CASANDER DIDN’T KNOW IF HE COULD SWIM.

He thought he could, but then again it was hard to trust your own memory when you could probably claim the prize for World’s Most Forgetful Boy.

Still, everyone could doggy paddle … right?

The dark waves of the Thames closed in around him. Cas flailed his arms and kicked his legs, but every stroke felt like ice against his skin. Water rushed into his ears, drowning his senses and dragging him down. It felt like being sucked into another world. A world where the time between seconds lived; where dreams and nightmares came to play when the sun was up; and where he imagined his memories scuttled off to when they slipped away from him at the end of every day.

But Cas knew he couldn’t give up.

A tiny, kindling spark inside him wanted to fight. Summoning every ounce of strength, he beat back against the current and battled the waves. The dazzling light of the surface shone above him, growing nearer as he swam…

Up, up and up, until…

GASP.

He broke through the surface, gulping in fresh air. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

A second later, the Crane’s Curiosities girl bobbed up beside him. Chilled to their cores, they swam to the shore and clambered onto the bank, soaked through and spluttering like a pair of soggy sock puppets.

It was only then that Casander realized they weren’t in London any more.

The rain-soaked roads and sullen skyscrapers had been replaced with sunny, green open spaces and clusters of swaying willow trees. Chirping birdsong floated on the air, replacing the angry beeps of cars and honks of trucks. But, most importantly of all, the hooded men were gone.

For now.

None of it made any sense. What had just happened? Where had the city gone?

Cas opened his mouth, but the sopping wet girl beat him to it. “Don’t freak out,” she said, holding her hands out as if to steady him.

Cas’s jaw dropped open. “What—”

“Look, there’s no time to explain,” she said, squeezing the last drops of water out of her pinafore. “I don’t need to be the Oracle to know what you’re going to ask. Where are we? How did we get here? Is this even real? Just spare me the questions, OK? I’m going to take you to someone who can answer all that – and more – but right now we need to move. Those hunters will be back any minute. They won’t stop until they find you.”

“Find me?”

Flabbergasted, Cas scrambled to his feet and followed the girl as she began to climb the grassy hill leading away from the river.

“Who are you?” he blurted out. He couldn’t help himself. The words escaped him before he could stop them.

The girl cast him a sideways glance. “I said none of those questions.”

“Technically, you didn’t say I couldn’t ask that.”

“Technically, I didn’t say you could ask anything.”

“Well, technically you just kidnapped me,” Cas pointed out, jabbing a finger back towards the water. “So, tell me who you are before I start shouting ‘stranger danger’. The hooded men will easily find us then.”

The girl glowered at him, daring him to challenge her. Their pursuers could be hot on their heels, but nonetheless Cas sucked in a deep breath, opened his mouth and—

“Warrior,” she said hurriedly, eager to placate him. “My name’s Warrior.”

She sounded distinctly peeved.

“That’s an interesting name—” Cas began, trying to be polite. The girl rolled her eyes and marched off ahead. Her strides were brisk and purposeful, like he was a nuisance fly she was trying to shake off.

Clearly, she wasn’t the chatty type.

The girl was the same age as Cas, and too short and delicate to be frightening really – but something about her still thrilled and terrified him to the bone. She had poker-straight black hair, which was bright red at the ends, and narrow, hooded eyes, not dark enough to be brown yet too earthy to be amber. Her gaze was fierce enough though. It burned through Cas like a blazing north star. It was the gaze of someone who could be either your best friend or worst nightmare.

Maybe it was foolish, but Cas refused to silently trail along in her wake.

“Who were those people?” he asked, struggling to catch up.

“Heretics,” Warrior called over her shoulder.

That information was about as useful as a chocolate teapot. “Why are they chasing us?”

“Not us, you.” She shot him a look of utter disbelief. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me,” said Cas. “I don’t know what I’ve done. I barely even know who I am!”

Warrior fixed him with a piercing stop-joking-around look, but Cas was too busy to explain. He was racking his brain, desperate for a speck of sense to fall out.

Crikey, he thought. What have I done?

The trouble with having no memory was that the possibilities were endless.

Had he robbed a bank? Tripped up a dithering old grandma? Run down the high street naked in only his most embarrassing rubber ducky socks? For all Cas knew, he could have been anyone from an international jewel thief to someone who had simply walked out of a newsagent’s without paying for a bag of sweets. The hooded men hadn’t looked like police, but they had to be something similar.

Heretics didn’t sound friendly.

The one thing they surely couldn’t be after him for was what had happened in the curiosity shop. They just couldn’t. People weren’t hunted for accidentally spooking a loose bird that must’ve got in through a window. Because that was all that had happened – what must have happened. There was no other explanation for it.

As he slipped and slid up the bank, Cas felt it again. That unusual tingling sensation. He tried to keep walking, but it was useless. Within moments, the same thrashing, jerking motion that had overcome him before seized control of his right leg and he was forced to stop moving until it did.

Warrior’s eyes widened as she stopped too. “That happens to you a lot, doesn’t it?”

Cas shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

“Well, I’ve seen it happen a bunch. Whenever you’ve been outside the shop, I’ve been watching you. It mainly happens when you get up from sitting down or go from standing still to moving. I call it your funny leg.”

The energy subsided and they began to scale the hill again, together this time.

Cas raised an eyebrow. “You mean, I’m not always outside the shop?”

Warrior huffed. “You come and go.”

They both knew that that wasn’t the information he was really focusing on, though.

His funny leg.

So, Cas thought, I was right. This thing – this condition – has always been a part of me, even if I can’t remember it. It was as much a part of his body as his hair, or his eyes, or his short, stubby nose.

“I hope you don’t mind that I call it that,” Warrior said quickly, colour rising in her cheeks as she toyed with the ends of her hair. The strands were now the same warm pink as her flushed face. “It’s just that it only seems to affect your leg and arm … well, your leg mostly … and ‘funny arm and leg’ is a bit of a mouthful.”

“No,” said Cas. “I like it.”

He genuinely did.

Having a name for the unusual energy inside him felt like a relief. He still didn’t know what it was, but naming it felt like being one step closer to accepting it. To understanding it. Funny leg was perfect too. It was light and cheerful, which made the gnawing confusion feel less heavy. And it was odd, which was exactly what the tingling felt like.

Cas grinned at Warrior, glad that they were finally talking. But when he looked back, he couldn’t help noticing the ends of her hair were definitely bright red again.

Once they reached the top of the hill, Cas looked around for any sign of where he was. As if by magic, there was one literally in front of them. An old, rickety signpost was planted in the ground, with two crooked arrows pointing the same way towards a winding, dusty path: Wayward Town, 782 paces and 1 hop and Wayward School, 1,203 steps, 3 skips and a jump.

Warrior started walking along the track, but Cas thrust out an arm to grab her.

“Wait, where are we going?” he said. “I need answers. About who those men were. About where we are and what’s going on.”

Warrior glanced skyward again. One day, the wind will change and her face will get stuck like that, thought Cas. “I said I would tell you everything, remember? We just need to lose the Heretics first.”

“Heretics, heretics,” repeated Cas. “You keep calling them that, but I don’t know what it means.”

“Surely even you can figure out that they aren’t exactly going around throwing tea parties and handing out kittens.”

Cas bristled. First, this rude girl had the audacity to throw him in a river, and now she was being as stubborn and unhelpful as a goat. Just as Cas readied himself to dish back a retort of his own, the sound of splashing and gruff grunts carried up over the hill behind them.

“Quickly!” said Warrior, eyes popping as she snatched at Cas’s arm.

Without another word, the pair took off along the winding track. As swiftly as their legs would carry them, they sprinted along the path through a copse of gnarly, withered trees, occasionally ducking into shrubs and brambles, as if it might somehow help the Heretics lose their scent. When they finally crashed out the other side, Cas could see a small, shimmering town in the distance. It was surrounded by what looked like tall, white spikes, with multicoloured ants swarming around them – except, as they drew closer, Cas realized the white spikes and ants weren’t spikes and ants at all.

A crowd of citizens was sweeping through a set of towering bone-white, crystal-like structures on the edge of the town, the thronging people adorned in differently coloured cloaks.

“Move along! Move along!” cried a group of guardsmen in orange livery as they patrolled the high structures. The brass buttons on their pumpkin uniforms glinted in the sun as they ushered people past, one by one.

Cas gaped up at the tall, gleaming structures as he and Warrior joined the ruckus. A dreadful wave of nausea and something else – something invasive, squirmy and prickling, like his innards were being examined from the inside out – passed through him as they strode between the towers.

“Wards,” said Warrior, stepping between the structures with nothing more than a shiver. “And those are wardsmen,” she went on, pointing to the orange border officers. “Both let people who belong in this world in and keep people from the ordinary world out.”

Cas tripped and blinked. “Wait – we’re in another world?!”

Ridiculous.

“Welcome to Wayward,” said Warrior, gesturing towards the town with an elegant twirl and flourish. “The most wonderful place in the Balance Lands.”

Just as Warrior turned to do another flamboyant spin, Cas froze.

A million thoughts and questions buzzed through his head, but it wasn’t any of them that rooted him to the spot. Metres behind them, bobbing and shoving through the masses on the other side of the wards, were two purple-and-white hoods.

Warrior stopped dancing, having spotted them too.

“Let’s go,” urged Cas, trying to heave her away.

Warrior batted him off. “We can’t outrun them.”

Cas couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Well, we can certainly try.”

“No, wait,” she said feverishly, her eyes scanning their surroundings as if she could sense something. She wasn’t the only one. People around them were looking from ward to ward as well. “Come on, come on.”

“What are you doing?” shouted Cas, panic spiking his voice now. The hooded figures were closing in. They were almost at the boundary.

He was on the brink of running away to save himself when a great shudder reverberated through the ground beneath their feet. Everyone at the boundary of Wayward stumbled. Everyone, that was, apart from Warrior – who wore a wicked, knowing smile. “Just wait a second – you’ll see!”

Sure enough, a moment later, Cas did.

As the first tremor rocked the earth, the two purple-and-white-hooded men strained to stay standing. Their legs shook as they rode out the vibration, but as soon as it passed, they surged forward again, shoving brightly cloaked men, women and children aside. Their hungry eyes locked on Cas and Warrior in the same second another shudder hit.

Cas’s stomach lurched as the world went sideways. He and everyone around him was knocked off their feet. Great, an earthquake. Just what we need on top of everything. Except the citizens milling about further into Wayward Town were still merrily going about their business, as if they hadn’t felt a thing. As soon as he could, Cas scrambled upright, helplessly trying to figure out what had happened.

Only, when he glanced back across the boundary, he saw … nothing.

Every person who had been outside the wards when the second, bigger impact hit had vanished. Instead, empty, rolling sand dunes stretched as far as the eye could see. Thundery clouds loomed outside the boundary, but when Cas glanced upwards, the sky directly above him was still clear and sunny.

It didn’t make sense.

The town couldn’t have moved … could it?

“We need to keep going,” said Warrior. “The Heretics will easily find us again soon.”

Cas barely had time to brush down his knees, before Warrior was hurrying him along into the town once more.

“Are you going to start explaining things yet or not?” Cas demanded.

Warrior sighed. “Wayward is like a checkpoint,” she called over her shoulder as he rushed to keep up. “A halfway place between this world and the Normie world. And everywhere else. That’s how it got its name – Wayward. Way through the wards.”

Cas had the overwhelming urge to pinch himself. If this wasn’t a dream, maybe they really were in another world – nothing else could explain the impossibility of it all.

“Wayward has a tricky habit of moving about of its own accord. It jumps from place to place whenever it likes. If you’re coming here from the Normie world, you always have to enter the Balance Lands wherever Wayward is at that present moment. It’s the same if you’re coming here from anywhere in the Balance Lands too. Entering Wayward through the wards is how the wardsmen make sure that you’re an Other.”

“An Other?”

“Someone with threads of power – with magic – who belongs in this world. Not a Normie.”

“Normie?”

“Normal folk.” There was that annoying eye roll again. “You can leave Wayward and go to anywhere in the Balance Lands you want. But to get here, you have to come through the wards. Even though no one knows where Wayward will show up next, all those Heretics will have to do is imagine coming here and then they can use any waygate to reach it. That’s why you need to pick up the pace.”

Heretics. Wards. Waygates. Balance Lands. Threads of power.

The words coming out of Warrior’s mouth were so strange that Cas didn’t know where to begin. It was all gobbledygook. Poppycock. Drivel and nonsense.

“Step on it, dawdler,” Warrior chided, shoving Cas ahead of her. “Didn’t you hear me? We need to get somewhere safe.”

Safe, thought Cas, reminding himself of his priorities. Yes, safe. He didn’t have a clue what was going on, but seeing as Warrior was the only one who apparently did, he had no choice but to follow her.

At first glance, Wayward looked like any other town. It had shops and taverns and children playing in the street – except there were mirrors and water fountains at every turn. Cas did a double-take when he saw a heavily bearded man walk towards a mirror outside a pub and … disappear into it. Nobody else seemed to have noticed the vanishing man, so Cas had almost convinced himself that he had imagined it – until he saw a woman walk straight into a mirror hung on the door of a bookshop. Then two friends in blue cloaks disappeared after jumping into the basin of a fountain in the town square.

Was this how they had travelled here? Were the reflective surfaces some kind of—

“Portals,” said Warrior, as if she could read his mind. “Or as we like to call them, waygates.”

Cas sucked in an incredulous breath.

“The Balance Lands is a perfect mirror image of the Normie world,” Warrior explained, “down to every country, city and street – with a few twists of our own, like Wayward. That’s why it makes sense that reflections are how we can travel from that world to this one. Or move from place to place within the Balance Lands itself.”

“And we came through – through one of those?” Cas mumbled, nodding towards a mirror set outside an old-fashioned supermarket.

“Exactly.” She cast him a half-threatening glare. “But don’t go shouting about it from the rooftops – technically we’re not supposed to travel through waygates alone until we’re older. It’s very difficult. It would’ve been almost impossible for you on your own if I hadn’t taken you with me.”

“Kidnapped me, you mean.”

“Saved your sorry butt,” amended Warrior, raising an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.”

Ignoring her, Cas shuffled closer to the nearest mirror to get a better look. Its reflective surface rippled and shimmered like it was alive. Between one ripple and the next, he caught a fleeting glimpse of the Normie version of London. But when Cas reached out to touch the cityscape in the mirror’s gilded frame, the image shattered and vanished without a trace.

Two entire worlds – both this one and the Normie one – were literally at their fingertips.

They could go anywhere. Do anything.

Cas’s eyes lit up.

He imagined strutting along the whimsical, watery canals of Venice and scaling the dizzying heights of Machu Picchu in Peru. They could climb Mount Everest, or watch the sun rise over the Egyptian pyramids; go white-water rafting in New Zealand, or drink tea surrounded by perfectly pink cherry blossoms in Japan.

All his worries and fears slipped away. “Where are we going, then?”

“Funnily enough, the safest place for us is here,” said Warrior. “Just not inside the town.”

Cas cast a wistful glance back at the mirror as he followed Warrior out of the town and onto a similar winding path. The sun was beginning to set now, turning the sky bubblegum pink and blood orange as it dipped below the horizon. This time, the road led towards a large, lonely mansion set atop a steep hill. A second rickety signpost with peeling letters read: Wayward School.

Like Wayward Town, the school was surrounded by pearly stalagmite wards.

Warrior waggled her eyebrows and grinned as they approached. “Now this is where it really gets interesting,” she teased, the tips of her hair turning a mischievous shade of orange. “The wards outside Wayward judge whether someone is an Other or not, but these ones judge if you have a bad soul or evil intentions. If you do, they light up red and trigger a warning alarm so loud that it can be heard in Balance London. Wardsmen will show up and whisk you away to Nowhere Prison before you even have a chance to surrender.” She winked. “Let’s hope you’re a good ’un.”

Cas gulped. His stomach dropped into his shoes.

This was bad. Very bad… What if he set them off? What if he was a terrible person who had done terrible things that he couldn’t remember? What if that was why the Heretics were chasing him?

Squeezing his eyes shut, Cas poked out his toe, edging across the boundary…

Nothing.

Only silence and a cool September breeze filled the air.

He opened his eyes and saw Warrior clutching her sides with laughter. “Your face!”

But Cas didn’t care.

His stomach leapt back up into its rightful place. He had passed through the second set of wards without setting them off. Whatever he had done inside the shop, whatever reason the hooded men had for hunting him, it couldn’t be that bad.

“Relax, we’re safe now.” Warrior patted his shoulder reassuringly. “Nobody can hurt us here.”

Now that they were on the other side of the wards, Cas breathed and fully took in his surroundings. In front of him stood two heavy, wrought-iron gates shaped like the curling letters W and S. He and Warrior slipped between them and headed across a short, wooden bridge over a moat.

From there, Cas could see it all.

Wayward School was a magnificent old building, grander and more beautiful than anything he could ever have dreamed. The school looked like a cross between a stately home and a fortress. Ivy wound over the cream stone walls and wrapped around two ornate marble columns that bracketed the largest double doors he had ever seen.

To his left, a sky-high tower stood sentinel, whilst to his right the moat ran down into a deep boating lake. Enormous trees and vines spilled out of one wing of the building, creating a tunnel which led down to luscious green lawns and a dense forest, where a creaky greenhouse and little lodges sat dotted between the trees, puffing out plumes of homely charcoal smoke. The last thing he caught sight of was a small graveyard, sitting eerily undisturbed at the edge of the woods, before they were climbing up the marble steps leading to the front doors.

Up close, the school doubled in size. It was at least five storeys high and incredibly wide. An ornate wheelchair ramp sloped upwards. Above the doors, Wayward School for Most Prestigious Others gleamed in large, curling shiny script. As did the motto:

Vitas, Mortus, Terran, Ignuus, Aqus, Kaeli
~ Omnus una cum trutina ~

A platinum school crest made up of five separate seals (two entangled birds; a leafy plant woven around a rock; a wave; a fireball; and a swirl of air) sat below.

“Life. Death. Earth. Fire. Water. Air,” said Warrior, translating the ancient script. “One is with the balance.”

“Woah,” Cas exhaled in surprise.

Warrior beamed. “Excellent goldfish impression. But yeah, I suppose this old hovel isn’t half bad.”

Half bad? Cas had never seen anything so spectacular in his life.

“Behind these doors lie the answers to all your questions. Everything that’s just happened. Everything you’ve ever wondered about yourself.”

Cas’s heart thundered in his chest. Warrior raised her hand and knocked on the door.

“Welcome to Wayward School,” she said. “Or as I like to call it, home.”