“’Mashal’? Where’s that?” said Chloe. “I’ve never heard of ‘Mashal’ before. Or ‘Larakia’.”

“Hang on,” said Hannah, who was more interested in something else she had noticed. “What do you mean ‘Princess Hannah’ and ‘Princess Chloe’? We’re not Princesses!”

“Of course you are,” said the woman with the long white hair who had greeted them when they emerged from the tunnel. “You cannot be here in Larakia without being royalty. I am royal too—Princess Katetheuna Muthageteria is my full name and title.”

“But we’ve never even been here before!” said Hannah.

“It doesn’t matter, my dear. You came in through the tunnel, like everyone else. You now have citizenship of Larakia. That is simply how it works.”

“Really? And that makes us Princesses too?”

“That’s right. All Larakian citizens are adopted children of the One True King. And, since your father is a King, that makes you a Princess.”

“Awesome!” said Hannah. “I could get used to this.”

Chloe was pleased too. In all of her favourite books and films, there were princesses. And she always wanted to be them, though she would never admit this out loud to Hannah. And not weedy, wimpy damsel-in-distress type princesses, but princesses with spark and gusto, who fought too. Warrior princesses. However, she still had some reservations.

“But please, Miss Kath…Miss Katey,” said Chloe politely, still concerned with her original question, “just where is ‘Larakia’?”

“Oh. Sorry, my dear. I was unclear. We are on the other side of the Aythian mountains from Dahma, northeast of Tur and Shaveh.”

“I’ve never heard of those places before. We came here from a tunnel in Oxford.”

“Oxford? Where is that?”

“Er…England. In Europe.”

“My dear, I have never heard of any of those places either... This is most puzzling. It does trouble me somewhat that you have never heard the name ‘Mashal’ before, let alone ‘Larakia’… But here you both are: two young girls with dark brown hair, identical twins, just as Hotzeh said you would be…”

“Hotzeh? Who’s that?” asked Hannah.

“Oh, Hotzeh is my brother. He is our head Forthteller at the moment. He has the gift of Sight. He does occasionally get things wrong sometimes though. Like last Winter when he forthtold a polar freeze and we had a freak heatwave. But he’s generally spot on. And, as I said, here you both are. It’s hard to deny he’s right this time.”

“You mean you’ve been waiting for us?” said Chloe.

“Exactly. I’ve been waiting for two identical young girls with dark brown hair to arrive here in Larakia through the Tsaphsaphah Tunnel. It has been forthtold that there is a special mission for you to carry out.”

“Oh, how exciting!” exclaimed Hannah. Royalty and a special mission. It was turning out to be a rather eventful day.

“Sorry,” said Chloe, “but we don’t really have time for any sort of special mission right now. We should really be getting back to our class in Oxford. If we go back through the tunnel, will we end up back where we came from?”

“My dear, to my knowledge, the only place that you will return to if you go back through that tunnel is to the Weeping Tree at the foot of Mount Awmeer and, eventually, to the city of Qereth in Aythia.”

“But then how are we going to get back to Oxford?” said Hannah.

“Well, Princess Chloe--”

“I’m not Chloe, I’m Hannah.” Hannah’s face flushed red for the briefest of moments.

“I apologise. Well, Princess Hannah, ‘Oxford’, ‘England’ and ‘Europe’ may be real places, but I am afraid they are not places near here or on any map that I have ever seen. This is most strange. I have heard of people being carried straight to Larakia on the Kingwind before…but this really is most strange. We shall have to go to see Hotzeh to ask him what he thinks about it. Come along.”

Without knowing what else to do, in Chloe’s case, and because she was curious to see who this Hotzeh person was, in Hannah’s, the girls followed Kathetheuna into the city. All the rectangular houses were made of the same white stone as the mountains, decorated with marble and, marvellously, here and there with jewels above their doorframes, looking as though they had taken great time and skill to build. The people were friendly and whenever the girls passed someone they smiled and said “Welcome to Larakia!” They were all wearing the same long white robe as Katetheuna, although each had their own thread stitched into it in its own unique colour and pattern, much as each house had a different coloured jewel fixed above the door. The whole city shimmered delicately, but without being garish or overstated, like a watercolour rainbow.

After a while they came to a small house with a huge ruby set in the wall above the door frame. Kathetheuna knocked on the wooden door and then led Chloe and Hannah inside.

They came into a marble-floored atrium, with doors going off it at either end. In the middle of this was a large, white-marble chair, at which sat a middle-aged man with dark skin and a long black beard. His own robe had a pattern of leaping red and orange, like flames. His eyes were gazing directly forward at them.

“Hello, Hotzeh,” said Katetheuna. “The two girls have arrived.”

“Ah, excellent!” said the Hotzeh. “And not a moment too soon! Are they identical twins?”

“That’s right. They came today, just as you said they would.”

“Of course, of course! Welcome, welcome, young ladies!

Chloe and Hannah greeted the man. It wasn’t long before they realised that he was blind. He was still staring straight ahead at them, but his eyes weren’t in focus, and he didn’t track them with his pupils. Instead of the normal irises and whites in his eyes, they seemed to contain a red fire from another world.

“Something is strange, though, my brother,” said Katetheuna. “They say that they have never been to Mashal before.”

“Really?” said Hotzeh. “That is odd. Where have you come from then, young ones? Come now, come now, don’t be shy!”

“We’ve come from Oxford, sir,” said Chloe politely, not knowing how to speak properly to a ‘Forthteller’. “In England. Our class was there on a school trip. A tunnel collapsed on us and when we came out, we were here.”

“Oxford, you say?” The man called Hotzeh thought for a moment. “Never heard of it! Most unusual indeed! Are you telling me that you have come here from a world other than Mashal?”

“I think we are,” said Hannah.

“What should we do, sir? We just want to get back to our own world,” said Chloe.

“Does this change anything about the forthtelling, Hotzeh?” said Kathetheuna.

“There can only be one conclusion,” said Hotzeh, “The One True King must have brought you here from your own world in order to carry out your special mission in ours!”

“But what if we don’t want to carry out this special mission?” said Chloe.

“Young lady, if the One True King really has brought you here, I am afraid you will only be able to return to your own world once you have carried out your special mission.”

“What is this ‘special mission’ you’ve been talking about anyway?” asked Hannah.

“Why, I thought you’d never ask! To find and to bring here the lost heir to the Steward Throne of Larakia.”

“Just finding someone and bringing them here? That doesn’t sound too difficult. I mean, we got here, and we weren’t even trying.”

“Yes. There are just a few complications.”

“What are they?”

“Well, nobody knows who he is, nobody knows his name, and he is probably hundreds of miles away in a dangerous, hostile, foreign country.”

“Ah,” said Hannah. “That does make things a little trickier.”