The Secret Country

Legend says that only three things can destroy the Secret Country: the Border Magic, the Crystal of the Earth, and the Whim of the Dragon. Only the last remains, as the five children are summoned once more to the land of their own make-believe. This time, however, it will be different. For as they fled at the end of The Hidden Land, the note they left behind will reveal them as imposters. Even a land of make-believe will not take well to being told what it is, and with the children they replaced among the dead, a charitable reception is unlikely.

The Hidden Land is the second novel in Pamela Dean’s The Secret Country trilogy. Having accepted the Secret Country as real enough for the moment, the children must rise to meet the challenges they invented in the roles they were so eager to play in safe imagination. Yet they must do so without most of the strength and skills of the characters they are playing.

Prince Edward, the eldest of the five, now rules a country on the brink of war with the Dragon King. Painfully aware that he is only acting a role, he must lead his forces to victory while avoiding the growing suspicions of those around him. For if he is not Prince Edward, what has been done with the real Prince?

For 9 years, a group of five children have played what they call the Secret: a hidden world of make-believe, whose universe they have created for themselves, filled with dragons and unicorns and kings and dire plots and sorcerers both kind and cruel. All goes well as they wile out their summer hours inventing and improvising and practicing their lines, until one summer the children, now teenagers, are split up. It should be the end of the Secret, at least for that summer, and so it seems to be… until one of the children stumbles upon a magic sword lying within a hedge, and crawls through to discover herself in another world. The world of the Secret, their make-believe land suddenly turned horribly, wonderfully, real.