Synopsis: The Gatekeeper

According to the world, Bismah Alice Jenkins is not a normal, ordinary girl. She is gifted. Everyone says so; her mom and dad, her teachers, her college recruiters. At twelve, she becomes a freshman in an exclusive preparatory school and wins the first chair cello position in the school's nationally recognized orchestra.

And yet, Bismah's always two steps behind her little sister, Al-Zahra. Al-Zahra would never be called gifted. Al-Zahra is a genius. Affectionately known as Ally, Bismah's younger sister is also a freshman in high school, at ten years old. She's also deaf, shy, and hopelessly insecure without her big sister to run interference in social situations and has few friends of her own. Because of this, Bismah is constantly torn between hyper-overprotectiveness towards her younger sister and a brashly competative state of one-up-manship.

And yet, to outsiders, the Jenkins sisters appear consistently close; as though, despite their socially "freakish" differences from their peers, they have made their own way in the world. According to others, they live relatively peaceful, routine lives, caring for one another under the able-bodied skill of their full-time working mother, the distant but loving gaze of their oft-absent father, and the constant hovering of their never-seen nanny, Michael.

But their life is about to come tumbling down, begining with the death of their mother and the dissapearance of one of their close friends. These are only the first in a bizarre string of "coincidences" that are anything but. Unravelling these mysteries opens the door to a world they never knew existed--a world of magic and darkness, where their oldest neighbors and dearest friends, even their parents, are not what they seem.
Ultimately, the sisters' investigation flings them out of Earth, maybe even out out of the Universe, and into a strange new realm; a collection of planets inhabited by semi-immortal, human-like people called Fae.

Separated by impossible distances, Bismah and Al-Zahra must each rely on their unique abilities and talents in order to survive. They must navigate without help or resources, make their way back to each other, and find their way home.

However, they are limited by every possible interference--language, culture, a civilization with destruction and rebellion nipping at it's heels, and an impossible task: they must find the current Gatekeeper, Nickil Evening; the one who can connect the worlds, because only he can open the gates back to Earth.

The problem is that Nickil Evening vanished centuries ago.

Without the help of a Gatekeeper, there is no way to get home. But with the thousands of Fae failing to find him in the hundreds of years gone by, there's no chance that the sisters will find him either. What are they to do?