Five orphans, raised in a strict British boarding school, discover they are not ordinary human beings. They do not age, while the world outside does. Amelia is apparently a fourth-dimensional being; Victor can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls where none had previously been; Colin is a psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power comes from a different paradigm or view of the inexplicable universe - and they should not be able to co-exist. The orphans have been kidnapped from their true parents, robbed of their powers and memories, and raised in ignorance by super-beings: pagan gods, fairy-queens, Cyclops, sea-monsters, witches, or things even stranger. Can the children learn to control their strange abilities and escape their captors?
