Alec Monroe, newly friendless due to a catastrophe at the ball park, anticipates a lonely summer until he meets Mordecai. Mordecai is a voice coming from a wooden head that Alec’s mother sent him, painted to look like a Pictish War Chief. Mordecai claims to be king of Casoria, a land far away in a parallel universe. He claims the head is enchanted and he’s been trapped inside. Mordecai is smart, he’s funny, he’s a lot of things Alec thinks he’s not, but he needs help. He needs Alec to go home with him and help break the enchantment. Alec agrees. Why not? When the time is right, they climb a hill to a Calling Door nestled in a hollow tree. Alec hesitates at the last minute but a stray mastiff named Diogenes head butts him through and follows. In Casoria, Alec meets the king’s friends and subjects. Mordecai’s fiancé, Claudine, so headstrong that she tries to free him by taking an axe to the head. General Eugenia McPherson McNutt, at war with the Swarthy Giants--- except for Winklepleck, a rogue giant, who is kind and gentle. And Harold, Eugenia’s baby brother, a musician, whose flute plays a warning song. There are seven Skylls, magicians who control the elements and the Calling Doors. Four have remained loyal to the king, but three have joined forces with the archvillain, Garious Durg, a renegade who now rules most of the kingdom. For the enchantment to be reversed, Mordecai must make a perilous journey to the magical Viper Mountain, but no Casorian can take him. It is up to Alec and Diogenes. In this winding journey, Alec learns how much courage and craft it take to be in the right place at the right time.