Martina Adler

Meet Martina Adler. She's not going to make an appearence in the story for quite a while, but I wanted to introduce her. Martina is the daughter of the chairman of Irwyn Hall's trustees and is at present rather under her father's thumb. She's lived close to Irwyn Hall her whole life and as a child she often played with Lin, Kara and Zac (Lin's younger brother, who died two years before the comic opens). Agewise she's the youngest. I am sorry to report that Zac and Kara were not very kind to Martina and teased her mercilessly; their childhood nickname for her was "Donkey", a name she hates. Lin, thankfully, was much nicer to her.

If you're wondering why she looks so big-eyed and scared and tragic, Martina always looks like that. She's afraid of quite a lot of things and lacks confidence in herself, and she's also rather clumsy and slow on the uptake (which often leads to jokes at her expense and people assuming she's stupid, which she isn't). On the plus side, she's a good musician and she has a beautiful singing voice, and she's a generally caring, modest and pleasant person once you get past her withdrawn demeanor. It's not her fault she's a bit downtrodden, really; she has extremely controlling parents she hasn't yet plucked up the courage to challenge (directly, at least).

Martina also has a big time secret that Lindsey in particular would asbsolutely psyche about if he knew... however, she's keeping it to herself at present.

Please don't comment about the cello that looks as though it's flying - the standing rod is just behind Martina's leg which makes it look really weird.