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Felix is not your usual hero. Though brave and intelligent, he suffers from a rare illness. His parents take him on the holiday of a lifetime to Costa Rica, where they visit the high point where the waters that feed into the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans separate. There, Felix faints and something extraordinary happens.

He wakes up in a back-to-front world where magic is real and humans are imaginary. Luckily, he's taken under the wing of Ironclaw, a maths-loving brazzle, anda mischievous tangle-girl called Betony. Together they embark on the wildest adventure.

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The helicopter took off, and the humming birds returned to the sugar-water feeders that were hung around the outside of the Study Centre. They used their beaks as rapiers, fencing in mid - air as they tried to knock one another away from the rim. The ones that won looked smug, and the ones that lost zoomed around the garden pretending they didn’t want a drink after all.

‘Come on, then,’ said Felix’s father. ‘Before it gets too hot.’

They started out along the path. The canopy closed above them like the roof of a cathedral, and when they looked up they could see flowers growing between the branches. They looked as though they’d been made of tissue paper and stuck on with glue.

‘What pretty trees,’ said Felix’s mother.

‘The flowers are epiphytes,’ said Felix, who had read far more than most boys of his age. He did a lot of reading, because for a lot of the time he couldn’t do much else, and he particularly liked things about science. ‘Epiphytes are parasitic plants,’ he added.

‘Oh,’ said his mother.

‘Like that strangler fig,’ Felix went on, pointing to a tangle of aerial roots. ‘The tree inside dies, in the end.’ Then he felt a little ashamed of himself. When his parents became too protective he always hit out the only way he knew how: by mentioning death.

They walked along for a while in silence. There wasn’t as much to see as he’d expected, but he could hear the strange ringing call of a bell-bird, which made him think of the little church in the village where they were staying. There were plenty of insects, though. A morpho butterfly the size of a tea-plate, its wings the most astonishing metallic blue. An ants’ nest, full of hollowed-out chambers.

 ‘Don’t go any closer,’ said Felix’s mother. ‘They probably have a nasty sting. How are you feeling, dear? Tired?’

‘No,’ said Felix. And he wasn’t. He wanted to get as far as the Continental Divide. Wanted to say he’d stood with one foot on either side.

They were going uphill all the time now. The view was going to be magnificent when they reached the top – jungle on one side, and jungle on the other, right the way down to the Pacific. And then he did begin to feel tired. He could see from the map that they didn’t have very far to go, but his mother was looking at him with that worried expression that irritated him so much.

And then, predictably, she said, ‘I think we should turn back now,’ and his father nodded.

‘No,’ said Felix.

‘Don’t argue,’ said his father.

‘But I want to get to the Divide.’

‘What’s so special about it?’ said his mother.

‘It’s the watershed,’ Felix explained. ‘All the water on one side goes into the Atlantic, and all the water on the other goes into the Pacific.’

‘So?’

Felix gritted his teeth. She didn’t understand. It was such a cool idea. Bodies were seventy percent water; if he could separate himself out the way he separated things out in the laboratory at school, half of him would go one way, and half of him the other.

‘It’s just an imaginary line,’ said his father. ‘There’s nothing to see.’

Felix glanced back at his mother. She was wriggling her shoulders, and then she turned her head to look behind her. Felix followed her gaze. There, on her back, was an insect the size of a pencil.

‘Get it off me!’ she shrieked.

Felix grinned. It was a stick insect; even though it was much bigger than the ones at school, it wouldn’t hurt her.

‘David!’ she yelled at his father. ‘Do something!’

Felix knew his father wouldn’t kill it - he would try to lift it off, and it wouldn’t be easy. He edged away. Just for once, he was going to do what he wanted.

He saw his father grasp the stick insect round its middle, and try to pull it off. The legs clung to the fabric like Velcro. Felix edged a bit further. Neither of his parents had noticed. His father lifted one of the insect’s feet off the blouse, then another and another. By the time he reached the fourth leg, the first foot was back on the fabric again. Felix was nearly at the bend in the path; a few more steps and he’d be out of sight. ‘What are you doing?’ yelled Felix’s mother. ‘Asking it nicely? It won’t work!’

The moment Felix reached the bend, he ran. It was hard work, running uphill – but suddenly, there it was; the top. It hadn’t been very far away at all.

The view was just as breathtaking as he’d imagined.