Ignored!

But the man did not react. He just continued looking out across the river as the current carried the raft past him, barely twenty yards from where he stood. "He just ignored us!" Astra exclaimed.

"I don't think he could either see or hear us," Jarlath told her. "Haven't you noticed how our bodies aren't reflected in the water? If the sun was out, I'd bet that we wouldn't cast any shadows either."

"What are you saying?" Fred asked. "That we're ghosts? Did your spell kill us?"

"Not ghosts exactly, no. We aren't dead. I don't know quite what happened, but my spell seems somehow to have brought us to an alternative reality. It is a very magical reality - I can feel the magic all around me - but it is a very different magic from that back home. Perhaps that's why we seem in some sense not to exist. What I'm saying is that we possess no intrinsic magic of our own in a world where everything is imbued with it. Or at least, any intrinsic magic that we do have is too different from the local magic to be recognised here."

"Can you return us to our own reality?" Astra asked pragmatically. If they didn't have to stay in this world, then it was of little consequence to her how strange it was.

"No. At least, not yet. If I can learn enough about this place, perhaps one day I might be able to. But that day is probably a long way off, possibly even years away."

"We are certainly interacting with this world at some level, though," Fred pointed out. "I seem to weigh about my normal amount. We can breathe. We are comfortably warm. And we are interacting with the wood of this raft, in that we haven't just sunk straight through it."

"Good point," Jarlath said. "I wonder what would happen if I plunged my hand into the water."

When he did so:

1. It caused a splash, and when he withdrew his hand it was wet.
2. His hand passed into the water without causing even the slightest ripple, and when he withdrew it again it was perfectly dry!

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