‘I have many names, like all who live in the Land of Always Summer, and, as you are no doubt aware, my Name of Names must never be revealed. But you may call me Petronus.’ He bobbed on the currents, growing more anxious. ‘Come.’ He gestured for Hal to follow. ‘Help me.’
Hal didn’t sense any threat from the strange boy and so reluctantly followed him into a tiny alley between two shops. At the far end was a tiny golden glow in the snow.
‘Help her. Please,’ Petronus said desperately.
The fading light was coming from a tiny winged woman. Her eyes were closed and her breathing shallow.
‘A Fragile Creature attacked her,’ Petronus said desperately. ‘Fired its weapon at her as she flew on the night winds.’
One of the guards, Hal guessed; they always had been trigger-happy. ‘What can I do?’
‘You are a Brother of Dragons,’ Petronus said.
Hal was on the brink of brushing the boy away, but the tiny woman’s fragile state called out to him. Hesitantly, he scooped her up to try to warm her in his hands. As he did so, a blue spark burst from him and crackled into the frail body. Instantly, the golden light began to grow stronger.
‘You have saved her!’ Petronus sounded on the brink of tears.
The woman recovered quickly, and soon she was standing on Hal’s palm, blowing him a kiss. Then she waved a cautionary finger at Petronus, and with a twirl shot up into the sky, trailing stardust behind her.
Hal was at first struck dumb by what had happened, but then he quickly grew irritated. ‘Look, what are you?’ he said.
‘How rude!’ Petronus swooped high into the air before drifting back down from side to side like a leaf falling from a tree.
‘I’m sorry,’ Hal said, stamping his feet to keep warm. The memory of the blue spark troubled him greatly. ‘But why are you here?’
‘Why? Why not? This is my home!’
‘Oxford?’
‘No, silly! I live beyond the furthest star, on the other side of the mirror, in the misty vale where the golden apples grow. If you want to be poetic.’
Hal considered this comment for a moment, sieving through the little he had gleaned of mythology. ‘The Otherworld?’ he asked eventually.
‘That is another name for it, as is T’ir n’a n’Og. There are names and names and names, and when you are as old as I am you’ll realise that names are meaningless, for they never really capture what a thing is.’
‘But this isn’t Otherworld,’ Hal protested. ‘This is… the world.’
Petronus laughed. ‘How ridiculous! I am here, so it must be the Land of Always Summer.’
Hal looked around. ‘But it’s winter.’
‘Then that proves the matter, for the Otherworld is a land of contradictions.’ Petronus spotted the tiny woman’s glimmer of golden light high over the rooftops. ‘My friend! I must go!’
‘Wait! How do you know I’m a Brother of Dragons?’ Hal asked.
‘So many questions! How does anyone know? It’s as plain as the nose on your face. You’re a blazing Blue Fire, like a little star come down to earth.’ Petronus pulled up his mask to reveal slanted eyes filled with the wildness of nature, and pointed pixie ears. He gave Hal a wink, pulled down the mask and then soared high into the sky and was gone.
Though he felt as if he was walking through a dream, Hal’s mind was racing. What Petronus had said about being in Otherworld gelled with what he had been told by the little people he had heard singing the other night. What could it possibly mean?
It wasn’t the only matter preying on his mind. Every time he heard someone or something call him a Brother of Dragons, it filled him with an unaccountable panic. Those words hinted at a future where he would have to give up the quiet, thoughtful life he had made for himself. It was a future where chaos ruled and anything could happen, where there were no certainties, no breakfast at seven-thirty, no lunch at one, no dinner at seven, no Sundays off, or sitting back with a good book as twilight fell. The name spoke of sacrifice and bloodshed and death and upheaval and all manner of unpleasantness, of the kind of life in which Hunter would probably revel, and which consequently was anathema to Hal. If it was true that he had somehow been selected by a Higher Power to be a defender of humanity, then that Higher Power had certainly got it wrong, for he had nothing whatsoever to offer.
Lost to his thoughts, Hal wandered down a side street off St Aldate’s to cut through to one of his regular haunts. It was a familiar route, but this time he was confronted by a pub he had never seen before. It looked oddly quaint and historical in a slightly unrealistic way, as though it had been prepared for a film set. Through bottle-glass windows filtered the ruddy glow of a fire and the gleam of lanterns, with a great many deep shadows in the areas between them. The warped glass did not allow a clear view inside, though there were clearly many drinkers within. Their hubbub leaked out through the ancient, scarred oak door. The second storey overhung the first in a Tudor style, complete with the requisite black beams and white paint, and from it hung a sign that said ‘The Hunter’s Moon’, with a picture of a full moon partially obscured by cloud and what appeared to be a man with a wolf’s head.
It looked surprisingly inviting, and so Hal ventured in without a second thought. It was only when the door had banged to behind him that he realised his mistake. The occupants of the pub were a strange, otherworldly group. There was a man as thin as a needle, nearly seven feet tall, wearing a stovepipe hat that made him even taller, his fingers so long and thin that they looked as if they were made of stretched toffee; a woman with long blonde hair that moved with a life of its own — she had a seductive look about her, but mad, dangerous eyes; a giant of a man wearing furs and a battered wide-brimmed hat, a string of conies around his neck and a blunderbuss hanging from his belt; another woman as bent, twisted and wrinkled as a crone from a fairy story, black shawl and white cap, a black cat perched on her shoulder, her cackle like the rattle of stones on a coffin; and more, all odd and out of place. Further towards the back, the revellers were even more bizarre; Hal glimpsed horns and scales and forked tails.
‘Bless my soul, it’s a Brother of Dragons!’ the tall, thin man said.
Before Hal could back out, he was grabbed by numerous hands and dragged to the bar where the landlord loomed, overweight and black-bearded, his arms as thick as telegraph poles, both of them covered with tattoos of disturbing symbols.
‘Pour the lad a drink, Drogoff!’ someone called. Another agreed raucously, and the landlord reluctantly served up a tankard of foaming ale that was almost as big as Hal’s head.
‘Ooo, it ain’t often we get someone like a Brother of Dragons in here,’ the crone cackled. ‘We’s honoured.’
‘What is this place?’ Despite the dreamlike sensation that gripped him, Hal was beginning to feel the first pangs of incipient panic.
The big bear of a man with the blunderbuss levered himself out of his chair and loomed over Hal. ‘Why, it’s The Hunter’s Moon, good brother. Best inn in all of the Far Lands.’
‘I don’t know what’s real or not any more,’ Hal said. His route to the door was blocked by more strange characters crowding around to see the new arrival. They were curious, but there was also unmistakable good will towards him, which made Hal feel a little more at ease.
‘The only real stuff’s in ’ere,’ the crone said, tapping the side of her head. ‘We make the rest of it ’ow we want it to be. Everybody knows that.’ With shaking hands, she grabbed a tiny goblet from the bar and knocked the contents back with gusto.
‘Steady on, Mother,’ the man in the stovepipe said. ‘The poor lad’s a bit disoriented. You know how it is when they first venture into the Far Lands. Give him room to breathe.’
The woman with the snaking hair glided forward, her hypnotic eyes burning into Hal. ‘Even Jack, Giant Killer, was adrift in his first days in Faerie,’ she said sibilantly. She moved a rotating finger slowly towards Hal’s temple, until the blunderbuss man gripped her wrist tightly. The woman hissed at him like a serpent, then pushed her way to the back of the bar.