It didn’t take them long to get back to the house, and Dad immediately asked Ava to sit down while he made them both a cup of tea.
‘I don’t like tea,’ she snapped, but he ignored her and went into his study, coming back with a small blue tin with a teddy bear on the front.
‘This is special tea,’ he told her. ‘I’ve had it since I was your age. I’m not sure how it’s made exactly, but when I was a boy I thought it was the most delicious drink imaginable. You can taste it for yourself in a minute and see what you think.’
‘I told you, I don’t want any tea,’ Ava said impatiently, sure that her dad was just stalling for time. ‘I want you to explain everything.’
Dad sighed. ‘The fact is – this tea will help me explain, because it reminds me of how I felt when I was your age.’ He spoke very carefully as he continued. ‘When I was a child I went travelling with my parents from an early age, but it wasn’t until my ninth birthday that they let me go on my first trip through a mirror alone.’ He smiled as he remembered. ‘They arranged for me to go and see Father Christmas. The real Father Christmas!’
Ava gaped at him, hardly able to believe he was serious.
‘It was the middle of the summer, so he had time to show me round his workshop. He gave me this tin of tea as a birthday present.’
Ava just gazed at him incredulously.
‘You might think that was a funny sort of birthday present to give a little boy, right?’ Dad continued.
Speechless, she nodded, because it was true that she had always imagined Father Christmas’s workshop to be full of shiny new train sets and beautiful dolls, rather than tins of tea.
‘Well, it isn’t just ordinary tea,’ her father explained. ‘He called it fizzy tea – but in fact it does a lot more than fizz. When you drink it, it can tell what your favourite flavours are – and it creates them for you!’
‘Magic tea!’ Ava burst out.
‘There must certainly be some magic in the ingredients, yes,’ her dad agreed. ‘Anyway, I drank most of it as a boy, but I put the last few spoonfuls away – because I couldn’t bear the thought of it being gone completely. I’ve saved what was left for all these years, waiting for an occasion that was special enough to bring it out again.’
As he took the tin into the kitchen Ava followed him, her mind racing. ‘But you still haven’t told me about the mirrors, Dad. Are we a family of witches or something? Is that how we can travel through them?’
Her dad laughed. ‘No, Ava. We aren’t witches. It’s just that we can use the magic mirrors whereas most people can’t.’ He paused, looking more solemn. ‘I know you must be feeling very confused right now, Ava. I guess the first thing you need to know is that you come from a long line of people who have an exceptional gift – the gift of being able to travel through magic portals. It’s an ability that seems to be inherited from one generation to the next – a magic gene that gets passed on, if you like. It sounds crazy, I know. Don’t worry – I’m going to answer all your questions in a minute. But first I want you to taste this tea.’
Ava watched her father use the end of a teaspoon to prise the lid off the tin. Then he took out a spoonful of tea and showed it to her. It looked exactly like ordinary tea and it didn’t smell of anything at all. He placed a spoonful into each mug before filling them with cold water from the tap.
‘Shouldn’t you use boiling water from the kettle?’ Ava asked in surprise.
‘Not for this tea. The leaves will heat up the water to just the right temperature for drinking.’ He handed her a mug. ‘Now watch and wait.’
First Ava heard the liquid fizzing – then she saw it. Inside the mug some sort of special magic reaction seemed to be taking place. As Ava watched, the liquid was changing from clear to brown to green to pink to yellow to blue to red to orange and on and on through every colour Ava could imagine.
‘It won’t stop changing colour even when you’re drinking it,’ her dad told her. ‘Don’t worry – it’s perfectly safe.’
Ava took a small, cautious sip. The drink tasted like warm toffee in her mouth. Her second – longer – sip tasted of lemon bonbons. ‘That’s amazing!’ Ava exclaimed. ‘Whenever I’m choosing sweets I can never decide between lemon bonbons or toffee ones. And Mum always gets impatient and moans that they’re both equally bad for my teeth!’
Dad’s eyes were twinkling – something she didn’t often see. ‘Take another sip,’ he urged her.
She did, and instantly giggled. ‘Toothpaste flavour,’ she burst out. ‘But very nice toothpaste!’
‘Father Christmas pops in something to help clean your teeth after anything that’s very sweet,’ Dad said. ‘Very conscientious of him, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Very,’ Ava agreed, still giggling. ‘Can I drink the whole lot?’
‘Of course,’ Dad said, taking a gulp of his own drink. ‘Liquorice Allsorts!’ he exclaimed. ‘Delicious!’
Ava smiled, but she still had a lot of questions. ‘Why did you never tell me about Marietta and her shop before, Dad?’ she asked. ‘Marietta wanted you to, didn’t she?’
Her father carefully put down his mug. ‘Marietta, as you probably already know, can also travel through the mirrors, though her main job is to stay and look after the shop.’ He paused. ‘She thinks our ability to travel through the portals is so much a part of us that it’s not natural to try and pretend it isn’t there. And she thinks that children with the gift should grow up knowing about it and using it from the beginning.’ He paused again. ‘But I think differently. I think it is too much for a child to understand – especially if one of its parents is a non-gifted human, like your mother. I believe it is better to wait until a child has reached adulthood before introducing them to the portals. Then at least they are old enough to assess for themselves all the risks involved.’
‘What risks?’ Ava asked, frowning.
‘The gift of travelling is not always an easy gift to have, Ava. It can be exciting, yes, and there are plenty of places I’d love to take you in a few years’ time. But the reason I don’t want you travelling until you’re older is that sometimes things can go wrong on the other side of the mirrors. Not all the places there are good ones, and in some you might experience things that you wish you hadn’t.’
‘What sorts of things?’ she asked curiously.
Her father looked at her steadily, as if he was weighing up whether or not to tell her more. Finally he said slowly, ‘Well . . . a few weeks ago, when I visited Victorian Britain, I saw a chimney sweep younger than you die after getting stuck up a chimney.’
‘That’s terrible!’ she gasped.
‘It was very frightening – and I wish I hadn’t been there. It’s one thing reading about that sort of thing in a book – but quite another actually seeing it for yourself.’ He swallowed, and Ava was surprised to see tears in his eyes.
Now she remembered that he was writing a book on Victorian children. ‘Is that how you do your research for your books?’ she asked. ‘By using the mirrors and actually going back in time?’
He nodded. ‘For a long time now I have been using my gift to document what life was like in days gone by. Marietta also has some historical men’s outfits in her shop. I use them quite a lot.’
‘So when we don’t hear from you for ages and Mum says you’re travelling with your work – is that what you’re doing?’
He nodded again. ‘Sometimes I live in other time periods for weeks or months on end. It’s the only way to get a real feel for that time in history.’
‘Does Mum know the truth?’ Even as she asked it Ava was sure that her mum didn’t.
‘No. She isn’t a traveller so she’d never understand. That was another reason I didn’t want you to know yet, Ava – because I didn’t like the idea of asking you to keep such a big secret from your mother.’
‘Maybe Mum would understand, if I explained it to her,’ Ava said.
‘Or maybe she’d get such a fright that she’d never let me see you again,’ Dad replied grimly.
‘She wouldn’t do that,’ Ava said. ‘She’s always saying that she wants me to spend more time with you.’
‘You can’t tell her, Ava,’ Dad said firmly. ‘Not if you want her to keep letting you come and stay with me. Trust me on this, OK?’
‘OK.’ Ava listened quietly as Dad went on to talk about how everyone in his family was born with the special gift of being able to travel to other times in history, and even to fantasy worlds that various people had dreamed up at one time or another and which existed in the space between what was real and what was not.
He told how there were many places in this world where certain magic energies all clustered together to form magic portals that allowed entry to other worlds. And Marietta’s shop was one of those places.
‘The plot of land where the shop stands has been in our family for generations,’ he added, ‘though it was an ordinary house rather than a shop when my parents lived there – and my grandparents and great-grandparents before them.’
Ava had never heard her father mention his family before. All she knew was what her mother had told her – that Dad’s parents had died a long time ago. Ava had always felt a bit strange asking questions about them, but now seemed like the right moment.
‘Dad, how did your parents die?’ she asked gently.
He frowned. ‘Twelve years ago – not long before I met your mother – my parents went on a trip through one of the portals. They never returned.’
‘That’s terrible!’ Ava exclaimed. ‘What happened to them?’
‘I don’t know. Presumably, they are still living happily ever after.’
Ava was puzzled. ‘I don’t understand. I thought you said they died?’
‘They might as well have done,’ her father said bluntly. ‘They left a note saying that they had decided to go and live for good in one particular fantasy land that they’d found. Since such a thing is totally against the laws of our people – and a search party would most certainly have been sent after them to bring them back – they destroyed the portal they had travelled through to make sure no one could follow them. Destroying a portal is very difficult and very dangerous – but it can be done if you know how.’
‘It must have been a really wonderful place if they wanted to stay there forever,’ Ava said wide-eyed, because however exciting her trip to Cinderella-land had been, she couldn’t imagine never wanting to come home again.
‘It doesn’t matter how wonderful it was – they had no right to do that to me and my sister,’ Dad said, scowling.
‘Sister?’ This was news to Ava.
Dad looked at her. ‘That’s right – a younger sister who was only sixteen when my parents left.’
‘A sister!’ Ava still couldn’t believe it.
‘We don’t always get on very well,’ Dad added drily.
‘Where does she live? When can I meet her?’ Ava asked breathlessly.
Dad was giving her a very sober look now, as if she was being incredibly stupid.
And that’s when it dawned on her. ‘You don’t mean . . . you can’t mean . . . ? Dad, is Marietta your sister?’