Isaac smiled. They walked to the middle of the glade and found that there was indeed a book resting on the little pedestal. It was a large, thin volume, with a green canvas cover that was stained and worn ragged in places. If there had been a printed title, it had long since faded away.

Isaac stepped forward and laid a hand on it. He closed his eyes and cocked his head, as though he was listening to something.

‘Well,’ he said after a moment, ‘it’s a portal-book, not a prison-book.’

‘What does that mean?’ Alice said.

‘It means there’s a matching book on the other side, so we can come back without any special conditions.’ He frowned. ‘But I can’t tell anything about where it leads, except that I don’t think it’s on Earth.’

‘Only one way to find out, then. How do we go through together?’

‘Hold my hand.’

Alice took Isaac’s hand in her own gingerly. The sleeve of his coat flopped over and rested on her arm. They stepped forward, and with his free hand Isaac flipped the book open to the first page. Alice saw the same confusing mass of characters that she had when she’d opened The Swarm, and then, as before, they twisted before her eyes into recognizable letters. She read:

Alice stood hand in hand with Isaac on a windswept, moonlit plain that stretched as far as the eye could see . . .

Chapter Eighteen: The Lonely Cottage

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE LONELY COTTAGE

Alice stood hand in hand with Isaac on a windswept, moonlit plain that stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. The grass dipped and bowed in waves, like the movement of an ocean. In front of them, rising out of the sea of grass, was a rocky hill, with a path on one side that looped laboriously back and forth several times. A small stone cottage with a peaked wooden roof stood at the top, with a curl of white smoke drifting lazily up from the chimney.

All in all, it was not nearly as bad as Alice had been expecting. She gave a little sigh of relief.

‘Would you mind letting go of my hand?’ Isaac said. ‘If you squeeze any harder, I might lose a finger.’

Alice let his hand drop, cheeks burning, and fumbled furiously with the map. This time, she discovered, it was prepared to fold up along the crease and open again to display their new surroundings. Apart from the outline of the hill and the cottage, it was mostly blank. The green line led up the switchback path and ended in a green dot somewhere inside the house.

‘It’s in there,’ Alice said. ‘Or the map thinks it is, anyway.’