feed the family, but now ... she was tempted, very tempted to ring the bell for her brother.  Steve wouldn’t be happy if she called him away from his computers to open the door, yet she felt dangerously exposed.  The police might have spotted her and ... and ... she didn’t want to think about it.  She’d never been arrested, not once.  The thought of being held in the police station, waiting for her mother to bail her out, was terrifying.  And could her mother even afford to pay?

The door clicked open.  She stepped forward and clicked on the light, wincing as the tatty carpet and outdated furniture came into view.  God alone knew who’d owned the house before them, but ... whoever they’d been, they’d left the house in a terrible state.  Janet had done what she could – her mother didn’t have the time and her brother would have been comfortable in a pigsty – yet she knew it still looked awful.  Her guests ...

She swallowed, hard.  How was she going to explain their presence to her mother?  A girl was one thing, but two boys?  Her mother would go through the roof.  She’d go completely librarian-poo.  There was no shortage of girls on the estate who had kids out of wedlock and then became grandmothers in their thirties.  Janet had been told, in the halcyon days when she’d had friends, that she was absolutely forbidden to attend mixed sleepovers.  She had no reason to think her mother’s views had changed, just because she was a lot older now.

Richard followed her into the living room and carefully laid his friends down on the carpet with a tenderness that surprised her.  Janet was unsure what to do.  Her mother had drilled some basic medical knowledge into her head – having a nurse for a mother had its advantages – but she wasn’t even sure what had happened to the two.  They looked to be sleeping, yet their eyes were open and staring.  She wondered, tiredly, if they’d been drugged.

“I ... I’ll get you some tea,” she said, numbly.  “Is there anything else you need?”

“Water, I think,” Richard said.  “Clean water.”

Janet frowned – the water was always clean – then shrugged and walked into the kitchen, her thoughts spinning as she clicked the kettle on.  What was she going to tell her mother?  The truth ... she wouldn’t believe the truth.  And it would lead to too many questions she didn’t want to answer.  If her mother found out what she’d been doing, where she’d been when she’d met the three, Janet knew she’d be grounded for the rest of eternity.  Or worse.

Her heart sank.  Annabelle never meant to invite me into her circle at all.

The thought mocked her as she poured a glass of water and carried it back into the living room.  Annabelle had set her up.  She’d talked Janet into breaking into the school, then locked her inside and called the creepy caretaker.  Janet’s heart stopped, just for a second, as she remembered him pointing a shotgun at her.  Richard had done something to him, something ... did he remember her?  Would he recognise her, if he saw her when she went back to school?  Or ... had a lone camera survived, ready to take her picture and send it straight to the police?  Were they already on their way to the house?

And Annabelle would have watched and laughed as the police arrested me, Janet thought, bitterly.  What a fool I was to listen to her.

She tried not to think about it as she watched Richard moving his hand over his two friends, never quite touching them.  He looked absurdly out of place, as if a policeman or a soldier had invaded her domicile and ... no, it was stranger, as if someone had parked a car in her living room.  She thought she sensed a flicker of electricity around him as he took the water, dipped his fingers in the liquid and pressed them to his friend’s lips.  He jerked, his entire body twitching, then sat up so fast Richard had to jump back to avoid being hit.  His eyes darted from side to side, drinking in the room around him.  And ...

“Brains,” Richard said.  “How much do you remember?”

Brains – Janet suspected it was a nickname, if only because few parents would be so cruel as to name a child that – rubbed his forehead.  “Helen did something, then you did something, then the spell matrix got out of control ...”

Richard nodded, then carefully dripped water into the girl’s mouth.  Janet frowned as he worked.  There was something odd about the way he was moving, as if he expected an explosion – or worse – at any moment.  She hadn’t seen anything like it ... the girl sat up, one hand darting out as she stared around the room.  Her eyes narrowed sharply as they peered at Janet.  It struck Janet, suddenly, that she had to look like a stranger in a very strange land.

“Helen,” Richard said.  “How are you feeling?”

Helen glowered at him.  “What were you doing?  What were you thinking?”

Her eyes returned to Janet.  “And where are we?”

“OldeWorld,” Richard said.  “I think.”

“You think.”  Helen never took her eyes off Janet.  Janet tried not to quail under Helen’s gaze.  Annabelle and her posse of mean girls tried to be intimidating, but Helen ... Helen had them all beat.  There was something in her eyes that suggested she knew she was in charge, that she would get whatever she wanted ... Janet wasn’t sure what to make of it.  “What were you thinking?  You made a gate!”

“No.”  Brains sounded absolutely certain.  “Our spells lacked the power to open a gate, even if we’d put the right charms in place, and we didn’t.  There was no way to think we’d do anything more than illuminate the magical topography and ...”

He frowned, studying a piece of parchment in his hand.  “I wonder ...”

Richard spoke, into the silence.  “So ... what happened?”

“It’s hard to be sure,” Brains admitted, in a tone that suggested he hated guesswork.  “I have a theory.”

“So theorise,” Helen snapped.  “What did you do?”

Brains passed her the parchment.  “I think – and yes, this is just a theory – that the magical topography, the fabric of space-time underlying Gatehouse, was already warped to create a gate that existed in potential if not in reality.  Our spells might have been a key in the lock and when we triggered the spells, we triggered the lock, opened the gate and fell through.”

“Insane,” Helen breathed.

“The gate, if gate it was, didn’t behave like a normal gate,” Brains continued.  “It swept us up and transported us here, rather than simply opening a portal and waiting for us to step through.”

“Brilliant,” Helen said, with heavy sarcasm.  “Can we get home?”

“Good question,” Richard said.  “Brains?”

“I don’t know,” Brains admitted.  “My head feels ... thick.”

“I do have painkillers,” Janet offered.  She tried to avoid using them, where possible, but this was clearly an emergency.  “Or you could have some more water.”

“Water, please,” Helen said.  “For all of us.”

Janet nodded and hurried back into the kitchen, pouring three glasses of water and four mugs of tea.  She heard a crashing sound overhead and winced as she carried the tray back into the living room.  Her brother was coming downstairs, and she didn’t have the slightest idea what she was going to tell him.  She hadn’t brought anyone home since ... since she’d turned twelve, five years ago.  He’d take one look at the trio and start laughing – or worse.  They looked as if they’d come straight from a stage school, without bothering to change into their regular clothes before leaving.  And who knew what he’d tell their mother?

She took a breath as she heard him clumping down the stairs.  Did she dare tell him the truth?

“Hey,” Steve said, coming into view.  “Mum said ...”

Janet saw his eyes go wide.  Steve was a great big brother, compared to some of the others she’d met, but it was hard to predict what he’d do.  Would he be pleased she had brought friends home or would he turn overprotective and order them – the boys, at least – out of the house?  Or ... she wasn’t quite sure what he could do, or what they would do, or anything.  She wished, not for the first time, that she lived somewhere a little more friendly to strangers.  The estate’s population saw strangers as potential enemies first and potential friends a lot later.

“And who,” Steve asked, his eyes lingering on Helen, “are you?”

“Visitors from another world,” Janet said.  “Really.”

Steve looked unconvinced.  “Really.”

“Yes,” Richard said.  He held out a hand, palm up.  A tiny flame danced over his skin.  “This world isn’t ours.”

“Incredible,” Steve said dryly, but he kept staring at the flame.  His brows began to furrow as he leaned forward, studying the flame.  “It’s a trick.”

“Magic,” Richard said.  “Real magic.”

Janet felt a sudden wave of awe.  It wasn’t the first spell she’d seen, but it was the first spell she’d been able to watch without a pressing need to keep moving.  The flame was ... unnatural.  It burned above Richard’s hand without ever quite touching the skin, darting back and forth as if it were caught in an invisible wind.  Janet wondered, suddenly, if Richard and his friends went to wizard school, to a place they could learn real magic ... she would have sold her soul to go to Hogwarts, even if it was threatened by a dark lord.  She looked up into Richard’s eyes, wondering if she dared ask him to teach her.  She’d do anything in exchange for lessons.

“Incredible,” Steve repeated.  This time, he meant it.  He sounded as if he had a hundred questions, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask a single one.  “Make the flame come to me.”

Richard nodded.  The flame leapt off his hand, a tiny spark of light, and glided around Steve’s head.  His eyes tried to follow it, his hand moving to snatch it out of the air before thinking better of it.  Janet felt her legs buckle as the light hovered in front of her, then snapped out of existence.  Richard looked tired, but happy. Steve ...

Janet’s brother smiled, rather tiredly.  “What happened?  How did you get here?  How did you even meet Janet?”

“It’s a long story,” Janet mumbled.

“Then start at the beginning, go on to the end and stop,” Steve said.  “Please.”

Richard leaned forward.  “We were doing an experiment,” he began.  “And something went wrong.”

Janet sighed, sitting on the tatty sofa.  Richard might not realise she hadn’t been meant to be anywhere near the school, but Steve would the moment he worked out where she’d been when she’d met the three magicians.  He wouldn’t rat her out, she was sure, yet ... he’d probably make sure she did all his chores, at least for a week or two.  She told herself it wouldn’t be anything like as bad as being arrested, even if she did get bailed out before she was put in the cells.  Steve could be a pain in the rear at times, but he was no bully.

“And then Janet brought you home,” Steve said.  “To our home, I mean.  Can you get back to yours?”

“I don’t know,” Richard said.  “We don’t have the magic or the tools to open a gate.”

“We don’t need to open a gate,” Brains said.  He sounded waspish, as if he had a terrible headache.  “We didn’t open one to get here.  We just need to trigger the gate that’s already there.”

Janet frowned as a nasty thought occurred to her.  “This gate ... would it be in the same place you arrived, under the school?”

Steve shot her a sharp look.  Janet tried not to meet his gaze.

“Yes.”  Helen sounded as if she was as headachy as Brains.  “The gates are firmly set within the magic field, then opened from the outside.”

“Which means you have to go back there to reopen the gate,” Janet said.  “That might not be easy.”

“Living here might not be easy,” Steve said.  “You don’t have any official records, do you?”

Richard frowned.  “Official records?”

“It’s very difficult to live here without official papers,” Steve said, flatly.  “Birth certificates.  Educational records.  Medical records.  Bank records.  Passports and driving licences and ... and, well, everything.  The government wouldn’t believe you, if you told them the truth, and if they did believe you it might almost be worse.  They’d try to dissect you, to find out how the magic works.”

Helen coughed.  “They wouldn’t help us?”

“No.”  Steve stared down at his hands.  “The government has been growing increasingly ... illiberal over the last few years.  They’ve been making life harder for small businessmen such as myself, as well as everyone else.  Show them magic and they’ll either try to exploit it or get rid of it.  And if you really are here by accident, there’ll be no hope of the Ministry of Magic or whoever showing up and asking awkward questions.”

Janet nodded, slowly.  Steve was right.  They couldn’t ask for help, not from a government that didn’t give a damn.  Richard and his friends might be taken apart, piece by piece, to see how the magic worked, or worse.  Who knew?

“So,” Richard said.  “What do we do?”

“This is OldeWorld,” Brains said.  He smiled, as if he was quietly relishing the challenge.  “The magic works differently here, but we can figure it out and reopen the gate.”

“And take me with you,” Janet said.  She didn’t realise she’d spoken out loud until everyone looked at her.  “I mean ... please.”

“We can try,” Richard said.  “If we can, we will.”

Steve looked pained.  Janet changed the subject as quickly as possible, before he could start to argue with her.  He would later, she was sure.  “OldeWorld?”

“A long time ago, our ancestors left this world,” Helen said.  She sounded as if she’d bitten into something sour.  “We call it OldeWorld.  There’s been no contact since the gates closed four hundred years ago.”

“We call it Earth,” Janet said, quietly.

“OldeWorld,” Steve said.  “Are you sure it’s the same world?”

“It must be,” Richard said.

“Yes.”  Brains’s tone left no room for doubt.  “The gate was opened from this world to ours, then closed.  It might not have collapsed completely, let alone been dismantled by the powers behind it, but it was still there.  When it reopened, it didn’t look for a third destination.  The odds of us travelling to a third world are precisely zero.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Steve said.  “Really, I will.”

He went on before anyone else could speak.  “Mum called.  She’s being kept overnight.  She’ll hopefully get some sleep in the ward, if things aren’t too busy, but she’s not hopeful.  You know how they are about overtime wages.”

Janet was torn between relief and concern.  “Will they let her off the morning shift?”

“They better had,” Steve said.  He tried to sound stern, but Janet could hear the concern under his words.  “Or she’ll fall asleep while taking someone’s temperature or bloods or something.”

He smiled, rather coldly.  “Point is, she’ll come home and go straight to bed.  It’s a weekend, so you won’t be going to school.  We have a day or so to sort something out ... give me a few hours to think about it.  There’s magic here.  We should be able to do something with it.”

“You could always say the boys are your guests,” Janet pointed out.  “Doable?”

“I think so,” Steve said.  “But right now, we need to find them somewhere to stay before it’s too late.”

His smile grew wider.  “And then we have to get them – and you –into school,” he added.  “I have a cunning plan.”

Janet frowned.  “Oh, God.”

Chapter Eight: York, England, Now

Helen couldn’t think straight.

Her head felt ... wrong, as if her brain was wrapped in cotton wool.  Her memories were a jumbled mess, flickering images of power beyond her comprehension mingled with twisted thoughts and feelings that made absolutely no sense at all.  The magic that should have been at her fingertips was gone, leaving only a faint spark that she was half-convinced was nothing more than her imagination.  The chamber around her was just so weird, so strange to her eyes, that she found it hard to believe she hadn’t accidentally drunk a deliria potion or been hit by a confusion hex.  It felt like she was caught in a dream that was swiftly becoming a nightmare.

She bit her lip, feeling as though she wanted to sleep and yet remain awake.  It was hard, so hard, to think clearly.  The boys, the three boys, were chatting about nonsense, their talk mixed with concepts she barely understood and words she didn’t know at all, while the girl was watching and listening intently.  The girl – Janet, Helen recalled vaguely – was as strange as the rest of their new environment.  Helen had never seen anyone who both dressed and held themselves like her.  Her older brother was at least slightly more understandable and yet ... they looked like commoners, with commoner attitudes, and yet they spoke as if they were equals?  It made no sense.

This isn’t your world, she reminded herself.  The rules may be different here.

She swallowed, hard.  It was rare for anyone to travel beyond the brass walls that marked the edge of Mystic Albion, save for flying sorcerers and traders hoping to make contact with the other mystic civilisations.  Helen had never considered trying to become one of them, even after she did her family duty by bearing and raising children.  She’d certainly never had to deal with someone from a very different society, yet ... she tried not to shudder as she recalled the stories her ancestors had passed down to the present day.  OldeWorld was a nightmare, a patriarchal world infested with Burners and other creatures of darkness.  The thought of growing up on the wrong side of the gates was terrifying, yet ...

Janet caught her eye.  “Do you want to wash?  Or rest?”

Helen nodded gratefully, even though the question about washing was a serious breach of etiquette.  The boys were still talking ... if she knew Brains, and she did, she was certain they’d be talking all through the night and long into the morning.  She stood, brushing down her robes as she followed Janet up a long flight of stairs.  The upper level was just as confusing as the lower floor, she realised numbly.  The carpet was warm and soft, but there was a sense of age and decay hanging in the air that bothered her on a very primal level.  Janet’s bedroom was tiny, smaller than her closet back home, yet ... her legs buckled as everything caught up with her at once.  They were in a whole new world – or a very old one – and nothing could be taken for granted, not even the laws of nature.  Her magic still felt as if it had been snuffed out.

“You can sit down if you want,” Janet said, waving to the bed.  “Or go to the washroom.”

“Thank you,” Helen managed.  The bed felt soft and warm, yet crude.  There were no warming spells pervading the blankets, no dreamcatchers hanging overhead.  The light overhead was bright yet cold, a far cry from the warm lights she knew from home.  “I ...”

She stared down at her hands, then forced herself to look at Janet.  It was hard to escape the sense she was lying, that she was deliberately trying to send mixed messages.  She was shorter than Helen, her face covered in freckles ... she would have been pretty, Helen decided, if she held herself with a little more confidence.  Janet acted almost as if she expected a blow at any moment, from ... from whom?  Helen prided herself on being a good reader of people and she hadn’t seen any tension between Janet and Steve, no sense he might strike her on a whim or she might turn him into a frog to remind him of his place.  They acted like siblings who also managed to be friends.  It was heartwarming.  Helen and her siblings fought like cats and dogs, hexing each other constantly.  They couldn’t ever be true friends.  

Janet met her eyes.  “Do you want to get some rest?”

“I don’t know,” Helen said.  Her body felt torn between the need for sleep and a very primal caution.  Normally, her room was heavily warded.  Here ... the door looked as if one good kick would bring it down.  “I don’t know anything any longer.”

“You’ll certainly need to change clothes,” Janet said, briskly.  “You can’t go outside looking like that, or you’ll draw attention.  But” – she grimaced – “I don’t know if you’d be able to wear my clothes.”

Helen frowned.  “Why not?”

“You’re taller than me,” Janet pointed out, sardonically.  “And your breasts are bigger.”

“Oh.”  Helen mentally kicked herself.  “My dresses are charmed to change sizes, to grow with me or to fit themselves to someone new.  Yours aren’t?”

“No,” Janet said.  There was something oddly wistful in her tone.  “I have to make do with cheap clothes from crappy stores or whatever I can find in charity shops.”

She opened a drawer, crammed to bursting with clothes.  Helen watched over her shoulder, trying to relax as Janet showed her everything from underwear to trousers and shirts.  It felt odd to even think of wearing trousers, but Janet didn’t seem to have much in the way of skirts, and the ones she did have were even worse.  The idea of showing her knees ... she shook her head in disgust.  There were few women who would willingly do that in public, regardless of what they did in private.  She took one of the shirts and shaped a spell that should have made it suitable for her.  Nothing happened.

“We’ll find you something better tomorrow,” Janet said.  She bit her lip.  “If we can get money ...”

It was on the tip of Helen’s tongue to point out that her family was wealthy as well as powerful, but she caught herself just in time.  So what?  Her family was on the other side of the gate.  They might as well be on the other side of the moon.  If she had relatives here ... she shook her head.  They wouldn’t know her, let alone recognise her.  How could they?  The spells that traced descent simply didn’t exist here.  Besides, it had been over four hundred years.  The bloodlines would have grown so distant even the most precise spells couldn’t determine they were actually related.  She didn’t have money, not here.  All she had were a handful of gold coins.

The sense of being trapped in a nightmare grew stronger as Janet helped Helen get ready for bed.  The bathroom – Janet didn’t have a private bathroom – was strange, almost alien.  She had to be shown how to use the facilities, although she had to admit that – in some ways – the toilet and bath didn’t live down to their reputation.  Apparently, people no longer crapped out the window.  Helen listened as Janet told her about other things, torn between irritation as Janet touched on matters she already knew and fear whenever she heard something she didn’t.  OldeWorld – Earth –  was strange and dangerous.  Her lack of knowledge could easily get them killed.

“Stay quiet, in the morning,” Janet said, as she laid a blanket on the floor.  “I don’t want Mum to realise you spent the night here.”

Helen glanced at her.  “What’s your mother like?”

“Overworked,” Janet said.  “She’ll come home very tired and sleep for most of the day.”

“Ouch.”  Helen made a face.  “What does she do?”

“She’s a nurse,” Janet said.  “She takes care of ill people.”

Helen felt her heart sink as she lay on the blanket and closed her eyes, trying to muster the magic to cast even a single ward.  It was rare for a mother to work while raising children – normally, one raised the children first and then started a career – another sign, as if she needed one, that she was in a different world.  She felt a pang of sympathy for Janet.  There had been times, Helen recalled, when she’d thought her mother took entirely too much interest in her doings, but at least she’d had her parents when she’d needed them.  If Janet’s mother had to work, instead of raising her children ...

She shivered as she concentrated on a sleeping mantra, hoping against hope that – when she opened her eyes – she’d be back home.  Perhaps it was all a dream.  And yet, sleep came very slowly.  The room felt wrong, the air alternately hot and cold rather than a steady temperature.  Janet snored ... Helen muttered a silencing ward, to no avail.  The magic refused to come.  She ground her teeth in silent frustration.  Richard had been able to use magic, hadn’t he?  Anything he could do, she could do better.

So focus, she told herself.  She tried to cast again.  And again.  Make it work.

The tiny spark in her mind, where a raging flame should have been, mocked her.  She was far too used to simply wishing for something to be, rather than building the spells piece by piece.  In hindsight, she should have spent a lot more time studying charms rather than merely lording it over everyone who couldn’t jump ahead by leaps and bounds.  The tutors had warned Helen it would catch up with her, one day.  Helen feared they were right.  

She jerked, her eyes snapping open.  Panic shot through her mind as she sat up.  She had never, not in all her life, gone to sleep in one place and woken up somewhere else.  The room around her wasn’t her room ... she wondered, just for a moment, if she’d been cursed or hexed before her memory returned, reminding her she was on OldeWorld.  Earth.  The magic felt a little stronger, but the pounding behind her temples made it impossible to concentrate.  Tears prickled in her eyes.  It hadn’t been a nightmare.  They were trapped on the far side of the gates.  

“Helen?”  Janet was sitting on her bed, reading a book.  “Did you sleep well?”

Helen shook her head.  Everything was wrong.  The room was eerie, the ill-fitting pyjamas scratchy, the light streaming in through the windows ... she forced herself to stand, wondering morbidly if she’d be able to even walk in Janet’s trousers.  Her robes were charmed to clean themselves overnight, but would those charms even work here?  The outfit looked faded when she picked it up, the protective spells she’d woven into the tiny gemstones dead and cold.  Her heart twisted as she put it back on the bed. It didn’t feel right any longer.  Nothing did.

“Mum came home early and went to bed, as I said,” Janet told her.  She passed Helen a dressing gown that, compared to everything else, looked almost respectable.  “Coming downstairs?”

Helen nodded, unsure if she should be annoyed at Janet hovering over her or silently grateful the other girl was taking care of her.  She didn’t need it ... except, she acknowledged sourly, she did. The dressing gown felt as uncomfortable as the pyjamas, but it was loose enough to make her feel decent, rather than showing off everything she had to all and sundry.  Janet stood and led the way downstairs.  Helen followed her, the bright sunlight making the house seem even more alien.  She was tempted to think she’d walked straight into the Land of Always Summer.

The boys sat at the table, chatting in low voices.  Helen felt a hot stab of anger as she saw the bags under their eyes.  Had they stayed awake all night?  It wasn’t impossible, although Richard should have made sure Brains got some sleep.  Hell, keeping Steve awake all night was hardly the mark of a good guest.  Helen sighed, not bothering to hide it.  Brains wasn’t known for caring about social protocol, and Richard was a commoner, but they should have shown a little consideration ...

Janet glanced at her brother.  “Did Mum see you?”

“I told her they were friends of mine,” Steve said.  “She thinks they arrived early in the morning.”

Helen frowned as he looked at her, feeling oddly embarrassed at his stare.  She knew she was pretty, she knew she drew the eye ... she’d chosen to deny herself intimate relationships while she was at school, knowing her duty to her family came first, but it still felt good to know she was attracting attention.  Except ... she glanced down at the dressing gown, realising it had slipped slightly.  The garment was too scratchy for her to be comfortable.

“Good thinking,” Janet said.  She poked a device that looked like a kettle.  “Tea?  Or coffee?”

“Tea, please,” Helen said.  She wasn’t sure what coffee was.  Another wave of disorientation broke over her.  The kitchen was just familiar enough to be disconcerting.  She would almost have been happier if she’d gone somewhere completely alien.  Her stomach rumbled, reminding her it had been a long time since she’d eaten anything.  “And is there anything to eat?”

“Toast and jam,” Janet said.  “Hang on.”

Helen felt another flicker of irritation as she looked at the boys.  They seemed more composed than she was, more comfortable in the strange new – old – world.  It was hard to escape the impression they’d landed on their feet, that they would do well here ... she felt a hot flash of resentment, her magic barely even flickering as anger burnt through her.  What the hell had they done?

“Well?”  Helen was too tired and irritated to be polite.  “What were you thinking?”

“There was no reason to think we would open a gate,” Brains said, never taking his eyes off the papers in front of him.  “It shouldn’t have been possible.”

“You did your experiments in Gatehouse,” Helen snapped, her anger boiling over.  She was rarely angry at Brains, but dealing with him was sometimes an exercise in frustration.  “Do you think they picked the name at random?”

“That will do,” Richard snapped back, his voice hardening.  “None of us had any reason to think anything could go wrong!”

“You didn’t think!”  Helen raised her voice, despite everything.  “Why didn’t you think to ask the tutors?”

Richard’s eyes flashed.  “Because there shouldn’t have been any danger!”

Helen glared at him, losing control.  Richard was a Head.  His intentions didn’t bleed into his magic.  They couldn’t.  Brains, on the other hand, was both a Head and a Heart.  His plans to open an anywhere-gate would have influenced his magic, even if he didn’t realise it.  His magic would have responded to his desires, rather than his commands, and opened the ancient gate, transporting them all to OldeWorld.  The boys hadn’t thought!  They never thought.  And now they were trapped.

“This is your fault,” Helen snapped.  “You should have thought!”

She raised her hands, shaped a spell and cast it.  Richard flinched.  Nothing happened.  Helen blinked in shock.  Richard should have been turned into a slug.  Or something.  But ... realisation struck, a moment later.  The spell was very simple, for her, but it required a great deal of power.  Her anger had made her forget she no longer had the power to cast it ...

Richard raised his hand and jabbed it at her.  Helen froze, her breath catching in her throat as his spell gripped her.  Horror flashed through her mind as she realised the awful truth.  Richard had grown up with very little raw power, forcing him to learn how to make the best use of what little he had.  She ... back home, she could have swatted him with a thought, but here she was crippled.  Her magic was too minimal to do much of anything.  She remembered him shrugging off her freeze spell – it was hard to believe it had only been a few short hours ago – and shuddered.  She couldn’t do that.  She was helpless.  If he wanted to crush her ...

I’m dead, she thought.  Behind her, she heard Janet gasp.  The poor girl had barely seen any magic before now.  I’m so dead ...

Richard spoke with quiet deliberation.  “You helped get us into this mess,” he said, in a tone that suggested he wanted to scream.  “Your magic helped screw up our experiment.  And now you have a choice.  You can behave.  You can help us get home again.  Or you can remain frozen for the rest of our time here.”

Helen wanted to scream too.  Her mouth refused to move.  It was hard not to panic.  She knew she’d lorded it over Richard, when she’d had the power; she feared – she knew – he’d be very tempted to do the same to her, now that he had the edge.  It wasn’t impossible to leave someone frozen permanently, even though it wouldn’t do their mental health any good unless their thoughts were frozen too.  Could Richard turn her to stone?  Or an object?  Was that even possible here?  Helen didn’t know.  The magic levels might be low, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t.  He knew how to get the most from very limited power.

“Choose,” Richard said.  The spell broke.  Helen staggered, only staying on her feet through sheer force of will.  “What’s it to be?”

“I’ll help,” Helen said.  She would need to learn how to use the magic she had, quickly.  It hadn’t really dawned on her, not until he’d hexed her, that she was defenceless.  And to think she’d spent the night in an unprotected room.  “I’ll do what I can.”

She saw a flicker of delight in Richard’s eyes.  He was pleased.  Of course he was.  He had the chance to lord it over her and she knew it, even if he didn’t.  And that meant ...

Help them get us home, quickly, she told herself.  Before something else can go wrong. 

Chapter Nine: York, England, Now

Richard couldn’t decide, in all honesty, if he should revel in what he’d done or if he should be ashamed of himself,

It was not right, he’d been taught, for the powerful to humiliate the weak.  He’d grown up in a community that had long memories of the time before the gates, of the time they’d been pushed around by landlords and aristocrats and taxmen and others who’d firmly believed, no matter what justifications they’d devised, that might made right. The lesson had stuck with him even after he’d gone to Gatehouse and discovered, to his horror, that the more powerful students often picked on the weaker ones.  Helen had always been willing and able to appeal to force, freezing him or transfiguring him or – in one case – simply compelling him to walk away and jump in the lake.  Enchanting her, freezing her in place, left him unsure if he should be pleased or guilty.  She had been horrible to him, but did that excuse him returning the favour?

She deserved a scare, he told himself, even though he felt a little guilty.  His intentions hadn’t been the purest.  They might start him down a very dark path.  And yet, he found it hard to feel too guilty.  She might be a little nicer now.

The thought mocked him as he rubbed his eyes.  Brains and Steve had stayed up all night, talking.  Richard wasn’t sure if they’d come up with anything useful.  Steve was more ... socially aware than Brains, and he certainly seemed to be very intelligent, but there were odd gaps in his knowledge.  He was very good at computing – and Richard had been impressed by the device Steve had shown him – yet he didn’t seem to know how to make one.  It was odd.  The experiment Brains and Richard had conducted, the experiment that had landed them in another world, was strange to him.  Apparently, the thought of experimenting alone was unthinkable.

And Helen might have had a point, Richard conceded.  We might have been wiser to ask the tutors first.

He let out a breath.  It hadn’t been hard to tell that hexing Helen had frightened Janet, just a little.  Steve had hidden it better, but Richard thought he’d been frightened too.  It was hard to wrap his head around a world without magic, but ... Richard remembered the computer and winced, inwardly, at his own reaction.  The device had been completely beyond his comprehension, lacking even a hint of magic and yet capable of things he couldn’t imagine.  Janet and Steve must feel the same way about magic.  Real magic.  To them, it was dangerously unpredictable.  And so were the people who wielded it.

“We need a place to stay,” he said, drawing attention back to the immediate problem.  He’d briefly considered trying to enchant Janet’s mother, but there was no way to predict how long the spell would last.  “And we need to find a way to get back to the gate.”

Steve grinned.  “The first is easy,” he said.  “We just rent a house through Airbnb.”

Janet snorted, although there was a hint of relief on her face.  “And how do you intend to pay for it?”

“We do have coins,” Richard said.  He took one of the gold sovereigns out of his pouch and placed it on the table.  “But I don’t know if they’d be worth anything here.”

“If that’s real gold, it should be worth quite a bit,” Steve said.  “There are people who’ll give you something for it, without asking too many awkward questions.”

He frowned.  “I do have some money, saved from my work,” he added.  “I’ll give you a loan.”

“And do you have enough?”  Janet didn’t seem so sure.  “It’ll cost a bomb.”

Steve smirked.  “Enough,” he said.  “Certainly, enough to pay for a few weeks rent.  The market has been shitty lately.  No one wants to rent houses or apartments in a dump like this” – he waved a hand at the wall – “and most owners won’t ask questions if they get cash up front.  I put the rent in my name, which sidesteps the need for ID, and as long as we behave ourselves, we shouldn’t have any problems.  No wild parties.”

Janet looked unconvinced.  Richard had no idea what was bugging her.  Steve’s plan sounded reasonable, certainly better than throwing themselves on the mercy of Janet’s mother or simply enchanting her.  And yet, in his experience, people rarely did things out of the goodness of their hearts.  Steve would want something in return.  What?  The gold coin on the table mocked him.  How much was it actually worth, here and now?  The gold was real.  It wasn’t easy to create gold, not without spending so much on materials that there’d be no way to make a profit.

We don’t know anything like enough about this place, Richard told himself.  And we have to learn.

“Do you have enough money?”  Janet crossed her arms under her breasts.  “Steve, this is serious.”

Steve nodded.  “Janet, I sell my products cheaply, but I sell a lot of them.  I have more than enough in my savings account to rent an apartment, at least for a few weeks.”

Janet looked irked.  Richard frowned.  There was something there, but what?  He didn’t understand what Steve did for a living, or why it was profitable.  The explanation had made little sense.  How did one program a computer?  How did one write and then sell programs other people could use on their computers?  It just didn’t make sense.  

“Alright,” he said.  “Can we do it now?”

“We also need to get into the school,” Janet said, tiredly.  “How?”

Steve laughed.  “It’s easy,” he said.  “They’ll be exchange students from Hogwarts.”

“Steve!”  Janet glared at her brother.  “It isn’t going to be that easy!”

“Of course it is.”  Steve winked at her.  “I’ll hack the records and make a few insertions.  No one will think twice about them, once they’re in the system.”

Janet took a long breath.  “Steve, that isn’t going to work.”

“Yes, it is,” Steve said.

Richard held up a hand.  “What do you intend to do?”

Steve winked at him.  “It’s really very simple,” he said, in a manner that suggested it was anything but.  “People tend to trust what they read in computer files, even when the system is so full of holes even a rank amateur can get in and out without trouble.  Once I get you through the outer layers of security, the system will treat you as any other students on the assumption that if you’re there, you have a perfect right to be there.”

“And when a teacher realises he has three strange faces in his class?”  Janet didn’t sound even remotely convinced.  “What do you think he’ll do?”

“Look, you have students coming and going all the time,” Steve pointed out.  “Kids from overseas, kids who’ve been forced to move here at short notice, migrant kids who barely speak a word of English and don’t really understand what’s going on ... kids playing hooky, often attending only one day in every month.  There are new faces all the time.  The teachers aren’t going to notice three more, are they?”

“I suppose,” Janet said, doubtfully.

“And if they do notice, they’ll check the files.”  Steve grinned.  “The files will assure them our new friends have a perfect right to be there.  I can put together enough background, by copying other records, to fool anyone.  As long as they don’t start verifying everything directly, by asking the people they think actually know you, we should be fine.”

He looked at Richard. “Try not to get into trouble,” he added.  “The police will not be fooled, if they start digging into your background.  It won’t take them long to realise you don’t have any real records and start asking pointed questions.”

“We’ll stay out of trouble,” Richard said.  Perhaps it would be wiser to keep Brains out of the school completely.  Helen and he could sneak into the building and try to get to the gate, then bring Brains when they were ready to make the jump home.  “It might be simpler not to attend school at all.”

“You might attract attention,” Janet said.  “The police sometimes crack down on truants.  If they caught you ...”

Richard shuddered.  Steve had explained the police weren’t Burners – they certainly didn’t hunt witches – but if they were caught, it would raise questions they didn’t dare answer.  Would they be believed?  Would it be better if they weren’t?  Richard had no idea how the local government – an incomprehensible structure with a prime minster who gave orders to the monarch – would react to magic, but he doubted it would be anything good.  The sooner they were back home, the better.  The princesses could decide how to handle further contact between OldeWorld and Mystic Albion.

“Brains needs to stay hidden,” Helen said, echoing Richard’s earlier thoughts.  “Richard and I will infiltrate the school.”

“Good thinking,” Richard said.  It was hard to keep a hint of sarcasm out of his voice.  At least Helen was trying to help.  “Can you make it happen?”

“Oh, probably,” Steve said.  “I’ll sort out the apartment first, then turn my attention to the school records.  Janet, can you get my washed clothes from the basket?  Brains and Richard will need to wear something when we go outside.”

Richard nodded.  “We’re going to need more money too,” he added.  “If we can sell the gold ...”

“Give me a day or two,” Steve said.  “We won’t get full market value, even if that is real gold, but we’ll get something.  And then we’ll have to think of something else.”

***

Janet kept her thoughts to herself as she dug into the washing basket, digging out trousers, shirts and underwear for the boys.  They’d have an easier time of it than Helen, she reflected; they shouldn’t have any problems wearing their old clothes, at least long enough to go to a cheap store and find something more suitable.  Helen ... in truth, Janet wasn’t sure what to make of Helen.  The girl reminded her of a snob, the kind of person Annabelle had become, yet ... there was something about her that made no sense, as if she was both being kind to Janet and looking down her nose at her.  And then she’d picked a fight with Richard ...

A shiver of mingled excitement and fear ran down Janet’s spine.  It was funny.  She’d read all the Harry Potter books and watched the movies, as well as countless other fantasy books and movies from The Witches to Unexpected Enlightenment, but it had never quite been real to her that magic could be used as a weapon.  It should have.  She should have realised it from the start, from the moment Richard had sent the creepy caretaker into a coma.  And yet ... she shivered again as she replayed the scene, over and over, in her mind.  She wanted the power for herself and yet, she was a little afraid of it.  She understood physical threats, from boys pushing and shoving to trying to force a kiss or worse, but magic ... a day ago, she would have sworn magic simply didn’t exist.  It was ... disconcerting.  

He could do that to you, her thoughts pointed out.  Or worse.

She looked down at her hands.  They were shaking.  The world had changed last night, although no one – save for her and her brother – knew it.  She’d often wished she’d have the chance to leave, to ascend into a new world ... she swallowed, hard, as she realised it might mean leaving her mother and brother behind permanently.  Or ... what would happen, if she was on the far side of the gate?  Would she have magic?  Or would she be a powerless squib?  Or ... what would a society of magicians do, to keep their secret?  She didn’t think she wanted to know.

Taking a breath, she picked up the clothes – and a pair of extra trousers – and carried them back into the living room.  Helen could wear the latter.  They wouldn’t fit very well, even with a belt, but they’d be better than anything Janet owned.  She hadn’t missed Helen’s reluctance to wear tight trousers or skirts ... not, Janet admitted, that she was fond of wearing them either.  There were boys in her class who’d happily take the opportunity to cop a feel and laugh when she complained.  The teachers did nothing.  #MeToo hadn’t changed anything for lower class girls, and everyone knew it.

“Here,” she said, offering Helen the trousers.  “They’ll suffice long enough to get you something proper.”

Helen nodded and slipped back upstairs.  Janet hoped she wouldn’t wake her mother.  She normally slept like a log, after overnight shifts at the hospital, but ... it would be a fine time for her to wake up and discover her children had guests.  Janet hadn’t brought anyone home for years.  Her mother might be delighted or ... she might start asking questions Janet didn’t want to answer.  And who knew what she’d do if she learnt the truth?

“Change in my room,” Steve said.  “I’ll be done here shortly.”   

Janet nodded, motioning for the boys to head up the stairs too.  Steve was tapping away at his laptop, flipping through images of houses and apartments with breathtaking speed.  Richard was staring at the laptop as if he’d never seen anything like it before ... maybe he hadn’t.  Were there laptops in a world of magic?  Janet didn’t know.

“You’re being very helpful,” she said, when the boys were gone.  “Why?”

Steve didn’t look up from his work.  “So are you,” he said.  “What were you doing in the school anyway, so late at night?  Did you have detention?”

Janet flushed.  Detention was a joke.  The students could just walk away, secure in the knowledge nothing would happen to them.  The idea of anyone keeping her past five o’clock was just ... absurd.  Even if she had had detention, she wouldn’t have been kept until pretty much midnight.  Steve had gone to St. Champions too.  He knew it as well as her.

“It’s a long story,” she said.  She trusted Steve wouldn’t rat her out, or blackmail her, but she didn’t want to talk about it.  “Why are you being so helpful?  And how?”

Steve looked up at her.  “I’ve been making money selling apps,” he said.  “I’ve put together quite a bit of cash.  It’s not ... it’s not declared, because if it were we might lose the house and get taxed to death.  Mum doesn’t know anything about it.  Not yet.  I think” – he looked down, just for a second – “I think there are limits to what I can do, because I don’t own any of the platforms I use to sell my wares.  I can be dumped in an instant and I know it.  So do they.”

Janet nodded.  “And your point is?”

“This is magic.”  Steve looked back at the computer.  “This is something new.  Brains and I ... we were discussing magic theory.  It isn’t that different to computer programming, if I’m understanding him correctly.  It could change the world.  If I could get on the bandwagon before the band starts playing, and the money comes rolling in, it could make us rich beyond the dreams of Quark.  Think about it!  We could live in a mansion and leave this shitty estate behind!”

“It might not work,” Janet said.  “Can you do magic?”

“Can you?”  Steve shrugged.  “They said their people left this world hundreds of years ago, right?  The magic was going away, but it hasn’t gone.  They can still do magic here.  So ... think about it.  Twenty-odd years ago, if you’d invested in Amazon or Facebook or whatever, you’d be a billionaire now.  This is our chance to do the same!”

“If you’re right,” Janet said.

“Yeah.”  Steve shrugged.  “Right now, what are our prospects?  I can make a decent living, but one bad day will destroy me.  Lots of stupid gobshites online these days, looking to tear down the people they can’t match.  You?  You don’t know what you’ll be doing when you get kicked out of school next year.  You’ll be lucky if you get a job flipping burgers for under minimum wage.  Mum?  She’s not going to get promoted again, not without qualifications she doesn’t have the time to earn.”

He smiled.  “If this works, we’ll be rich.  The prospects are limitless.  If it doesn’t, well ... we tried.”

“Thanks,” Janet said.  She waved a hand at the laptop.  “Any luck?”

“Yeah,” Steve said.  “Like I said, there’s quite a few places nearby just waiting for someone with lots of money and very little common sense to come along and rent them.  One of them will do.”

“I hope you’re right,” Janet said.  She picked up the coin and looked at it.  “Is this real gold?”

“I’m not sure,” Steve said.  “Gold is actually quite soft, as metals go.  I think, from memory, our ancestors used to mint coins that were gold alloys, rather than pure gold.  If it is real ... selling it will be a pain.  I’m not sure if the more upmarket pawnbrokers are obliged to report anyone trying to sell gold coins or not.  The downmarket ones will keep their mouths shut, but undervalue it.  We may have to look around, see who’ll give us the best quote.”

“Good thinking,” Janet said.  “And thank you for helping.”

“Hey, what are brothers for?”  Steve winked at her.  “You just make sure you get all the blame, if Mum blows her top.”

“I’ll do my best,” Janet said.  If her mother ever worked out that she’d been trespassing in the school, she’d be in deep shit.  She’d be grounded for so long her grandchildren would be grounded with her.  “But the sooner we move out, the better.”

“You can’t go with them,” Steve warned.  “Mum would never allow it.”

“But I can visit,” Janet said.  “I want to learn how to do magic too.”

https://www.azonlinks.com/B0BG2BTB3M

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