“Or hanging out with ninja wizards,” I say.

“Or jumping off waterfalls,” Rose adds.

Grandad throws his hands up in the air and does a big belly laugh. “Looks like you’re good to go then!”

Chapter 4

“Ta-da!” Grandad throws open the door to the attic.

It’s incredible. He’s transformed the dusty room into the den he promised us. There’s a squishy sofa, beanbags, books, and games; there’s even a popcorn machine. Grandad’s put framed photos on the wall of him and Nani in Mauritius, and I spot two china dodos that belonged to Nani. The whole room looks cozy and cool, and a massive improvement on the junk-stuffed attic.

Rose and I run around, bouncing on the sofa and looking in drawers. Rose’s old rocking horse, Orion, is sitting in front of the window giving me an evil glare. No change there then. The Orion in Roar hates me too, only he’s more of a threat because he’s an actual stallion with large teeth and a boy-stinging tail.

“Arthur, come and look at this,” says Rose. She’s found a trunk full of our old toys. I pull out a ninja costume that looks just like the robes Win wears, a bag of pirate Lego, and then a red plastic dragon.

“I thought you’d taken all this to the charity shop,” I say to Grandad.

He shrugs. “It seemed a shame to throw it out.”

I know what he means. It was playing with these toys that led to Roar appearing inside the cot. We don’t know how it happened, or why some games came to life in Roar while others stayed firmly in the real world, but these toys are where it all began.

Rose carefully folds a mermaid’s tail and puts it back in the trunk. She looks around the attic. “I love it all, Grandad!”

“You’ve not seen the best bit yet,” he says, then he bends down and flicks a switch. A string of fairy lights starts to flash over one of the eaves, and I see that tucked inside, covered in Nani’s silky sari, is the folding cot. Its boxy shape makes a shiver run through me.

Grandad smiles proudly. “I thought a magical portal deserved a special place to live,” he says, and then, like a magician, he whips off the sari.

I stare at the cot’s familiar flowery mattress and rusty springs. The plastic headboard reflects the twinkling fairy lights. I run my hands over the words I scratched into the headboard years ago—ENTUR HEER FOR THE LANED OF ROAR!!!—and my stomach knots with excitement. Soon we’ll be crawling into the mattress. Soon we’ll be in Roar!

“I polished the headboard and oiled the wheels,” says Grandad, pulling the bed into the middle of the room.