Page 84 of The Neverfear

He returned to Christopher’s shoulder and sighed with pleasure. ‘This will make a very fine chapter in my biography. You might call it “How the Presence of a Dragon Lends a Touch of Class to Any Event”.’

Late that night, Christopher left the dancing, glittering party to find Anya. She was sitting at the water’s edge where the lawn met the sea, her feet in the waves. She grinned as he approached. ‘Blisters from dancing,’ she said.

He sat down next to her.

‘Do you think Morax will try to find Teren again?’ said Anya, as though she were picking up a conversation they had just left off.

He told her the truth. They had gone through too much together to lie. ‘I think it’s possible.’

‘Me too.’

‘But if he tries again, we’ll be ready. We’ve done it once: his boats are seized, all his bandits arrested. And there have been no more burnings, no more attacks.’

‘And we saved him, Christopher! The Immortal. I love him,’ she said simply. ‘The Immortal has loved and protected us, for thousands of years. So I’m glad that I had a chance to help protect him. I’d do it again, in a heartbeat.’

‘I know. Me too.’

The water lapped against the shore. Far out in the sea, a hippocamp’s tail flickered above the surface. A piece of wood came floating in on the waves.

‘Look!’ said Christopher, and he bent to pick it up. He began to laugh.

‘What is it?’ said Anya. She was waiting to laugh too – her whole body ready for it. Always ready, he thought, to laugh or fight.

‘It’s part of the Neverfear,’ he said. ‘For the new boat.’

The adventure continues in the fourth book of the Impossible Creatures series, coming in autumn 2028

The Guardian’s Bestiary

There is a secret place in our world that is carefully hidden from us by magic. It’s a wild magnificence of a place: a land where all the creatures of myth still live and thrive. It is known as the Glimouria Archipelago: a cluster of thirty-four islands in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, some as large as Denmark, some as small as a town square. Across the islands, thousands of magical creatures run and fly, raise their young, grow old die and begin again. To us they’re half forgotten and were long ago dismissed as children’s stories.

But we have not destroyed them: they survive. They are plentiful, and shining, and real. It is the last surviving magical place.

Ahool bat

The ahool bat can grow as large as a dragon or remain as small as a beetle. Its name comes from the sound of its call as it hunts at night: ahool-ahool. The bite of an ahool is not usually fatal, but once latched on it is almost impossible to remove. Fortunately ahools loathe water and they can be evaded by hurling liquid at them, running into a lake or, in extremis, extremely vigorous spitting.

Al-miraj

Al-mirajes are horned hares of dazzling beauty. Their ears are long and pink on the inside, and their horns pure gold. During the mating season, where the al-miraj treads, fresh shoots of greenery rise from the earth; they can carpet a barren field with grass within an hour. The al-miraj is said to seek out the valiant, the wise and the good. Queen Arian of Lithia once sought to give one to her fiancé, only to see the creature shun her suitor and joyfully greet her maid servant. She married her maid-servant instead and they lived happily ever after, with a garden full of gold-horned hares.

Avanc

The avanc is a swamp-dwelling carnivore, resembling a fanged beaver. The teeth of the avanc, which are bone-white and pointed like pins, grow an inch every day, and they keep them trimmed and sharpened against rocks, trees and occasional humans. The softness and lustrous beauty of their fur can lead children to take liberties. Those children who do so, do so only once.

Batrachomyomachian mouse

The Batrachomyomachians are a princely breed of mice. Frogs are their historic enemies, dating back to a dispute with a Frog King more than two thousand years ago. They make weapons from needles and shields from nutshells; it is surprising how much damage a vegetable whittled to a point can do. They are valiant creatures. Their desire to be of service makes them excellent allies, albeit very small ones.

Behemoth

A sea creature of extraordinary strength and size, the behemoth looks at first glance like a tusked and fanged hippopotamus. The largest behemoths can reach the size of a battleship, and even a small behemoth can crush half a dozen humans at once in its jaws. Their preferred food is keratin – particularly human keratin, which is found in hair and nails. Some herds of behemoth have been tamed by seafaring Pellagic peoples, but the majority are deadly. Their attitude to life tends to be Wreak destruction first, ask questions later.

Bonnacon

[added by Irian Guinne]

The bonnacon is the size of a bull, with a gentle, mournful countenance and a secret sorrow. Its magnificent horns turn inwards on its own head, making them useless for self-protection. It has therefore evolved a defence mechanism that is entirely excrement-based in nature. A fart can knock an adult unconscious for an hour; diarrhoea can burn the skin off the bones. It can release a trail of dung three acres long before it runs out of ammunition. Pliny the Elder met one during his travels in Glimouria in the year 77 ce. He wrote: ‘Contact with the dung burns pursuers as though they had touched fire,’ and was very suitably impressed.