The plane hit the tarmac with a jarring thud. I took a deep breath to calm myself. It would be hours still before I would actually meet my father. Being a native of Faerie, he couldn’t set foot in the mortal world. (If he’d decided to kidnap me, he’d have had to use human accomplices to do it.) The unique magic of Avalon is that the city exists both in Faerie and in the mortal world—the only place where the two planes of existence overlap. When my father stood at the border of the city and looked out, all he could see was Faerie, and if he crossed the border, those of us in the mortal world wouldn’t be able to see him anymore.
He’d arranged to have a human friend of his meet me at the London airport and take me to Avalon. Only when I got through Avalon immigration would I be able to meet him.
I went through the immigration and customs process in London in something of a daze. I’d been too excited and nervous to sleep on the plane, and it was definitely catching up with me now. I followed the herd to the ground transportation area and started searching the sea of placards for my own name.
I didn’t see it.
I looked again, examining each sign carefully, in case my name was misspelled and that’s why I’d missed it. But the crowd of drivers steadily thinned, and nowhere did I see anyone holding up my name. I bit my lip and examined my watch, which I’d adjusted to London time. It was 8:23 a.m., and when I’d last talked to my dad, he’d estimated that if the plane was on time, I’d get through customs somewhere around 8:15. His friend should be here by now.
I took another one of those deep breaths, reminding myself to calm down. Dad’s friend was only eight minutes late. Hardly worth panicking about. I found a comfortable chair near the doors, my gaze darting this way and that as I looked for someone hurrying into the terminal like they were late. I saw plenty of those, but none of them carried a sign with my name on it.
When 8:45 rolled around and still there was no sign of my ride, I decided it was okay to get a little bit panicky. I turned on my cell phone, meaning to give Dad a call, only to discover I couldn’t get a signal. Belatedly, I wondered if American cell phones worked in London. I swallowed another wave of nerves. Dad had sent me a lovely getting-to-know-you gift, a white rose cameo, and I found myself fingering it anxiously.
I’d been in and out of a lot of airports in my life, and if the flight was long enough, my mom was invariably sloshed by the time we landed. Even when I was like eight years old, I’d been capable of steering my mom through the airport, finding our baggage, and arranging a taxi to take us to wherever we needed to be. Granted, the most exotic place I’d ever had to do it was Canada, but heck, this was England, not India.
Telling myself not to sweat it, I found a bank of pay phones. Because my mom couldn’t be trusted to keep track of bills or anything, we’d arranged for me to have my own credit card, which I promptly used to make the long-distance call to Avalon.
I let the phone at my dad’s house ring about ten times, but no one answered. I hung up and bit my lip.
I’d been nervous enough about this whole adventure. Now I was stranded at Heathrow Airport and my dad wasn’t answering his phone. Add to that a crushing case of jet lag, and all I wanted to do at the moment was curl up in a snug, comfy bed and go to sleep. I swallowed a yawn—if I let myself get started, I’d never stop.
At 9:15, I had to admit that the chances of my dad’s friend showing up were slim to none. My dad probably wasn’t answering his phone because he was waiting for me at the Avalon border, as he’d promised. So okay, all I had to do was get a cab to take me to the border. It was only about twenty-five miles out of London. No big deal, right?
I exchanged some money, then got in one of those enormous black cabs they have in England. It felt really weird to see the driver on the wrong side of the car, and even weirder to be driving on the wrong side of the road.
My driver drove like a maniac and talked nonstop the entire way to Avalon’s Southern Gate. I don’t know what his accent was, maybe Cockney, but I only understood about a third of what he said. Luckily, he never seemed to require a response aside from the occasional smile and nod. I hoped he didn’t see me flinching and wincing every time it seemed like he was about to squash someone into roadkill.
Like everyone else in the universe, I’d seen lots of pictures of Avalon. You could find about a thousand guide books dedicated to the city—I had two in my luggage—and just about every fantasy movie ever made has at least one or two scenes that were filmed on location in Avalon, it being the only place in the mortal world where magic actually works. But seeing Avalon in person kind of reminded me of seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time: no photograph on earth could do it justice.
Avalon is situated on a mountain. Yes, a real, honest-to-goodness mountain. The thing juts up into the sky out of the flat, green, sheep-dotted countryside, and it looks like someone grabbed one of the Alps and haphazardly dropped it where it most definitely did not belong.
Houses and shops and office buildings had been built into every square inch of the mountain’s slopes, and a single paved road spiraled from the base to the castle-like structure that dominated the summit. There were lots of lesser cobblestone roads that led off that main one, but the main road was the only one big enough for cars.
The base of the mountain is completely surrounded by a thick, murky moat, the moat surrounded by a high, electrified fence. There are only four entrances to the city itself, one at each point of the compass. My dad was supposed to meet me at the Southern Gate. The taxi driver dropped me off at the gatehouse—a three-story building about a half a block long—and I felt another pang of apprehension as I watched him drive away. It was possible for cars to pass through the gates into Avalon, but the driver would have to have an Avalon visa to be allowed through. Backpack over one shoulder, I dragged my suitcase through a series of rat mazes, following the signs for visitors. Naturally, the lines for residents were all much shorter.