Manchester, Sunday 6th September 2015

Today was the last day before the school term for my Master and Miss Guinevere. The university where the Professor and Professora teach does not begin its term for another month, though in three weeks, something called Freshers' Week will happen. They have explained that this is a time when all the new students come to learn their way around the town by drinking a pint of beer in every ale-house in the town in turn, writing their names on each other's shirts, and vomiting, and that I shouldn't worry if things get noisy.

Twelve-year-olds, however, are not expected to take part in this ritual (indeed, the water here is so safe that it is not the custom for boys or maidens under eighteen to drink beer). So our preparations for school have mainly involved trying to find a school which had a place for my Master, and shopping.

Until a few months ago, I hadn't encountered any humans except the alchemist who made me, and I didn't know any females until I met Sorrel, and then the sea-serpent, Dr Ghalib, Professora Greenbloom, Miss Guinevere, Lola, and Firedrake's new friend Maia. But as far as I could find out from human books, young male and female humans generally lived separate lives, with boys going to school while maidens stayed at home learning to spin wool, weave cloth, and grind corn.

Now, though, it seems that young humans of both sexes go to the same schools and learn together, whether they are studying physics, cookery, woodwork, or sex itself. (It seems logical, particularly this last; after all, when they grow up and marry each other, they will need to understand how each other's bodies work. And I will probably never find anyone to marry.) The only times they are separated are when relieving themselves, and when changing their clothes to play a game called football or soccer, and washing the mud off afterwards.

There are over twenty schools in this town for youths between eleven and eighteen, but fortunately the one Miss Guinevere goes to has a space for my Master. They are in the same 'tutor group', which is the class in which children meet first thing in the morning, but there are several classes in every year, and as my Master has missed several years of schooling, he is likely to be in different 'set' groups from Miss Guinevere for most subjects, at least at first. Language is also a difficulty. For some reason, most schools teach in the language of whatever country they happen to be in, rather than in Latin. My Master had studied some English in school between the ages of six and ten (so he is better off than an English child would be in Germany, as most English children don't learn any foreign languages before the age of eleven), but, having after running away from his foster-home and school two years ago, he has had time to forget. I wondered whether I could be of some help in translating.

I asked my Master whether he could smuggle me into school in his new schoolbag, which smells very soulless and plasticky compared to his battered old rucksack. After all, I had ridden in it when we had gone to buy school uniforms, pens that carry their own ink supply, and a machine a little smaller than I am which can do sums to save its owner the trouble of doing them. So could I, of course, though the machine is rather faster at calculating square roots than I am.

My Master looked tempted, but also worried. 'Are you sure you want to? It'll just mean more hiding away, all day. I mean, climbing out and introducing yourself to everyone worked out okay in the fishing village, but – well, it might not have.'

'No, Young Master, I won't do that again,' I promised. 'Only I want to find out what a school is like. I want to understand the lessons, so that I can help you study. And – I just want to be with you.'

The Professora looked at me oddly. 'For the past couple of weeks, you've almost been in hiding here,' she said. 'Is everything all right?'

'Of course it is, Madame,' I said firmly. 'You've been very kind to me, and I'm truly grateful to you for letting me share your home.'

'But that's just it!' she said. 'In Hamburg, you shared everything with us, even though you had to stay out of sight of strangers. But since we've come home, apart from one swimming lesson in the bath, you've spent most of your time in the basement, either reading or exploring the internet on Barnabas's smartphone that he didn't want. You catch your own meals instead of eating with us. You seem glad to spend time with Ben when he goes down to see you, but you never want to come up to his bedroom. Obviously, you're welcome to your privacy, but – well, is there something about this house that makes you feel uncomfortable?'

I resisted the urge to shout, 'It's full of brownies!' Instead, I said, 'No, no, everything's fine. I suppose I've just got used to being alone, over the centuries.'

'Understood,' she said, though she didn't look entirely convinced. 'But if you'd like to spend sometime being not alone, would you mind helping to sew name-tapes into some of these uniforms? I've asked Ben and Guinevere to do most of their own, but if you help them, it'll get done sooner, and it's not the sort of job brownies like.'

'I'd be delighted to help,' I said, and I truly was glad to have something useful to do. I can sew very neatly, even with a needle the length of my forearm – after all, I've been making and mending my own clothes for hundreds of years.

As we worked, the two children chatted. I didn't say much, but just by being with them, I could feel myself thawing out, the way a hibernating lizard thaws when the first rays of spring sunlight touch it. Being lonely when you don't have any friends is as inescapable as starving when you don't have any food, but being lonely because you refuse to go and see your friends is just laziness, and, like mental or physical laziness, it can all too easily become a habit.

We haven't settled for certain whether I am to accompany my Master to school tomorrow, or let him go there first and decide whether it's safe. We've agreed to sleep on it, and decide in the morning.

Only, down here on my own, I can't sleep. I've been playing Tetris on the phone, but even that can't relax me tonight. The thought of going into a school of a thousand teenagers who could, potentially, be even worse than six brownies, is frightening as well as exciting. But I have to admit that, if loneliness feels bad, then being lonely in the middle of a crowd could be the worst of all.

Monday 7th September 2015

After writing that last entry, I realised that I was not only anxious and lonely, but also hungry, so I decided to go out to the garden to see if I could catch a moth.

The back door here has what was originally a cat-flap, but is now a brownie-flap. One thing I hadn't known about brownies is that not only do they have rather catlike faces and claws, but this sort at least can take on the form of cats when they choose. Obviously, it makes it easier for them to avoid notice if visitors don't see six furry, talking humanoids, but just six ordinary moggies and it means they can go into the garden, or down the street to tease neighbouring dogs, when they choose. Also, they are formidable enough fighters to deter any real cats from setting paw in this garden.

Other predators, however, do.

As I stepped out through the brownie-flap, I heard a small, tinkling scream above my head, and then a cloud of twinkling, fluttery things launched themselves at the place where the scream had come from. A tawny owl opened his beak to give a hoot of astonishment, dropping the victim he had seized, who plummeted through the air to land in the grass in a tangle of shimmering wings and silver dust.

'Are you all right?' I asked.

'No, I'm half left,' replied the fairy, in Elven. Fairies can speak Universal just as well as dragons and brownies, but they generally only bother when they want to lie to people. Amongst themselves, the local flock of fairies speak a British dialect of Elven, which is slightly different from the version spoken in the Alps, but near enough for me to follow.

'Are you okay?' I repeated, in Elven this time.

'Oh, 'ell!' groaned the fairy. 'Oh, E'm hurting! Oh, N-O! Oh, pee off, will you?'

She stood up, and tried to fly off, but it was no use. One wing was torn and hanging helplessly from her back.

I winced, imagining how she must feel, and tried to remember where the medical supplies were kept. Once, centuries before, my arm had been badly mauled by a rat, and the wound turned septic. At that time, my brothers and I had reason to be glad the alchemist had used us for experimenting on, as he had left meticulous records. We knew which moulds made poultices that could ward off infection, and what dosage of which preparation of willow-bark was strong enough to take away pain and fever, but not strong enough to be poisonous. Even so, I was ill for a long time, and my brothers Spinner and Dragonfly cared for me patiently. Afterwards, it was several years before I fully recovered the use of my right arm, so Bumble and Beetling took over much of my share of the work. I had been so lucky to have a family I could rely on – and all this fairy had was a flock of silly fairies.

They were hovering around her now, giggling to each other: 'What's wrong with Bryony?' – 'Bryony can't fly-on-ee!' – 'Pick her up, let's try-on-ee!'

They swarmed forward to grab their injured sister, but I stood in their way. 'Wait!' I said. 'Please…'

That just made them giggle again: 'Please, breeze, freeze the cheese, in the trees. Easy peasy, Japanesey, lemon-squeezy…'

'Shut up!' I shouted. This startled them so much that they actually did fall silent for a moment. 'Now,' I continued, 'can two of you go to the cardboard-recycling box, and find a piece of cardboard small enough to fit through the brownie-flap, but big enough for Bryony to lie on…'

That set them off giggling again. 'I'm not a lion, I'm a fairy!' said Bryony weakly.

'For Bryony to lie-on-ee,' chanted another.

'Listen!' I shouted again, as this seemed to be the only way to get their attention. 'Bryony could lose her wing if we're not careful! I need the rest of you to go to the bathroom cabinet and fetch the…'

I realised I didn't know which substances were safe for fairies. For all I knew, the big bottle of disinfectant might dissolve Bryony's wing, even if between us we could manage to open the bottle and pour from it. On the other hand, the antiseptic cream should be safe, as the fairies were always flying into the bathroom to smear their faces with blobs of various types of goo and play 'Guess who I am!'

'Just bring me the blue tubes with white writing on, and put them on the kitchen table,' I said. Fairies can't read English, so I had to accept that, along with the antiseptic, I was also going to get mouth ulcer gel, haemorrhoid ointment, and toothpaste.

Just then, a paw planted itself on my shoulder. I turned, and found myself facing a huge ginger tomcat. For a moment I was seized by panic, and then reminded myself that of course this wasn't a real cat, but Billy. This did not seem much of an improvement.

'What do you think you're up to, then?' he growled.

'Trying to organise these fairies,' I said. 'One of them's hurt, and I need the first aid kit. I can't fly, but they can.'

Billy laughed. 'Trying to organise fairies? You don't think you could use the help of someone a bit bigger?'

'The humans need their sleep. The children have school tomorrow, so I'm trying to deal with this without disturbing anyone.'

Billy purred. 'Hey, you know the score! Humans give us food and a good home, so we pay our way by helping them. Just don't overdo it,' he added. 'We make it a rule to do one good turn each per day. More than that, and the humans start taking you for granted.'

'Why would I want to limit my helpfulness?' I asked indignantly. 'This is the first time I've had a Master I can love and respect, so…'

Billy hissed. 'Master! That's the way dogs think. Brownies don't have masters!'

'Well, homunculi do,' I retorted. Then I realised: he's willing to be helpful. Why am I arguing with him?

'Do you mean you could help?' I asked. 'Could you reach the bathroom cabinet?' Billy is big – over a metre tall in brownie form – but I remembered the cabinet as being too high for anyone except an adult human to reach it.

'Not me, but I reckon Lobber could.' Billy bounded in through the brownie-flap, and a minute later stood upright, holding the door wide open. He switched on the light in the kitchen, fetched a piece of card and helped me lift Bryony onto it, and hoisted her onto the table. Next, he grabbed me with one paw, padded upstairs to the children's bedroom, and batted at the ball of black fur curled up on Miss Guinevere's bed. 'Lobber, you lazy git, wake up and give us a paw, will you?'

'Don't look at me!' growled Lobber. 'I've done my good turn – I helped put the shopping away.'

'Yeah, you put most of the Wensleydale away in you. Come on, it's past midnight – this can be Monday's good turn. One of the flutterbyes is hurt, and we need someone who can get the first aid box down. Reckon you can manage that?'

'Hmmm – at a stretch.' Lobber jumped down from the bed, yawned and stretched, and went on stretching, until he bumped his pointed ears on the ceiling. Embarrassed, he smoothed his fur and shrank down to a little under two metres, then fetched the first aid box and set it and me down on the kitchen table. 'Can I go back to bed now?' he asked.

'Well – there's just one more thing.' I needed something sterile to wash Bryony's wounds. 'Please could you boil the kettle and then pour a little water from it into a saucer?' Lobber looked dubious, so I added, 'It could be your good turn for Tuesday. If you get them both done now, it'll leave much more time for sleeping.'

As sleeping, whether on a human's bed by night or in any patch of sunlight during the day, is Lobber's favourite activity, he accepted this, only muttering, 'Thuffering thuccotash!' When the boiled water was cooling in the saucer, Lobber went back upstairs to sleep, and Billy went out to taunt the Rottweiler down the road, which, he felt, needed a bit more excitement in its life.

The fairies, with only a modicum of silliness, fetched me a roll of Sellotape and some Blu-tak from the living-room, another piece of card from the recycling box, and a pair of scissors small enough for me to use from the bathroom. They were intended for cutting human fingernails, and had curved blades, but it was better than trying to cut with a pair of scissors bigger than I am. I cut two pieces of sterile dressing with padding, the size of Bryony's wing, and two pieces of card slightly larger. Then I set to work on cleaning and dressing the wound.

I am ridiculously squeamish and probably the worst person in a medical emergency. Dragonfly and Mizell would have been confident and professional in a situation like this but they weren't here, and I was. So I concentrated on cleaning Bryony's torn wing with pieces of cotton-wool dipped in the boiled water, and then spreading antiseptic cream on it, without hurting her more than I could avoid or dislodging her delicate wing-scales, and without fainting or being sick.

When I had finished, I assembled the cardboard cast around the dressings, with balls of Blu-tak to keep the pieces of card apart, and Sellotape to hold them together. Bryony pouted. 'It's too heavy,' she grumbled. 'I can't move.'

'That's the point,' I explained. 'It's to make sure you keep still until your wing has had time to heal.' I pulled out a great mass of cotton-wool to cushion the wing. 'The family will find you and look after you when they come down to breakfast,' I told her. 'It's best if you get some sleep now.' I was starting to feel very weary myself. I called to the other fairies, who were now buzzing around the cupboards, trying to unscrew the lid from the honey-jar. 'Excuse me! Do you think you could sprinkle some sleep-dust on Bryony?'

The cloud of fairies whirled around, knocking the kettle over, which knocked the saucer, which fell onto the tiled floor and smashed. The fairies, after sprinkling their magic dust over their wounded sister, hastily flew off through the open window. I pushed the Sellotape off the table, slid down the table-leg after it, and began looking for old newspapers to wrap the broken pieces of crockery before anyone got hurt. But before I had time to parcel it all up with the Sellotape, let alone mop the floor, Professor Greenbloom had come downstairs and was staring at the mess.

'Twigleg, what are you…?' he began. I didn't take in the rest. Playing it back, I think it included the words 'You could have been killed!' and 'Why didn't you call me?' At the time, though, all that registered was that a big person was talking to me about the puddle on the floor, which was definitely my fault, which meant that I was in trouble and deserved to be punished.

The Professor crouched down so that he could make eye contact with me. I kept my head lowered so that he couldn't, and went on clearing up. When I had finished, I said, 'I think I need to be on my own now,' and scuttled past him, down the stairs and into the basement. Not to my cosy nest on the table next to a bookshelf, but to a cupboard at the far end.

The alchemist didn't often punish us physically, at least once we had noticed that nothing he did to chastise us when we disobeyed was likely to be anywhere near as painful as the experiments he carried out on us whether we broke the rules or not. But he soon realised that, as we depended on each other for reassurance, the most severe punishment he could inflict was to take one of us and place him in a dark, sound-proof, smell-proof box. It didn't matter which of us he chose, as the other eleven would suffer nearly as much, waiting without knowing how many hours or days or weeks it would be before our brother was returned to us, or how ill he would be by then, or whether this time the alchemist would leave him until he died.

This cupboard was the nearest equivalent I could find to the punishment box. I lay curled up on the floor and cried until I fell asleep.

I dreamed hat my brothers were comforting me after a session in the isolation box, calling me back to myself. I woke to find that there was indeed someone calling me, but it was a human.

'Twigleg? My dead Fliegenbein? Are you all right? Where are you?' It was the Professor. I emerged from the cupboard and crossed the basement floor to him. He was kneeling on the floor, with a hand held out so that, if I wished, I could run up his arm and onto his shoulder. I stood back. There was only one person whose arm I would have run up at that moment, and then only maybe.

'G-good morning, sir. What time is it?' I managed finally.

'Nearly lunchtime. Ben and Guinevere were disappointed not to see you before they went to school, but I explained that you'd been working very hard through the night and you needed a rest. We're all very grateful for what you've done for Bryony, and of course the children were cooing over her. We've made up a bed for her in a shoebox and gave her some honey and she slept most of the morning, but she's awake now, and asking for you.'

'I'm very sorry about…' I tried to think what I was apologising for, and settled on 'last night.'

'Whatever for? You did a wonderful job, and you were extremely resourceful. I was startled at first, and then worried in case you'd been putting yourself in danger, but I realise now how patronising it was of me to think you couldn't cope. But all the same – you do realise you're allowed to ask for help, don't you?'

'Uh, well, the other fairies helped, and Billy and Lobber,' I said. 'What did Bryony want to see me about?'

'Oh, just bored and lonely, I think. The rest of the fairies have gone out. Do you want a lift upstairs, or would you rather walk?'

'It's quicker if you take me,' I said, and climbed onto the Professor's hand.

Bryony was lying in her shoebox with a handkerchief for a blanket. When I entered, she glanced up at me and said, 'Tell me a story,' in imperious tones so like Nettlebrand that I almost burst out laughing at the incongruity.

I started to tell the story of how I had been sent to spy on Firedrake and ended up joining his side, but Bryony said, 'No, silly, not a boring true story about dragons. Tell me a story about an elephant. That one there.'

She gestured to a book which, I later found out, had belonged to Miss Guinevere since she was four years old, about an elephant who befriends a planetary civilisation living on a dust mote. It was a poem, and translating poetry from English into Elven was enough of a challenge to keep me interested. By the time I had finished, we were both tired enough to go back to sleep for the rest of the afternoon.