The Land of Roar. Jenny McLachlan

then Grandad comes wheezing into the room. ‘So what do you think of your surprise?’ he says.

      I pull my eyes away from the window. ‘We can’t find it.’

      Grandad laughs and throws his arms out wide. ‘That’s because you’re standing in it!’

      Rose blinks. ‘What do you mean, Grandad?’

      ‘The attic is your surprise. Isn’t it amazing?’

      Rose and I share a look of confusion. Grandad’s done some pretty weird stuff over the years – including dying his beard green for Christmas – but he’s never given us his attic as a present.

      He looks at us eagerly. ‘Do you like it?’

      I nod. ‘Yeah, it’s really . . . surprising.’

      Rose is less polite. ‘Is this some sort of joke, Grandad?’

      He walks around the messy room, kicking things out of his way. ‘I know it doesn’t look like much at the moment, but once you’ve cleared it out, I’m going to turn it into a den for the two of you. I’ll put a TV over there, replace the sofa, put a popcorn machine in the corner. Whatever you want. It will be yours!’

      I smile as I imagine how amazing it will look. Even Rose’s eyes light up, breaking her number-one rule of never showing she’s into something. ‘I’ve always wanted a proper den,’ she says. ‘Not the sort of thing me and Arthur used to make with blankets. Can we have beanbags?’

      Grandad laughs. ‘Shaped like burgers?’

      And that’s when my mind catches up with what Grandad just said. ‘Hang on. What do you mean, once you’ve cleared it out?’

      ‘Well, look around! How can I make you an amazing den if all this junk is up here?’ He pushes a wobbly pile of boxes. ‘I’d like to help, but I can’t, not with my asthma.’ To prove his point he bends over and breaks into a hacking cough.

      ‘Inhaler,’ I say, and obediently he pulls out his asthma inhaler and has a puff.

      ‘Nothing to worry about,’ he says, straightening up. ‘Now, after you’ve got the attic empty, we can spend the rest of the week painting.’

      Rose groans. ‘Do we have to, Grandad?’

      I’m with Rose on this. In just over a week we start at Langton Academy – a huge secondary school that’s packed full of big, scary kids and that has a no-talking-in-the-corridors rule – I do not want to spend my last days of freedom doing DIY.

      ‘You have to if you want a den,’ says Grandad. Then he grabs a pile of comics and heads for the door. ‘I’ll be in my shed.’

      For a moment Rose and I stand there staring at the chaos. Then Rose picks up a metre ruler – which for some reason is wrapped in tinfoil – and starts clearing a path through the middle of the junk. ‘This is my half,’ she says, then she tosses the ruler into the messier part of the attic, ‘and that’s your half.’ Next she opens a cupboard and starts pulling out books. After a moment, she says, ‘No wizards in here, Arthur.’

      With a sigh I pick up a sports bag and start stuffing it full of National Geographic magazines.

      Suddenly Rose gasps. ‘Hang on . . . I think I’ve found one!’

      I can’t resist looking up.

      Rose is grinning and holding up a large dusty book. ‘My mistake. It’s not a wizard. It’s a French dictionary.’

      I go back to the magazines. Something tells me this is going to be a very long day.

      Rose decides that we’re going to put everything in the garden before sorting out what’s going to the tip and what’s going to the charity shop, and ‘Hurry up, Arthur!’ soon becomes her favourite phrase. But it’s hard to hurry up when there’s so much cool stuff to look at.

      I discover a magic set, a whole pillowcase stuffed full of Playmobil pirates, and I even find a wizard’s hat perched on top of an oar. I wonder if this could be what I saw at the window, but the oar is right at the back of the attic. There’s no way I could have seen it from the garden.

      I put the hat on and creep up on Rose, planning to scare her, but when she turns round she just narrows her eyes and says, ‘Didn’t you once have an imaginary friend who was a wizard?’

      She’s right, I did. His name was Wininja and he was stealthy and a bit magical.

      ‘He was a wizard-ninja, Rose. Big difference.’

      She smiles. ‘Is he standing next to you right now, Arthur, whispering in your ear?’

      The moment she says this I have this sensation that someone could be standing next to me and I have to fight the urge to look. Rose goes back to her books and I glance around the attic, my eyes lingering on the darkest corners. ‘Hurry up, Arthur!’ Rose snaps.

      While Rose takes her bag downstairs, I decide to get started on the dressing-up box. I take out an armful of clothes and dump them on the floor. I’m just trying to detangle a ball of beards and wigs when I spot a Quality Street tin buried at the bottom of the box.

      I pull it out and feel the weight of it in my hands. It’s round and dented, and has a picture of a soldier and a lady on the front, and when I shake it I can hear something rattling around inside. I sit down and prise at the lid until it opens with a shower of rusty flakes. All that’s inside is a foil chocolate wrapper and a large folded piece of paper. The piece of paper has the word ‘SECRIT!’ written on the front in my own handwriting.

      I stare at the thick, yellowing piece of paper, holding my breath as I wonder what I once thought was so secret. Carefully I unfold it and spread it out across the attic floor. It’s a hand-drawn map, covered in tiny pictures and carefully written labels, something Rose and I must have made years ago.

      The map is of a wobbly land almost cut in half by a river. One side of this land is as colourful as a cartoon with emerald-green trees and bright blue lakes. The other half has hardly any colour at all. It’s filled with blackened mountains, jagged grey cliffs and forests of stick-like trees. Written along the top of the map, again in my spiky handwriting, is one word: ROAR.

      ‘Roar . . .’ The word sounds so familiar when I say it out loud.

      My eyes follow the zigzag waves one of us has drawn across the sea, and suddenly I remember the way those waves crashed against the cliffs and how there were so many of them the sea seemed to churn and boil. Just when I’m thinking that this map must have been inspired by some place Mum and Dad took us on holiday, I remember something else: me and Rose bursting into this attic and shouting, ‘Let’s play Roar!’

      I smile. Roar isn’t a real place. It’s a game that Rose and I used to play, one that was so good, we drew a map of it.

      As I gaze at the map the game comes creeping back to me. I see mountain ranges stretched between the folds of the paper and a curving coastline dotted with coves and cliffs. There’s a cluster of jelly-shaped islands labelled Archie Playgo, a castle rising out of the sea, and three dragons soaring through the sky. Butterflies, or maybe fairies, are dotted everywhere and sly-looking unicorns peer from between trees. I can’t actually remember sitting next to Rose and drawing these things, but still my mind tingles with recognition and something else. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.

      Rose’s footsteps pull me back to the attic.

      ‘What’s that?’ she says, kneeling next to me.

      ‘It’s a map we drew of Roar.’