Lucy Leader 44 Butterfly Drive

Lucy is happy the school holidays have begun, but angry that her parents have gone on a world cruise and apparently forgotten her 14th birthday. But she doesn't mind that she and her kid brother have been left in the care of her Nan and Granddad, whom she can twist around her little finger if she wants to. Granddad is an eccentric scientist who works on creating a time machine in a boatshed at the back of their property and Nan is suspected by Lucy's friends Amy-Jane and Caramellow of being a witch. The three are soon joined by a boy, Trott, who lives nearby and whose own friends have gone away for the holidays. They are also joined, terrifyingly at first, by Glimpse - the planet's head gatekeeper - who tries to adopt human form but can manage only to look like a goblin. The "others", Glimpse's assistants, also join them. There is a breach in a portal of time and space, which runs through Lucy's bedroom, and the head gatekeeper and his assistants must repair it before it's too late. The breach was meant to be only a minor one made by the elves of another dimension to hide their treasure from the pillaging mogtroids, but it just keeps getting bigger and Lucy suddenly finds herself Keeper of the Elfin Treasure Trove. Lucy's outgoing nature and inquiring mind gets her into desperate trouble when she decides to visit the other dimension on her own. Caramellow thinks it all must be a bad dream and Amy-Jane is "transported" by mistake when the elves seek to hold counsel with Lucy. The boy Trott thought he was going to be bored out of his mind hanging around with a bunch of girls who didn't really even like him. More like, he was to be nearly scared out of his mind. Summer holidays were never quite like this, and as Glimpse warned them, "Be careful what you wish for, be careful what you say, lest your careless words may bring the fairies out to play".

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