Chapter Thirty

The passage between the two worlds was not nearly so hard a journey, although it still left Mark feeling slightly sick and as though he had been turned inside out. He swallowed hard and looked around.

They were all there on the triangle of lawn. Alasdair and Joss wearing the tawny, quilted jerkins of the army. Molly, looking more frail and exotic than ever in a soft blue-grey tunic, holding the spindle to her heart. Ariel in a similar tunic, her straight dark brows lifted in an expression of immense gratitude as she realized they were all there, safely.

He looked around at the bright summer foliage and blue sky. Sunshine, he thought. Sunshine! The colours of his own world were like strong drink and he wanted to swallow them somehow with his eyes. Molly’s mother and Trudy were running across the lawn.

“Where have you been? Where have you been!” Her mother folded Molly in a hysterical embrace. “Gone for nearly four weeks . . . We’ve been frantic . . . There looking all across the country for you.”

“Four weeks?” Molly looked over her mother’s shoulder at Joss, who shrugged. “I don’t understand.”

Her mother had started to take in their strange clothes, their long hair, Alasdair’s new height. “Four weeks . . .” she faltered. “Where have you been.”

Molly looked around at all the others, ending with Mark. “Where we have been,” she said. “This is going to be some story.”

He grinned at her and nodded.