In Yanar, graduation year was called the year of ascension. This meant that any child holding a graduation certificate was ready for an adult life. After my graduation ceremony, my mother called me into her office. I knew that it was an important meeting, because she looked very serious.
She explained to me that they had uncovered some irregular disturbance in some parts of the world.
“What kind of disturbance?” I asked.
She said that it was the kind of disturbance that could breach the veil separating us from the parallel world.
That was worrying. Yanar was already at war with an alien race who were trying to invade Earth.
My father was leading our space forces, and he had the alien fleet cornered just past Uranus, but I was worried that we may not have had much army left on the ground for a two-front war.
“If I didn’t know better, I would think that the Masanis have found a way to cross to the other side,” she said. “But I do know better, and I know for a fact that they do not possess such technology, let alone the necessary powers to do so,” she added.
All this time it was as if she was talking to herself, staring at her desk. She finally raised her head, her blue eyes looking straight at me, and said, “That is where you come in. Although you are only fifteen, you have managed to graduate and are now officially ascended, and I have had very good reports on your performances in FIST.”
My mother wasn’t one to give her children compliments, so I was pretty surprised and happy. I sat more comfortably on my chair and stared back at her with a proud look on my face and a cheeky grin.
She said, “I’m going to send you to the UK. The strongest reading has been detected in Surrey. I need you to investigate the anomalies, find out what or who is causing them and report to me. Do not engage with anyone. Your job is to report, not to stop the perpetuators.”
“Very well, Mother,” I said.
“You will be going with Amelia. She hasn’t reached the age of ascension yet, but with your brothers at the front and me busy with the general council, I’d prefer her to be with you. Make sure she is safe, and keep up with her training.”
“Yes, Mother,” I answered.
“You will also be going with the Wu twins and a few other Yans. Their parents have volunteered their services in case of trouble. They know nothing about the mission, and I’d prefer that they remain in the dark. The only person you will clue in is Pam. Do you understand?”
I nodded yes, but inside I was thinking, Hell no. I’ll clue Alex in. Pam will do it herself, anyway, and if any of the other Yans happen to be my friends, I’ll clue them in too. Sorry, Mother.
“You can go now, child. It’s almost time to chat with your father,” she said.
The meeting was over. Yan parents were not known for their affectionate ways towards their children. The Yans believed that if parents showed too much affection towards their children, it would make the children weak, and therefore lower-quality soldiers.
Couples, however, were very affectionate towards each other, to the point of embarrassment for children sometimes. Public displays of affection towards a partner were very common in Yanar.
But now here I was, about to embark on a secret mission, and my mother was showing that she cared about my wellbeing by making sure that I would not be alone in Surrey.
I eventually found out that Amelia and I were being sent to a boarding school called J. C. Maxwell Academy. It used to be a Catholic boarding school but had been donated to Surrey County Council, and it was the best school in the vicinity of the anomaly recorded by the Yan science council.
The reason given to the UK government for choosing J. C. Maxwell as the school to send me, the future leader of Yanar, to was that J.C. was a very popular school among our people. The UK government was concerned by the lack of security around Amelia and me at J.C., but they were told by the council that as long as no one knew that we were members of the Ten, there was nothing to fear.
It wasn’t difficult to convince the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Although J.C. had become a non-religious school, they had maintained the high level of standards implemented by the previous owners.
It did not take long for us to get to Gateway Hill, the village adjacent to the school. The village had actually been built to provide accommodation for the workers and their families during the construction of the school. Then later it was used for the school staff and their families.
As time went by, more and more people moved to Gateway Hill, and by the time the school was donated to Surrey County Council, the village had become a town on its own and was no longer associated with the Catholic church or even considered an extension of the school grounds.
Gateway Hill was even more picturesque than I had thought. It was situated between Bowlhead Green and Milford. I had heard that since changing its name from Ceaster to Gateway Hill, the village had been attracting a large number of visitors, which was not unlike what I was witnessing.
There seemed to be a lot of people visiting. If I hadn’t known better, I would I have thought that there was a conference of some sort happening. When we stopped and asked around, we were told that it was often that way in autumn, when they had all kinds of attractions organised by the town hall to occupy visitors.
We were also told that the village had been renovated to make it look like you had stepped back in time. They were right. Its reputation for its honey-coloured seventeenth-century-lookalike stone cottages with steeply pitched roofs was not exaggerated. It was stunning.
Gateway Hill had been built around Thursley Lake, which meant that the lake cut through the middle of the village. Each side had a similar concentration and scale of development.
Despite the beauty around me, I couldn’t help but feel a pinch in my heart. The sea of tourists had just reminded me of my beloved Yanara and its incessant crowds, but as soon as we left Gateway Hill, the most spectacular and terrifying view we had seen so far was standing in front of us: J. C. Maxwell Academy, more commonly called J.C.
It was beautiful, surrounded by dense woodland that looked like an enchanted forest without the fairies. Sometimes I think that if someone had listened very carefully, they would have sworn they had heard the wind singing as it was passing through, following us all the way to the school.
The whole building was built on a hill, almost like it was dug in. The entrance was in the main court, which was built in the style of a Spanish monastery. After crossing the main court, we ended up in front of a three-storey building.
The ground floor was made of arches that let us see into the classrooms. The first floor was also made up of classrooms, and the second floor was where the staff could rest and have their tea. The entire building was white, but inside the building the walls were covered with tiny green and blue tiles, giving an underwater feel. The middle court was reserved for sport activities. After crossing the court, we could go inside a building with multiple rooms made for all types of activities like fencing and swimming, as well as culinary classes and dance classes.
On the other side of the building, there were different courts for outside sports such as football, rugby, basketball, tennis and so on. The top-level court was where the second entrance was located, as well as the dormitories. The dormitories were large, ancient four-storey buildings decorated in what could only be described as an Italian style. The left side was for the boys, and the right side was for the girls. The dining room, library, study rooms and relaxation rooms, as well as playrooms, were all on the ground floor.
I had expected to find some greenery inside the walls, but it had exceeded my expectations. The most surprising thing about those trees was that some of them were fruit trees, but as we found out later, it was forbidden to pick any of them, and a biblical sin to eat any. The school headmaster himself had forbidden it, and many students had theorised at the time that he might have wanted to avoid a lawsuit in case of an accident happening.
Another thing I had noticed was that most of the day students were from Gateway Hill. Our school was a boarding school, but it obviously took in a lot of students from the village. As perfect-looking as the school was, there was something very strange about it. My mother was right; something was in the air. It was up to me to find out what.
I had felt a disturbance in the air as soon as I got to J.C., and every day since. As clean and fresh as the air was, it felt heavier on the skin than London’s, which was a lot more polluted. I could also feel a chill, as if I had landed in Mordor, and Sauron’s eye was watching me while sucking up the good energy that surrounded us.
I had expected to be sharing a room with my sister, but that was not the case. The rooms for students aged sixteen and over were for two students maximum. Although I was only fifteen, I was in the same grade as sixteen-year-old students, and ended up being placed on the same floor as them.
The room was small and a disappointment. There were two single beds, which did not make me happy, because I loved to roll around in my bed. The other annoying thing was the size of our cupboards – clearly, they did not intend for us to bring a lot of clothes. Although we would be wearing a uniform, no one would keep it on after classes.
The walls were magnolia, which made me happy, and we had been told that although we were not allowed to change anything in the room, we were allowed to put up posters and decorate as we wished, as long as we did not damage the original paint. There were also two small study desks with enough space for our laptops, and one window with a view onto the main court.
I would have been very upset, if my sister had not been on the next floor with girls of the same age and who seemed to be lovely. The younger girls were four per room and from ages twelve to fourteen. The décor was exactly the same as ours except that they had much bigger rooms and more cupboard space.
I was amazed by the dining room, and the menu we were offered was impressive. It was obvious that the place used to be a Catholic school, because the baroque style was not understated. The dining room had four arches painted in gold, and each arch had a different food station. The first was the meat station, the second was seafood, the third was salad and vegetables, and the last one was the sides and other accompaniments.
I had expected long tables like in Cambridge University colleges, but that was not the case. We instead had rectangular wooden tables next to each other. The room was vast, with a high ceiling painted in gold, and the doors were big dark wooden doors with red curtains. The floor was carpeted, and it was dark red like the curtains. Behind the curtains were very large sixteenth-century windows. A large table at the front of the room was reserved for the teachers, who got a sit-down meal.
I was about to complain that there was no dessert station when we were told by the other students that unlike other courses, the dessert station would be brought out later and was always a disappointment in taste and portion size.
Typical, I thought. As usual, my favourite part of the meal is the worst.
I wasn’t sitting with my sister, Amelia. She had chosen to sit with her new friends, so I sat by myself and was quickly joined by a familiar face. It was Hogan MacConraoi Croise, a childhood friend of the family and a fellow Yan.
Hogan looked like what I expected James Bond had looked like as a teenager. He was tall and had olive skin like a French-man or an Italian, dark hair, dark eyes and a square jaw. He was considered to be quite handsome, and he knew it, which made him a bit fond of himself, but he was a very good person nevertheless.
I had never been so happy to see anyone in my life. I screamed and hugged him. Then I started pushing him and hitting him playfully. I couldn’t believe he had not told me that he was going to attend J.C. on the day of my goodbye party.
He kept laughing and admitted that it had been a very hard secret to keep and that he had begged his parents not to tell mine that he would join Amelia and me, because he wanted to surprise me.
I suddenly realised that Hogan’s mother had signed up her son to back me up in case I needed help, and he didn’t know anything about it.
I could only hope that he would not be too angry. Hogan was a Greek Yan. Greek Yans were Olympians, which meant that they worshipped Greek gods.
Their gods allowed them to dedicate a lot of their time to fun and parties but not much more, especially not towards preparing for unscheduled battles.
History had proven that not telling an Olympian in advance that he might be facing a battle was a very big mistake. I could only hope that when the time came, Hogan wouldn’t direct his anger towards me.
He introduced me to his roommate, named William Evans Clarke. I was almost star-struck; he was the best-looking guy I had ever seen. He was gorgeous. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn that our god Thor himself was standing in front of me. He was tall, fair-skinned, muscular but not over the top, and had striking deep-blue eyes and long golden-blond hair. I was pretty sure that there were countries where being that good-looking was illegal.
To make matters worse, I couldn’t think of anything to say to him. I wanted to sound cool and relaxed, but everything was happening so fast, and the best I could do was to get up and give him my hand to shake. He took it and said, “Nice to meet you,” and we sat down. I nodded and gave him the world’s most forced smile. He smiled back and I almost fainted.
The boys’ dormitories were the same as the girls’, from what I understood, and it felt great to know that we would be able to hang out together quite often. It took two days for my roommate to arrive. Her name was Scarlett Ramsey Sneddon. When I first laid eyes on her, I was quite surprised; she looked like the Japanese manga character Georgie.
She was wearing a gorgeous grey-and-white autumn swing dress with short sleeves and two black strips, one under her chest and the other just over her hips, which made her waist look tiny despite her size-fourteen frame. She had very long blonde hair with big curls. She had big blue eyes, rosy cheeks, which were a little bit curvy, pink lips, a big smile and, uncommonly for a Masani girl as far as I had noticed since leaving Yanara, didn’t have make-up all over her face.
She was a bubbly and sweet girl, and we hit it off right away. I was over the moon; the sense of dread I’d felt when I had arrived at the school was completely gone. I was starting to feel that the year was going to be fantastic, and I was right; the school was starting to look like a primary school reunion to me.
I soon realised that Pamela Rafnkell Wu was two doors down from me. Pamela and her brother Alexander, most commonly known as Pam and Alex, were former classmates of Hogan and mine. Pam was a very good violinist, and Alex a talented pianist. Pam was a tall girl with long dark hair.
She was one of the most beautiful girls in J.C.. She was actually so beautiful that every time we were on holiday in the Masani world, we would often get asked if we wanted to do modelling, or were given business cards by some photographer. In my case they would often say that I would be suitable as a plus-size model, which was ludicrous, since I was only a size twelve and considered quite small compared to the Yanara standard.
Pam’s twin, Alex, was very tall as well, and unlike me they were from Yanar City. Yanar City was our capital and was in the Pacific, and it was quite hot all year long, which meant that they were used to wearing almost nothing at all. In Yanara we said that southerners were wealthy because they never spent a penny on clothes except for swimwear, and, of course, as the good southerner that she was, here was Pam wearing a gorgeous light-brown floral-patterned short jumpsuit with a halter-neck and open back.
She looked stunning. I did not regret wearing my embroidered bohemian backless V-neck dress with long sleeves. I would have paled next to her otherwise.
Pam’s roommate was a Masani girl named Delphine Crawley Longchamp. I liked her immediately. She was short and curvy, not what you would call pretty, but she had a ton of charm. And when she smiled, her face lit up, and she suddenly started to look like the statue of Fjörgyn in Yanara, with a cheeky personality to go with it.