EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE

NORMAN HAD IMAGINED that this summer in England would be a great adventure. He had expected fortresses and Roman ruins. Norman’s England was the England of knights and castles, battles and conspiracies. That’s what you got for reading books. The real England was altogether different, more like one long museum trip. He had stopped getting his hopes up every time the family piled into the tiny car and set out on one of their excursions—one more church, one more cemetery, or worse, like today, one more stately home.

At least this one was close. The drive had been less than an hour. Norman stood on the balcony of the hall’s second storey looking out at the grey sky and the rain. His mother, torn reluctantly from gilt-framed paintings and the ornate furniture of the roped-off room behind them, stood at Norman’s side and pointed out what could be seen from this high vantage point on the hill.

“We’re actually not far from our house. That over there is Summerside.” Meg Jespers-Vilnius pointed to a smudge of brown in the green countryside. “The Shrubberies is just behind that bit of dark woods there. If you could walk it in a straight line, you’d probably be home in twenty minutes.”

“I wish.” Norman dropped his chin to rest on the stone balustrade and stared out sullenly at the gathering clouds. The Shrubberies was their home for the summer. The English were weird about many things, like naming their houses.

“Don’t be like that,” his mother admonished. “Try to find something that captures your imagination. It’s not every summer you spend in England.”

Norman might have had a smartass answer for that, too, but his eyes had dropped to the back lawn and settled on a pile of grey stones and moss.

“Is that. . . ?” he began breathlessly. His voice trailed off, unwilling to finish the question.

“Yes, you remember—it’s called a folly,” Meg replied, gratified that something had caught the boy’s imagination. “Some sort of half-ruined chapel or something. You remember the tour guide at the other place told us that they built them like that, fake ruins. It’s like a garden decoration, an eighteenth-century aristocrat’s version of a garden gnome.”

This wasn’t the first folly Norman had seen on their summer tour. In Cheshire he’d seen a pyramid the size of a garden shed. In Derbyshire there’d been a miniature Greek temple and fake castle ruin. But this one was different. This one Norman had seen before.

“We’ll get a closer look when we do the garden tour,” his mother promised, and she returned to the dark room inside.

Norman was never going to wait that long. While his mother and father studied the paintings and the furniture intently, he slipped back down the stairs and scraped through the low hedge onto the lawn.

From the lawn, the folly was even more real. It brought everything back, everything he wanted to remember and could not believe was true. He had seen this ruined church before. He had been inside it. He had ducked through the arched doorway. He had steadied himself on these rough, worn columns. He had even rested his head on the soft moss carpet that covered the cracked slate floor. Or at least, he had dreamed it. But if it was here now, didn’t that mean it wasn’t a dream after all?

He didn’t recall crossing the wet lawn or passing any fence. He didn’t recall opening any gate that said “Off Limits to Visitors.” He just found himself inside the church, dry and out of the rain. It was like being back in Undergrowth again, back in the ruined church at Tintern outside the village of Edgeweir, a place inhabited by badgers, foxes, hares and stoats. Here in the folly it all felt true again. In Undergrowth he had fallen asleep under the arches of this ruined church. That strange fox abbot had sheltered him here.

Norman lay down on the moss inside the folly and stared up at the rafters. The church at Tintern Abbey had been built by foxes, but they had never completed it. A war with some other animal kingdom had stopped the construction. Its roof had half caved in. Norman stared up at the clouds that moved across the hole now. One hand reached out to touch the curtain of dark green ivy that covered the wall, while the other felt the thick carpet of moss that covered the flagstone floor. A tingle went up his spine as he touched it. This was exactly how it had felt last time.