I magine an age of giants. It was a long, long time ago, in a British Isles so old it did not know it was the British Isles yet, when the country was all wildwood, and there were two types of humans fighting in the woodlands.

The WIZARDS, who had lived in this forest for as long as memory, and were as Magic as the wood itself, and rode on the back of the Giant Snowcats. And the WARRIORS, who hunted the Magic down with bright swords and fire, so they could build their forts and their fields and their new modern world.

The Warriors were winning, for their weapons were made of IRON... ... and IRON was the only thing that Magic would not work on.

This is the story of a young boy Wizard and a young girl Warrior, who were both cheerful and hopeful and full of good ideas, but they had been taught since birth to hate each other like poison. It is the tale of how they met, and learnt to be friends and to see things from each other's point of view, and it really wants to be a HAPPY story... but unfortunately in the course of their last joyful adventure...They accidentally let the KINGWITCH out of the Stone where he had been imprisoned so safely for century upon century And WITCHES had returned to the wonder of the wildwoods

Now, I do not want to scare you, dear Reader. But Witches had feathered wings, and acid blood, and every clawed hand ended in five talons as long and as slice- sharp as a freshly sharpened sword.

Which would be fine if they were well-intentioned, But Witches were the kind of evil that hates all things good and eats the hearts of robins and wants to destroy the world and everything in it.

And the Kingwitch commanded them all....

Nobody knows where the Kingwitch was now hidden. But I do.

I want the boy, thought the Kingwitch, in cramped, wicked thoughts. I want the Boy-who-is-Very-Nearly- Mine, for HE can help bring me the Girl-who-has-Magic- that-Works-on-Iron... for if I GET that Magic, I shall at last be invincible....

But fear not, dear Reader! This must be impossible. Xar had been locked up in the great prison of Gormincrag. And nobody gets out of Gormincrag, which may not be very nice for Xar, but it also follows, as night followsday that the Kingwitch and his Witches cannot get in

And as for Wish, why Wish's scary mother, the great Warrior queen Sychorax, has built a gigantic Wall across the entire western edge of her kingdom, a Wall so high that even a Longatepper High-Walker Giant couldn't see over it on tiptoes, to protect her people from the attacks of the Witches.

So our heroes can't possibly meet each other, or the

Kingwitch, in a story as short as this one.

It was extremely unlikely that they would ever have

met in the first place. It happened ONCE.

Surely it couldn't happen

TWICE?

It was a quarter past midnight, four weeks before Midwinter's End Eve, and a thirteen-year-old boy was dangling precariously from a disintegrating home- made rope hanging from outside the darkest tower of Gormincrag, the Rehabilitation Centre for the Re-Education of Dark Magic and Wicked Wizards

(That, by the way, is a long and fancy name for a jail, and not just any old jail, the most secure and impregnable jail in the wildwoods)

The boy's name was Xar- (which is pronounced "Zar - I don't know why, spelling is weird) and he really, really, really should not have been there.

He was supposed to be INSIDE the prison, not OUTSIDE it, dangling fifty feet above sea level from one of the windows. That's one of the most important rules about that prisons, and Xar really should have known

But Xar was not the kind of boy who followed the rules

Xar acted first, and thought later, and this was exactly what had led him to be put in the Gormincrag Rehabilitation Centre in the first place, and given him the reputation of being the

naughtiest, wildest boy born into

the Wizard kingdom in about

four generations.

See if you think that reputation is justified In the past week, for example. Xar

had:

put what was supposed to be Sleeping Potion into the Rogrebreath guards' wine, but it turned out to be Cursing Potion instead glued the bottoms of the entire Drood High Command to their chairs in the hope that it would give him time for a quick getaway - but forgot to glue the chairs to the floor, so the Droods just ran after him with chairs stuck to their bottoms... treated

Part one escape :(1)

Himmself to some stolen Inviability Pon, but unfortunately I had only made his HEAD disappear, giving the Drood in charge of Reprogramming a terrible shock because he imagined on ting Xar's cell that the prison had been invaded by headless GHOSTS

None of these disobedient things had been Intentional, exactly. They had all just happened by accident, in the course of him trying to escape. for even though Xar was a happy-go-lucky cheerful sort of person, two months of imprisonment had given even his high spirits a bit of a battering, and his quiff of hair had drooped a little under the pressure, and he had been feeling, at times, a little desperate.

Gormincrag was well known to be impossible to escape from, but Xar never let a little thing like impossibility put him off. So although to an outsider his present predicament might have looked pretty bad. Xar was remarkably pleased with himself for a person who was hanging on to a crumbling rope swaying violently above seas known to be infested with such dreadful monsters as Blunderbouths, Daggerfins, and Bloody Barbeards.

His wide-awake eyes were bright with excitement and hope.

T O B E C o n t i n u e

"You see!" Xar whispered triumphantly to his companions. 'what did I tell you,? We've nearly escape already?!'

And Nar was right, they had really done a very good job to get this far.

The Gormincrag Detention Centre for the Re- education of Dark Magic and Wicked Wizards had been designed to imprison some of the most terrifying monsters in the entire Magical world. Bogeymen. Ogres of all sizes and swageries, Jack o' Kents, Bugbears, Kelpies, Grim Annises, you name it, and even, once upon a time, dare I say it, WITCHES, that were once extinct, and had recently re-emerged in that part of the wildwoods.

NO ONE, no Dark-sprite, no Rogrebreath however large and terrifying, no Wicked Wizard of spells the most fiendish, had EVER escaped from Gormincrag before. People had tried of course, and the legends of brave but failed escape attempts from Gormincrag were told from sprite to sprite across the years. But no one had ever successfully made it out of there alive. Even if, by some extraordinary chance, you made

it beyond the prison perimeter without the skulls screaming, the grim towers of Gormincrag were built on seven islands set in a sea called prettily 'the Sea of Skulls, and the treacherous waves would get you, or those vicious merfolk, the Bloody Barbeards, would swim out of their holes in the Drowned Forest on the seafloor and get you, and bring you back.

As the son of a King Enchanter, and a boy with a great deal of personal charisma, Xar had quite a few followers.

At the moment he was accompanied by five sprites (Tiffinstorm, Timeloss, Hinkypunk, Ariel, and Mustardthought) - and these were beautiful, fierce- looking creatures, resembling a cross between a very small human and an angry insect, and three hairy fairies, (Squeezjoos, Bumbleboozle, and The Baby), smaller, more bee-like animals, who were too young to have climbed into their cocoons and metamorphosed into proper adult sprites yet.

Sprites can light up like stars in the night- time, but these ones did not want to be detected at the moment, so they had subdued the light of their little bodies to the very dimmest of glows. These sprites all belong to Xar, and loyally, quietly, invisibly, they had smuggled themselves in to Gormincrag to try and help him escape. You right, Master" Squeezjoos, one of the hairy taries, whispered back. Squeezjoos was a tiny little x-legged creature, larger than a bumblebee but still so small he could fit into your hand, and he was buzzing excitedly around Xar's head. 'Yous ALWAYS right! That'ss why youss the Leader and you never leads uss into any trouble! Co! What's this fasscintressting cave?

This 'fasscintressting cave' was in fact a large skull with its mouth open. Squeezjoos buzzed in to investigate and the mouth snapped shut with an ominous clang, and the eyeholes squeezed tight closed as if they still had lids on them. "Helloooo?' buzzed Squeezjoos in anxious echoes from within. 'Helloooo? I think I iss stuck!' The sprites nearly fell out of the air they were laughing so much, but Xar intervened in quick alarm, hissing, 'Don't go over the boundary of the battlements anybody! There's a Magical forcefield around this castle, and it's fine getting IN, but get across it to get OUT!" you can't

At some considerable danger to himself, because the skull was just out of reach, and he had to tie the end of the rope to his ankle and dangle upside down to get his hands on it. Xar thenvery, very carefully and delicately released the mouth bone of the skull so that Squeezjoos could buzz out triumphantly squeaking, I is fine! Don't worry everyone! I is FINE!

And then Xar swung himself back onto a safer ledge again, and explained to his interested companions that those skulls were the screaming kind, and they were one of the final defences of Gormincrag.