Chapter 6 - The GB Olympic Queueing Team Part1 (Reposted)

The Twentieth of February Two Thousand and Twelve. Monday.

Chapter 6 The GB Olympic Queueing Team

The thing is Amber and I had been to Durham before. It was where our older sister, May, was at university. She's doing English and Criminology which I thought would be really cool but it's all to do with Social Science (whatever that is) and they don't study murders or anything interesting like that. That's what we used the railcard for – it's got both Mum and Amber's name on it so it's all right for just the two of us to go. We only usually go up for the day. Most times Amber and May end up going shopping but we'd go to the pictures too and May always picks something I'd like. We went to see X Men First Class last time which I thought was excellent but Amber got confused because I don't think she realised that it was a prequel. She'd only watched the other ones for Hugh Jackman and was disappointed that he wasn't in it (yes, I know he has a cameo in it, but that wasn't enough for Amber and I didn't want put down any spoilers. Only I have now, haven't I? Thanks).

So you might be thinking 'Oh, isn't that a coincidence that they're going to Durham and that's where their sister is.' Well, congratulations to you because that's what a coincidence is, when two things happen at the same time. You may find it hard to believe but what with there being a university and a passport office in Durham something like this happening is not altogether impossible. Yes, there's an office in Liverpool that's nearer, but the Durham one was on the way to the Isle of Beep. So stop worrying about it and let me get on with the story.

'Have you told May about what's happened,' I asked Amber. The five of us were sat across two tables on the train. Dan was enjoying a packet of crisps and a bottle of pop and Nina and Horatio were reading different sections of the Sunday paper. Amber was charging up her Blackberry and messaging her friends.

'Yeah, I emailed her when we set off. Told her what had happened. She said she's busy tonight, but she'll catch up with us tomorrow afternoon after lectures.'

'Wasn't she upset about Mum and Dad?'

'Didn't seem to be. She said a friend of hers had her parents abducted by aliens. It all turned out all right in the end. She said if we were on the case she wasn't worried.'

'She did believe what you were saying, didn't she?'

'How do I know? Look, Carl, I'm busy here. I don't need the third degree, ok?'

'Ok!'

'Thank you.' She then went on to ignore me for the next two hours.

The train journey was long and boring. I didn't have my PSP with me and I got fed up of Tetris on my phone really quickly. So I picked my moment carefully and I finally got the story out of Nina and Horatio.

It turns out Horatio was a Spanish sailor by the name of Horacio Morientes who was the only survivor of a shipwreck. Or he thought he was the only survivor – there was this other bloke who survived and became his evil nemesis but that's nothing to do with this story. Anyway, he found Nina, a genie, trapped in a bottle ('more like a jar,' said Nina, 'with a lid. But as soon as a genie's involved everyone says “bottle”, so “bottle” it is) and before you could say 'three wishes' he was magically rescued and home and dry.

All sorts of astonishing misadventures ensued and before you know it they fell in love. So far, so sixties sitcom. Except it is expressly forbidden for a master to fall in love with their genie. Yeah, slavery's okey-dokey, but the 'L' word? That's a definite no-no. The only way around it was for Nina to renounce her power and the two of them to commit to each other for the rest of their lives. Which in this case would be all eternity, because as a result of getting married Horatio would join Nina in immortality. It all sounded very romantic at the time. No-one mentioned to them that being deathless meant they were unable to pass life on. They would never, ever be able to have children.

Being a genie and finding a genie are both types of a curse and there's rarely a happy ending where curses are involved. The conditions of the marriage were that they would have to be together forever. If ever one of them was out of earshot of the other then they would both crumble to dust. This was fine to begin with but as time went on it became apparent that the only thing they had truly had in common were their magical adventures. She began to find him boring and inattentive, he didn't like the way she examined the tiniest detail of everything she did. Little things, but the thought of an eternity of them weighed heavy on both their hearts. They began to spend less and less time together, but with the curse preventing either from having a life of their own they began to resent each other. Forced into each other's company they would say the most horrible and hurtful things, things that could never be taken back. The precious memories of the wonderful times they had spent together were soon forgotten.

I said that that was understandable after hundreds of years. Anybody would get irritated after that amount of time together. Horatio shook his head sadly. In the first five years of their marriage they had angrily screamed themselves hoarse dozens of times. Eventually, they had managed to come up with a working relationship, earning their keep all over Europe. Fortune Teller and stooge, or Magician and Assistant. They knew enough about the world of miracles in order to make a living as entertainers – circuses, theatres and fairs through the years, moving on before suspicions were formed about their ageless nature. But their wilful flouting of the rules of the supernatural meant they would never be respected or accepted by the world again. They had never been accepted by our world in the first place.

Things had got better in the last twenty years or so, though. The curse that kept them together was pedantically literal. With mobile phones coming into common usage it was possible for the two of them to be apart while still technically within earshot. Voice mail got around any problems with areas with no signal, but should either of them let their phone's battery fall dead then they would both soon follow it. Nevertheless, finally being able to live separate lives had helped them repair some of the damage done between them. And occasionally, when something adventurous or magical came along – like now – they'd find themselves almost getting along.

'Almost,' said Nina as Horatio finished off his can of Stella Artois with a burp.

Another night, another Holiday Lodge Express. Another fried breakfast. I hoped dad would be grateful enough with us for saving him and the world that he'd overlook his next credit card bill. We all met in the cafeteria to compare notes. Nina started the day with some unwelcome news.

'The passport office opened at eight-thirty. They're probably queueing out the door already. Come on we'd better get down there.'

I'd never really been one for fried bread but I resented being rushed away from my last slice then. At least I got to finish off my second cup of tea.

'Do we all have to go?' asked Amber.

'We're all getting passports, so yes,' replied Horatio. 'Have you all filled out the forms?'

Horatio had printed off online application forms using the small IT suite that belonged to the hotel. We all dutifully held up our completed forms as we stormed down the street. Somebody was going to lose one, I knew it.

'Has everybody got their photos?' asked Nina. We'd all taken turns in the photo booth at the railway station last night, so there was an unenthusiastic chorus of yesses in reply.

'Excellent. Nearly there...'

Millburngate House was a big blocky place that looked like it had been made out of concrete Lego. It took a while for us to find the entrance, but when we did there were plenty of signs to make sure we went in the right direction. It was Amber who spotted it first.

'Here we go: “Imaginary and Non-Realistic Applications”. This must be the way.'

There was a very helpful blue line running down the corridor to guide us on our way. Eventually, it came to a set of double doors. Dan and Horatio pulled them open between them revealing...

Three massively long queues. They were unavoidable, the first thing that struck you. The doors led into a huge hall, bigger than the one used for assembly at school. At the far end, at the front of each queue, we could just make out three tiny windows, each staffed by a distant blur of a person, each the goal of the hundreds of people waiting patiently in line.

'This is impossible,' I said. 'It's not even been open an hour.'

'Told you,' said Nina. 'We probably could have done with queueing even before the place opened.'

'But all these people can't be going to the Isle of Beep,' I said. 'Isn't this for emergency applications? Doesn't anyone get their passport well before they set off.'

'It's for anyone visiting somewhere that isn't real or isn't on a map,' explained Nina. 'And that's something you seldom plan for. There are very few people who plan to make this sort of a trip. These offices are always busy with people needing passports at the last minute. Join the club.'

As Nina was speaking, someone else entered the hall the same way that we had. Without hesitation they joined the middle one of the three queues.

'I think we'd better get in line,' said Horatio. 'This is going to take long enough as it is. If we keep letting others in we'll be here all day.'

'Should we split up?' asked Dan. 'Would it be quicker if we all joined different queues?'

'I don't know,' said Amber. 'I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't think it's such a good idea.'

There was a quick conflab and it was decided that we would split up – Me with Nina in the middle queue, Amber with Horatio in the left hand one and Dan on the right hand side. He hadn't done anything like this before but he assured us he was a dab hand with forms and the like. We took our places and prepared for the long wait ahead.

Barely five minutes had gone by when Horatio statrted waving at us. None of the lines appeared to have gone down at all but a few more people had entered the hall and joined each of the three queues. There was enough of a gap between the queues that it was impossible to have a conversation between them without raising your voice. It seemed Horatio had elected not to attempt that was instead furiously miming something to me and Nina. It took a while to realise that he was gesturing toward someone a short way ahead of us in our queue. Mindful of not losing our place Nina and I peered past the people in front of us to see a woman in a black duffel coat carrying a cat. She had her hood up so it was difficult to see her face clearly. But her chin was visible, jutting out.

It was covered in stubble.

'I think we joined the wrong queue,' I said to Nina.

More soonliest.

Previously on 'My Idiot Sister is The Chosen One'

The Twentieth of February Two Thousand and Twelve. Monday.

It was my sister, May, that had it. My notebook, I mean. She'd written Dan's phone number in there and borrowed it, fully intending to copy it into her phone, but had never got round to doing it. Anyway, I didn't see my notebook again until May came home for Christmas.

Sorry. I've dived in without explaining stuff there. Some of you might remember that a bit ago I was telling you the story of how I discovered that my idiot sister was the chosen one in this quest thing to stop a couple of highly strung cat demon witch types from destroying (slash) remaking the world in their own image. Or something.

What's that? You don't remember? Hmm, sorry, that's my fault. It has been a while. Let's see if I can remember the important stuff.

My name's Carl Thorpe (yes, I remembered that bit. Ha-ha, didn't need any help with that) and I was making a record of all the weird things that happened to me, my sister Amber and a bunch of other people after a bloke from the Italian Renaissance turned up at our house one night (well, it was kind of one day – look, it's kind of complicated to explain. You might want to go back to the beginning of all this and start from there if you haven't come across my earlier scribblings on all this nonsense).

Basically, there's these two cat demons called Lucia and Lisa who are looking for something called the Tabula Rasa scrolls that will let them rewrite the whole of reality from scratch. They have evil minions called conataurs, which look like idiots with traffic cones on their heads, but the cones actually are their heads. Our mum and dad have been turned into conataurs, so as well as saving the world we're trying to figure out a way to get them back to normal.

We're trying to get to these scrolls before the demon sisters do. We found and item called the Chianti Lodestone that is like a geiger counter for magic stuff and we're using it to locate the whereabouts of these scrolls. We picked up the lodestone at one of those historical gift shops and along the way we also picked up Dan, a bloke who works there. He pretty much had to come with us as a tram smashed into the shop and almost killed everyone. That's not as important as the fact that he's one of our team now – don't go worrying too much about all the stuff that's gone before.

We've also picked up a couple called Horatio and Nina who have turned out to be and ex-genie and her ex-master. They've been around for hundreds of years and they're pretty clued up on all this magic stuff so they've been giving Amber and me a few pointers. They're the ones that pinpointed the location of the Lodestone as being somewhere in the North Sea in a place called the Isle of Beep. Yeah, beep, it's weird how that comes out even when you try and write it down – it's as if the real name has been censored somehow. But that's what it is actually called – The Isle of Beep.

Since this island is a mystical neverland of legend we've all had to get special new passports to visit. We've gone to the issuing office in Durham, which is handy because that's where, May, my other less idiotic sister is at university. We'll probably catch up with her later.

Right, well, the point is I'd got up to the point in the story where we'd reached the passport office and then I lost my notes! Or at least had them nicked like I said at the beginning of this little recap.

Yeah, I had notes written on paper. That's not fair – I really wanted to get an iPad. I could have had all this written out from the off instead of having to type it all up again just because my parents are convinced I'd break it if I had one. It would have been dead handy on the quest (well, for the parts of it that had good wi-fi which, now I think about it, there weren't many of). But there's no point moaning now, I've got my notebook back now and I can continue telling the rest of the story. I'm going to repost the beginning of the last chapter again as well – a bit like rewinding a recording a bit so you remember what just happened.

I haven't wasted my time while I didn't have my notes, though. I got the box set of all three series of The Inbetweeners and The Inbetweeners Movie and I've been watching them while waiting for my research to turn up.

Oh, and there was that time I was attacked by the leader of the conataur cavalry and barely escaped with my life, but that's another story.

For now, let's get back to the tale I like to call My Idiot Sister is The Chosen One.

Chapter 6 - The GB Olympic Queueing Team Part 1

The Thirtieth of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Wednesday.

Chapter 6 The GB Olympic Queueing Team

The thing is Amber and I had been to Durham before. It was where our older sister, May, was at university. She's doing English and Criminology which I thought would be really cool but it's all to do with Social Science (whatever that is) and they don't study murders or anything interesting like that. That's what we used the railcard for – it's got both Mum and Amber's name on it so it's all right for just the two of us to go. We only usually go up for the day. Most times Amber and May end up going shopping but we'd go to the pictures too and May always picks something I'd like. We went to see X Men First Class last time which I thought was excellent but Amber got confused because I don't think she realised that it was a prequel. She'd only watched the other ones for Hugh Jackman and was disappointed that he wasn't in it (yes, I know he has a cameo in it, but that wasn't enough for Amber and I didn't want put down any spoilers. Only I have now, haven't I? Thanks).

So you might be thinking 'Oh, isn't that a coincidence that they're going to Durham and that's where their sister is.' Well, congratulations to you because that's what a coincidence is, when two things happen at the same time. You may find it hard to believe but what with there being a university and a passport office in Durham something like this happening is not altogether impossible. Yes, there's an office in Liverpool that's nearer, but the Durham one was on the way to the Isle of Beep. So stop worrying about it and let me get on with the story.

'Have you told May about what's happened,' I asked Amber. The five of us were sat across two tables on the train. Dan was enjoying a packet of crisps and a bottle of pop and Nina and Horatio were reading different sections of the Sunday paper. Amber was charging up her Blackberry and messaging her friends.

'Yeah, I emailed her when we set off. Told her what had happened. She said she's busy tonight, but she'll catch up with us tomorrow afternoon after lectures.'

'Wasn't she upset about Mum and Dad?'

'Didn't seem to be. She said a friend of hers had her parents abducted by aliens. It all turned out all right in the end. She said if we were on the case she wasn't worried.'

'She did believe what you were saying, didn't she?'

'How do I know? Look, Carl, I'm busy here. I don't need the third degree, ok?'

'Ok!'

'Thank you.' She then went on to ignore me for the next two hours.

The train journey was long and boring. I didn't have my PSP with me and I got fed up of Tetris on my phone really quickly. So I picked my moment carefully and I finally got the story out of Nina and Horatio.

It turns out Horatio was a Spanish sailor by the name of Horacio Morientes who was the only survivor of a shipwreck. Or he thought he was the only survivor – there was this other bloke who survived and became his evil nemesis but that's nothing to do with this story. Anyway, he found Nina, a genie, trapped in a bottle ('more like a jar,' said Nina, 'with a lid. But as soon as a genie's involved everyone says “bottle”, so “bottle” it is) and before you could say 'three wishes' he was magically rescued and home and dry.

All sorts of astonishing misadventures ensued and before you know it they fell in love. So far, so sixties sitcom. Except it is expressly forbidden for a master to fall in love with their genie. Yeah, slavery's okey-dokey, but the 'L' word? That's a definite no-no. The only way around it was for Nina to renounce her power and the two of them to commit to each other for the rest of their lives. Which in this case would be all eternity, because as a result of getting married Horatio would join Nina in immortality. It all sounded very romantic at the time. No-one mentioned to them that being deathless meant they were unable to pass life on. They would never, ever be able to have children.

Being a genie and finding a genie are both types of a curse and there's rarely a happy ending where curses are involved. The conditions of the marriage were that they would have to be together forever. If ever one of them was out of earshot of the other then they would both crumble to dust. This was fine to begin with but as time went on it became apparent that the only thing they had truly had in common were their magical adventures. She began to find him boring and inattentive, he didn't like the way she examined the tiniest detail of everything she did. Little things, but the thought of an eternity of them weighed heavy on both their hearts. They began to spend less and less time together, but with the curse preventing either from having a life of their own they began to resent each other. Forced into each other's company they would say the most horrible and hurtful things, things that could never be taken back. The precious memories of the wonderful times they had spent together were soon forgotten.

I said that that was understandable after hundreds of years. Anybody would get irritated after that amount of time together. Horatio shook his head sadly. In the first five years of their marriage they had angrily screamed themselves hoarse dozens of times. Eventually, they had managed to come up with a working relationship, earning their keep all over Europe. Fortune Teller and stooge, or Magician and Assistant. They knew enough about the world of miracles in order to make a living as entertainers – circuses, theatres and fairs through the years, moving on before suspicions were formed about their ageless nature. But their wilful flouting of the rules of the supernatural meant they would never be respected or accepted by the world again. They had never been accepted by our world in the first place.

Things had got better in the last twenty years or so, though. The curse that kept them together was pedantically literal. With mobile phones coming into common usage it was possible for the two of them to be apart while still technically within earshot. Voice mail got around any problems with areas with no signal, but should either of them let their phone's battery fall dead then they would both soon follow it. Nevertheless, finally being able to live separate lives had helped them repair some of the damage done between them. And occasionally, when something adventurous or magical came along – like now – they'd find themselves almost getting along.

'Almost,' said Nina as Horatio finished off his can of Stella Artois with a burp.

Another night, another Holiday Lodge Express. Another fried breakfast. I hoped dad would be grateful enough with us for saving him and the world that he'd overlook his next credit card bill. We all met in the cafeteria to compare notes. Nina started the day with some unwelcome news.

'The passport office opened at eight-thirty. They're probably queueing out the door already. Come on we'd better get down there.'

I'd never really been one for fried bread but I resented being rushed away from my last slice then. At least I got to finish off my second cup of tea.

'Do we all have to go?' asked Amber.

'We're all getting passports, so yes,' replied Horatio. 'Have you all filled out the forms?'

Horatio had printed off online application forms using the small IT suite that belonged to the hotel. We all dutifully held up our completed forms as we stormed down the street. Somebody was going to lose one, I knew it.

'Has everybody got their photos?' asked Nina. We'd all taken turns in the photo booth at the railway station last night, so there was an unenthusiastic chorus of yesses in reply.

'Excellent. Nearly there...'

Millburngate House was a big blocky place that looked like it had been made out of concrete Lego. It took a while for us to find the entrance, but when we did there were plenty of signs to make sure we went in the right direction. It was Amber who spotted it first.

'Here we go: “Imaginary and Non-Realistic Applications”. This must be the way.'

There was a very helpful blue line running down the corridor to guide us on our way. Eventually, it came to a set of double doors. Dan and Horatio pulled them open between them revealing...

Three massively long queues. They were unavoidable, the first thing that struck you. The doors led into a huge hall, bigger than the one used for assembly at school. At the far end, at the front of each queue, we could just make out three tiny windows, each staffed by a distant blur of a person, each the goal of the hundreds of people waiting patiently in line.

'This is impossible,' I said. 'It's not even been open an hour.'

'Told you,' said Nina. 'We probably could have done with queueing even before the place opened.'

'But all these people can't be going to the Isle of Beep,' I said. 'Isn't this for emergency applications? Doesn't anyone get their passport well before they set off.'

'It's for anyone visiting somewhere that isn't real or isn't on a map,' explained Nina. 'And that's something you seldom plan for. There are very few people who plan to make this sort of a trip. These offices are always busy with people needing passports at the last minute. Join the club.'

As Nina was speaking, someone else entered the hall the same way that we had. Without hesitation they joined the middle one of the three queues.

'I think we'd better get in line,' said Horatio. 'This is going to take long enough as it is. If we keep letting others in we'll be here all day.'

'Should we split up?' asked Dan. 'Would it be quicker if we all joined different queues?'

'I don't know,' said Amber. 'I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't think it's such a good idea.'

There was a quick conflab and it was decided that we would split up – Me with Nina in the middle queue, Amber with Horatio in the left hand one and Dan on the right hand side. He hadn't done anything like this before but he assured us he was a dab hand with forms and the like. We took our places and prepared for the long wait ahead.

Barely five minutes had gone by when Horatio statrted waving at us. None of the lines appeared to have gone down at all but a few more people had entered the hall and joined each of the three queues. There was enough of a gap between the queues that it was impossible to have a conversation between them without raising your voice. It seemed Horatio had elected not to attempt that was instead furiously miming something to me and Nina. It took a while to realise that he was gesturing toward someone a short way ahead of us in our queue. Mindful of not losing our place Nina and I peered past the people in front of us to see a woman in a black duffel coat carrying a cat. She had her hood up so it was difficult to see her face clearly. But her chin was visible, jutting out.

It was covered in stubble.

'I think we joined the wrong queue,' I said to Nina.

More soonliest.

Chapter 5 - Bottling It Part 3

The Twenty-Seventh of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Sunday.

Horatio had an AA map in his car, one of those big ones that he'd got from a remaindered book shop. With pen and ruler he had drawn a line that showed the direction that the Lodestone had been pointing across the country.

'We need to find somewhere far enough away to draw a second line from, explained Horatio. Assuming the Scrolls are in the north-east of England, Sheffield should do the job quite nicely. We take a reading from the Lodestone there - ' he stabbed Sheffield on the map with his pen, ' - and where the two lines cross should give us the location of the Scrolls.'

'What if the scrolls are not in England?' asked Dan.

'Then we're going to have to move further and further away to get an accurate reading.'

'I hadn't even thought of that,' I said. 'What if they are abroad? I don't know, I just assumed we wouldn't have to fly to get them. We haven't got that sort of money. We haven't got any sort of money!'

'Let's worry about that if and when it becomes necessary,' said Nina. While Horatio had been organising his map, Nina had gone and got changed. She still wore her cape but now it was over a simple plain pink dress. Her hair, freed from the curlers, flowed down to her shoulders. She reminded me of someone but I couldn't put my finger on exactly who. 'First let's get to Sheffield before it gets dark. Find out where we're going and take it from there. Will we get everyone in your car?'

'Should do,' said Horatio. 'There's room for three in the back.'

'I can't go in the back,' announced Dan. 'I get car sick. Sorry, but I do.'

'I wouldn't risk it,' I warned Horatio. 'There's already been trouble with an egg custard today.'

'I'll be fine if I'm in the front,' said Dan. 'I just need plenty of fresh air, that's all.'

'Well go and get some now,' said Horatio. 'I'm not having you be untidy in my car.'

'I'll have a look at the map while I'm at it.' Dan picked up the atlas. 'Let's see what the shortest route is.' Off he went down the stairs.

'Are we prepared for this?' I asked Nina. 'I haven't really had chance to think about what we're doing. I haven't even got a change of clothes.'

'Don't worry, love,' said Nina. 'I've had a look into my crystal ball and I'm confident we won't have too far to go.'

'Cool. I didn't realise you had a crystal ball too,' I said.

'It's just a figure of speech, Carl,' said Nina. 'But I did do a quick Tarot reading, just to get a general idea of what's ahead.'

'And?' I said impatiently.

'There's a good chance it might rain,' said Nina. 'I think we should take our umbrellas.'

'And definitely don't forget the Lodestone,' said Horatio. 'Without it the whole journey will be pointless.'

'That's a point,' I said. 'Where is the Lodestone?'

'I thought you had it,' said Nina. 'You were using it with your map.'

'No,' said Horatio, irritated. 'I gave it back to you when I finished. Where have you put it?'

'I haven't put it anywhere. I didn't have it!'

Horatio put his head in his hands. 'You're always like this. Not thinking of the consequences. “Oh, it'll all work out in the end,” “stop worrying so much.”. That's why we end up with trouble with trolls and the world coming to an end because you can't keep anything tidy!'

It was embarrassing to watch. This argument was obviously about something other than the Lodestone. It reminded me of when Mum and Dad fell out, only there was a bitterness, a hollowness to Nina and Horatio's words. When Mum shouted at Dad she wanted to prove a point. Nina and Horatio were past that. They were just shouting because they were hurt.

'Is this making things better, Horatio? This tantrum? Because all I can see it doing is upsetting me and the kids. For the record, you did not give the Lodestone directly to me.'

Horatio started to reply but was cut off. 'You were there when I put it - !'

'Even if that were the issue,' said Nina, evenly, forcing herself to be calm, 'it won't have disappeared. I have magical alarms all over the place – no-one can get in here without me knowing, and no-one is able to take anything out of here either. The Lodestone must be here somewhere, we just have to look.'

'Sorry, have you been looking for this?' Dan slouched back into the kitchen holding the map and the Lodestone. 'I was just having a proper look at it.'

Nina was puzzled. 'How did you take it out without the alarm going off?' Dan just shrugged.

That wasn't enough for Horatio. He stormed over to Dan and confronted him. 'You moron! Have you any idea how worried we were?' Horatio was about six feet tall and towered over Dan's stooped head. Dan didn't appear at all intimidated though. He simply looked over his glasses and met Dan's gaze. Then he shook his head, almost imperceptibly. Horatio backed down, unexpectedly flustered.

Dan pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and carried on as if nothing had happened. He put down the map and Lodestone.

'You were right about this thing being powerful,' said Dan. He opened the atlas to the page showing Sheffield. 'I was just looking at the route to Sheffield when, fizz, bang, there was a flash of light and suddenly, mysteriously, a line appeared on the map. Look.'

He pointed to Sheffield and there it was. A line drawn in pen from the city centre to a point off the page to the north.

Nina looked sceptical. 'Really? The Lodestone drew a line on the map?'

'Yep,' said Dan enthusiastically. 'See, it's in green ink. That has to be magic, doesn't it?'

Horatio seized on this opportunity to forget the last few minutes. He tore out the pages of the atlas that the lines from Sheffield and Manchester ran through and laid them out the better to work out where they crossed. In the excitement of discovery everyone else forgot the last few minutes too, and Dan's dubious story wasn't challenged. But I remember a few days later when I used an old carrier bag finding a receipt in the bottom of it. It was for a green pen – from a WH Smith's in Sheffield.

'Hah! I could have guessed, really,' said Nina.

Horatio had carefully extended the original lines onto the overlapping pages and now the point where they crossed could be seen: in the North Sea, off the coast of Northumberland.

'Is that right?' I asked. 'Are they under the sea? Is it sunken treasure?' I knew that would complicate things, but there was part of me that thought if would be pretty cool if it was.

'Oh, it's right, all right,' said Nina. 'Only that's not just sea there. That's where you'll find the Isle of Beep.'

I think it's important at this time to point out that Nina didn't really say “Beep” then. It's just that when she said the name of the island there was an actual beep like they have on the telly when someone's swearing and they want to blot it out. I don't know where the beep came from – it sounded like it was coming from Nina but it was definitely electronic. When she said it again I tried reading her lips, but bizarrely it looked like she was saying “Beep” even though you could tell that wasn't what she was trying to say.

'Sorry, did you just say “the Isle of Beep”?' I asked her. When I said it, I just said the word “Beep”.

'No,' replied Nina, 'I said “the Isle of Beep”. It's a small island that sort of doesn't exist. It's not a famous holiday resort, it's not been popular since Victorian times, you know, bank holiday weekends, that sort of thing. Lots of people didn't used to go there, but with the advent of cheap package deals more don't go to the Costa del Señal Sonora or the like nowadays. Well, you can't guarantee the weather.'

I checked with Amber and Dan. 'She did just say “Isle of Beep”, didn't she?'

Amber nodded. 'Yeah.'

Dan didn't agree though. 'No,' he said, 'it was more like “Isle of Beep”.' Only when he said “Beep”, while it was still all electronicky sounding, it was much, much deeper. Odd.

'Well, whatever it's called, how do we get there if it sort of doesn't exist?' I asked.

'Have you still got your passport?' Nina asked Horatio.

'It's well out of date,' he replied. 'Lapsed about a hundred years ago.'

Horatio and Nina kept dropping these hints about being really, really old but both of them looked about the same age – maybe even a bit younger – than Mum and Dad. It was getting on my nerves a bit so I thought I'd call them out on it.

'There's those photos on the wall downstairs,' I said to Nina. 'All about thirty or forty years old. But you don't look any older now than you do in them. And Horatio keeps going on about stuff a hundred, or three hundred, years ago. Who are you?'

'Do you want to tell them, or shall I?' Horatio asked Nina.

Nina got her jacket – pink, naturally – from the hallway and put it on. 'We're going to have to get passports to the Isle of Beep from the office in Durham,' she said. 'We've got a long ride ahead of us – I'll tell you the story as we go. But for now...'

'For now,' continued Horatio,' all you need to know is that I became immortal over three hundred years ago. That's what happens when a master marries his genie.'

'You're married?' said Amber to Horatio.

'You're a genie?' I said to Nina.

Nina nodded. 'Used to be, at any rate. I've been a palm reader and fortune teller for this last century or so now. My name used to be 'Nina de Bouteille' but over the years people kept calling me 'Booty' and eventually it stuck.'

'I don't get it,' said Amber. 'Are you not together any more?'

Horatio laughed.

'It's a bit more complicated than that,' said Nina. 'Come on, let's get going. I said I'd tell you on the way.'

There was some discussion on the way to Horatio's car about what to do about packing if this quest lark was going to take more than a few days. Amber and I had our overnight bags from when we'd stayed at the hotel with Cabriatti but it was decided that a trip to the shops in the morning before the passport office opened was a good idea. Dan had a rucksack full of stuff with him – don't know when he'd had the chance to pick that up but it was one less thing to worry about.

Horatio's car was in the small chained off car park at the end of the alley that was set aside for the shop owners. There were several cars there but it was easy to tell which one was Horatio's. In the corner space there was a pink Ford Sierra – surrounded by traffic cones.

Horatio stopped short of unlocking the padlock that held the chain across the car park's entrance. He stepped over and took a closer look at his car.

'Who put all these cones here?' he said perplexed. I had half an idea who, but before I could say anything Horatio let out a cry. 'The tires! Some little beep has slashed my tires!' (On this occasion it's me doing the beeping...)

'Horatio,' I called out, 'I'd come away from there if I were you. I think this is the work of demon sisters.'

'Oh really,' he said. 'well they've gone and done it now. Never mind the end of the world. Nobody touches my car and gets away with it.'

'Horatio! Get out of there!' shouted Nina.

'Don't interrupt me when I'm ranting. Eek!'

At last, Horatio had seen what we'd seen. Three of the cones surrounding his car had sprouted legs and claws like bizarre orange plastic crabs. It wasn't much of a jump to work out that those claws had been responsible for the damage to Horatio's tires. If he wasn't out of there quickly they'd be doing something similar to his ankles. Fortunately, he'd got the message and the message had been 'Run!'

The crab cones didn't follow us out of the alley. Their job had been only to scare us off and they'd done that well enough.

'Best not to talk to me right now,' said Horatio. 'Not in a good mood.'

'Never mind that,' I said. 'How are we going to get to there now?'

The thing I hate most about my sister is how smug she gets on the very few occasions when she has something useful to add.

'Let me introduce you to Mr American Express and Mrs Family and Friends Railcard,' she said. She held up her Blackberry. 'The next train to Durham departs from Piccadilly station in twenty-five minutes.'

I was going to say something but then I noticed a figure slumped in a shop doorway opposite.

'Hey, isn't that that troll that was in the shop earlier?' I asked no-one in particular. 'Is he unconscious? It looks like he's been in a fight.'

'It does, doesn't it?' said Dan.

More soonliest.

Chapter 5 - Bottling It Part 2

The Twenty-Fifth of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Friday.

I didn't think so at the time and I've had a bit of a think about it since and I am almost certain that this was the one and only time I had been in a pink kitchen.

We'd all shuffled up the narrow stairs that led to the rooms above. There was only a couple of chairs in Nina's 'reading' room so it was decided we'd all go upstairs for a cup of tea. The kitchen was just large enough for all four of us to squeeze in. There weren't enough chairs – in fact the remains of one that I assumed was broken by the troll was tucked away under the table – so everybody stood rather than fight over the couple that were available. We all cupped our mugs in our hands and waited to see who would be first to speak.

'Can I see the Lodestone,' asked Nina.

Amber made to hand over the gift bag that contained it. I stopped her.

'Hang on a minute,' I said. 'How do you know about the Lodestone? And how do we know we can trust you? It's all a bit convenient you being clued up on us and what we're doing. You could be working for them cat demon people.'

'You're the ones who came here,' pointed out Horatio. 'Don't get all nowty with us.'

Nina shushed him. 'It's all right Horatio. That's a fair question.' She put down her tea and held up the palm of her hand.. 'I take it you saw the sign outside the shop? I'm a fortune teller. I just told my own fortune and lo and behold there you were, booked in to arrive about - ' she shot a look at the kitchen clock ' - about three o'clock.' She pointed to a crease at the base of her thumb. 'Annoying know-it-all boy,' then at a line running between her fingers, 'irritating, but cosmically important airhead girl,' and finally she tapped the tip of a finger, 'half-man, half- '

'Hello, anybody there?' Dan's voice echoed up from downstairs.

'Up here, honey!' called Nina. 'The kettle's just boiled.

She turned back toward me. 'As to who I work for...' she pointed at her face. 'Strictly freelance. This palace is paid for out of my own fortune.'

'It's true,' said Horatio. 'I keep offering to find her somewhere better – to help with the money. But she won't have it. Independence is a very big thing with her.'

'The biggest,' said Nina.

'Except when help with trolls is required.'

Nina laughed. 'Except when help with trolls is required. I think that's fair enough, don't you?' And Horatio laughed too.

'Who are you people?' I asked.

'Ohh, life stories later. Let's get on to the interesting stuff.' Nina beckoned to Amber. 'Give us a butcher's at this Lodestone, then.'

Nina took the bag from Amber and removed the Lodestone from its packaging. I'd forgotten how unimpressive it looked, that flimsy frame and the string. I felt a bit embarrassed making all this fuss over it and almost apologised for its appearance. Nina and Horatio, however, were awestruck.

'Is that the Chianti Lodestone?' asked Horatio, his voice a reverent whisper.

Nina shook her head. 'It's a copy – a perfect copy. I didn't know such a thing existed.' She watched the double-arrow at its heart twist within its cradle as she rocked the frame. 'This is some serious Juju here, people.'

'Do you know how to use it?' I asked. 'We're supposed to be looking for something – or things – called the Tabla Rasa Scrolls. We were told this would lead us to them. But it's pointing in two directions. Which is the right one?'

'Tabla Rasa!' exclaimed Nina. 'Blimey! This isn't just “will I be married before I'm 25?” is it? What have you lot got yourself involved in?'

Between us we told the pink pair the story so far. Dan added in the most recent details during his second cuppa.

'I'm sorry about your parents,' said Nina when we'd finished. 'I wish there was something we could do immediately. But there aren't any short cuts once you start on one of these quest scenarios. You've got to find what you're looking for, go through some sort of confrontation and probably learn a lesson or two along the way.' She smiled. 'There's a lot of personal growth involved.'

Amber snorted. 'I'm not learning nothing.'

'I think that's a safe bet,' I said.

Nina picked up the Lodestone. 'This is a very powerful alchemical tool. Switched on and with the right knowledge it can be used for all sorts of transmutative gubbins. Even on 'standby' it's giving off loads of mystical noise and fall out.'

'Switch your magic off, never leave it on 'standby',' said Horatio. 'It's a right waste of energy even when it's doing nothing.'

'Quite right,' agreed Nina. 'But one of the side-effects of that fall out is that it will always point toward the most powerful magic in its same plane of existence.'

'Or dimension,' added Horatio.

'Or postcode,' finished Nina. 'It's that property of the Lodestone that gives it its name.'

'And the Scrolls are the most powerful?' I asked.

'The Scrolls are the most powerful. The capacity to completely erase certain aspects of Creation? Oh yeah...'

'Stuff this, I just want to rescue Mum and Dad,' said Amber.

'So do I,' I said. 'But this is all a bit heavy duty.' I looked at Nina. 'You're more clued up on the likes of alchemy and trolls. Wouldn't you – or someone like you – be better suited to this? I mean, isn't there some sort of magical police we could phone up?'

Nina and Horatio exchanged a knowing glance.

'There is at that,' said Horatio, 'but I'm afraid they wouldn't listen to you and they certainly wouldn't listen to us. We're a bit persona non grata in magical circles.'

'It's up to you, gang,' said Nina. 'Try not to let the world be destroyed.'

'Oh brilliant,' I said. 'We don't even know where we're going for starters. I'm not taking the blame if the apocalypse comes just because I got lost.'

'Now that I can help you with,' said Nina. 'Has anybody got a piece of card with the words “Not today, thank you” written on it?'

Amber, Dan and I shrugged while Horatio patted his pockets before holding his hands up apologetically. 'Can't think where I've left mine,' he said.

Nina frowned. She got a pair of scissors from drawer, a packet of cereal from a cupboard and sat on one of the chairs, shuffling it toward the table. She set about cutting out one of the larger sides of the cereal packet.

'There's a large element of British Magic that's based on manners,' she explained as she cut. 'There are incantations based on how you take your tea, the correct way to address a Duchess and helping old ladies across the road. In the right circumstances if you politely refuse to accept the existence of magic you can stop it from working – for a short while. Pen!' Nina held her hand out, waiting for someone to fetch her what she wanted. Dan still had a biro in the pocket of his Golden Olden Times polo shirt – he handed it to her.

'What use is that to us?' complained Amber. 'We're trying to get the thing to work properly. We don't want to switch it off.'

Nina wrote “Thank you” on the card from the packet twice as large as she'd written “Not today”. She reached for the Lodestone and placed it in the centre of the table. The arrow shifted to maintain the direction it had stubbornly stuck to all this time. Nina then held up the card, showing it to everybody in the kitchen one at a time.

'Yes we do,' said Nina. 'We only want in to work in the direction that will lead us to the scrolls.' And with that she placed the card immediately in front of one of the arrows two points, taking a second to ensure the writing was the right way up after initially putting it on its side.

Nothing happened.

'Oh, I don't believe this,' said Amber. But Nina didn't seem disappointed. She smiled and moved the card so that it was now in front of the arrow's second point. Straight away it fell slack, just hanging there loosely at the end of its strings. Nina turned the Lodestone upside-down and again the arrow hung limply, obeying gravity but paying no attention to any other force (yes, I know the string is also exerting a force on the arrow and that's why the system is in equilibrium. You know what I mean. Nobody likes a smart alec). That is until Nina lifted the card out of the way when it then pulled against its strings as it sought the direction of the Scrolls once more.

'Not bad, eh?' said Nina.

'I don't get it,' said Amber. No surprise there, then.

'That's the way toward the Scrolls,' I said, pointing in the same direction as the second arrow head. 'Putting the card there blocked their influence on the Lodestone. When you put the card at the other end there was no influence from that direction to block so the arrow still worked.'

'Simples,' said Nina.

Horatio followed the line of the arrow over to the window and looked out in roughly the same direction.

'That's north-east, more or less,' he said. 'Be impossible to tell exactly where its coming from without some sort of triangulation. I think we'd have to go at least as far as somewhere like Sheffield to get another reading.'

Nina tapped him on the shoulder. 'We?'

'Yes, “we”,' replied Horatio. 'Don't pretend you hadn't already decided to help with this quest of theirs.'

Nina pouted. 'I hadn't completely decided yet.'

'Yes you had.'

'Don't pretend you know me, Horatio.'

'I ought to, after 300 years.'

'Yes, you ought to. That's the point.' Nina turned to the rest of us. 'Anyone for Sheffield?'

More soonliest.

Chapter 5 - Bottling It Part 1

The Twenty-Third of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Wednesday.

Chapter 5 Bottling It

Nobody had been hurt in the tram crash. It was incredible. The damage was enormous, the entire front of the shop had caved in and much of the one one next door was smashed too. There was talk of the building being condemned, the upper floors were dangerously unstable with nothing substantial beneath them to support them. We were evacuated extremely quickly as was everybody from the surrounding buildings and the whole area was cordoned off. After all our details were taken and when the paramedics were satisfied that we were unharmed we were allowed to go. Everyone was saying what a terrible accident it was. We weren't.

'Are you suggesting that somebody caused that crash to deliberately injure you?' With his shop in ruins Dan had somehow ended up tagging along with us.

'Injure us!' I don't know why but I remember feeling more angry than shocked. 'They were trying to kill us! That thing didn't just come off the rails. It carried on half way down the street and then picked out the shop that we were in.'

Dan nodded thoughtfully. 'Yeah, that does seem a bit odd.'

Amber gave a one of her odd snorting laughs at that. She was giving off that slightly-bored-with-everything air that was her default attitude but it did seem a bit more forced than usual. Her eyes looked a bit uncertain, a bit afraid. I wondered if I should say something but then she made her position clear by saying something dumb to me first.

'You are so going to eat your words when you meet Miss Booty.'

We were wandering through town in a dazed fashion in no particular direction. Unconsciously, I think we were trying to get as far away from the devastation of the tram crash as possible. There was a sense that someone in the group must know where we were going and so we were all sort of following each other. I quickly came out of my daze when I realised that it was Amber who'd been steering us. We were on Oldham Street. I threw my head back in despair.

'Argh! We are not going to get our palms read! There is no situation in the world, certainly not the one we're in right now, where handing over money so someone can check out our “lifelines” (I'm sorry to say that, yes, I did make the air quotes sign at that point) will help. I know what's in our future: More things trying to crash into us, more running around with very little idea what we're supposed to do and family Christmasses round at the cone-heads house.'

'Have you figured out which way round that arrow thingy works yet?'

'No, I haven't had time to -'

'No? Right, shut up then. Miss Booty it is.'

I looked over to Dan for support. He was nodding thoughtfully as if considering all the pros and cons. He said, 'I think it was Sherlock Holmes who said that when you can't come up with anything else, whatever's left, no matter how rubbish it is, must be the solution.' He pushed his glasses back up his nose and fixed me with a grave stare. 'Sherlock Holmes was a clever bloke. We've got nothing else to try. Might as well give it a go.'

At the time I thought that was the most useless argument I'd ever heard, but looking back it must have been good because we went to this Miss Booty's.

There was a narrow alley off the main road, surprisingly busy for such a small street. Signs protruded from the walls on either side. There was an old record shop, a hairdresser's, a martial arts studio ('that'd be more use,' I suggested), a couple of shops selling items of dubious moral character and at the end, in the shape of a giant hand, a sign for a fortune teller.

The door to this emporium of wonders was covered in dirty flaking pink paint. At first I thought it might have been abandoned, but through the dirty glass a small sign declared the place was 'OPEN'. The door frame was surrounded on either side by windows that were filled up with faded photographs of a young woman dressed in various versions of the same outfit: long pink robes with a small cape that was fastened with a brooch in the shape of a crescent moon. In each she was pictured smiling next to what I presume was a celebrity. I didn't recognise any of them – from the clothes I supposed it must have been in the 70s or 80s. I don't know. I like old telly, but I wasn't really into Light Entertainment and I'm no fashion expert. Each had an autographed dedication but again I didn't recognise any of the names: “Thanks again, Nina. You're a Doll! Love, Jimmy xx” or “Nina – Bless you, darling! All my love, Lenny X” There were messages from Marti, Larry and Les too, all of which seemed to impress Dan but I was none the wiser.

'Are we going in then?' asked Amber.

'It was your idea, you go first.'

'You are such a child!' said Amber, undermining her point somewhat by sticking out her tongue.

The opening door was accompanied by an old-fashioned shop bell announcing our presence. We descended a small flight of steps into what looked like a small pink version of a doctor's waiting room. There were two short benches against opposite walls – I couldn't ever imagine there being a queue of people that long in this dingy little place – and more of the signed photographs over every wall. There were also charts showing the names of each of the various lines on the palm of the hand. All bobbins, of course, but I was interested to find out that another name for palm reading is 'chiromancy'. I do like discovering new words, even bogus ones.

There was door opposite the front door and it was slightly open. I thought about peeking through it but was stopped by a voice coming from behind it.

'Be with you in a minute.' It was a man's voice – I wasn't expecting that.

'Who's that?' I mouthed to Amber.

'I don't know,' she said in a stage whisper. 'There was only Miss Booty here last time.'

The door opened and the owner of the voice was revealed – a tall, thin man in his early thirties wearing a white shirt, pink Pringle tank top, plaid trousers and a flat cap. He approached Dan.

'Do you know what Mark Twain said about golf?' he asked him.

'Yes,' replied Dan.

The pink golfer looked disappointed at that. 'Oh,' he said and sat on a bench. 'Are you here to see Nina?'

'Miss Booty? Yes. Is she in?' asked Amber.

Sounds of an argument in another room got closer and closer. The pink golfer theatrically cocked an ear in the direction of the open door.

'Yes, I think she is.'

The words of the argument became louder and clearer. There seemed to be three voices.

'Don't you dare ever show up drunk here again! In fact don't you dare ever show up here!'

' M'sorry, Nina. I didn't know who to turn to. He won't listen to me. He never listens to me.'

'That's because I've gone deaf from the constant noise! You never shut up! Day and night – can't you be quiet for just five minutes?'

'No-one listens! No-one ever listens to me!'

'Go on, get out! Get out the pair of you.'

The argument entered the room. Two of the participants shared one body. I know troll can be a bit of a catch-all term for anything big and horrid but I'm pretty sure that's what it was. A seven-foot two-headed troll, crying and shouting at itself wearing nothing but an oversize raincoat.

'And get some clothes on! You're lucky that ogre left his coat here.' Shooing them along was the young woman from the photographs, dressed in pink pyjamas decorated with a cloud pattern. Her long blonde hair was in curlers and she was wearing her cape as a sort of dressing gown. 'Go and do something nice together. Go and find some trees to smash or something.'

Both heads of the troll perked up at this. 'Smashing!' they said together. Then, 'Jinx!' That made them both laugh and they left the shop in a much better mood, even chuckling at the tinkling of the bell as they opened the door.

'Bye, Nina! Sorry about the hassle, Horatio!' The pink golfer gave a half-hearted wave at the mention of his name.

It's fair to say the three of us had stood there with our mouths wide open during all this. Dan in particular was shocked at the casual way a giant beast had been let loose on the streets of Manchester.

'You're not just going to let that thing run wild, are you?' he demanded of Nina.

She held her hands up and shrugged. 'Not my problem any more.'

'It never is, is it?' Horatio the golfer wasn't impressed.

Nina snapped. 'Shut up, Horatio! I'm sorry I interrupted your precious pitch and putt. But you know talking down a twin-headed troll's a two-person job. There wasn't anybody else I could call on a Sunday.'

Horatio sighed. 'No, I suppose there wasn't'

'Thank you,' said Nina awkwardly.

'Sorry,' announced Dan, holding up his mobile phone. 'I'm having trouble getting a signal down here. Just going to pop outside for a second to text my mum, tell her what's going on.'

He skipped up the stairs and into the alley outside. Everybody else was left there in the waiting room. There was a slight pause while the mood of the moment changed gears and then Nina clapped her hands and rubbed them together in eager expectation.

'Right then, what's all this about a Lodestone?'

More soonliest