The Song of the Quarkbeast: Last Dragonslayer: Book Two by Jasper Fforde

Labrador, six-tenths velociraptor and three-tenths kitchen food blender.’ I held a special affinity for these creatures. Not just because I owed my life to one, but because they were one of the Ununited Kingdom’s surviving eight species of invented animals, all created by notable wizards in the sixteenth century when enchanted beasts were totally ‘the thing’. The Mighty Shandar created the Quarkbeast for a bet in 1783 and apparently won the wager, as nothing more bizarre has ever been created since. That didn’t stop them being uniquely dangerous, and a Quarkbeast was regarded with a great deal of suspicion by the authorities – hence the issue with the Beastcatcher. An abiding fondness for metal was one of their many peculiar habits, zinc most of all. In fact, the first obvious sign of a Quarkbeast in the neighbourhood was that all the shiny zinc coatings were licked off the dustbins – the beast equivalent of licking the icing off a cake.
    I looked around cautiously, hoping to catch a glimpse of the small creature. There was no sign, so I walked back to the car.
    ‘Do you think the Quarkbeast could have been the pair of yours all the way from Australia?’ asked Tiger, doing up his seat belt.
    ‘Quarkbeasts come in pairs?’ asked Perkins, who, although quite expert in seeding ideas, was not so hot when it came to magicozoology.
    ‘They don’t so much breed as replicate ,’ I explained. ‘They divide into two entirely equal and opposite Quarkbeasts. But as soon as they do they have to be separated and sent a long way from each other – the other side of the globe, usually. If a paired positive and negative Quarkbeast meet, they are both annihilated in a flash of pure energy. It was said that Cambrianopolis was half destroyed when a confluence of paired Quarkbeasts came together and exploded with the force of ten thousand tons of Marzex-4. 3 Luckily, Cambrianopolis is such a ruin no one really noticed.’
    ‘I heard it was an earthquake,’ said Perkins.
    ‘That’s usually the cover story. We can’t have people panicking like idiots as soon as they see a Quarkbeast. The general population is suspicious enough of magic as it is.’
    ‘I suppose not.’
    ‘Why do Quarkbeasts search for their twin?’ asked Tiger.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘Boredom?’
    ‘If it’s the pair of your Quarkbeast,’ said Perkins with growing confusion, ‘doesn’t that mean the new Quarkbeast is unlikely to explode?’
    ‘Exactly. Nothing to fear from this one.’
    We drove off in silence, past the cathedral, out of the city walls and headed south into the Golden Valley and past Snodhill Castle with the Dragonlands beyond and down the escarpment to the small town of Clifford. There, on a bend in the river and set about with oak and sweet chestnut, was the place Tiger and I had called home for the first twelve years of our lives. It was as grim as we both remembered it, and Tiger and I glanced at each other as we drew up outside. Perkins took one look at the Sisterhood of the Blessed Lady of the Lobster and announced he would be staying in the car.
    ‘It’s not that bad,’ said Tiger defensively. ‘The foundlings are rarely made to share blankets these days, and gruel no longer has a consistency thinner than water.’
    ‘I wonder how they did that?’ I mused, since gruel’s primary ingredient was water. ‘I’ve always wanted to know.’
    ‘It must be hard to extract the nourishment out of water,’ agreed Tiger, ‘but they managed it somehow.’
    ‘I’ll leave you both to your trip down memory lane,’ said Perkins, staying resolutely on the back seat and hover-orbiting a pair of snooker balls around each other as a ‘tuning up’ exercise for his Magic Test. ‘I’ll see you guys later.’
    We walked across the car park, up to the great doors, past the slot in the door for after-hours foundling deliveries, and into the quadrangle. I felt Tiger clasp my hand.
    ‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘no