Where does the story begin? In a dream? In the bathroom? In the underworld? Under a fingernail (Uurrg!)? Somewhere as high as the top of Mount Everest, or as far away as the moon?

No. Our story starts in a field near you, in the countryside, in the school holidays. Three children are playing hide and seek: Leo, Ziggy, and Mizzi. Ziggy hides behind some gorsebushes – he can smell the coconut scent of the yellow flowers, he can feel his heart beating fast. The others are about to find him, he steps back – there’s something there! Something metallic, rusty, unbelievable! Ziggy kneels down for a closer look: it looks like the wing of an aeroplane.

He calls the others. They are weary of trying to find him, and shocked when they see the wing of the plane.

“There might be more of the plane under that bush,” says Leo. He’s the clever one, he always has good ideas. Mizzy runs forward, starts to lift the bush, the others help to push branches out of her way.

“Wow,” they all say. Under the bush is a crimson and black World War Two fighter plane. “Let’s go and look inside it,” Ziggy suggests. They climb inside the plane. It’s a bit scary: what if there’s someone in there?
Or the skeleton of a World War 2 pilot? But the plane’s empty. Apart from a faded brown envelope. There’s a piece of old parchment inside and a letter:

If you are reading this letter, then I must have died long ago and my mission did not succeed. I am a spy transporting half of the Scroll of Peace. When the two pieces of the Scroll are joined, War will be over forever. Please continue my Quest: find the lost half of the Scroll of Peace and save the World from certain doom. But remember, be very careful how you fly this plane: you must …

“I can’t understand what this part says – it’s all in code,” says Leo. “Never mind, it’s probably someone’s idea of a joke. Let’s play a game: pretend we’re searching for the lost part of the Scroll of Peace!”
They have a great time pretending to fly the plane. They push all the buttons and pull all the levers. But then they must have fallen asleep – or something – because when they wake up, they’re not in the field in the countryside anymore.

“We … we probably sleepwalked,” Leo says. But they don’t recognise this place at all, and then something really, really scary happens. They see a dragonfly. Are you thinking that’s not very scary? You’d be wrong: this is a giant dragonfly with a five foot wingspan. It’s a prehistoric dragonfly.
They all scream and run. The giant dragonfly is hovering over them: the ground begins to shake. Oh no. This has to be a dream. It’s a dinosaur! “Its real!” screams Mizzi. They see the plane: the dinosaur’s gigantic teeth are tearing at the cockpit. Suddenly the plane dematerialises. It rematerialises next to them, and they jump back inside. “We’re ok!” says Leo. “We got away. But … but how do we fly the plane? How do we get home?” In a panic, Mizzi pushes all the buttons she can see: the plane rises up into the air and enters the Time Vortex in a flash of light. But one of the buttons is the ejector seat button. Before Leo and Ziggy can stop her, Mizzi is shooting out of the plane!

Outside the plane, everything is silent and dark. Mizzi is squirming in the Vortex of Space and Time for what feels like forever: then there’s an enormous explosion and she falls and falls in slow motion, and as she falls she can hear people screaming, more explosions, the zoom of aeroplanes. “AAAaaahhh!” She screams as she hits the ground, then she’s knocked out: she doesn’t know it, but she’s in London, it’s World War 2,it’s midnight and she’s right on the edge of a huge bombed out crater.

Meanwhile, Leo and Ziggy are in the plane, trying to crack the code.
“We’ve got to work it out. We’ve got to find Mizzy, and get home again.”
“Leo – what about the Quest for the Scroll? Maybe it’s all up to us!”
Leo is studying the code. He doesn’t answer.

Ziggy looks at the the ancient Scroll. It’s crumbling at the edges. Instead of words it is covered in tiny images. “Leo! You’ve got to look at this!”
“Not now, Ziggy! We’ve got to find my sister! I think I know what to do.” And Leo punches in some numbers and pulls a lever.
“AAAaahhh!” The plane accelerates forward at warp speed and suddenly stops dead. The boys are flung forward and out of the plane on to hard ground. Looming high above them is an enormous, partly built pyramid.
Ziggy looks up. “Oh no! Ancient Egypt?”

“AAAaahggg!!! Run!” A hideous Mummy has just emerged from the pyramid and is gliding towards them, hands outstretched. They are so scared they can’t run. They’re frozen to the ground. But as the Mummy gets closer, they see it is holding something in its rotting hand. It stops in front of them and crumbles to the ground. On the pile of bandages is a rolled-up piece of parchment – Leo picks it up – it is covered in little pictures like the Scroll.

“Leo! I know what they are, they’re hieroglyphics. And this must be the lost half of the Scroll of Peace. So the plane is programmed to take the pilot where he needs to go!”
“That means we should be able to find Mizzi. Come on.” They get back in the plane. As soon as Leo pulls the lever the plane vanishes from Ancient Egypt and passes through the Time Vortex again. The boys don’t notice that something else is trapped in the Time Vortex with them: something large, with enormous wings…

The plane hits London in the middle of a bombing raid. It hovers just above the ground and Leo and Ziggy are thrown out. The plane vanishes instantly: it can’t exist here in World War Two while the original plane is still here in the same Time Zone.

“Mizzi!” shouts Leo. Mizzi wakes up in fright and starts to slide into the bombed-out crater. She’s hanging on by her fingernails: then slowly she pulls herself up and the boys get her out.
“We’ve found it! The lost half of the Scroll!”
“But, but …where’s the plane, Leo?”

A man runs up to them. He’s wearing pilot’s uniform. “I saw what happened. Are you guys all right? Hey, what’s that?”
“It’s half of a Scroll. A Scroll of Peace,” Leo says.
“But … but that’s what I’m looking for! That’s my mission. To find the Scroll of Peace that will end the War. And you kids have brought it to me. But where’s the other half? Never mind – the plane will find it. The plane will fly me to the lost half of the Scroll.”
Leo whispers to the other two. “It’s the pilot – the one who dies. We can’t tell him what’s going to happen to him. That will change Time, and we may never get home.”

The pilot goes off with the Scroll, and the children spend the night in a deserted air raid shelter. Early in the morning they go outside: the plane is back again.
“That means the pilot has gone,” Mizzi says, “and we can go home.”

They get back in the plane and enter the Time Vortex. With the mission over, the plane is programmed to return to the Time of the person flying it.

“We’re back!” Ziggy climbs out of the plane. He smells the air, noticing the coconut smell of the gorse.
They all look back at the plane. Everything is the same, so they know they haven’t changed history, even though they found the missing half of the Scroll.
But as they walk away, heading away from the fields and back to the village, something starts to happen; the plane engine starts again, the pilot appears in the cockpit and prepares to enter the Time Vortex. His new mission: to visit the future, to prevent the next World War with the Scroll of Peace now mended and whole again, thanks to the children.

“I wish we had something to remind us of what happened,” says Leo later, as they watch TV.
“Me too,” says Ziggy.
“No-one will believe us,” says Mizzi.

But outside the window, a pair of enormous wings are whizzing as a huge dragonfly hovers in the wind …