Leaf woke with a start and sat up in bed. For a moment she was disoriented because she wasnât in her own bed. No band poster stared back at her from the wall at the foot of the bed because there was no wall. The bedside table was missing too, and on the other side there were no winking red eyes from her four-foot-high troll clock, the one sheâd made with her brother Ed several years before for a school science project.
She wasnât in her normal sleeping clothes either: a band T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. Instead, she was wearing an ankle-length pale blue nightshirt of soft flannel, something she would never have chosen to put on herself.
The room she was in was much bigger than her bedroom and there were eight other beds. The closer ones definitely had people asleep in them because Leaf could see bodies under the covers and the tops of their heads. The other beds were probably occupied as well.
It looked like a hospitalâ¦
Leaf suddenly became a lot more awake. She tried to jump out of the bed, but her legs wouldnât hold her up and it turned into more of a slither on to the floor. Clawing at the bedclothes, she got herself upright and leaned against the mattress while she tried to work out what was going on.
Slowly it all started to come back. Very slowly, as if her recent memory was broken and her brain was having trouble putting all the pieces back together.
Leaf remembered visiting her friend Arthur in the East Area Hospital. Heâd told her about the House that was the epicentre of the Universe and how he had been chosen to become the Rightful Heir to the Architect â not because he was born to be or anything like that, but because heâd been the right person at the right time. (Or the wrong person at the wrong time, depending on how you looked at it.) The Architect was apparently the creator of everything. Sheâd made not only the House but also the whole Universe beyond it, including the Earth.
Arthur had told Leaf about all this, and about Mister Monday and Grim Tuesday, two of the Trustees who had betrayed the missing Architect and refused to execute her Will. But before heâd finished, a huge wave had come from nowhere, washing them both into an ocean that wasnât even on Earth. Arthur had been carried away even further out on the strange sea, but Leaf had been picked up by a ship, the Flying Mantisâ¦
âThe Mantis,â whispered Leaf. Even a whisper sounded loud in the quiet room. There was no noise at all from the sleeping people in the other beds. Not even a snore. Suddenly Leaf wondered if they were actually dead rather than sleeping, and she stared at the closest bed to check. She could only see the top of the personâs head, just a tuft of hair â not enough to figure out whether it was a man or a woman. But after a few seconds Leaf was relieved to see the blanket rise and fall slightly. Man or woman, the person was breathing very slowly.