Diana! Diana! Where Are You?”

Diana! Diana!!!” The words sounded as if they were coming from so far away. “Where is she now?” the voice demanded. “Diana, get back here!” Gradually I opened my eyes to see a figure standing over me about three inches from my face, so close I could feel her breath on my cheeks. For a moment I struggled to remember this familiar face. “Oh, it’s you, yes, yes mum?” I was fully back now. “What is it mum?” “Diana, how many times have I told you to stop day dreaming? I have asked you to do your chores an hour ago, and you haven’t done a single thing.”

“Sorry mum, I just can’t help it.” This was my chant every time I picked up a favourite book or comic. It used to take me simply ages to finish a chapter, never mind a whole book. Not that I was a slow reader; I loved words. I grew up with books around me. Mum was an avid reader and so was dad. They used to joke that sometimes we would all be in the house and no one would ever know. We were that quiet. Each of us would be immersed in our own world, the world that was a book. How many times mum would have to call me back from a ‘day dream.’ I often resented being called back, because in my comic/ book world I could do things that I could not in this world.

In my early years it was in my books and comics that I met, played, interacted and lived with many of my favourite characters They seemed to me as real as any other of those in the outside world. This concept was never strange to me. It happened so often that I perceived it as normal, as with so many things that occurred in my life – until I grew up. I would go into the world of superman comics, where he would fly me way up in the sky, or to some planet. I would converse with Lois Lane, who after superman was my best comic friend. To me these experiences were real. I often came back from my comic world breathless, where superman had just flown me to some exotic place or other, actually still feeling the warmth of that place on my cheeks, or still being able to smell the sweet scent of a flower.

I didn’t know then that the books and comics were portals into which I could pass safely through, and through the characters of the comics I would be befriended, and lovingly tutored without realizing it as such at the time, by those whom I later came to know as my guardians and I their ward. I was being tutored for a time in the future, where every word spoken by these guardians would come back to me at the most appropriate times in my life. They would return to save me from a harm I had no idea was always lurking in the shadows, awaiting any opportunity to take my young life before I had a chance to live it. Through my book portals I was gently introduced into the world of guardians and magic and astral travelling.