I am four and a woman in a green dress and her teeth filed to sharp points holds her hand out to me in Paddington Station.

“Come, little Prince,” she croons and I hug Bunny tighter.

I am ten and in the woods a mushroom circle is set out for me. Faeries fly at me and pinch my arms and my cheeks until they feel hot. With cold hands they seize my sleeves and pull me to the circle.

“Your birthright, little one! Come, come, come!”

I am fourteen and a hard circlet of black gold is left on my pillow, stained with red which is not rust but hot blood. I do not touch it, but bundle up the pillow and burn that and the crown with it. My mother (she is here these last six months) cradles me the way she has not done for years and sobs into my hair.

I am twenty, a man full grown and the signs are stronger. Doors open which should not exist. A woman rises from the waves and tries to hand me a sword. When I do not take it she tries to drown me with her wrath, white water sucking at my boots.

I am thirty and my mother is sick. She calls me to her bed and I come. In a nursing hospital, the corridors grey and bleak, she lies upon a bower of flowers the nurses cannot see. Her thinning hair has been laid out and she is Ophelia, drowning. Around her attend the fae, the wet naiads and dappled dryads.

Her court, I realise.

“Do not go,” she begs me. “I have kept you from your father these thirty years. Not hidden, but safe from him.”

“Come,” the attendants cry. “Come with us.”

Never sick, never dying, never hungry, they promise. Never to share my mother’s fate. A birthright, unknown.

I leave my mother to her death and follow them.