Prologue

Max knew he wasn’t special. He was just a regular kid with a regular family living in a regular house.

His twin sister, Charlie, wasn’t special either. A chatterbox? Yes. Girly? Urgh, yes? Annoying? Words cannot express how annoying she was. But special? No. The only thing Max found interesting about Charlie was the way that vein popped out in her forehead whenever anyone called her by her full name, Charlotte.

Sometimes Max whispered, “Charlotte,” for no other reason than to see that vein dance.

Max’s pet bunny, Ignatius, wasn’t special either. Very not special. Just a bundle of white fur that ate and pooped on repeat. He loved Ignatius, but special he was not.

The book Max was currently holding was special, though. He and Charlie had been helping to clean out their great aunt’s house when they found it. It was in a rusty old, locked box in the bottom of a trunk, in the bottom of a wardrobe. They’d busted open the locked box together, expecting something incredible. All that was in there was this book. It looked like someone had tried to burn it, and were they bite marks?

Charlie had dry reached at the stench. It smelt like someone had tried to flush it down the loo as well. I mean, if you’re going to try to dispose of something down the toilet, don’t you flush the toilet first? Apparently not from the smell of the book!

Max had taken it with them in the car when they’d left the house. Charlie had argued and whinged and even resorted to dobbing on him, but their mum had just shrugged her shoulders at them. She had bigger things to worry about than their twin bickering.

So, it turned out that Max, the unspecial boy with the unspecial bunny and the unspecial life, had a secret. That book, the burnt, bitten, diabolical smelling one, was a portal to endless escapades.

Ignatius always went with him. He’d been sitting on Max’s lap the first time he’d opened the book, and now Max couldn’t bear the thought of going without him.

On these escapades, though, Ignatius didn’t remain a bunny. Oh no, the “shift”, as they’d come to call it, turned him into other animals. Always a different animal and always one that was incredibly unhelpful. But Ignatius’s company had its perks because on these escapades, he could talk!

Whenever Max felt bored, he pulled the book out and let it shift them to another world. And that’s where they were going right now. What would it be this time, he pondered as he flipped through the pages. A giant maze? A world made entirely of stained glass?

The world tilted, his stomach lurched, and he clenched his eyes shut. Max knew that when everything felt the right way up again, and he opened his eyes, he wouldn’t be in his bedroom anymore.