Engadine sleeps in Whimmie's arms, warm and soft and milky. In his little newborn head dances the rhythm of her lullaby:

BUMPity bumpity BUMPity bump

Here COMES the galloping MA-jor

He rocks in absolute security, dreaming to the rhythm of cantering hooves. And because it is Whimmie's favourite song, it is the last thing he hears every night and the first thing he hears on waking every morning. One day he wakes up to the bumpity bump song and the first people he sees are Whimmie, then Miriam, then Collunda and then me because we are all going to my Naming together. In an open-topped barouche drawn by four glossy bay horses, Whimmie bumps Engadine on one knee and me on the other. Miriam and Collunda unfurl parasols and argue.

"Isn't it a bit confusing?" says Miriam, "I mean, you're a faery and your children have faery godmothers and stuff."

"Well they can't have human ones," says Collunda.

"And why is there always a bad one? Who gets to be bad – do you draw lots?"

Collunda rolls her eyes,

"Some faeries just go bad. They have a special section to themselves at the end of the Eisteddfod."

The Faery Eisteddfod is something Miriam loves to hear about.

"When are you going to invite me to that? I'm going to be queen, you know, you're supposed to obey me."

"Can't be done, won't be done, not the done thing when all's said and done. But this is a done thing." Collunda shakes out her long black hair and smirks at Miriam. "Ready?"

Miriam is so excited she can't speak, just nod. We should enjoy this rare moment of silence.

"Come on then!" Collunda raises skinny green arms, the sleeves of her shabby robe falling back to her shoulders. A garbled string of nonsense words, a handful of dried toadstool thrown up in the air, an eldritch shriek and they are catapulted over the barrier into Side. Racing along a dirt road, the handful of toadstools raining down on them, sprouting arms and legs and giggling.

A quick pause here for us to see what Miriam sees:

Before: the wide flat plain of Tara – grassland, the occasional oak tree, distant forests and mountains. Around her a heavily armed retinue, the coachman cracking his whip, all of them galloping because Collunda insists it's more fun that way. Whimmie in the seat opposite clutching Engadine and me to her bosom. Miriam's hands, white-knuckled, gripping the side of the carriage.

Now: the same plain but full. Really, unavoidably, market-day-in-a-big-Chinese-city full. Every blade of grass, every weed, every insect has its own faery. Miriam can't see them all but she can hear the babble of voices. The wind itself has zephyr faeries in it, coaxing the breezes along. The dried toadstools all over the carriage are stretching arms and legs and unfurling into faeries giggling and chattering and glad to be home and wondering where the nearest water is. The sun is just up and most faeries are busy painting colours into the landscape. More and more faeries gather around them to look at the strange beasts moving all by themselves without magic.

"What izzit? What is them?"

"Mine!" shrieks Collunda, still standing up in the swaying carriage, "see what I me MY can do!"

"Collunda!" breathe the zephyr faeries.

"Collunda!" appears in the sky in a flash of yellow and is swiftly painted over with pearly grey to match the clouds. Collunda cackles and sits down. "Well?"

Miriam shakes her head. She can't speak. To say anything would break the spell, surely. Collunda taps the coachman on the shoulder.

"Johnson! Slow down."

The horses slow to a walk, all of them sidling and fretting in this strange new place.

"It's so...noisy." Breathes Miriam.

"Really?" Collunda looks around like a deaf woman in a mall.

"I mean everything's alive and talking."

"But your world's like that too."

"I never noticed." Collunda chuckles and waves a hand. The road ripples and they are in the forest. Miriam gasps. Under the trees she is watched from every side. The pressure of the faery gaze, all those eyes, reminds her of processions, coronations. She sits up a little straighter, a little more regal. Of course the world is curious about her. Any world would be curious, interested, flattered even to have Princess Miriam to visit. Collunda watches her friend sit taller. It's the only way. Either that very public gaze feeds your arrogance or it crushes you and you live out life as a bluebell faery, never moving from your spot, sleeping underground all winter in your bulb. No, Miriam wouldn't turn that way. Collunda cackles with glee.

Judging by the bug on the windscreen test, the ecology of Side is alive and kicking. Miriam spits out a wriggling Brownie and pulls her veil across her face.

The carriage halts. The footman lets down the steps. Miriam and Collunda step down onto the grass and the reality of their feet crushing a hundred, a thousand, a million, who knows how many magical beings with each step. The Taran footman takes it in his stride. One to watch, thinks Collunda. Miriam hesitates half a breath then strides forward. Daughter of Kings and Queens, Ruler of Thousands, exploiter of all she sees. Faery bends its neck in acknowledgment and Miriam steps on it.

Collunda shrieks a laugh,

"I knew, I newbully knew. Rub their rub-nubbly noses in it!" With Whimmie picking her way behind them, they stroll into the clearing.

It is early morning in Side and the flat disc of the sun rises. Hauled into the air by sweating ethereals with ropes and pulleys and fore-faeries yelling orders. It still ends up a bit crooked. Today the disc shines hotter on your left cheek. The day shift takes over the orchestra and harps are replaced with soft bugles. Ah, one of those sunrises! Fog faeries drift about trailing damp and mildew. The sky faeries rapidly paint the sky grey, then yellow, then pink, then blue until it looks like the sky in Picasso's 'Mandolin and Guitar': solid blocks of blue and lots of pattern-card lenticular clouds. The fog faeries sink slowly to the grass, where the dew faeries are hard at work. As the fog faeries fold up their cloaks and head home to their burrows, flowers open and paint faeries descend, colour cards in hand, to tint and titivate. Bees flash past. The orchestra takes a break. Only the Heavenly Sphere players keep going (boom ting booooom dong) making that background grinding noise the doctors tell you is tinnitus but isn't. The sun is up; the day has begun. Red-cheeked faeries work the pumps that make the breezes, force gas exchanges and control the weather. Breath laughs at them, trickling in and out of their hot lungs which laugh right back.

Black clouds zip over the horizon. Storm faeries gather to see Collunda's child Named. Rain splatters on Miriam's parasol.

"She will fall in love with a handsome prince who will love her back!" cries the first of the faery godmothers.

"And he will never know how she betrays him!" Chortles the bad faery godmother. The third faery leaps forward,

"And then they will both live happily ever after!"

"Aaah!" The faeries wet my head with metheglin and drift away to their feuds. The weather faeries squabble and dump rain, hail and then snow.

Miriam sips elderflower champagne with Collunda in the carriage parked under a flowering thorn bush.

"Anyway, how's your love life?" asks Miriam.

"Violet. If it all goes well."

"Really?" Miriam's eyes rest on the olive-skinned babe on Whimmie's right arm. Collunda grins.

"If it all works out, I'll tell you."

And everyone rides, drives or flies back across the divide to Tara where Miriam has arranged a Naming Nuncheon to introduce George to The Dragon's Restaurant.

#

"Spot on my surcoat, it's huge!" George has only seen the dragon screeching overhead on the attack. Now he's sharing a dining room with it. Miriam smiles proudly.

"And, forsooth, tis the only dragon in the Three Kingdoms with its own seat at the Chamber of Commerce."

George stares. George splutters.

"It needs to be killed, bubble in my bath water. Guards!"

"Nay!" Miriam lifts one gloved hand. "First, George, try this!" And she pops into his open mouth a pan-fried prawn with Eastern Dipping Sauce. George closes his mouth and then his eyes as taste explodes across his tongue: sweet, a little honey; sour, a hint of lemon and coriander; salt, a reminder of the sea; spicy, just enough edge of chili; and...something else. Something that makes him feel ozone in his lungs, hear rushing water, feel sea horses galloping up a beach towards him belly-deep in foam, with giggling mermaids perched on the rocks nearby combing their hair and admiring themselves in little gold mirrors while down in a secret pool, shrimp-life dodge and flee.

"Oh my!" He opens his eyes. Miriam smiles benevolently.

"Daddy always says it's important for a kingdom to have a dragon."

"Pebble in my creek, why?"

"Well..." Miriam hadn't really been listening. Philip's lectures usually degenerated into rambling stories about what Stinky Leatherman used to do after they all drank eight pints of Royal Ale. "I think...it's something to do with how they collect everything everyone is stupid about and make it valuable."

George frowns. Miriam rubs her nose.

"Maybe that wasn't quite it. Oh drat! Collunda do you remember?"

Collunda certainly does.

"Dragons has a place, Majesty." George's frown doesn't lift. She sighs. "How do you know you're brave?" George shrugs. "You stands up to summat that scares you. So every kingdom needs a scary thing."

"But..."

"An' besides, dragons collect all the best stuff together in one place an' then you can go an' get it." Collunda pokes him in the ribs, "if you're brave enough."

"Luncheon is served, Majesties."

George stumbles after the waiter, submits to having napkins laid across his lap and tucked in around his collar and then opens his mouth expectantly. Prawn by prawn the dish empties. Spoon by spoon he swallows lemon sorbet as a palate cleanser. Bite by bite there follows steak in a wine sauce with potatoes cooked just so in salted butter and brussels sprouts crunchy and tart and then something creamy and soft and chocolatey and...George surfaces dreamily with a cigar in one hand and a glass of port in the other.

"Well?" Miriam puffs at her own cigar.

"Worm in my compost, this Chef must be ours to command!"

"Oh, she is," Collunda assures him. Arialda growls softly above them. The Head-Waiter twitches and gestures to the musicians who bring the easy listening music-to-digest-by to a close and play an extended fanfare.

"Majesties, Lords, Ladies, Gentlemen, honoured guests...The Cake!"

The apprentices perfect Cake in the early days of their employment. Cake is easy. The two least experienced of them are designated Cupcakes and Sponges, with an older apprentice known as Fancy Icing to supervise. The waiters pull curtains across the windows and haul on ropes to lower a shutter across the dragon window so that the restaurant is dark. Children giggle. Someone whispers. The apprentices play "Happy Birthday" on whistles they have carved from bones. Potion Tom's fibula has a lovely tone to it. Unfortunately, the darkness focuses your other senses and those corpses at the back of the cave really don't smell good. Fortunately, the door to the kitchen opens with a rush of heat and firelight and sugary smells. Cupcakes and Sponges push out a trolley with a squeaky wheel bearing a cake that towers over them. It's a Naming Cake built like a mounded white palace covered in pink icing and decorated with multi-coloured gum drops.

"Ooooh!" The crowd applauds.

"Hmph. Is that it?"

Miriam winces,

"Um, Collunda I don't think-"

It's too late. Magic is streaming across the room and the confectionary castle is growing delicate buttresses and little people made of icing. A scent of lemon and violets with an edge of mushrooms fills the air – this is going to be faery cake: magical, delicious and just a tiny bit hallucinogenic. The crowd oohs and aahs. The air in the room is glamoured and twinkling. Everyone smiles and relaxes and then a pencil-thin line of fire stabs out of the darkness. Where there was the towering cake there is just a melted plate, a blackened blob and Cupcakes and Sponges blinking through soot.

"The magic is the cookery, faery fingerfood."

Collunda is on her feet, eyes snapping, glaring up at Arialda.

"The magic is the magic." She hisses. Wailing, I reach for Mumma, roll off the table and lie screaming on the floor throughout the fight that follows. Fungus Queen versus Dragon Chef. Humans and faeries alike flee screaming. The Royal Party is hustled away under a turtle of shields. Collunda doesn't leave until there are mushrooms growing from every surface in the place: walls, tables, chairs, apprentices. She escapes alive, with me tucked under one arm and the dragon roaring,

"You are banned, Faerycake, banned for ever!"

Collunda is still laughing when we arrive home at the little house in the marshes. Inside my tiny sleeping cubicle, she reconjures the cake big enough to walk through and we take a tour of a sugar palace, her plucking decorations off the walls for me to suck.

Back in the restaurant, Arialda and the apprentices make a cauldron of Risotto a la Funghi.

"Nasty, arrogant, interfering faeries." Growls Arialda. Dusadis only glances quickly at the jar of moleystool but Arialda sees him. "Faerycakes!" she growls.

"Chef?" there isn't an apprentice called Faerycakes. A huddle of apprentices pushes Cupcakes and Sponges to the front.

"Make faerycakes," hisses the dragon. "Make them better than faeries make them. Make them so that Heroes will be sent to find them. Make them so that goddesses will throw nectar aside and demand them. Make them in the shape of what she said so that I can make her eat her words."

#

That was my third naming. I had been Named in Brindisi at a candlelit ceremony with Alfonso's family, who expected me to grow up into a model Roman citizen. They wet my head with wine and gave Collunda ragged-edged coins. Later that night, Collunda took me out into the olive groves where a confused Olive Faerie wished me strong roots and glossy skin. Collunda had been the Bad Faerie and just said,

"She'll fight with her mother." Because girls do that.

The Olive Faerie had nodded and murmured,

"Only about some things, though. Mostly she'll be a lot like her mother – a twig off the old graft."

I was supposed to grow up to be like my mother and like is supposed to call to like but I wonder: if you met yourself coming the other way, would you fall in love or sharpen a knife? Faeries have been known to do that, make a copy of themselves. It works for a while. It's someone to talk to in the evenings and to begin with, the sex is fantastic – you're with a partner who knows exactly what you like and what you want and when. After a while though, a staleness creeps in. There are no surprises. The thought patterns are the same. It's the same old tussle – I meet you, I like you, I explore you and then you are known. There's nothing about you that is new. The known world dulls around me. The map becomes the territory and I might as well just keep the map. Sell up and move on.

#

Collunda has been meeting Tristram regularly in the violet glade. She comes home singing from these encounters and the House has decided that Tristram should be made permanent. That's the thing about having a House help you with your love life: they have a different viewpoint. Houses are concerned with permanence, maintenance and minimising shocks. Houses like to have new items installed properly by qualified professionals and then left humming quietly away in a corner needing only minimal maintenance.

The path from where the House squats in the marshes, to the plain near the palace, goes through mixed woodland where violets grow. Fungi grow here in glades, up trees and in amongst the rotting leaf mulch. On a sunny day when his desire becomes too much to resist, Tristram hops across from Side, strolls casually along the path and creeps to the edge of the trees. The House isn't always here. Collunda spends time in Side and travels around Tara as well. When she wants to move her House, toadstool rings spring up at her command; he has seen one surround the House and everything inside it disappear, but today the House is here. He watches for a while but there is no movement.

He has waited by the path every day through the violet season. He has even threatened the Violet Faeries and kept them painting well past the time when violets should stop flowering. He has spent most days in a fever of lust, with or without Collunda there and he wants her. He wants to know everything there is to know about her. There are all sorts of rumours about what Collunda does alone in the forest; everyone has a tale to tell. Everyone likes to speculate about why she lives in semi-magical Tara rather than in Side. Tristram is determined to find out. And now he creeps into the clearing where the little cottage stands, all alone.

Almost as if it is waiting for him.

Tristram approaches from what he hopes is the blind side. The chimney straggles up this side of the House, more like ivy than metal and there is only one tiny unglazed window way up in the eaves. Tristram puts his ear to the wall and listens. Nothing. Collunda must be out. The wood planking is warm against his head and doesn't feel quite like wood. Tristram sniffs. A faint smell of rot. Something damp. Maybe it is something he can help with. Thinking smug thoughts about his blacksmithing skills and how impressed Collunda would be if he made her bronze-plated foundations, Tristram creeps around to the front of the House.

The door is open.

He tries to remember if it was open when he was lurking at the edge of the clearing, watching. He would expect Collunda to be someone who locks doors and pulls curtains; someone who keeps her secrets well-hidden from curious friends and determined burglars alike. Tristram tries to imagine Collunda in the house, helpless and needy. It doesn't work; he can't do it. She is more likely to be behind the door with a frying pan ready to belt him over the head. Tristram shrugs and steps over the threshold.

Nothing happens.

He looks around the neat kitchen – range to his left, table to the right, cupboards ahead and a rickety-looking flight of stairs in the far-left corner.

"Hello?"

Tristram crosses to the foot of the stairs. The House shifts slightly. Goodness, those foundations really need some help, thinks Tristram. The door swings closed. Tristram knows he should leave. Or at least wait downstairs in the kitchen. Make himself a cup of tea. But the memories of Collunda's laughing face against the perfumed bank, petals in her hair and what-they-did-next is too compelling. He wants to hold her pillow to his face. He wants to read her secret diary. He wants, let's face it, access to her underwear drawer. He starts up the stairs.

Sometime later Collunda strides back into the clearing with her newly Named daughter, me, asleep in a shawl tied across her back. If Collunda is very lucky she will be able to transfer me from shawl to crib without waking me and thus be able to have a quiet cup of tea.

"Oh my!" She stops at the edge of the clearing. The House is standing up. Slightly wobbly, it is true; it has to keep moving from foot to foot to keep its balance, but it is up and Collunda feels pride run through her, toes to nose. Her face blushes from apple to pale jade.

"House!" she calls softly. "I'm home."

And it walks towards her. It really does! Three uncertain steps before it plunks down on the ground right in front of her, with a crash of breaking crockery. Collunda strokes the door-frame, murmuring, "Good House. Clever House. Oh, what a clever House you are!"

It quivers under her touch and the door flies open. The kettle is on, there are fresh violets in a vase on the table and some shattered plates on the floor. Collunda climbs the stairs to her bedroom. Her happiness transmits itself to me and I slumber contentedly through the transfer from shawl to crib.

Something thumps above our heads.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

The House is tiny. A kitchen, above that sleeping alcoves and above that an attic. It will be my room when I am older. Right now, it should be empty.

"Hmmm."

The legs have grown and strengthened faster than she hoped; perhaps a new Thing is growing up there? Or a bird has flown in through the window. Or ... Collunda picks up a hefty lump of dried toadstool and sets off up the stairs to the attic. She raises the trapdoor cautiously and peeps over the edge.

A pair of eyes, wide and frightened, meet hers. Brown eyes. Tristram's eyes. Wide and frightened above a mouth gagged with a loop of purple fungus that is holding his head against the floor. His crown, a single silver band through his hair, is askew. More of the purple growth pinions his wrists and ankles.

Downstairs the kettle whistles. Collunda blinks once then closes the trapdoor and plods thoughtfully down the two flights of stairs to make tea. She sits at the little kitchen table, ignoring all the thumping in the attic and reflects as she sips her drink. On the one hand, she should let Tristram go immediately. He is, after all, some sort of a prince. And the House should not be allowed to imagine she approves of this sort of behaviour. On the other hand, look at what this means! Firstly, the House is much, much more intelligent than she imagined. It has presented her with the one thing it knows she wants. If she lets Tristram go, how will the House feel? What terrible sense of discouragement might ensue, preventing it from ever trying another of these adventurous little plots? And, secondly, it will be nice to have Tristram here for a while. Collunda blushes a deep jade. Nice! She sips more tea.

#

Twelve long months it lasts. In the eighth month Collunda sings a rhyme one morning and Cricket is born. A little gold, a little lilac and huge eyes staring at me so that my young world fills up. Meanwhile, Tristram's name in the Woodland is mud: he has missed appointments, offended visiting royalty and left his magical forge unattended and unfed. Instead, he lies loosely fettered on a giant mound of soft purple fungus which Collunda hopes is House Brain. Her creation is out of her control. It still uses the whistle at the top of the chimney to communicate with her but has moved far beyond one toot for 'yes' and two toots for 'no'. It has learned Morse code and can scratch simple pictograms in the dirt with its claws. Collunda dissects larger and larger animals, leaving larynxes and voice boxes on the kitchen table overnight for the House to examine.

"Soon," she explains to Tristram, "The House will have a voice and then, see, we can discuss what to do with you."

Tristram picks at his sole remaining bond, a purple anklet with a ropey attachment to the glutinous mound. He has changed colour from gold to pale lilac, leading Collunda to hope that he has been assimilated and is now an integral and irreplaceable part of the House. An extension, if you like.

"I still don't see, my love, my darling, my sweetest queen, why we two can't simply married be."

"I've bin married."

"Only to a human. And he was a Roman. Monstrous bullying bureaucrats. There's no comparison. You'd be a Faery Princess. All Mycelia yours to command. Think what you could do."

Collunda shakes her head. She knows about princessing from visiting Miriam. Days full of rituals and protocols and noblesse obliging. It is all too much. Right now she walks a narrow path towards the kind of success and fame she has imagined many times and understands: Strange Collunda Vindicated by Her Achievement is one thing; Princess Collunda's Latest Project is something altogether different. A vindication sets things right, makes everything better so the world will stop sniggering at her and leave her alone. But Princess Projects are watched and talked about. What now? What's next? What will she do? Never having imagined life as a powerful monarch, Collunda doesn't know where to begin and can't face having to make her mark on all those aging retainers and ancient traditions while a voracious public tracks her every move.

"I'm a faery, Tris, that's all."

"But if you aren't going to let the fruit faeries raise Cricket, shouldn't he have, you know, a father?"

On cue, the baby starts bawling downstairs and they hear me go stump stump stump across the kitchen, up the stairs, across the bedroom to the crib. The screams peak and stop. Collunda should have left Cricket under a gooseberry bush to be raised by the Fruit Faeries but when she wrapped him up to take him away, I started to weep. And weep and weep. In the face of my anguish, Collunda made a disastrous decision.

"Anything for a quiet life. Here!" she plopped the little bundle in the crib next to my bed. "You look after 'im. Raise 'im proper." Faery social workers, if there were such things, would have been horrified. Perhaps she thought it was the right thing to do. Perhaps she thought we would grow up feeling loved. Perhaps she wanted to get back upstairs to the attic and she didn't think at all.

#

A small multitude of The Faer gather in a woodland grove lit by fireflies for Cricket's Naming. Cricket gurgles in his basket. I glare from the arms of an old and doting faery. Collunda isn't talking about it but I'm aging faster than any faery should. The first Faery Godmother wishes him good looks; he will be tall, dark and handsome. The second Fairy Godmother amends that by adding,

"But somehow weird-looking. So that a lot of people will want to kill him."

The third Faery Godmother rolls her eyes.

"He can only be killed by a true hero, mourning the loss of his true love and armed with a vorpal sword freely given to him with his own blood on it."

Everyone cheers.

#

"What was it like where you grew up, Viridia?"

That’s me, Viridia. Sometimes, after too much beer, humans are curious and I tell them stories.

"I didn't really know my mother. I grew up in my father's house. It was a mansion with marble floors and carved finials and great ornamental gardens." They ooh and aah, round-eyed with the romanticism of it all. You and I know it wasn't like that at all.

In my mother's house the small dark rooms were all fungus-covered wood and smelled of damp. Our beds had rails around them so that when the House lurched suddenly to its feet or leaned over to scratch under a log for bugs, we all just rolled and sighed in our sleep. Sometimes we were dumped on the wooden floors because something had spooked the house: eyes glowing in the night, a growling in the bushes or fire. Wildfire was what its fungal brain most feared. Then flood. It hated hot summers and wet winters, resisting all Collunda's efforts to persuade it out into the sunshine and sulking when it rained.

Every week I washed it. Warm water with a little peppermint oil for the kitchen. Cold water and lavender oil for the three tiny bedrooms, which had grown from being sleeping alcoves beneath windows into spaces just big enough for a rug, a chair, a tiny three-drawer dressing table and a door onto the landing where narrow stairs curled up and down.

The ceiling, with its coating of soft purple flesh, like a thick embossed wallpaper, I wiped carefully with a damp cloth dipped in cold soup. It seemed to prefer minestrone. Cricket cleaned the outside. First a soft brush to remove the dust and webs. Next a coating of slime, something Collunda boiled endlessly on the stove, seaweed and cows' hooves jostling around in the big bronze pot. When it was ready the mixture would roll and plop, throwing hot drops onto us. We licked at the burnt skin, tasting hot slime, like Gwion licking the first three drops of Cerridwen's Potion of inspiration from his thumb. We didn't gain inspiration but we also weren't poisoned. Swings and roundabouts.

"What was your mum's house like, then?"

"Oh, pretty ordinary, really." Collunda would hate me saying that. Hah!

#

Of course, with Tristram chained in the attic, Collunda couldn't show her House to anyone in Side, so she kept it in Tara and raised us alongside Miriam's children.

She ignored the implications of that, too, just made tea and clambered up the steep stairs to the attic. Tristram rolls over and smiles dreamily,

"Hello, love." She curls into his arms like a bee into a flower. The tea goes cold.

She needed a lover who didn't have to be tied up in the attic. She needed a friend. She needed to be free and happy and she made all the wrong choices for that. If she had let Tristram go that first day, who knows how our lives would have changed. Instead of being shut away from the world we would have been out there, playing and played with, finding our way through Side and through life's tangle. Instead, she tied him up, she tied us all up and put the tangles inside our heads. Now I can't have a straight thought, the only path is a twist and a curve and a winding. Sometimes it's not a path at all, just a twirling thread leading nowhere. "Moving on," I say to myself, "moving on."

#

One sunny summer day, we join the Royal Family in the Rose Garden overlooking the Home Paddock where Skulldancer, the placid and fat-bellied training mount who is teaching all of us to ride, stands knee-deep in flower-filled grass. Whimmie pushes Engadine in the pram, bumpity-bump across the garden, for his daily dose of sun and air and across to the fence. Skulldancer greets them with a soft wicker. All the horses love Whimmie – she keeps nuts in her pockets and apples in the pram. Baby Engadine, bumpity bumping and gazing up, up into the blue finds the pram filled with a gigantic head, soft, hay-scented breath and whiskers that tickle his face. An apple crunches by his ear. He has a moment of absolute contentment.

Then George whisks him out of the pram.

"What-Ho, Young Engadine!" he booms.

"Dada!"

George laughs and tosses the toddler in the air. Miriam and Collunda lie back on a mound of pillows surrounded by ladies-in-waiting while George and the courtiers play croquet and take it in turns to carry Engadine and me. In every direction looms the new Curtain Wall.

"Horsey! Horsey!"

A jingle of harness across the drawbridge and through the barbican and here come the Cousins like the wolf on the fold. Down from the mountains, from treacherous ice-bound Bannix, hunting their sweet prey: the young prince, foster-child to Tara.

“Queen Aurelia and King Julian of Bannix are dead!”

The young Prince Engadine has his parents' portraits hanging over his crib and Whimmie tells him their stories:

"Your mother, Queen Aurelia, Gods bless her like a stone, she was as sweet as a nut. She was so sweet she was all over bees. In fact, one day the Queen of the Bees, all big and fuzzy, come along to the palace and said, in her burry furry voice, 'Oh Queen.'' Whimmie does the voice by talking in raspberries on young Engadine's tummy, so he never has very good recollections of this part, 'Oh Queen, my children are so hungry, will you let them sip the sweat from your feet?'

'Of course!' said the sweet sweet Queen, your mother and she kicked off her shoes and stuck her feet out of the window for the bees to lick an' it felt like this."

Engadine squeals and writhes as Whimmie licks and buzzes at his bare feet.

"And so the bee children fed and all was well. But the next day, back buzzed the Queen o' the Bees again.

'Oh queen, my children are hungry will you let them sip the sweat...'" Whimmie eyes the naked toddler lying in her arms "'From. Your. BOTTOM?'!"

Engadine shrieks with delight as his nurse turns him over and raspberries his bottom cheeks.

"And all was well. But the very next day, the bee queen was back again. 'My children are sooo hungry, please can they sip the sweet sweat from your stinky-sweet ARMPITS?' And your mother, may she be wading even now around the Isles of the Blessed, said:

'You and your children gather nectar for my honey and pollinate my fruit trees and these are the foods that make me sweet so, yes, of course.' And she stood naked on that very windowsill there and spread her arms and that was when you father, Gods bless him like a mountain, saw her for the very first time. Now go to sleep."

"Did the bees eat her all up?" asks Engadine.

"Not that I ever saw, what I heard was they took her away to the Apple Isle to live where all the sweetest people live, eating honey and apples all day long. She's probably as fat as a lambkin by now."

So Engadine has two pictures in his head of his mother: one is of the gently smiling lady in the painting over his crib and one is of a tall, fat woman, hung with bees, wading thigh-deep in the sea towards an island cloaked in apple trees and bee hives. He most definitely does not have a picture of her beaten and screaming, being spitted on a lance along with his father and his brother Claudimax when the Nobles held the Winter Adjustment of 1482, put the Royal Family of Bannix to the sword and established an Administration 'to tide things over' until Prince Rodonos was old enough to take the throne. It is just as well –– an image like that would do terrible things to a child.

And besides, that picture is the subject of the tapestry in the Great Hall at Tara, with Queen Aurelia neatly embroidered in a pool of blood, so he sees it every night at dinner.

Bannix waits, cold and cruel, until such time as Claudimax's little brother, Rodonos, will be deemed old enough to rule. Unfortunately, he never is: the Bannix winters are cold; the ice on the precipices around the castle is notoriously treacherous; and, of course, the railings around the castle balconies are renowned for their frailty.

"Ah well," say the Administrators, "we'll just stay in charge until young Prince Engadine returns to take his throne...Find him!"

And meanwhile distant cousins with distant claims marry the daughters of various Administrators until the intermingled bloodlines, like kitten-tangled wool, tie the country tightly together in no rational way. Engadine, True King of Bannix, shrugs. He is three and he has a pony. Besides, as Whimmie often says,

"Coal fer rabbits, young master, coal fer rabbits."

But later, when the Administrators are deep in internecine squabbles that threaten to spiral out of control, a True King would be useful and that's where the wolves come in. Bannix wolves, smiling Administraitors, duplicitous double-crossing lupines here to feast with King Philip and his heirs, the young Princess Miriam and her consort George. Their leader says his name is William,

"Sweet William, doncher know?" He bows low, low, low over Miriam's hand, pays pretty compliments and claims cousin-ship.

"Or something like that". A long discussion over dinner establishes him as one of the Bannix cousins but, "I've been travellin', don'cher know." And William tells increasingly tall tales for the rest of the evening in between admiring Miriam's jewels and figure. "Hard to believe you've a son."

"Daughter," lies Miriam easily, "Our little Princess Enid."

The Court takes a collective breath in, re-writes its collective memory and as they all breathe out, Whimmie is receiving her orders and the news is on its way to tavern and cottage. Life under a tyrant, even the most benign of tyrants, requires citizens to be nimble and adaptable. Bill the Sign-Writer is up all night and by the morning any mention of "the young prince" will be met with a blank stare or "Is her Highness expecting, then?"

"But what of the little fosterling, Prince Engadine, our True King who was left in your care?"

"Oh dear," Miriam gazes vaguely around the banquet hall. Berren lurks in the shadows and signs to her that their plan is in place. All is ready. "No. The only noble child here is Our Daughter, Enid." And right on cue, here comes Whimmie leading a poppet swathed in blue silk with golden curls and embroidered slippers: Princess Enid.

"Awwww!" says the crowd, as she trips across the Banqueting Hall hand-in-hand with her nurse and greets the visitors with a shy sweet lisp, so much like Aurelia but then, Miriam is too; strong genes these Tarans have.

"Oh dear," says Princess Miriam again, "it's likely the foster boy was lost in the forest on his journey here. There is a dragon you know. So many people we have lost." Tears sparkle on her eyelashes. Princess Enid puts a small hand on her knee.

"Please don't cwy, mama. Tears are like horses: once they start, they're hard to stop."

"Aaah, bless!" murmurs the crowd.

The wolves are beguiled. They are also bad at maths – it is too confusing for paws and claws – so they just nod and growl softly and tear at their meat while Miriam tells them of the horrors she went through giving birth to her darling little Enid. When one of the wolves, grizzled and scarred, puts his head on one side and murmurs,

"Ninety degrees? It scarce seems possible." Whimmie takes little Enid back to the nursery. Talk around the tables moves on.

"By gad," whispers George to his Princess, "I had no idea, wax on my parquet, that a woman could suffer so. Are you certain tis wise?"

"Why certes," Miriam pats the bump that will slip easily out with barely a grunt on her part the day after Enid's next birthday and become Princess Sophronia. "Right glad We are that Our daughter Enid will be at the birth to hold Our hand."

Philip the Taran Tyrant smiles approvingly and raises his goblet for a toast,

"Death to tyrants!" all the Taran Court drinks with him and laughs. The wolves drink, wild-eyed.

Nothing wrong with tyrants. After all, you are in the tyranny of a book. You are in or out – there's no other choice. I dictate the terms here, where the story goes, what you discover and when, there's nothing you can change about that. Obey the rules or suffer the consequences. Close the book now and you will never know what happens. Behead the Tyrant and you'll never know what pyramids they could have raised.

An exhausted messenger, carefully coached by Berren, races into the Banquet Hall.

"Strange news, Majesties! War in Horst! Bannix threatened!" He drops dead before he can be questioned.

"Exhaustion," says Berren sadly, looking up from where he kneels by the corpse. "He must have been desperate to get the message to you in time."

The Wolves are saddled up and ready at dawn.

"Do you know the short cut?" Asks Berren. "Over the Little Ravine?" He gives them directions.

Whimmie and Princess Enid stand on the ramparts waving to the departing Bannix Barons.

"Lies will make squirrels of us all, Mistress Enid." The tiny princess blinks at Whimmie. We are all children of the landscapes we grow up in. Engadine has been raised in palaces. Today The Queen called him Princess Enid. Now Whimmie has called him Mistress Enid. Engadine blinks one more time and then adjusts.

"Lies is like horsies, Whimmie."

"That they are."

"Just cos they's veglitarian doesn't mean they won't bite you."

"I knew what you meant, youngling."

Enid nods.

"Praps it's time for breakfast." Says Whimmie and takes her hand.

The men from Bannix stop for breakfast at the Dragon's Restaurant. They plant the wolf banner in the ground, making a hole in the crazy paving. They swill down Dragon Ale and grab Cornish pasties off trays. There's a lot of them to feed and water. The outdoor area is a mess of horse poo, pie crusts and urine. The Wolves aren't too particular about sanitary arrangements.

"Mount up!"

The leader throws a handful of gold onto a passing tray.

"Thank you, sir!" the Apprentices bow low. Who knows if it's the right money? You don't tell people like this what their meal is worth, they just pay you and let you live. The chink of coins wakes Arialda. She yawns, opens an eye.

"Ooh look! Tourists!" The wolves are carrying tribute from Tara to Bannix. "Just a little something for our dear cousin!" Three sulky mules laden with heavy bags. Arialda's eyes gleam and she drools a little. Dusadis coughs,

"A note, Chef, from that Berren."

"Read it to me."

"Hmm," Dusadis frowns, "it says 'Bon Appetit', Chef."

"Oh joy!" murmurs Arialda. She slinks out of her roost to shadow the Wolves from the trees as they clatter over the ridge and start the steep descent down to the road to Bannix. It is a shortcut, Berren was telling the truth about that. They round a corner and…

"Hello, exotic mouthfuls!"

"What the..?"

Arialda isn't interested in them as food (not immediately) so they fall like grain. Their job was to intimidate Tara and they don't have a single crossbow between them. They're all polished leather and glittering short swords, good for a swift assassination behind the stable midden but not so useful for dinosaurs.

The drummer boy has the fewest weapons – two blunt sticks and his lunch dagger. His first instinct is to curl up very small under his drum. Arialda finds him at the bottom of a pile of bodies.

"Ooooh, squirmy little thing!" His second instinct is to shit himself and throw up. Arialda wrinkles her snout. You could start to suspect, O my cynical reader, that Arialda is becoming infected with Civilisation. She is well-fed now and a little too used to food smelling of garlic and rosemary. Besides..."so much, so shiny." She slides away from Colin, somehow gathering up all the armour and the bags of gold and is gone.

Colin looks around. Dead, stripped bodies. Dead mules, dead and injured horses. Behind them on both sides is thick forest full of…something howls.

"Wolves!" hisses Colin. He forces his shaky legs to work and staggers across to the side of the road where a war-horse is snatching anxiously at grass. "C'mon Prancer." The horse looks at him and chews. This can go one of two ways. Prancer can blame Colin for recent events upsetting to horse-kind and trample him to a puddle; or, Prancer can recognise Colin as human and therefore someone who can make sense of all of this and more than likely has oats in his pocket. Prancer lips oats from Colin's shaking hand and Colin gently reaches forward and takes his reins. Prancer is bruised and bleeding from some shallow gashes on his neck but when Colin leads him forward he can walk. Not lame, not disemboweled, thank the gods! None of the men have anything left, no insignia, no dog tags, nothing. Colin finds himself a cloak and tucks the Wolf Banner under his shirt. All the time he's watching the sky and watching the darkness between the trees. There are eyes there already. He can feel their impatience. They want him gone. He climbs on a rock to scramble onto Prancer, hardly noticing what's going on in his trousers. Prancer needs no encouragement but takes off down the road at a flat gallop and doesn't stop until they reach Horst and the Administrators who frown and mutter.

"Spies," one of them suggests.

"Make it so," says another.

"Send Colin," says a third.

"What, that Colin? The smelly one?"

"No, no! Colin the spy."

Behind Colin's fleeing horse, on that tragic mountainside, Arialda returns to gather up the bodies. These are some of Horst's finest,

"Muscled, meaty and munchable!" murmurs their murderess over the cauldron where she is stewing them whole. It's not Bendigeidfran's cauldron so they don't come out alive but their taste does. "Lively and lickable!" Arialda slurps the soup. "Frisky and fresh. Undertones of...courage and fatalism and ooh, that top note! I shall call this Arrogance Soup. Want some?"

The apprentices have lost any shyness about eating within their own species.

"Thanks," says Spit.

"Don't mind if I do," says Pastries.

"Well...oh alright," says Side-Salads.

Only Dusadis, still mostly vegetarian, watches from the shadows.

#

"Mornin' Miss Whimper!" Colin the new groom tugs his forelock respectfully. Whimmie shrinks back slightly and hugs young Princess Enid against her leg.

"What're you after, lover?"

"A little bit of lovin', mebbe?" Whimmie squints at the groom. "Me name's Colin. 'Ere, bring the littlun. We can walk a while."

Whimmie is tempted. Who wouldn't be? He's a handsome man, well-muscled with shiny hair and a pleasant smile. He seems gentle, the days are long and Enid is demanding. Hand in hand with the child and arm in arm with the man, she walks. Across the courtyard, under the gate and out into the countryside.

"Haven't seen you round before, lover?" says Whimmie.

"No, I were raised in Frentia. I wanted to travel an' I thought I'd visit family here a while, y'know."

It all rolls off his tongue a little too readily. Whimmie sighs.

"In't the marshes lovely today? Any marshes where you come from?" She asks.

"Mountains, mostly. Look, there's a liddle spot we could sit fer a while."

"Mmm." Frentia is known for its crayfish and eel pie. She has heard Prince George call his Frentian cousins bog-trotting know-nothings. No mention of mountains. Nevertheless, Whimmie lets Colin take her by the hand. In a secluded glade surrounded by bog fetch and silly oak, they lie Engadine on moss to sleep while they, er, canoodle.

"Ooh, that were nice. You'm good at that, lover."

"You're not bad yerself." Colin is a little surprised by the nanny. "Thought you wuz, y'know, din't do this much."

Whimmie waggles her eyebrows,

"Tin't summat I advertise."

They both chuckle, sleepy and pleased with themselves. Enid opens her eyes and grumbles about wanting a pee. Whimmie sighs.

"Duty calls."

"'Ere, let me."

"No-"

Too late. Colin helps the child and grins a crafty grin.

"I thought so. Her's not a princess at all. This ent right. Keepin' a prince away from 'is people."

Whimmie watches him closely.

"Wotcher gonna do about it?" she asks.

"Reckon 'e needs to be back where 'e belongs." Says Colin.

"Bannix is it?"

"Sright."

"I'll be havin' to stop you, then." Says Whimmie. Colin looks surprised.

"You and who's army, lover? Now come on, we can do this easy or we can do this hard." He looks regretful and then surprised again.

Whimmie is a Taran Nanny, neither virginal nor defenceless. Think mother bear on a bad day – all that soft strokeable, fur to distract you from the teeth. There is a reason nurses use long pins to hold their hats on their heads. This one is a nice bronze pin, one of those alloys hardened with arsenic I expect, with a glass bobble on the end and it reaches between the fourth and fifth ribs, just like Ritchie always recommends, right into the centre of his heart. Regretfully, Whimmie stands by Enid and they watch Colin choke and gag and fall back into the long grass writhing until his mouth falls slack and his eyes fix and then fade. Enid giggles and claps her hands. Whimmie retrieves her hat pin and says,

"Tis never the risin' sun that burns thee, lovely."

Ritchie receives Whimmie's report on her return from the marshes, prim and tidy with Princess Enid at her side. He remains blank-faced. He admires her professionalism. He has spent many an afternoon in the marshes.

"I'll have it seen to Miss Whimper, not to worry."

"Thank 'ee, Sergeant."

"Williams!"

"Sarge?"

"That's magic, that is." They both watch her step lightly across the cobbles into the Keep. "And there's a dead spy in the marshes."

"Another one?"

Ritchie shrugs.

#

Time moves on and the Taran Palace adjusts around the new Princess as if the Prince had never been. Engadine, True King of Bannix, shrugs. So he has to wear a dress? Who cares? Five is a good age and tonight he has a secret assignation with his Faery Godmother. Besides, as Whimmie says now,

"Coal fer rabbits, young mistress, coal fer rabbits."

Here is Princess Enid creeping out of the castle late that night in a long white nightgown and bunny slippers. Sneaking through the grassy marshes outside the new curtain wall, moonlight glinting on bright hair to where Collunda is waiting at the river in a small shallow boat. They slide out onto the water, then under the bridge and downstream a little way to a damp copse where Enid steps through a door in a tree into a cave full of dead warriors. Open-mouthed, ready to scream, a second look reveals they are breathing. Sleeping. Round eyes turn to Collunda, then back to the sleepers. The knights lie in full armour, hands crossed on chests on stone biers. Next to each bier stands a sleeping war-horse, also in armour and draped with coloured silks.

"Choose one," says Collunda.

"What, to keep?"

Collunda's green face creases in amusement.

"No, silly little human, to sire a horse for thee."

"Oh."

Enid chooses the great grey stallion that watches over the crowned warrior on the highest bier. Somehow, they sneak the horse out of that small door in the tree and turn him loose on the plain, where he finds Skulldancer, Enid's patient training mount and the rest is far from private because horses have no prejudices or social rules about these things and simply go about making small horses the same way they go about stealing apples and bullying stable boys. Afterwards, Collunda somehow fits all that prancing, pleased-with-himself muscle and arrogance back through the little door in the tree and then rows Enid back to the castle in the little boat.

Here's six year old Enid holding Whimmie's hand in the stables eleven months later watching Skulldancer give birth to a dapple-grey colt who will be hers. His. Hers. Anyway. Here's Engadine curled on the straw with the sleeping foal, left thumb in the colt's mouth, right thumb in his own. Her own. Both of them gently sucking away and snoring.

There is a point between the eyebrows where the foal likes to be scratched. Engadine places one stubby finger at the centre of the whorl of hair and foal and boy know, without ever having done it, that a man and a horse together can gallop across a plain; that inside them they have the potential for muscle; that they will be taller, faster and stronger than most people. The foal butts him in the stomach and Engadine sprawls in the straw, giggling.

In the coming months Engadine learns to run, one hand on the foal's back, breathing with him. The foal is weaned and Skulldancer returns to the parade-ground. At the foal's first birthday Enid names him Skullsmasher.

"Skully," whispers Engadine into one soft ear. The colt slams his head into Enid's face. Engadine runs to his nurse.

"Lessons from a rock, young Mistress, lessons from a rock." Whimmie drops blood-stained clothes into a bucket she keeps for the purpose and gives Enid a biscuit to stop her crying. The stable staff have already learned to be cautious around Skully –– those he loves, he loves deeply, but retribution for mistakes is swift, painful and, in the case of Colin, who gave him stale oats, final.

#

Of course they can’t all be called Colin. That would be ridiculous. I’m just calling them Colin in honour of my brother-in-law, Colin Collins, plumber and Mr Fixit for the Collins family. He knows what he’s done, don’t you Colin? I may introduce you to him, later. In the meantime, you can watch him suffer. There’s no real harm in it, surely?

People often say that about magic.