Effie remembered that her grandfather had applied to the Guild to become a wizard and had been turned down. He’d received the letter just before he had been attacked.

“The background to all this is rather complicated,” said Mrs. Beathag Hide. “Especially for children. Particularly ones who are not strong historians.” She raised a dark, angled eyebrow.

It was, sadly, true. History was no one’s strong point. Lexy was good at sciences. Effie was best at languages. Raven was good at creative writing and anything to do with nature. Only Maximilian had any ability in history. But all he’d learned at school were the rudiments of an official time line that didn’t include anything to do with the Great Split, the existence of magic or the Otherworld. At school all they learned about was the Third World War and the second great fire of London. And a bit of Henry VIII and the Nazis, too, of course.

“Very briefly,” said Pelham Longfellow, “Since the worldquake, more people have been able to visit the Otherworld. More people have epiphanized. Some say it is because this world has become ten percent more magical, but no one knows if this is actually true, or even accurate. What is clear is that the two worlds, having originally split however many hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago, have recently moved closer together. Some mainlanders welcome this. But most of them are highly suspicious of islanders.”

Effie sighed quietly. She’d had firsthand experience of this, of course. Pelham went on. “The Guild of Craftspeople has recently had a change of leader. Masterman Finch is a splittist, just like the Mainland Liberation Collective.”

Mainland Liberation Collective. Effie had heard this name somewhere recently. Oh yes, she remembered now. Wasn’t that the group that Millicent Wiseacre was in? Effie shivered briefly at the memory.

“A splittist?” said Maximilian.

Pelham continued speaking. “A splittist is someone who approves of the Great Split and disapproves of the worldquake, which brought the worlds closer together again. Anyway, both the MLC and the Guild want the Otherworld and the Realworld to have no further connection with each other. They want the portals closed, and magic to be much more tightly controlled in the Realworld. It’s complicated to explain, but the Diberi are also separatists, although in a much more extreme way. They actually want to destroy the Otherworld. They believe that the Realworld has so little magic because the Otherworld controls it all. They want more magic and power for themselves.”

Pelham paused. Professor Calico Quinn started speaking.

“Some say it would also make the Guild’s life a lot easier if there was no Otherworld, so they and the Diberi potentially have some aims in common. Although of course the Diberi want more magic, and the Guild wants less.”

Pelham Longfellow sipped from a glass of water in front of him, and then began speaking again.