Another Green and Pleasant Land

By Ruth Danes

Twenty-nine-year-old Kate is dissatisfied with her life. Her half-sisters vanished many years ago in mysterious circumstances, and her best friend spoke of a supernatural world before disappearing, never to be heard from again.

Left behind in our world, Kate experiences puzzling glimpses of this other world in her dreams, while trying to find love and build a career as a solicitor. However, fate takes her away from the ex-boyfriend she pines for to a job at an archaeological dig, where she encounters more mysterious happenings and tight-lipped colleagues.

But what are her new co-workers hiding, and might Kate's dreams come true in the world of the Westlands and the Woldsheart?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Next Chapter
• Release date: Aug 13, 2022

Book preview

Chapter One

February 1999, Derby, England

Ifrowned at my mother, but she was firm.

Your sisters are almost fifteen, Kate. You are nine. Therefore, they may do things that you may not. Don’t follow them. Go and do something else instead.

But you don’t know where they are going. This was my best argument, to persuade my mother that they might be up to no good.

It did not work.

Your dad and I trust Leonie and Sophie. When you are their age, you will have the same freedoms. Why don’t you read one of the books you got out earlier? You brought a little mountain home from the library.

This was true, but the books would not distract me. At that time I devoured stories about spies and gangs of children solving mysteries. I had a mystery of my own, right in my own home, but my mother was not letting me solve it.

My half-sisters, they were only ever my half-sisters in my mind at times like this, when I was especially annoyed at them, had been whispering secretively between themselves for several weeks. Naturally, this piqued my curiosity more than a conversation in public at normal volume would have. I had learned that they had seen a phenomenon which they struggled to describe in a nearby field. They debated whether it was solid or plasma. It looked like a prism, in that it looked like a large pane of glass, and it showed every colour of the rainbow, depending from which angle they approached it and how far away they stood. They agreed it was transparent, and if it were a doorway, a large man could have passed through it with ease.

I jumped in on their conversation, and they fobbed me off. Our parents were not interested in my carried tale, and my sisters did not mention anything to them.

Don’t eavesdrop, my father gently chided me. You three don’t have to share everything. They don’t interfere when your friends come round to play, do they?

I simply learned to be more discreet. My patience was soon rewarded. I overheard Sophie and Leonie talking about strange voices which came from the prism. The voices spoke a language they did not understand or even recognise. They were confident that the owners of the voices could hear them, but they were less sure if they were understood.

Towards the end of February ’99, when spring was within sight, a terrifying discovery rocked our neighbourhood. It even made the national newspapers.

The carcass of what looked like a giant wasp, measuring over seven feet long, was found in the field where my sisters often went. Scientists performed tests on it but could not identify it. I watched them talk about it on television with great interest.

When I grow up, I will be a scientist just like them. I will investigate things and people will interview me and want to know what I think.

The corpse vanished as mysteriously as it appeared three days after a man had reported it to the police. This generated even more interest. Some people thought it was a hoax, others thought it was an alien.

A memo, which was printed in a tabloid, two days after the corpse vanished, only added more interest and mystery. However, everyone I knew thought it was a hoax. Somebody was seeking attention.

It is as well that the evil creature from the void was dispatched before it could do harm or breed. It is not ideal that so many in your world have seen it, but we can always rely on a watcher to do their duty, no matter in which world that duty lies.

My parents certainly believed the memo was a hoax and explained what a hoax was to me. I was inclined to agree with them until I saw my sisters exchanging glances. I wondered if the corpse and the memo were linked to what they saw and what fascinated them. Nobody knew what a watcher was in this context. I was even more curious than before.

In the first weekend of March, I managed to follow Leonie and Sophie without being noticed. They made their way to the field near to where we lived and walked to the side furthest from the road.

There was nothing to see but grass, hedgerow and distant trees. There was nothing to hear apart from the wind in the trees, road noise and my sisters’ annoyance. They turned their heads this way and that, squatted and stood, and approached the hedgerow furthest from the road from different angles. I was careful to keep out of sight. Eventually they gave up and left the field, agreeing to return another day. Whatever they usually saw or heard was not there.

I was bursting with curiosity but knew I must keep quiet. I had mentioned my sisters having a secret to my friends, but they weren’t very interested because I was not able to tell them much. My sisters would have been angry at my spying on them, and my parents would certainly not be pleased.

An idea hit me as I lay in bed that night.

I don’t need to follow them to the field. I can go any time when I am allowed to play out. In fact, it is best to go alone, so they don’t see me watching them.

The next morning I told my father I was going out to play. My mother was on duty. (Both she and he were police officers, they had met at work.) He told me to be back for lunch. Sophie and Leonie were slumped in front of the television, engrossed in a soap. They barely noticed me.

I made my way to the deserted field and immediately saw what had not been there yesterday but what my sisters had seen on multiple occasions. It was a cross between a prism and plasma, it was not solid, it was see-through, and it radiated a rainbow spectrum of colour. The colours changed as I nervously approached it. This was something I had never seen before.

Slowly and cautiously, I made my way to the phenomenon. I was apprehensive, but I also knew this might be my one chance to see something so rare. I could hear nothing but road noise. When I was within arm’s reach of the phenomenon, I froze before finding my voice.

Hello, can you hear me? My name is Kate Craster.

There was no reply, and I did not dare move closer.

I repeated my greeting and waited. Nothing happened. Eventually, I walked home, continually turning my head to see if whatever it was was still there. As I left the field, I noticed it had vanished.

What do I do now? Who can I talk to about this? Leonie and Sophie want to keep this a secret and will be cross if they know what I know. Mum and Dad will punish me for spying on them. None of my friends will believe me.

In the end, I decided to keep quiet and wait to see what happened next. I might get the chance to see the phenomenon again.

Within three weeks something did happen that shattered our lives.

On the day of the vernal equinox, it would be years before I appreciated the significance of the time of year, my beloved sisters vanished.

Nobody saw them on this earth again, and no trace of them was ever found. Sunday 21 st March 1999 started out as normal. I went swimming with my mother, my father went food shopping, and my sisters said they were meeting friends in the city centre. They said they would be back for lunch. Our parents made no objections, and they left.

My mum and I arrived home from the leisure centre to find my dad chopping up lamb and vegetables for a stew. By the time the stew was cooked, we expected Leonie and Sophie to have returned. They had not, but we sat down to lunch anyway. I was hungry after the morning’s exercise and not in the least bit concerned. Our parents were more annoyed at my sisters than anything else.

My father put some food aside for them, then we washed up together. It was now after two o’clock. My parents’ annoyance was turning to worry. Neither of my sisters was overly punctual, they sometimes received detentions for arriving late for school, but they were never this late. They had promised to be back by noon.

Nobody we knew had mobile phones then. Leonie had named the friends they were going to meet; Jess and Abby, two girls in the same year as them at school. Abby lived in another neighbourhood, but Jess lived just two streets away. Our parents had no phone number for either girl, but our mother knew where Jess’s house was.

By three o’clock she could bear it no longer and made her way to where Jess lived. She came back within twenty minutes, looking terrified. Jess had been at home with her father but nobody else was present. Jess was surprised to see my mother and even more surprised to learn what my sisters had told her. Neither of my sisters had arranged to meet with her that weekend. Abby had been off school all week with a chest infection, so she was confident that she would not be hanging around the shops with anyone.

Years in the police had made my parents all too aware of the harm that can come to young girls. They rang everybody whose number they knew with whom their daughters might be staying. Nobody had seen the girls all day. They knocked on the doors of our neighbours. One man had seen them walking down the street shortly after they must have left our house, but he did not notice anything out of the ordinary.

Our parents searched the room my sisters shared. Normally they respected their privacy, but over four hours had passed since they were expected to return. They found nothing suspicious.

My mother rang the local hospitals while my father checked the television and radio for reports of accidents or attacks in Derby. When this drew a blank, they called their colleagues at the police station and reported Sophie and Leonie Craster as missing.

The police acted quickly and came to our house. They took descriptions of my sisters. Both of them were quite short for the ages and solidly built with round faces. However, Sophie was grey-eyed with cream-coloured skin and straight blonde hair. Leonie’s hair was a halo of black coils when left to its own devices, and she had rich brown skin with a dimple in each cheek. My mother handed her colleague copies of my sisters’ last school photos with shaking hands. They interviewed us all, including me. My mood turned from puzzled at my parents’ concern to fear. What horrors might await my beloved sisters out there in the darkening evening?

The women interviewing me asked if my sisters had asked me to keep any secrets for them.

Do you know if they have any secrets from your parents? the elder of the two police officers asked me. If so, now is the time to share them.

She saw me hesitate and continued in a persuasive tone.

You will not get into any trouble. Indeed, you would be doing the right thing.

I took a deep breath and told them the one secret I knew. I told them about what I found so hard to describe but had seen on more than one occasion. It was not glass, a prism or plasma, and it fascinated my sisters. I described how they spoke through it and how I never saw anyone else present nor heard other voices. I proudly added that I had read many books about science, and even the authors of these books did not mention this strange object.

My information baffled the police officers, who asked me if I was completely sure I was describing what I had seen. Indignantly, I insisted I was telling the truth. It could not have been an optical illusion because they interacted with it.

My mum and dad were as perplexed as the police officers when they heard what I described. They wished I had said something earlier but reassured me I was in no trouble. After all, I could not have known what was going to happen.

Do you think they went through the prism? How is that even possible? I’ve read lots of books about science, and none of them mentioned anything like this.

Neither the police nor my parents could answer this. They could not even tell me what I had seen.

They took me to the field to show them what I had described. I had already told them that the prism, as I had taken to calling it, was not there all the time, and it was not there then. The police officers exchanged glances and asked if I was completely sure I was telling the truth.

The next day I did not go to school until the afternoon. Instead, I was interviewed again in the morning by another police officer, a man this time, called DCI Henderson, and we were alone. He asked me in great detail about the prism. He was thoughtful and interested in what I was desperately trying to communicate.

I am telling the truth! I ended.

I do not think you are lying, he responded. I think you are an honest girl, but I would not talk too much about this prism, nor go looking for it. Many people will not believe you because it is outside of their experience.

DCI Henderson led me out to my parents, who were waiting in another room. He reassured them that the police would do everything they could to find Leonie and Sophie. He talked at length about what was already being done.

They are both pretty young girls, which helps to keep the public engaged, he concluded. These sort of missing persons’ cases tend to inspire more interest, which can only be a good thing. The fact that Sophie is white may also help, I hate to say.

True, but her resemblance to a certain white woman may go against us more than Leonie’s appearance. My father shook his head. However, we must stay positive and keep going, just like we tell other parents. Their background, what we will tell of their background, might also help because it is unusual. Two stepsisters, who are as close as twins, who even share a birthday and coincidentally always had the same surname, but look so completely unrelated. Strange facts stick.

For these reasons, and maybe just because people care about missing schoolgirls, my sisters’ disappearance featured heavily on the local news. My family was interviewed by a local paper. I took part, but I had already been told by DCI Henderson, in front of my parents, not to mention the prism.

It sounds so odd that people will think you’re a liar, and it will jeopardise the search.

I did not need to be told twice. I would have done anything to find my sisters, yet I could not help but link their disappearance to the prism. It was so strange for them to vanish that I could only link it to the strangest thing I ever saw. At school I attracted a lot of attention. The teachers were particularly nice to me. Nobody else had ever had anyone in their family go missing before. These sorts of things only ever happened to other people until the one day they happened to me.

Despite everyone’s best efforts and a valiant campaign, no trace of my sisters was ever found. Once or twice my parents spoke to me about what I saw, but none of us knew what to make of it. We never gave up hope, although our hearts were breaking. We cleaved together as a family.

Chapter Two

April 2004, Derby, England

Istared at my friend with wide eyes, scarcely able to believe what she was telling me. Marnie had woven a spell with her words and taken me from her bedroom, where we were ensconced whispering to each other, to somewhere quite fantastical yet also familiar.

Marnie and I had known each other since the January of the year before, when we met at a group therapy session for anorexic teenagers. My struggles with food and the consuming of it began in the months after my sisters disappeared. I often felt too anxious and guilty to eat as much as I wished. How could I stuff my face when I had no idea if Leonie and Sophie had enough to eat or clean water to drink? How did I know they had not starved to death long ago?

This unhappiness might have stayed at a small appetite had I not gone to France with my parents for a holiday the summer before I turned thirteen and eaten a dish containing seafood, butter and bacteria. I had a humiliating and public attack of food poisoning which distressed me sufficiently to become vegan and reduce what I ate to a dangerous degree. I became obsessive about my weight, my diet, my exercise routine and the search for my sisters. Very soon my parents became desperately worried and made me go to the doctor. In January 2003 I spent time as an outpatient at a local hospital. It was there that I met Marnie Cadwallader.

Marnie and I both stood out in the group therapy sessions, although everyone was pleasant towards us. We were the tallest girls there. Everyone else was both white and local. Marnie was white, Welsh and beautiful. I developed a strong crush on her almost straight away. She later learned I was bisexual, but as far as I know, she never discovered my true feelings towards her. We formed a deep, close friendship, which was what we both needed at that time.

There was much to admire and like about Marnie. She was intelligent in a way that I was not, she was creative and intuitive. Her talents lay in words, drawing and music. She had a warm, open heart and a good sense of humour, despite her illness. When people spoke, she really listened, and she seemed to hear more than other people. She was beautiful inside and out. She was slightly shorter than me and built like a fairy with the face of an angel. Her skin was like a pearl against the bright blackness of her long, heavy hair, and her eyes were the colour of polished jade.

The therapists and nurses were happy for us to pair up because we did no harm together. Instead, we recovered as a pair. We gained weight steadily, gradually unravelled our demons and learned how to live healthily.

Over time, I learned Marnie’s history, and why she developed an eating disorder. She was an only child, and her parents were still together. They were loving and supportive towards each other, but in therapy, Marnie was beginning to understand that she had always experienced emotional neglect and emotional abuse from them. The idea of approaching them for advice was laughable, they seemed only to notice her to criticise her, and she could not believe that they loved her. Saying the words and showing their meaning were two completely different things. Only the near-constant presence of her beloved grandparents, who had lived on the same street, had saved her.

The previous summer everything fell apart for Marnie too. Her grandmother died of a stroke, and her grandfather had died the winter before. Her parents moved from Cardiff to Derby as they had planned due to her father’s new job. The higher salary outweighed his daughter’s distress. Marnie controlled her food because her life had spiralled out of control.

I met her parents on two occasions, as part of group therapy sessions, and immediately appreciated my own. They were charming towards others, devoted to each other and alternately disinterested in or irritated by their daughter. Marnie’s wish for them to attend group therapy was an attention-seeking waste of time in their view.

Marnie and I stayed in touch as we began the next stage of our recovery. We discovered we attended the same school, but we had no lessons together. We met up as often as we could and confided our every secret in each other.

She knew my sisters had vanished, although she did not know all of the details, and she told me an interesting story of her own.

From around the beginning of April of 2004, she began to tell me about a boyfriend. At first I thought she was telling me a story, she often made up tales to amuse us both and had a vivid imagination, but after a while, I was not so sure. I did not ask her because I did not want to break the spell of whatever was making her so happy.

She had met this boy in early March, and he was unlike any lad she had ever met before. She had never been on a date nor so much as kissed a boy before, but she could still state this. He was seventeen to her fourteen, black and half a head taller than her. He was handsome and wore his hair tied back at the nape of his neck, which revealed pointed ears, almost like an elf’s in a sci-fi film.

His name is Rickynd, Rickynd of the house of Ishelmer, of the Woldsheart, she told me as we sat in her room one Saturday afternoon. The Woldsheart is a kingdom in a world that is not ours but is still very like ours in some ways. In this world, the British Isles are divided into ten small kingdoms, each populated by multiple aristocratic houses and those who owe them their allegiance. The Woldsheart is made up of what is East Anglia, Cambridgeshire and most of the Midlands in our world. The aristocratic houses who rule there are the houses of Lothwold, Ishelmer, Kurtrissel and Sharman. One dialect of one language is spoken in the Woldsheart. Other dialects and different languages are spoken in the other nine kingdoms. The Woldsheart is a translation of the name of his kingdom. I can’t pronounce its name in Rickynd’s language.

How do you communicate if you can’t speak his language?

Oh, he always speaks English to me.

Very convenient. We both know that English is the only language you speak fluently.

He’s also told me a lot about the history of his world. The earliest parts of its history are shared with our world.

Entranced by her story, I continued to listen.

Over one hundred thousand years ago there were many different worlds, including his and ours. The gods then merged them into two, his and ours. At that time his world was populated by twelve species of humans or folk. They included us, or Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Fairy Folk.

About ten thousand years ago these twelve species merged into one, but there remained variations across their world, a little like different ethnicities in ours. Several thousand years ago this one species established kingdoms and ruling houses across the world.

For approximately one thousand years the ten kingdoms of what I might call the British Isles had fought on and off with each other. There had been waves of war across the world ever since the twelve folk became one. However, a lasting peace was now being spoken about in the ten kingdoms.

I listened spellbound as Marnie told me tale after tale about Rickynd and his world. He trained fantastical animals for their army and had seen action. He told her about his family, which sounded far happier than hers, war or no war.

As the weeks passed, she told me how they were becoming closer. I assumed this was fantasy. She described kissing, touching and declarations of love but no more. I assumed that at fourteen she was not ready for more, either in her dreams or in