Trepidation and curiosity wrestled one another for a moment. Curiosity won. “Okay,” he relented. “Twenty minutes.”

The two started walking toward the street. “I’ve got to call my girlfriend and tell her I’ll be a little late,” Kit said, pulling out his phone. He flipped it open and pressed the speed-dial key for Mina’s number. When nothing happened, he glanced at the screen to see the “Network Not Connected” message blinking at him. He waved the phone in the air, then looked again. Still no tiny bars indicating a signal.

“Not working?” asked the older man, watching him with a bemused expression.

“Must be the buildings,” mumbled Kit, indicating the close brick walls on either hand. “Blocking the signal.”

“No doubt.”

They continued on, and upon approaching the end of the alley, Kit thought he heard a sound at once so familiar, and yet so strange, it took him a full two seconds to place it. Children laughing? No, not children. Seagulls.

He had little time to wonder about this, for at that moment they stepped from the dim alleyway and into the most dazzling and unusual landscape Kit had ever seen.

CHAPTER 2

In Which Lines Are Drawn, and Crossed

Before his bewildered eyes spread a scene he had only ever glimpsed in movies: a busy wharf with a three-masted schooner moored to the dock and, beyond it, the grand sweep of a sparkling, blue-green bay. The brilliant, sun-washed air was loud with the cackle of seagulls hovering and diving for scraps of fish and refuse as fishermen in the smaller boats hefted wicker baskets full of silver fish to women in blue bonnets and grey shawls over long calico dresses. Broad black headlands rose on either side of the wide scoop of the bay and, between these craggy promontories, a tidy town of small white houses climbed the slopes. Stocky men in short, baggy trousers and droopy shirts, with straw hats on their heads, pushed handcarts and drove mule teams along the seafront, helping to unload hessian-wrapped bundles from the tall ship.