"Whooo," Divvy suddenly said in an odd voice, wiggling her fingers mesmerically, or so she hoped. "You are having a dream, a most pleasant dream in which the beautiful Twinkle Twins are visiting you to let you know it is a matter of life or death for you to be out here this evening. You must return to the school buildings in a sleepy but determined manner and forget us."

"Forget us," Fizzy caught on, modifying her voice into spooky tones too. "We are not really here."

"Divvy! Fizzy! What are you doing here?" a boy's voice cut through the night air, ripping the cobwebs of hypnotism from the tall boy's mind, or so the sudden flinch he gave suggested.

"Billy Buckle!" the twins howled and made to run for it. They did not know the grounds of Chancefleet obviously enough so they simply ran towards a patch of concealing shadow with the boy at their heels. The shadow proved to be an outbuilding which they skirted right into a crowd of lads playing a ball game in the twilight. Everyone stopped and stared at each other.

"I say, is that a girl?" one boy said.

"And another one, I think, or is it the same one twice?" The identical nature of the invaders was sowing useful confusion and Divvy glanced this way and that looking for an exit.

"Oof," came the wheezing cry of Billy Buckle, having caught up with and collided with the hesitating girls.

"Buckle!" came a scary authoritarian voice, "what are you doing with those strange creatures?" A master, who had been watching the game on the sidelines made his presence known with this bellow of outrage.

"Whoo," Fizzy began.

"Forget it," Divvy interrupted, "that trick won't work. We've got to get out of here super quick." She raised the trophy and began fiddling with the controls as more boys approached with the master and Billy Buckle, recovered from his winded condition, scrutinised the twins with unpleasant proximity.

"Hey, that's the Triple Shield! What are you doing with it?" he declared loudly and made a grab for the silvery device just as a glowing oval formed next to the three struggling figures.

"Don't touch!" Fizzy hopelessly warned for the boy had seized upon the rim of one of the three pieces just as Divvy pulled her sister through the hole so that they all disappeared together.

Yet they did not arrive at their destination together.

Billy Buckle blinked, rubbed a bruised knee and looked around him in the sudden silence.

"This is so cool," he said, then realised he was holding a piece of the trophy. It had fallen apart when he tried to wrestle it from Divvy. Now he stood there clutching the crescent shaped embossed metal, while all around him was nothing, simply nothing. A grey mist swirled in front of him, behind and to the sides, carried on a slow constant breeze, and beneath his feet a dry powdery earth crunched as he stepped forward to see if he could make out anything in the landscape. The ground sloped and knowing the way mist sat heavily in depressions he made his way up hill. Then he remembered and began shouting the names of the twins as he walked, one after the other so there would be no mistake or favouritism.

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Having reached a prominent rise in the ground so that it was downhill all around him he stopped. Alas he was no better off for the mist lay as thick and grey and impenetrable as before.

"Oh hello," a voice suddenly floated out of the dense vapour and a hazy figure approached from another direction to join him at the top.

"Divvy?"

"Might be." One of the things the twins hated most was when someone could tell them apart. "I see you have a part of the trophy," she added, plucking it from the boy's puzzled grasp before he could object. "Now we have two pieces. Pretty useless without the third."

"Where are we?" Billy asked.

"On a hill." Divvy snorted with laughter at her own response and then set about explaining as carefully as she could how the trophy worked, what had occurred to send them to this unexpected and unpleasant place, and pointed out the one crucial fact. "If we don't find Fizzy and the other piece of the Triple Shield we shall be stuck here long after lights out," she said meaningfully.

"Or the rest of our lives," Billy added more significantly. "We split up when we travelled, but not very far apart as you found me quite quickly."

"You have a very loud voice for such a small boy." Divvy was four inches taller than Billy Buckle, and more so at the moment for she had claimed the highest pinnacle of the peak upon which they were stranded.

"Aren't we going to search for your sister?" he asked, ignoring the personal comments.

"No need. You see, if we are ever lost we always follow a tried and trusted plan for finding each other again. If one of us is up hill then go down hill, and if one of us is down hill then go up hill. If a breeze blows from one direction one of us chooses left and the other right. Never fails."

The boy scratched his head as he tried to visualise this hide and seek game the twins had devised and was going to make the observation that Divvy was currently up hill and therefore should she not go down hill now when a distant call from somewhere below drew his attention to the fact someone else had found them.

"There, see?" Divvy said with evident satisfaction. "My twin sister has already found us, or me rather, for she was not looking for a boy anywhere," and she coughed disdainfully. Out of the mist a tall, blonde pigtailed figure marched forth and planted herself sprightly upon the peak.

"Getting a little crowded here," she sniggered. "Hooray, you've got the other bits of the trophy. Do you have any rope?"

"What for twin?"

"To tie up this little nuisance here so we can return safely without interference."

"You don't mean to leave me here?" the said boy gulped, turning as grey as the mist.

For answer Divvy carefully reconstructed the Triple Shield and made that funny face again as she recalibrated the dials. Tapping the thing three times she saw with satisfaction the now familiar glowing ring that seemed to sit upon a cloud of mist.

"Ladies first," she said tartly and stepped through, Fizzy upon her heels and with a shriek of alarm Billy Buckle leapt after them for he really did not want to be left behind on a world of mist and nothing but mist.

They tumbled onto a street which looked satisfyingly familiar.

"Definitely Frangea," Fizzy said, straightening her frock. "I can hear the sea and smell salt in the air."

"And I can hear some annoyingly familiar birds chirping over there in those trees," Divvy added to clinch the fact they had returned.

"And I can see two men running towards us as fast as possible," Billy Buckle said, pointing down the road.

"Not again," sighed the twins in unison.