The Battle for Roar

CHAPTER 1

It happens during PE.

We’re playing rounders on the field when this huge crow comes flying over the science block. I’m supposed to be bowling, but all I can do is stare up at the sky and watch as the bird flies closer and closer.

‘Throw the ball, Trout!’ bellows Mr McGill.

My best friend (in the real world), Adam Zeng, waves his bat around. ‘Yeah, smash it to me, Arthur. Pretend you’re a wizard and that ball is a power crystal that will turn my bones to JELLY!’

Like me, Adam has a big imagination. Unlike me, he sees no reason to hide this fact from the rest of our class. He starts to wobble (like jelly) and laughter breaks out across the field. This enrages Mr McGill, who yells, ‘Bowl, Trout, BOWL!’

So I bowl, but just as the ball is leaving my hands the crow dives towards me. I yelp and throw myself to the ground.

‘BIRD ATTACK!’ screams Adam and the ball smacks into Mr McGill’s stomach.

Through my fingers I watch as the bird pecks a crust off the grass, then flies away again.

‘That bird was going for you, Arthur,’ says Adam as he pulls me to my feet. ‘I thought it was going to peck your eyes out!’

‘Me too,’ I say, glancing nervously at the sky.

Mr McGill isn’t amused by the whole crow-ball-in-the-stomach thing. He sends everyone inside to get changed except for me and Adam. Then, with one hand resting protectively on his stomach, he jabs a finger at us and says, ‘I want you two jokers to stay out here and pick up litter.’

I look around. Rubbish is scattered across the field. Water bottles and crisp packets drift in the wind. ‘What, all of it?’ I say.

‘Yes, Trout, all of it,’ he says, then he turns and stomps off, calling over his shoulder, ‘Useless bowling by the way!’

Once he’s out of earshot, Adam squeezes my shoulder and says, ‘Gadzooks, Master McGill is a swine.’ Adam’s into live-action role play and every weekend he goes to some woods and pretends to be a medieval knight. He doesn’t see why he should have to stop just because he’s at school and often speaks using ye olde language. I think this is really funny. My sister doesn’t.

‘Verily ’tis true,’ I say – because the medieval thing is addictive and no one is around to hear – and then we start to pick up litter.

After a while Adam says, ‘You know what, Arthur? I reckon that crow came from the Land of Roar.’

I freeze, my hand hovering over a sweet wrapper. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I bet Crowky sent it as a message,’ he says, his eyes round with excitement. ‘He’s basically saying: Watch out, Arthur Trout, I’m coming to get you!’

It’s hot on the field, boiling, but even so a shiver runs through me. I force myself to laugh. ‘Yeah . . . probably!’

‘Definitely!’ says Adam, then he starts chasing a crisp packet across the field, yelling, ‘Come hither, dastardly Monster Munch!’

I have to remind myself that of course Adam is joking and he doesn’t believe for one second that Crowky, a wicked scarecrow with wings, is sending me sinister messages via a crow. As far as Adam’s concerned, he likes pretending to be a medieval knight, and I like making up stories about a fantasy world called the Land of Roar, and it’s one of the reasons we’re such good friends. But, as he runs across the field, the cold feeling continues to creep through me. I look up at the sky. The bird has definitely gone, but even so my heart beats fast. Because what Adam doesn’t know is that Crowky is one hundred per cent real – from his feathery wings to the tips of his life-sapping fingers – and sending me a creepy message is exactly the sort of thing he would do.

CHAPTER 2

After school, Adam and I sit on the wall by the bike shed and wait for my twin sister, Rose, to turn up so we can walk home together. Rose used to hang out with us at school as well, but recently she’s become friends with a girl called Kezia and we’re seeing less and less of her.

Adam’s gutted. He loves everything about Rose – her sarcasm, her fondness for shoving us around, even her ability to beat us in every single running, staring and arm-wrestling match that she forces us to have. I keep telling Adam that if he’d had to share a womb and then most of his life with Rose he wouldn’t think she was so great, but he just sighs and says, ‘If only!’

While we wait, Adam and I chat about what happened on the field. In our heads the crow has become superhuman in size – as big as an eagle, or, as Adam suggests, a suckling pig. ‘You should add it to your story,’ he says. ‘Now, before you forget what happened.’

I glance around to make sure no one’s watching, then get my notebook out of my bag. It looks like any old notebook but inside I’ve written down every single thing that’s ever happened to me and Rose in Roar. Adam caught me writing in it one day, so I told him it was a story I’d made up. Since then he’s always getting me to read it out loud and he knows all about Mitch and Win and the Lost Girls. He even makes suggestions about things I should add ‘to make the story better’.

‘Say it had evil eyes,’ says Adam as I scribble down a few sentences about the crow, ‘and claws like razor blades!’ Before I can put it away he says, ‘Read the start, Arthur, I love that bit.’

I can never resist talking about Roar so I flick to the front of the notebook, and start to read.

‘Many moons ago, a brother and sister, twin children of a powerful warlock and a wondrous witch, played a game. Using their mighty imaginations they invented a world – Roar – and they filled it with incredible friends including a merwitch called Mitch and a ninja wizard called Win. These magical twins put all the things they loved in the Good Side of Roar, and the things they feared – cats, dead trees, demented scarecrows, their enemy Crowky etc – into the Bad Side. One day, still many moons ago, the twins crawled into an enchanted cave and when they came out of the other side they were in THE LAND OF ROAR. Their imaginations were so powerful their game had come to life!’

‘Awesome,’ says Adam, nodding his head appreciatively.

OK, so this isn’t exactly what happened. Rose and I are twins, but Dad isn’t a powerful warlock and Mum isn’t a wondrous witch. Dad’s a postman and Mum’s a textiles teacher, but the rest of it is true. Kind of. Our portal to Roar is actually a folding camp bed, but when I told Adam this he said, ‘That’s rubbish, Arthur. Make it a cave.’

As usual, once I’ve started talking about Roar I don’t want to stop. ‘I’ve done more,’ I say. Last night I finished writing down everything that happened during our last visit to Roar. ‘Do you want to hear it?’

‘Course I do!’ says Adam.

‘OK, so Crowky’s in the sea and Win and Arthur have just been rescued by the ice dragon, remember?’

Adam nods, then I start reading:

‘Arthur Trout leaped on to the ice dragon’s slippery back and dragged Win up next to him. Without stopping to think, he reached out a hand to Crowky. Come with us! he demanded.

‘Crowky’s button eyes slid from Arthur to the NO PROB-LLAMA! T-shirt floating in the sea. Should he let Arthur Trout, Master of Roar, save his life, or should he try to get the T-shirt? Crowky came to a decision and dived into the freezing waves. His twig fingers wrapped round the T-shirt and a grin spread across his sack face. The T-shirt might be tatty and torn, but Crowky knew it was a magical key that would let him . . .’ I trail off, not sure if I want to read the next bit.

‘Go on,’ says Adam, nudging me.

‘That would let him escape from Roar and crawl into the real world.’

Adam snatches the notebook off me and takes over. ‘And then Crowky could hunt down Arthur and Rose and their grandad, and stuff them by squeezing the life out of them with his twig fingers!’ Adam cackles with laughter as he grabs my arm and hisses, ‘Drain, Arthur, drain!’

‘Yep. That’s what he’d do,’ I say, sweat prickling my skin.

Suddenly a loud voice cries out, ‘Arthur, what do you think you’re doing?’

I look up to see Rose standing in front of me, arms folded with an angry look on her face.

‘Just reading a bit of my story to Adam,’ I say.

‘Well, I don’t think your story sounds very realistic, do you?’ she says, one eyebrow raised. ‘How about you say that Arthur wasn’t sitting on the dragon’s back but was dangling helplessly from its claws, like a little mouse, and that Win was in his pants?’

‘That would be brilliant!’ says Adam. ‘And it would be even funnier if Arthur was in his pants too!’

‘Good idea,’ says Rose, then she spins round and walks towards the gates, calling, ‘Hurry up, you two!’

When Rose first found out that I’d read my story to Adam she was furious because we’d agreed never to tell anyone about Roar. But as soon as Adam started talking about her moonlight stallion Prosecco and her deadly dragons she changed her mind.

At school Rose is like any other twelve-year-old, but in Roar she’s this incredible creature-tamer who can make dragons roll over for a tummy tickle with one click of her fingers. She loves the fact that someone else finally knows about her skills and agreed that I could keep reading my story to Adam as long as I never let him know that Roar is real. Some days this is a really hard promise to keep.

Once we’re out of school, Rose looks at us with a sly smile and says, ‘So Kezia told me a funny story. Her brother said that two boys in our year freaked out when a crow landed on the field during PE. Apparently one of boys curled up on the floor and started to cry, while the other one ran around the field screaming, Big one! Big one!’

‘Arthur was not crying,’ says Adam, outraged. ‘He was whimpering, and I was saying, Begone, begone!’

‘Yeah, and you’d have curled up on the floor if that thing was flying towards you,’ I say. ‘The crow was massive, Rose!’

She grins. ‘I knew it had to be you two. So what was it about this bird that scared you so much?’

‘It wasn’t a bird,’ scoffs Adam. ‘It was one of Crowky’s spies delivering a message to Arthur.’

‘Oh, yes?’ says Rose sarcastically. ‘And what was this message?’

‘Well, we don’t know exactly,’ says Adam. ‘It was more a general I’m-coming-to-get-you message . . . What I don’t get is why Crowky didn’t turn up on the playing field himself? He’s got the T-shirt, so he could come here if he wanted to, couldn’t he? Imagine if he flew down and stuffed Mr McGill. That would be amazing!’

His words make my stomach squirm uncomfortably and I fight the urge to look up at the sky.

‘I’ll tell you why Crowky didn’t turn up himself, Adam,’ says Rose. ‘Because, just like the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts and your girlfriend in Year Nine, he isn’t real.’

Adam gazes at her. ‘Gad zooks, you’re funny, Rose.’

Rose sucks in her breath. ‘Adam, what’s the rule about the buffer zone?’

‘No medieval stuff within twenty metres of you.’

‘That’s it,’ she says, ‘and right now you are less than thirty centimetres away from me.’

‘Forgive me, sweetling!’

Rose swings her bag at Adam but he dodges out of the way. So she gets him in a headlock instead. ‘Call me sweetling again,’ she hisses, ‘and I’ll stop walking home with you.’

‘Sorry!’ he squeals.

Once Adam has been released we talk a bit more about Roar, then share a packet of Peanut M&Ms while Rose tells us about Kezia’s cat. Apparently it’s scared of cucumbers and bananas but not courgettes. Soon we reach Adam’s road.

He runs towards his house, then, when he’s standing outside his gate (and approximately twenty metres away from Rose) he shouts, ‘Fare thee well, Lord Arthur and sweet Lady Rose. By my troth ’tis but four days till the summer holidays!’ Then he bows, waves an imaginary hat above his head and disappears inside his house.

‘Ye gads,’ says Rose, unable to help herself, ‘I can’t believe that boy is one of my best friends.’

We walk on for a moment, then Rose nudges me and grins. ‘Just four days to go, Arthur. I can’t wait!’

She’s not talking about the summer holidays but about going back to Roar. On the last day of term Grandad is picking us up from school, taking us to his house and then we’re crawling straight through the camp bed and into Roar.

‘It’s going to be amazing,’ I say, and then the two of us are lost in thoughts about Roar. A warm, happy glow surrounds us as we cut across the park, but then I have to go and ruin everything by saying, ‘Rose, are you sure Crowky didn’t send that crow to scare me?’

She bursts out laughing. ‘Of course he didn’t! Arthur, do you really think that if Crowky wanted to scare you, he’d send a crow to make you bowl badly in rounders?’

‘No,’ I admit. ‘He’s more into kidnapping people and setting fire to stuff and destroying lives.’

‘Exactly,’ she says, giving me a shove. ‘Crowky is gone, Arthur, which means this trip to Roar is going to be our best ever!’

CHAPTER 3

There is another reason why this trip to Roar is going to be our best ever: we’re going for ten whole days.

When Mum and Dad said they wanted to spend their annual no-twins holiday walking in Spain, Rose and I managed to convince them that one week wasn’t nearly enough time to enjoy the Pyrenees and not be with us. Then we went on about how much we loved visiting Grandad, and how it made us feel grown-up and responsible being left on our own, and before we knew it they’d booked a ten-day holiday in Spain.

This meant we could start planning our trip to Roar.

We knew that ten days would give us enough time to do something really special. It was Rose who came up with the idea of an expedition. Along with Win and Mitch, we’re going to sail across Roar, further than we’ve ever been before, to explore the islands that lie beyond The End. They’re not frozen and snowy like the rest of The End. They’re lush and green and mysterious, and we haven’t got a clue what’s on them . . . but soon we’re going to find out!

The thought of the expedition is so exciting that the last days of school drag by. Rose and I sit through pointless end-of-term lessons, the whole time dreaming about the moment we set sail on our pirate ship, the Alisha. If anything, it’s even worse at home. Time seems to stand still as we pack bags full of clothes we’re never going to wear and listen to Mum and Dad’s lectures about looking after Grandad and making sure we get enough fresh air. Ha! If only they knew. Air doesn’t get much fresher than when you’re flying a dragon over the Bottomless Ocean!

Then, finally, the last day of term arrives.

After breakfast, we say goodbye to Mum and Dad then drag our heavy rucksacks to Langton Academy. Then we have five long lessons to get through. The second the bell rings, Rose and I are shooting out of school with Adam following close behind us.

‘What’s the big rush?’ he says as our rucksacks bang into lockers.

‘We don’t want to keep Grandad waiting,’ Rose calls back.

She needn’t have worried. As usual, Grandad is late. Adam stands between us at the side of the road while other children walk home and the buses pull away.

‘I’m going to miss you two,’ says Adam. ‘I asked Mum if you could come camping with us in Wales, but she said there wasn’t enough room in our tent.’

Adam can’t believe that our mum and dad are going on holiday without us, even though we keep telling him we don’t mind. ‘Honestly, we’re fine,’ I say. ‘We love it at Grandad’s.’

‘I know,’ he says, ‘but, Arthur, the campsite’s got alpacas!’

Rose hides a smile. Like me, she must be thinking about all the merfolk, unicorns and dragons that are waiting for us in Roar.

‘Where’s Grandad?’ I say, peering down the road. Although I’m desperate to get to Roar, I don’t mind him being a bit late because he’s got a very embarrassing car. He’s attached so many bits to it from other cars that it looks like it belongs to a clown.

‘There he is!’ says Rose.

His car comes rattling down the road followed by a huge cloud of smoke. Grandad hits the brakes then toots his horn three times, just in case we haven’t spotted him . . . parked in front of us . . . in his clown car.

He leans out of the window and gives us a massive smile. His hair and beard are fluffier than ever and they stand out against his dark brown skin. ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ he says. ‘Get in!’ I’m about to throw my bag in the boot, when he says, ‘Boot’s broken, Arthur. I’m going to find a new one at the scrapyard tomorrow.’

Of course he is.

Before we can leave Adam has to have some medieval banter with Grandad, and then he bids us a long ‘adieu’. This involves him doing a deep bow and then saying to Rose, ‘Fair thee well, Rose, my lambkin!’

‘I’ll never be your lambkin, Adam,’ she says, winding up her window before he can attempt to kiss her hand. Grandad pulls away from the kerb with a few more