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1Amberfly
I read this book in high school, so sometime between 2005 and 2009, but it may have been published earlier. The local library had it shelved in the teen section. It was a small, slim paperback (probably not more than 150 pages) with a dark blue cover. I think the title was in white.
It's about two boys in parallel worlds(?) wandering around a huge, old, empty house (castle?). They're both enchanted somehow--they don't know how they got to this place. It's snowing outside. There is also a white cat that can talk--I think at the end she turns into a mystical, Titania-like figure. I think there is another non-human character with the cat, but I'm not sure about that. The two boys don't know about each other until the end because they're in different realities, but they're both named Jerold, although one spells it differently. (The second boy might be called Gerund--he's kind of clumsy and the cat tells him "You are a walking gerund" and he thinks that's his name.)
At one point Jerold (just one of them) traces his name on the foggy window, and one of the villain's servants sees it. At the end of the book, in the confrontation with the bad guy, he (or she, can't remember) thinks the boys are defeated because the servant knows his true name, so it has power over him. But because the creature saw the name from the outside of the window, it's backwards. When he says it, it comes out with the letters reversed, like "dloreJ". The servant is really strong, but not the brightest, obviously. Thus the villain and his servant have no power over them, so the boys can defeat them.
The book had a handful of illustrations--they were black-and-white line drawings, full-page. One of them was of the villain's servant, looking intimidating in a helmet like a knight's, with the letters "d-l-o-r-e-J" tumbling through the air. But I'm pretty sure there were only a few, like 5, illustrations in the whole book. It was mostly text, not a picture book.
Sorry for the wall of text, I put down everything I remember hoping someone will recognize this. I don't remember the title or the author and it's been driving me nuts!
It's about two boys in parallel worlds(?) wandering around a huge, old, empty house (castle?). They're both enchanted somehow--they don't know how they got to this place. It's snowing outside. There is also a white cat that can talk--I think at the end she turns into a mystical, Titania-like figure. I think there is another non-human character with the cat, but I'm not sure about that. The two boys don't know about each other until the end because they're in different realities, but they're both named Jerold, although one spells it differently. (The second boy might be called Gerund--he's kind of clumsy and the cat tells him "You are a walking gerund" and he thinks that's his name.)
At one point Jerold (just one of them) traces his name on the foggy window, and one of the villain's servants sees it. At the end of the book, in the confrontation with the bad guy, he (or she, can't remember) thinks the boys are defeated because the servant knows his true name, so it has power over him. But because the creature saw the name from the outside of the window, it's backwards. When he says it, it comes out with the letters reversed, like "dloreJ". The servant is really strong, but not the brightest, obviously. Thus the villain and his servant have no power over them, so the boys can defeat them.
The book had a handful of illustrations--they were black-and-white line drawings, full-page. One of them was of the villain's servant, looking intimidating in a helmet like a knight's, with the letters "d-l-o-r-e-J" tumbling through the air. But I'm pretty sure there were only a few, like 5, illustrations in the whole book. It was mostly text, not a picture book.
Sorry for the wall of text, I put down everything I remember hoping someone will recognize this. I don't remember the title or the author and it's been driving me nuts!
22wonderY
I googled some of your key terms and came up with The Wild Hunt by Jane Yolen.
4LibraryPerilous
@Amberfly, you've described the book so evocatively that I've now added it to my ILL list.
