Between Worlds

By Jessi Hammond

Two girls from the opposite ends of time, drawn together by a single cataclysmic event. … Festival of Fire

When Rowie and her sisters are in terrible danger, she remembers the Chalk Girl. … The Chalk Girl

The haunting music stole Boyd's sister away a year ago. Now it's back... Worlds Away

Davey can see colours no-one else can. His friend Kemi knows the reason why – and it's not good… … Colour Bound

A still-grieving Alinta flees from the Midwinter Festival, only to find another group celebrating the Solstice in a far more serious – and deadly – way… … The Longest Night

Five short stories about kids and portals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kincaid Publishing
• Release date: Jun 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223952725

Book preview

Introduction

Portals are awesome.

Imagine walking through a cave or through mist, or stepping through a door or into a machine, and poof! You’re in another world. Without the boring are-we-there-yet? travelling bit in between.

Portals can be magic or scientific. They can be accidental, like ‘Who put that there?’ or they can be deliberately set up or left for others to find. Or they can be used as weapons.

All the portals in this story are very different. And the kids who find them and use them – or not – are very different too.

Like Erica, in Festival of Fire. She has no idea that she’s gone through a portal, until she notices things are a little different.

Rowie, in The Chalk Girl, isn’t looking for a portal either, though she is looking for a solution for herself and her sisters.

Boyd is looking for his sister, who disappeared a year ago. You can read about his search for her in Worlds Away.

Colour Bound is a little different. Davey doesn’t realise he’s looking for a portal but his friend Kemi does – and Kemi has a hard decision to make.

Alinta has a tough decision to make in The Longest Night as well. She’s come from Australia to England, and is experiencing the magic of the Winter Solstice for the first time.

Five kids. Five different portals. Five stories I hope you enjoy.

Thanks for reading!

Jessi Hammond

Festival of Fire

Withdrawn and resentful after her mother’s death, Erica sneaks away during Kinbrae’s annual Fire Festival to the quiet and solitude of the next valley over, where the original village of Kinbrae stood before a landslide destroyed it one thousand years ago.

Solveig spins and weaves wool to keep herself and her mother alive after her father is presumed drowned at sea. Unable to take part in Kinbrae’s Fire Festival because she is a girl, she sneaks away to the headland between her valley and the next to watch it.

Two girls from the opposite ends of time, drawn together by a single cataclysmic event…

One

Erica reached the narrow crest of the ridge, her feet in their thick boots sliding on tussocky grass. The wind blowing in off the North Sea was even colder here, numbing her cheeks, and the setting sun had no warmth to it at all. She pulled the sheepskin-lined hood of her new parka tighter around her ears. She hated the cold. Hated the wind. Hated the isolated, grey-green, almost-treeless countryside.

Hated being here in Kinbrae in northern Scotland in the depths of winter without Mum and with a Gran she’d never met until two months ago.

At least she couldn’t see Kinbrae from here. The small village was in the valley behind her, nestled a little way up from the rocky beach. The valley ahead was narrow and empty of humans. Like Kinbrae’s valley, it descended in huge steep uneven plateaus like giant steps down to where the waves smashed on to a rocky shore. But unlike Kinbrae’s valley, most of the steps here were mounded, the dirt and grass piled unevenly across them. The hill at the far end of the valley was jagged and uneven, and looked as if a giant had taken a huge bite out of it. Gran had said that was where the hillside had broken away almost a thousand years before and thundered down the valley to the sea, taking the old village of Kinbrae with it. Only a few people had survived. They had moved across to the next valley and built the new village of Kinbrae, where Gran’s little stone house sat dug in to the steep hillside, along with a few other farmsteads, and the rest of the village was perched down near the sea behind an ancient stone seawall.

And where, right now, those old stone houses and the cobbled streets, not to mention the seawall and the Great Hall backing onto it, were decorated with streamers and balloons and bunting. And, moored to the long jetty, was the replica Viking ship that the men of Kinbrae had built over the last three months. A ship that would soon be set afire by those same men with flaming torches made of pinewood and sent off on the evening tide.

It was a Viking New Year’s celebration, Gran had told her, the Festival of Fire. It had been celebrated on the Winter Solstice every year in Kinbrae even before the original town had been buried. Other towns in Scotland had similar festivals. The torches, which were walked around the village from beyond the furthest farmhouse, were supposed to drive the ghosts and negative influences toward the ship, and the burning ship was supposed to take them away, leaving the village cleansed for the new year.

At least Gran hadn’t made her do anything in the Festival. Erica did not want to spend her afternoon playing stupid old-fashioned festival games with kids she didn’t really know yet. All Gran had said before she left, carrying two bags bulging with food, was, ‘Ye’ll be able t’see the torchlight parade an’ the ship sailin’ off from here, pet, if you won’t come down t’the seawall. ’Tis a grand sight indeed.’

Erica had nodded, waited until Gran’s long thin shape disappeared around a bend in the narrow path that led to the village, and set off in the opposite direction, climbing up the ridge and over into the valley where the original Kinbrae had crashed into the sea.

Where she would definitely not be able to see the torchlight parade and the ship sailing away.

And where, hopefully, she would be alone, with no one sneaking sympathetic looks at her and no Gran with her quiet voice encouraging her to do things she didn’t want to do.

Like this stupid Festival.

Mum was dead. How could Erica even think of doing fun stuff when Mum wasn’t here to enjoy it with her?

Two

Solveig packed the last of the weaving into the box carrier on her wooden sledge and stood, arching her back and looking up at the sky. The sun was near to setting, the sky banked with clouds to the west which promised more snow during the night. Hopefully not during the Torch Run though, Solveig thought. Last year it had snowed during the Festival of Fire and half the torches had gone out before their carriers could reach the ship.

The elderlies had foretold a bad year, and they were not wrong.

The whole year had been a bad one for storms, with several blizzards keeping Solveig and her mother indoors for days while the wind howled around their small house,