Chapter 1

While You Were Gone
Archer Price was far from home.  
Archer and his twin sister, Mimi, called Marshton their home. They were in Neven, which they didn’t call home. Neven was a long way from Marshton. You couldn’t travel there by car, plane, or ship. 
You needed a magical cube.
Press a button on the cube, and its magic took you to Neven, an ancient medieval kingdom. So, the twins were far from home, but still close.
The twins had some problems: 
Problem #1: Archer and Mimi’s grandfather, Sam Brown, had been missing for thirty years. 
Problem #2: Mum was kidnapped by Neven’s bad guys. One of them was a woman. 
She was the twins’ Nan. Nan, the kidnapper, was also the twin sister of Neven’s nasty King Francas. Neven wasn’t an exciting place. Well, it was, but you’d also need the word dangerous. Scary was another word that worked well. Or terrifying or sinister. 
Problem #3: Archer and Mimi’s real Nan, Mum’s mum, had lived in Neven for thirty years. When she lived in Marshton, she was Doctor Emily Brown. In Neven, everyone called her Grak. Emily’s brother, Richard, was with her. If you met him in Neven, you’d call him Avus.
Archer wanted to find their grandfather, Sam Brown (Emily’s husband). Instead, he and Mimi found Grak and Avus. Even though Sam and Emily were married, Emily (Grak) didn’t know where he was. 
Archer didn’t want to add to the list of problems, but there were more: 
Nan’s attic in Marshton had boxes of scientific equipment, a laptop computer and a portable generator. The fake Nan had brought everything to Neven. 
Archer wondered why. Neven was an ancient kingdom. Generators supply electricity for a TV when you’re camping. Neven had nothing electrical–no TVS, fridges, or coffee machines.
Archer decided to stop thinking about problems and went to find Mimi.
She was firing her slingshot, taking turns with a girl the twins had met in Neven. Pachina was their age and had all the sports skills of Mimi. Most likely, she had more. Pachina was a tracker and a hunter. 
As each girl scored a hit with the slingshot, they bumped fists, something Mimi had shown Pachina. 
‘See the leaf on the end of that branch?’ Pachina said. 
‘You mean the one that’s hanging by just a thread?’ Mimi said. She aimed and fired. Mimi used lead fishing sinkers as ammo. Dad had gazillions of them. They flew much better than stones. The sinker cut through the twig holding the leaf, which fluttered to the ground.
‘Wow,’ said Pachina. ‘Now watch this.’ She aimed at a bug crawling up a rock. The sinker splattered it. ‘Scores are still even, Mimi,’ she smiled. ‘Is anyone hungry?’

Chapter 34

Magic
The twins landed in Grak’s glade ahead of Avus’s group. 
Before leaving Nan’s, they’d searched Mimi’s room and found another backpack. 
They had rechecked the attic, which was still bare and empty—no silver squares on the wall, no fridge-size boxes. Then, they walked Nan around the house, checking for anything that might have come from Neven. It took them over an hour, but Archer was satisfied that Nan was stranded in Marshton. 
Archer had returned to the garage. In a storage cupboard, he found a plastic drop sheet used by a painter to catch accidental splatters. 
He grabbed three things from Dad’s boat. They were a bit big, but everything squeezed into his backpack. He returned to his room and picked up his Bluetooth speaker–a can-of-beans-sized cylinder. His plan, if it worked, meant he’d lose it. It was a small price to pay if it meant getting Mum back.
They’d left Ismay crying in the kitchen. The tears didn’t look fake. Archer wasn’t sure if she was upset about lying or that lying had gotten her caught. She wasn’t Nan to him any more; her name was Ismay. He felt like he didn’t know her.
He grabbed Mimi’s hand. ‘Let’s get back to our real family,’ he said.

Ismay waited as the cube’s light flashed, then left the kitchen. Her tears disappeared quicker than the light. After stepping around the guard, who still struggled with the glue, she climbed the stairs to her study and wrote a letter on scented paper.
She sealed it in an envelope and took it to an unused chicken pen in the yard. Some twisted branches were a small problem, but she pushed and pulled at them, then tugged the gate open.
Inside the roost were several nesting boxes. Ismay pulled away more branches and put the letter into one of them. She twisted the ruby in her ring twice. The box made a sound like the gears crunching on an old truck. A light flashed from inside it. Ismay let the light die, then looked into the box. The letter was gone. She smiled.  

‘I have a plan,’ said Archer, closing his tablet. He’d made some changes using the app he’d opened in Marshton. The group sat around a table in Grak’s cookhouse. Spread across the table was a large map of Wendolax Forest. The morning sun peeked through the trees, making blotchy shadows.
‘Please share,’ said Avus.
‘You’ll try to talk us out of it,’ said Archer. He turned to Ddragan. ‘Do you think the bracelet is in Akra?’
Ddragan shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The answer is in the Bracelet Book. But I suppose we have to start somewhere.’
Archer nodded. ‘Okay. Ddragan, I need you, Grak and Avus to go to Akra.’ He checked the cube’s location list. ’Wait for us in the market street. Seth, Toby and Pachina, meet us here,’ He tapped a finger on the map. 
‘It will take time to reach this spot,’ said Seth, looking at the map.
‘If everything goes okay, we should be there at the same time–late this afternoon,’ said Archer. ‘We’ll have Mum and the Bracelet Book.’
‘You’re going into the castle again?’ said Grak.
‘Mum’s in there,’ said Mimi. ‘I know Archer’s plan. We can rescue her.’
‘Are you taking her back to your home?’ said Ddragan.
‘We have the same problem as before,’ said Archer. ‘The fake Nan is there. And we know for sure there’s at least one guard. We have to get Mum out of the castle.’
Ddragan said, ‘You won’t get the Bracelet Book out of the castle. It is too well guarded.’
‘Yes, I thought it might be,’ said Archer. 
‘Take me instead of Mimi,’ said Avus. ‘I can fight off the guards. You’re a couple–’
‘Of kids,’ said Mimi. ‘We know.’
‘They’re using magic to hold mum,’ said Archer. ‘Force won’t work; we need some magic of our own. Maps of the castle, please, Ddragan.’
Archer pushed a felt-tipped pen and some paper across the table. Ddragan nudged the pen with his finger. ‘What do I do with this?’
Archer showed him, and Ddragan smiled. ‘Magic,’ he said.

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