Alchemy. Margaret Mahy

the court had hit a high lob. The two players on the far side of the net ran frantically inwards, both concentrating on the ball and on nothing else. Colliding violently they fell, spread-eagled on the court, to the accompaniment of mingling cries of sympathy and derision. Fabuloso! he thought as he clapped, irritated to find himself using, yet again, his father’s insistent word.

      “Fabuloso!” exclaimed that slightly lisping voice behind and above him.

      Roland froze. He took a long, deliberate breath. Then he twisted around to stare for a second time at the man in the black coat, without trying to seem in the least casual about it this time. But the man was gazing at the court in a perfectly normal way for someone enjoying a tennis match. Roland, still looking up and under, could make out even less of him than he had done the first time – just the same powerful neck and the same pale skin beginning to sag under the long chin, and above that, the brim of the black hat. He tried to move forward, but there was someone sitting directly in front of him. How could it possibly be a coincidence that such an odd word had been used at the very moment he was thinking it? Yet how could it could it possibly be anything else?

      For a fantastic moment he caught himself wondering if the man in the black coat could possibly be