I have flown to star-stained heights
on bent and battered wings
In search of mythical kings, mythical kings
Sure that everything of worth
is in the sky and not the earth
and I never learned to make my way
down, down, down, where the iguanas play

Dory Previn

If you've never been to Lavenham, Suffolk, then you probably don't know that this eccentrically crooked town—best known for its physics-defying half-timbered Tudor townhouses—is also home to a relatively sizeable proportion of wizards and witches, goblins, elves, ghosts, ghouls and other unpleasant things that go bump in the night. But if you'd walked down the winding streets of this mixed magic-and-Muggle town, you would learn several things. Firstly, you don't need a ruler to become an architect in Lavenham. Secondly, it is sometimes necessary to wear a wool overcoat in England in July. And thirdly, there is a private society of witches and wizards who work tirelessly in secret to renew the age-old gravity-defying charms that protect this town's whimsical architecture from itself. Meanwhile, the Muggle world continues to accept the more sensible explanation for these buildings' continued existence: namely that Lavenham is just different, special and exempt from the laws of physics that apply to the rest of the universe.

Even so, you'd never know that one particular room in a ramshackle townhome with dramatically sloping eaves was the site of the most surreal moment of my life‑—and there have been quite a few. I don't want to spoil the story for you, but it wasn't a happy moment, or a moment I enjoy remembering. In fact, it's a source of great sorrow to me, even now. However, there is no denying the profound absurdity of walking into my nearly-five-year-old son's bedroom in the wee hours of a blustery March night, only to find the room half-destroyed, exploded from the inside, the twisted remains of a toy rocket ship lodged in the shattered ceiling plaster, my son's pajamas drenched in blood as he lay unconscious and surrounded by a protective army of tiny plastic soldiers while an enormous bleeding wolf licked his considerable wounds in the far corner. It was a scene few people could forget for quite a number of reasons, but I'll remember it, oddly enough, as the last time I'd stroke my son's silky hair while he slept, bathed in the light of the full moon.

I grew up an ordinary girl in an ordinary family in a boring flat in Aberstwyth. My dad worked for the offices of a textile company and argued with my mam about negotiating with the unions. My mam stayed home and tended to the house, as most mothers did in my corner of the world after the War ended. My dad thought my mam was a bit soft about the unions, probably because she'd had to work in a munitions factory during the War. It had been a bit difficult for her to adjust to returning to housekeeping after the excitement of the War.

I was a little kid during the War, only nine when it ended, and I yearned for an adventure of the sort my dad's work friends talked about. Many of them served in the army, or flew planes or volunteered as ARP wardens if they were too old for service. But I spent the War at home, sharing our flat with our cousins from London and my little sister, fighting battles over the bathroom and the butter rations.

As a teenager, I was driven to travel. I wanted to go tour Europe and visit different countries and become worldly like RAF pilots my dad knew. I did not want to spend my whole life in rainy Aberstwyth, hanging chintzy paintings of the Mediterranean seaside on my walls, just so. It wasn't that I was rebellious, or that I disliked my family—I adored my father and got along well enough with my mother; my twelve-year-old sister looked up to me like a goddess. It was just that I'd spent my childhood reading storybooks with beautiful lithograph illustrations of wonderful, impossible places—fairytale places, imaginary ones—and though I knew they didn't really exist, I wanted to go looking for them anyway. I suppose that at the time, I thought that searching for magic would be almost as good as finding it. My dad, who was a big reader as well, always said I was like a dragonfly living in an anthill. We didn't have loads of money to send me on a trip, but he told me if I found a job abroad, I should take the chance. My sister made me promise to write her and to telephone once every two weeks, which was as often as we could afford a long-distance call.

Abroad turned out to be Cardiff, but that was alright with me for the time being. I know, I know—you probably want to get to the interesting parts, with magic wands and explosions. They are coming, I promise! In Cardiff, I found work as a kindergarten teacher's assistant, and later on, at an insurance office. Every morning I put on a starched white blouse and a navy blue skirt, a pearl brooch and my going-away present: a lumpy ball of amber on a gold chain. An ancient beetle was trapped inside the amber, glinting greenish and gold when I held the stone up to the light. Later, I would take the amber off the chain and wrap it in a soft felt cloth, pressing the bundle into my son's hand before he went off to sleep away from his parents for the very first time. I thought about the beetle a lot after he left, wanting to imagine that it was watching over him, preserving him, keeping my Remus whole and still and unchanging as a relic; all those things he couldn't be.

Can you tell that I worry about him, still? He's much older and a great deal stronger than his father and I thought he would ever be, but he is still my little boy and I am still his mam, lost to him though I may be. If you see him, please tell him that, and also to eat more vegetables. I am concerned about his diet. But I digress.

Working in Cardiff was an adventure unto itself. I lived at a ladies' boarding house with a curfew of ten o'clock. My bedroom was in the attic; though it was freezing cold in the winter, I had chosen it for the beautiful Queen Anne-style bay window. It looked out onto the back garden of the Hound and Crown, a pub that leaked drunken banter and live jazz late into the night. Most evenings, we ate meals at the communal dining room. We ate on a weekly schedule. Monday—fried cod, cabbage and leeks. Tuesday—bread and butter, carrot soup and beans. Wednesday—a cawl, ingredients variable, flavour somewhat dicey. The food was nothing special, but I was on my own (almost) for the first time and I loved stepping out of the house in the morning, just before the sun rose, wearing my black patent shoes and feeling entirely adult. In the evenings, I would write poems longhand in my journal, or go to the movies with my fellow secretaries and clerks. I had a vivid social life, many friends and potential beaus, but I wasn't particularly close to any of them. I enjoyed gossiping with the girls from the office or going to the pub and giggling, flush-drunk on a single beer. I went on double dates to the theatre and always arrived home at a respectable hour. In truth, I had little interest in seriously dating. I suppose I fancied that in travelling the world, I'd meet an exotic man from a foreign country and we'd have a whirlwind romance and then part at a train station or a port and I would move on, searching, never settling. What I wanted was not something that could be defined, nor could I visualize anything but the blurred outlines of my desire, the negative space surrounding it coloured by yearning. One February in 1958, I described it in my notebook as "nostalgia for the future, or excitement about something impossibly ancient." I was a bit of a sap then, as I am now. Remus and his father would roll their eyes at me, but they didn't understand. They were born into this terrible, wonderful world; I chose it.

I liked to take long walks by myself. It wasn't the most well-advised thing to do, as my mother took care to remind me, being young and female and incredibly prone to falling into daydreams so vivid that I walked into low-hanging branches. She told me that if I wanted to experience nature so badly, I ought to find a nice group of girls my age with a real naturalist to lead us on a tour. I took this advice to heart, and then I took that part of my heart and placed it in a dusty drawer somewhere in my mind and promptly forgot about the drawer.

There was a farm not far outside the city where you could buy fresh honey and apples still waxy and dirt-speckled and other types of produce, depending on the season. I went to this farm occasionally and would buy a fruit and some biscuits in a brown paper bag, then set off to walk through the neighbouring woods. It was a half-hour walk from the pumpkin patch to the sloping valley where the trees took over from the grass. It was one autumn, still early enough that the trees were just spotted with orange and green, that I walked into this wood and, waiting until I was fully concealed from the farm, pulled off my shoes and stockings. I carried a pair of comfortable socks in my saddle bag and put them on. I didn't want to tear my stockings on a bramble, or get them covered in dirt, but the real reason I took them off was simply that I hated wearing them.

The day was bright but bitten by a customarily British chill. I wore a cable-knit cardigan, but my legs soon became cold. Stopping by a hazel tree, I sat down on the blanket of leaves and heather to rub some warmth back into my legs. The translucent canopy of leaves above me glowed emerald green. I felt momentarily overcome by a strange energy. I did not mean to say anything, though I felt my mouth open and my throat tighten as if I were at loss for words. My pink knees, socked feet and loafers blurred into a haze in my peripheral vision. I was aware that the forest was not totally silent, yet I could hear nothing at all. It was neither a pleasant nor unpleasant feeling, just a queer one, as though life had paused and the world dissolved into nothing, save the black branches webbed with strands of sunlight overhead.

It lasted probably a minute at most before I remembered myself again, and went back to feeling the chill in my exposed calves. The sound returned- just gentle birdcalls and drifting leaves ruffling in the breeze, the snap of a squirrel's leap from twig to twig. I don't know if it was a premonition or the breeching of some ward or just a moment of confusion. Later on, I'd ask the few wizards I knew if it sounded like anything they knew of; none could say definitively if it was related to magic, but all advised me to ask someone more knowledgeable. I never found anyone who claimed to understand what the feeling was.

After the feeling went away, I pushed myself up off the mossy ground and set out down what passed for a path. It was a winding trail of trodden earth, the branches and brambles mostly stepped on or kicked away by horses. The light played off the changing leaves and breaks in the foliage, casting flickers of gold and crimson onto the tree trunks. I stopped for a moment and reached into my bag for my notebook, thinking to make some quick notes about the scene around me, possibly for a future poem. A branch creaked behind me. I looked up, saw nothing, and assumed it was a squirrel or a stronger gust of wind. As I pulled out my pencil, I heard another sound. At first, I thought of a horse chuffing air through its nose; it sounded like heavy breathing. I looked up again and craned my neck around. Nothing. As soon as I began to jot down some words in my notebook, the sound started again; breathing, but coming closer and closer to me. A strange chill fluttered up and down my spine. I began walking briskly away, hoping that it was merely a curious rabbit in the underbrush. The sound followed me. Footsteps. It was definitely a person; the breathing had taken on the ragged quality of a man jogging. I broke into a run, dropping my pencil onto the ground. My bag whipped back and forth, slamming me in the hips. I glanced back and saw a hunching black shape and a pale hand reaching forth, coming closer. There was a finger missing—possibly two. I gulped, and nearly slammed into a tree.

I managed to make it around the tree, but so did the person chasing me. It reached out and I tried to leap forward, but I felt it make contact with my skirt, grabbing a handful of fabric and jerking me back. A scream escaped me, and I heard a second set of footsteps approaching, also running. The sky and ground reversed themselves; I fell backwards as the decrepit figure pulled me to the ground. The air was pungent with the stench of stale tobacco, sulfur and gasoline. A terror seized me like none other; I would not experience that kind of fear again until that bright, terrible night in Lavenham.

By the next day, I would remember it as the best day of my life.

A man shouted something I couldn't quite make out. The smell disintegrated and I felt the hand release my skirt. I stood up; the decrepit stranger seemed to have run away, though I never heard any footsteps and it had happened awfully quickly. Relief flooded into my clenched stomach.

"Was it—are you alright?"

A young man I hadn't noticed stepped out from between two arcing trees. His brow was furrowed with concern. In one hand, he carried a short stick that tapered towards the end.

"Oh, yes," I breathed, "but that was awful. I go on walks here often, but I've never come across a—a creep like that!" I brushed flakes of dried leaves off my knees and looked up at him. "I don't know how to thank you for chasing him off. I tried to run, but he was faster than he looked."

"Well, it was only a Boggart," he said sheepishly.

"A what?"

The corners of his mouth flickered, almost as if to smile. "A Boggart... a tramp. You know."

"But he was going to kill me!"

"Well, most of them are quite harmless, but this one..." He seemed to notice my apprehension. "This one was insane! Maybe violent. But he's gone now," he added firmly.

"I hope so," I said, nervously peering around the nearby tree trunks. "D'you think he might try to come back?"

"I, er don't expect so, but...he might. I suppose it's better to be safe than sorry." He glanced down at his blue plaid tie. I noticed then that he was dressed more like an academic than a young man on a hike in the countryside. His jacket was nubby wool, his dress trousers somewhat short on him.

"I'm not sure what to do," I said. "I don't know if I should just keep going, or..."

"Maybe I ought to walk you to the road?" he piped up, blushing a sweet shade of peach. "If you have an, er, a lift home?"

"I took the bus. It's a mile down from the farmhouse, about forty-five minutes. Did you take a car?"

He shook his head and dipped his hands into his pockets. "No, I just ap—I walked, also. Took another route, but yours sounds quicker," he said with an awkward grin. "If you'd like, I could walk with you to your bus stop...just in case, you know, it, I mean, he might think differently if we're two instead of one."

"Oh, would you please? I'm not usually this nervous about the woods, you know, I come here all the time—"

"I understand," he said graciously. "Can't be too careful." I joined him in step as we traced my path back through the trees. He was tall, but walked deliberately slowly so that our strides would match.

"So, were you taking a walk as well?" I asked.

Actually, I came out here to take notes on, er, the wildlife," he said. "It's my job."

"Oh, are you a researcher?"

"Something like that," he said.

"And you study animals?"

"Of a sort, yes."

"How lovely," I breathed. "I would so like to have a job that required taking long walks in the forest. I mean...except for today, of course."

His laughter reminded me of an old book's softly ruffling pages. "It's not all exploring in the woods. I have to write papers and do demonstrations and the like. That's not as much fun."

I wondered at what exactly a "demonstration" of zoology was, but I tucked the thought away. "I'm just a filing clerk at an insurance office. It's very dull, if you can imagine."

"Really," he said. "That surprises me."

"I thought everybody found filing dull. I've certainly never met anybody who particularly enjoyed it."

"No, no," his laughter ruffled again. "I meant...well, I suppose you don't seem dull."

I glanced at him sideways; he was blushing.

"I hope I'm not," I said. "It would be a terrible existence, not only to work in a dull office but to be dull one's self. See, I could handle one without the other. A filing job isn't so bad when you've got an imagination to keep you occupied, and I suppose a life of adventure would distract me from having none, but to live without an imagination or any excitement at all would be a nightmare."

"Hmm," he murmured. "But you wouldn't know you were dull, would you? I mean, you wouldn't know what you were missing."

"I wonder," I said. I reached down to hitch up my stockings and remembered with a stir of embarrassment that I had taken them off. Had he noticed? We had barely met, but I didn't want him to think poorly of me.

"So your job, in research? Its not dull, isn't it?"

He paused to pluck a yellowing leaf off a low-hanging branch. "Well...no, I'd say not. I like my work. I get to travel sometimes."

"Where have you been?"

"Not too far. Mostly all over Britain, but I've done a few European assignments. The furthest I've ever had to go was Transnistria, in Romania."

"See any vampires?" I asked jokingly.

He opened his mouth, closed it and then paused.

"I just meant, like Dracula, you know," I said.

He smiled. "Yes. Of course. All over the place. The country's lousy with them; there aren't enough coffins, so they've got to sleep underneath the futon."

"What a dreadful thought," I moaned. "To spend your eternal life taking naps under a sofa bed. The Welsh would never stand for it, I'll tell you."

"Well, they don't always—" he began, and then stopped. He gave me a queer look. I wondered whether he had noticed my bare legs.

"I just realized I haven't got your name," he said softly.

"And I haven't gotten yours, and I really ought to have asked, given that you just saved my life." He smiled at that. His eyes crinkled up behind his tortoiseshell glasses and I noticed their colour for the first time, a soft almond flecked with gold.

"Lyall Lupin. And you are—"

"Hope Caron Howell, but you can just call me Hope."

"I hope to," he said and reached forward to shake my hand; his was smooth and warm in my own. That was the first time we ever touched and for many years afterward I would hold the sensation of Lyall's soft, un-callused palm close within my mind, a talisman of something gentle and lovely, a balloon of joy to float us through the sea of pain to come.

When we reached the bus stop, he paused for a moment, toying with the lowest button of his shirt. I smiled up at him.

"I, er, I actually meant to take this bus as well," he said apologetically. "I have an office in the city."

"Oh, where do you work?" I asked, combing my hair with my fingers unknowingly. It was a habit my mother had tried to train out of me, but I couldn't help but do it when I was nervous or excited or in this case, a little bit of both.

"It's a shared office. I've just got a bit of a closet in the corner with a desk. A—a government office. Commissions research for the preservation of the...endangered species of, er...Wales."

"I do think they ought to stop driving all the roe deer out of the forests," I said. "I think it's tragic, what's happening to all the wildlife in Britain. There's almost none left, for starters. Not that I know much about it," I added quickly, for his expression had changed from pleasant to amused, his eyebrows having quirked up just a tad. "I just think people take it for granted that they can go for a walk and hear birds, or go deer stalking every fall and it's never going to change. I mean, I have this argument with my father all the time. He doesn't hunt, but his friends from the RAF..."

I chattered on like this for the best part of our bus ride. I sat in a seat facing the bus's interior and he stood before me, holding onto a pole with one hand and his briefcase with the other.

Finally, I recognized the soot-stained bricks of my neighbourhood. I must have missed the announcement of my street. I hurriedly pulled the cord to request my stop; Lyall noticed.

"This is you?" he said. He glanced out the window. His expression looked somewhat pinched.

"Coming up, yes," I said, somewhat embarrassed by the state of the houses. "It's—not the fanciest of areas. It's a boarding house."

"Oh—yes, of course—" he stammered, "I was actually—I think it's a perfectly nice street," he added. "You've got all your things with you, then?"

"Yes, thanks" I stood up and patted down the wrinkles in my skirt. "I just wanted to thank you for everything—you saved my life! I'm tremendously grateful."

Lyall's eyes crinkled up as he smiled. "No need, no need. It was only the decent thing—"

"I only wish there was something I could do to repay you."

He looked at me askance, then down at his shoes, then back up at me.

"Actually," said Lyall carefully, "I, er, well I'm not from here, as you can probably tell by my accent—I mean, not from Cardiff, anyway, and if it's not too much trouble, I'd like it if you could perhaps show me around the high street and, er...if you'd like to meet for tea or something..."

"Oh," I blushed. "That would be very nice. Not that I know too much about the city, but...I'll give you my telephone number..."

"Oh, that's alright," he said hurriedly, "My telephone is broken at the moment. Perhaps we could meet this Saturday afternoon at your corner, around, say, four o'clock"

I briefly wondered why he couldn't just use a tollbooth, but my thoughts were interrupted when the bus stopped at my corner and we lurched forward. Lyall dropped his briefcase and hurriedly picked it up. When he bent over, I noticed a carved wooden stick poking out of his pocket, like a pencil with no eraser or lead. When he straightened up, he noticed me looking and rearranged his coat to cover his pocket.

"Well, I suppose, we're here."

"Yes. Thank you very much. I do need to get going, but let me thank you again—"

"Of course," he said. "Well, it was no trouble at all. None. So, Saturday then, at this corner—"

"Yes," I said, unable to help myself from smiling. He smiled back, his grin just a twitching of the corners of his mouth and wrinkling at his eyes. "Goodbye, Lyall. See you soon."

When I returned to the boarding house, one of the matrons, Mrs. Wyeth, noticed me smiling. She raised an eyebrow."Had a nice time, Miss Howell?"

"Yes. Lovely weather," I blurted before rushing upstairs to my room. I shut the door and fell onto my bed and burst out laughing, long and hard, for what felt like no reason at all.