Eight hundred years
on a cold stone sill
Alan and Steven have dared each other up to the barn vent for years. The toad in the dark has never moved an inch. Then Steven finds a stone in the grass — flat, glassy, a perfect skimmer — and lobs it clean through the opening.
The birds stop. A single black cloud crosses the sun. The flagstones close around the boys' feet like a quagmire, and a voice older than the barn itself begins to speak. To undo what they have done, two ten-year-olds must cross into a medieval England where a talking cow, a foul-mouthed rook and a knight in red are the only allies they have.
Read the full synopsis →“Like two flies, puny flies in a trap!”
Voth
The ones they meet
What waits past the vent
A world under glass
Voth throws a giant green bottle over the whole region and turns time backwards inside it. Everything the boys know is still there — eight centuries earlier.
Brothers who bicker
Alan and Steven shove each other into ditches one minute and hold hands running for their lives the next. The dialogue is broad Yorkshire and entirely unsentimental.
Animals that talk back
A cow with a plum in her mouth and a rook with a cockney twang argue over how much the boys are allowed to know. They always have talked. Nobody ever listened.
A wizard the angels lost
When the age of wizards ended, the count came up one short — the blackest of them all. Voth has been missing from the ledger, and from the ledge, ever since.
A demon summoned badly
Kenulf is hauled up from the Misery and Misfortune Section on his master's word. He is enormous, obedient, and not remotely the brightest of Setek's horde.
One way home
Destroy the stone toad and Voth never existed in their present. Fail, and neither will they — nor Glenda, nor Raymond, nor anyone else.
What readers are saying
Swap these three for real quotes when reviews come in.
“Placeholder quote — a line here about how quickly the barn scene pulls you in.”
“Placeholder quote — something on the brothers' dialogue and the Yorkshire voice.”
“Placeholder quote — a note on Voth as a villain worth being frightened of.”
No photo this time.
Alan The Jackdaw Man.
He’s away in the future!
Helping the boys in their
Second adventure!
Alan Haigh-Tillotson
Author of Brotherly Love — The Red Knight's Tale, a fantasy set in the Yorkshire fields and written scene by scene, in the shape of a film.
