The Fuzzle situation wasn’t improving, and everyone was getting sick of roasted marshmallows. Even me, and that’s really saying something.

I couldn’t believe how many Fuzzles we’d found, and still, every day more poured into the clinic in trash cans and buckets and old toaster ovens. Mr. Randall took a load to Two Duck Island in the afternoons, which meant Mrs. Dreadbatch came to yell about things in the evenings, which meant we were all tired and pretty Fuzzled-out by the time the sun went down.

“I can’t do it! I can’t do it anymore!” Callie said one morning. Her voice was already hectic. “I dreamed about them last night, Pip. I dreamed I was onstage, only instead of people in the audience, it was Fuzzles. A theater full of Fuzzles!”

Callie was starting to crack. I tried to look understanding when the clinic door opened behind us.

“Add them to the pile in that bathtub!” Callie snapped without turning to look.

A voice replied, “Pile? Bathtub? I’m here about Regent Maximus. Just thought I’d pay him a visit.”

“Mr. Henshaw!” I said, jumping to my feet.

He waved. Just as before, he wore a suit, and his hair was so perfectly combed it looked like plastic doll hair. His tie was the sort of bright blue that Bitterflunks couldn’t resist. Immediately, every Bitterflunk in the playpen bounced off the walls and floor to land on it.

Mr. Henshaw looked as dignified as one could expect in this situation. “Pip, how’s my Unicorn?”

“He’s great,” I said, with hardly any hesitation at all. I was getting better at talking to humans, especially when I got to talk about magical creatures. I went on, “Well, he’s sort of great. He hides in the straw a lot. And when we had that little thunderstorm the other afternoon he thought he was going to drown. And he got his horn stuck in his feedbag on Tuesday. But other than that … Here, let me walk you to see him.”

I glanced at Callie, who narrowed her eyes at Mr. Henshaw before saying to me, “While you’re out there, Fuzzle the Griffins—I mean, feed the Griffins their Fuzzles—I mean, feed the Fuzzles—AH! JUST GIVE THE GRIFFINS SOME HAY!”

Mr. Henshaw looked scared. I hurried him out to the large animal stable.

Regent Maximus was in a stall between two Standard Griffins named Buzzer and Fleet.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” Fleet called, so fast that it took me a moment to put together what she’d just said. She always talked fast. “He’s been whimpering for an hour. At least an hour! He says there’s a wasp in his stall.”

“No, that was this morning,” Buzzer said, poking his beak through the stall door. He looked grumpy. He always looked grumpy. “Now he says it was a Glowfly.”

“They won’t hurt you if you don’t thrash about and bother them,” I told Regent Maximus, who continued thrashing and bothering. I peered about in his stall for wasps or Glowflies but saw neither.

Mr. Henshaw looked bewildered. “Sorry, what?”

“No, no, no,” I said swiftly. I tried to act natural, though I couldn’t remember exactly how much I’d said out loud, or how long I’d been staring at the animals while they spoke to me. “Just, I was … letting the animals know I was here!”

Clipping a lead on to Regent Maximus’s halter, I led him from the stall and into the backyard while Mr. Henshaw watched. Regent Maximus sidestepped a dandelion as if it were a cobra.

“My life!” Regent Maximus muttered in muted terror. “Oh, my life!”

Mr. Henshaw sighed. “I just don’t think he’s ever going to show. I had such hopes for him.”

“Maybe with a little work,” I said, patting Regent Maximus on the nose. He eyed a fly as it swept past us. His expression was deeply worried.

“You don’t understand, Pip,” Mr. Henshaw said. “I’ve hired trainers that cost more than most houses. No one has been able to calm him down. Unicorns are supposed to be majestic! They’re supposed to be proud!”

“Sometimes proud isn’t such a good thing when it comes to Unicorns,” I said, thinking about Fortnight and Raindancer. “And anyway, maybe he just needs someone who can understand him,” I said.

“And you understand him?”

I shrugged shyly. I did understand Regent Maximus better than most people. That I was definitely sure of.

Mr. Henshaw smiled. “How about this—see that board over there?” He pointed to a broken bit of fencing lying in the grass. “If you convince him to step over that board before he moves back in with me, I’ll give you twenty dollars.”

For some reason, this made me feel embarrassed. I quickly said, “Oh! I don’t have to get paid! I’ll do it for free.”

He laughed. “That’s not good business!”

“I’m not really a businessperson,” I replied. “I’m more of a … researcher. I’d do it for the research.”

“That’s fair,” Mr. Henshaw said. “Noble. Let’s shake on it, then.”

We shook hands just as Aunt Emma walked outside.

“Please tell me you didn’t just sell my niece that Unicorn,” she said, pointing at our clasped hands. “I can’t feed any more large animals.”

Mr. Henshaw’s eyes sparkled. “Not yet—but that’s an excellent backup plan, if his show career doesn’t work out. I’ll give her a good deal.”

“Don’t tempt her! Pip is as animal crazy as I am,” Aunt Emma said, which made me feel both shy and pleased. Before I could decide which feeling was stronger, she changed the conversation to talk about stable construction and square footage and building permits.

I stopped listening and turned to Regent Maximus. In a low voice, I said, “All right, Regent Maximus. I’ll give you a chunk of honeycomb the size of my hand if you go over that board.”

“I will die,” Regent Maximus said. “Splinter. Nail. Abscess. Tetanus. That garbage truck.”

The truck was six houses away. There was no possible way it could kill him. I tried to explain this to Regent Maximus, but it turned out that talking to a Unicorn was a very different thing from convincing a Unicorn. I couldn’t help but think about what a bad job of convincing I’d done during the Unicorn Incident.

The grown-ups were still talking. Mr. Henshaw, in a quite different voice from before, suddenly said, “Emma, I was thinking—would you like to go to dinner sometime? There’s this fabulous new Italian—”

“Oh, Bill, I’m flattered,” Aunt Emma said, her cheeks turning red. “Really, I am. But I’m still married to Grady.” She held up her left hand and flashed her wedding ring.

“I understand,” Mr. Henshaw said, but as if he did not understand. “Remember that it’s been seven years …”

“I know,” Aunt Emma said. “Believe me, I know.”

It was strange to hear someone talk about Uncle Grady. Most of the time we didn’t talk about my uncle.

And because we didn’t talk about my uncle, we also didn’t talk about dragons.

There are no dragons in Jeffrey Higgleston’s Guide to Magical Creatures … because they don’t exist. I mean, I’d love it if they did—there are all sorts of old stories about them, and every once in a while, a crazy story appears in the paper about how some old lady out in the desert spotted one. But the truth is that no one reputable has seen one in living memory, and no one ever finds skeletons. And most importantly, no one ever finds dragon poop.

Everything poops.

So there are no dragons. And yet, seven years ago, Aunt Emma’s husband, my uncle Grady, set off into the deserts of Texas and Mexico, looking for them. For a long time, he kept in touch—he called, or sometimes wrote Aunt Emma romantic letters. But then one day, the calls and letters stopped. Really stopped, just like that.

Was he dead? Was he alive? Did he need help? Did he ever find any dragon poop?

These questions had gone unanswered for seven years.

“Thanks for the, uh, invitation though,” Aunt Emma said, trying so hard to make her voice sound casual and airy that it sounded the opposite. “Give me a call when the stable is all ready for Regent Maximus!”

I saw Callie standing suspiciously in the doorway to the clinic. Her eyes were laser-death on Mr. Henshaw.

Mr. Henshaw smiled warmly despite this. “And, Pip! Don’t get too discouraged with Regent Maximus. I appreciate that you’re even trying.”

In the background, Regent Maximus suddenly shouted in terror. It sounded like a frightened whinny to everyone else, but I, of course, could understand him perfectly as he screamed, “Why! Why is the sky so blue today? What does it mean?”

I said, with considerably more confidence than I felt, “Just you wait. He’ll be a new Unicorn the next time you see him.”