CHAPTER 1
How It All Began
It was the height of summer in the year of 2006, and the school holidays had just started. My name is George and I am twelve years old. I have dirty blonde hair that ends just above my brown eyes and I had recently finished reading the old kingdom trilogy by Garth Nix. He was my favourite author and I loved reading his books. I was cycling down to the nearest library on my ridgeback mountain bike for some new books to read while I went on holiday to Spain, and after that to the Isle of White. The sun was high in the sky and I felt its warming rays play across my face, and I thought that if the dead were real they wouldn't be out in the open on this day, for the dead were greatly weakened by sunlight and less so by rain. The library was only two streets away but I was starting to sweat already because of the heat and I was excited about what book I might find. It must be a Garth Nix book, I thought, and hopefully a few more new ones as well, that would be a real bonus. The library came into view as I rounded the corner; I was really sweaty by now and longing for the cool interior of the library. I wedged my bike into a rusted bike holder and chained it there so no over eager chav could take it for a joyride down the skate park. There was a massive, ancient oak tree looming over the bike holder and its great green leaves filter the sun to make a semi-shadow all over the car park in front of the library. I opened the deep oak doors of the library and stepped into the brightly lit reception.
Half an hour later I was standing in front of a bookcase with tacky plastic shelves stacked high with books. I had asked the receptionist if they had any Garth Nix books but they only had Grim Tuesday, which I had already read before, but there was another author with the same surname so I thought I would check it out. It was in the fantasy section so it looked promising, and I needed a new story to dwell on any way.
I had been told that the book was supposed to be very, very old but readable, it had a sun bleached brown, leather covering and nothing but a weird symbol on the front cover. At last! I had just seen a faded brown spine of a book wedged in tightly between "Gone Into The Abyss" and "Gyrobics for beginners", which I knew had nothing to do with fantasy... It wasn't too big or heavy and the cover looked very old. I couldn't see the weird symbol though and I wondered if I had the right book. I flipped the book on its side and there was Fredrick Nix, written on the spine. I flipped the book back over in my hand to look at the cover again. Surely that hadn't been there before! But there in the dead centre was a great charter mark! It was deep silver in colour and the lines moved inside giving the effect of slow moving mercury. It kept its shape though. It was pulsating lightly and so I put two fingers on it and fell into nothingness.
Then suddenly small stars exploded all around me, but these were no stars, they were billions upon billions of charter marks glowing gold! They weren't all gold though; some were silver, others blue, red and many more. All different and they all felt warm and fuzzy. Then quite suddenly I was back in my body, two fingers millimetres away from the charter mark. The experience was eerie, for all this was just like Garth Nix's vivid explanations in his stories. I immediately went to the receptionist's desk and showed her the book and told her to look at it, but she just saw bleached brown leather of an old book and a sweaty child showing it to her. "Are you okay dear?" she asked, I felt embarrassed that I came storming in and looking so stupid. "But surly miss you see that mark, or at least feel it, it pulsates you see." I then thrust the book, cover first, onto her open palm. As soon as she felt the cover the mark glowed so bright it looked like a light bulb. Some colour poured back into her aged face. "Oh my," she said, "Why I believe I do young man, how wonderful, and warm too. I feel ten years younger.", and she looked it too I thought. "May I have it then miss?" I asked as pleasantly as I could for I feared she would take it because of the warmth it gave her.
"Of course deary, of course." So she scanned it quickly and handed it over. I practically ran through the oak front doors, and sprinted to my bike. Now this was a book I needed to read. It felt like it was saturated in magic, which is supposedly not real.
It took me a lot less time to get home than it did to get to the library. I was going so fast I almost smashed into the front door of my house, but luckily dad had improved the brakes on my bike after a mountain bike crash when my brakes failed. Remembering that time I felt my stomach churn. I was hurling down a mountain path with dad when he shouted "stop!" But my brakes failed and I rocketed into a pole, a horizontal pole at my stomach level designed to keep cars off the path. Lets just say I didn't cycle the rest of the way down! I opened my front door and stepped into the porch. Our porch was made of brick with one large window on the left. It was a short corridor really, with the end wall made of glass and wood and the door which was made of glass and wood also. The porch was lovely and cool in summers but bitterly cold during winters. I hastily kicked off my shoes and ran through the glass and wood door, up the stairs, along the landing and flying into my bedroom.
Ten minutes later I started to talk to myself again, this is one of my many bad habits.
"Weird," I said, "really weird." There wasn't a single word, or even letter in that book. "All that excitement for nothing." I was feeling I bit let down now. The only things visible were the page numbers. I flicked to the back page to see if there was anything there. Nothing, "Just the last page, page number 247. 247 pages of nothing. I guess Fredrick Nix was a lazy man." I started to flick back to the first page looking at the left side pages. Then I stopped, I still don't know why but I had the same feeling that I had when I saw the charter mark. I looked more carefully at the page to see if I could see what caused me to stop on this page, page number 178. Then I saw it, an extremely faint line, no a sort of arched window shape. It was traced on the page with what must have been the finest pen in the world. I touched the line with my two fingers on one part of the shape. I felt a warm buzz under my fingers, and then a searing heat as golden fire erupted along the lines. It was golden charter fire, fire which roared with charter marks, billions of them casting blinding light. I yowled like a demon because of the pain; it had badly burnt my fingertips. I heard my mum's frightened voice ask "what is the matter" from downstairs, and so I stifled a second yowl of pain. I managed to shout back
"It's nothing!" I hoped she wouldn't come up to my room, and thankfully she didn't, also the fire receded too. The shape's line seemed to flow but not changing direction, just flowing like thick, slippery goo. A lot like the charter mark on the front I thought, but this one glowed fiery reds and oranges. The space inside the window shape was bare, but when I looked closer there was very faint strokes of colour that came into focus and then faded away again. I looked even closer so that my nose was only centimetres away from the page. There were more strokes now I thought. These ones also wriggled across the page as well and were a lot less faint. Then hundreds appeared at once and moved and entwined into each other. They formed to make a picture, no a moving picture or film. "Wow, how on eck is this happening?" I muttered. The film was of a man who was old, so old you would think him to be ancient. His skin was aged with great wrinkles and was slightly translucent too. His very grey hair fell down just below the shoulders and his crisp white beard fell all the way to his waist. He was dressed in thick purple linen and silk which was covered in tiny half moons and golden suns. He's eyes looked like the kind that had seen too much villainy and yet gave out plate loads of kindness. His lips started to move but no sound came. He must of realised I couldn't hear him from my reactions. So he drew his withered hands from beneath the layers of linen and silk, and he started to draw symbols in the air. The symbols that he was drawing, I saw, were yet more charter marks. I knew this because when he finished a symbol there was a flash of golden light and sounds started to issue from the book.
After about five minutes he stopped and spoke one word, to me it sounded like someone talking into a pillow so the word was muffled. Then everything was crystal clear, I could even hear the sounds of the linen when he moved. "Why hello there, and may I ask how you got hold of a book of power without even having a charter mark on your head. Also, where are we?" His voice had the essence of authority around it and had a posh accent to it. I knew as well from this small speech that this man liked knowledge. "I, I got the book from the library, down a couple of streets away, and err we are in my room at my house, which is in Birmingham. And err, what's your name. Mine is George Grates." I was quite nervous, because this man looked important. I won't right out this entire dull conversation. I found out that his name, Frederick Nix, that he is roughly seventy years old and is a charter priest. "So, sir," (for he liked being called sir) "do you think you could baptise me?"
"Maybe," he muttered, "maybe."