‘May I?’ asked Peter, wanting to experience this miracle for himself.

‘Go ahead,’ replied his uncle after pondering for a moment whether it could be dangerous. ‘Two heads are better than one.’

As soon as Peter touched the sand, its sparkle disappeared.

‘Well!’ said the professor with surprise. ‘What happened there?’

Peter’s eyes were wide open as though he had just remembered something important.

‘Are you OK, Peter?’

‘Yes…yes. It’s just that suddenly I felt something like a camera flash, but it’s not important.’

‘Perhaps it is. Think about how you feel, anything that comes into your mind, say the first thing that occurs to you.’

‘Well, I’ve just remembered that today I had a dream that I was riding on horseback, but I don’t know what that has to do with anything.’

‘A dream, you say?’ mused Uncle Basilius. He then put a little more sand on the table. ‘Touch it again, Peter, and concentrate.’

Peter reached out with his hand and, closing his eyes, put his finger into the sparkling dust. The sand lost its sparkle again.

‘Yes!’ said Peter, startled. ‘It happened again. Now I remember what I was doing. I was riding a horse through the middle of a wood.’

Basilius didn’t wait another second. He emptied all the sand on to the table and invited Peter to touch it. As soon as Peter put his hand in the sand, his face lit up.

‘It’s incredible, Uncle Basilius. Now I can remember the dream perfectly. The sound of the birds… I remember I was getting closer to the sea and riding over the waves… I don’t know how I could have forgotten.’

‘It’s not that you forgot, Peter,’ said the professor with concern. ‘They stole the memory from you. And…’ he said, moving the sand around again, ‘it seems as though the sand has lost whatever made it so magnetic.’

‘Stole? What do you mean? That’s impossible!’ exclaimed Peter as he followed his uncle, who, lamp in hand, was searching for something on a shelf.

‘Here it is,’ he said, taking out a book bound in black leather.

He gave the map to Peter, who, when he held the lamp to the book, could read the title: Compendium of Anglo-Saxon Legends.

The professor started to flick through the book, which was filled with drawings of mysterious creatures and lands.

‘Here it is… The Sandman,’ said the professor, holding the book open on that particular page. ‘According to legend, this figure carries a bag of magic sand with him. He appears to blow the sand into children’s eyes to give them sweet dreams.’

‘But it says “to give them”, not “to steal them”. Do you think the sand could do both things?’ asked Peter.

‘I don’t know. But I’m sure the creature we saw earlier didn’t look anything like the description we have here of the Sandman.’

‘No, it didn’t,’ said Peter, looking at the drawing in the book of a tall, thin man pale as sunlight. ‘The figure looked more like… a cat.’

‘Now I come to think of it, you’re absolutely right!’ exclaimed Uncle Basilius. ‘If it wasn’t on two legs and we could double its size, we could say it was some kind of feline creature.’

He closed the book and put it back on the shelf. Then he looked at his pocket watch, thought for a second and said:

‘I’m going to try and find out a bit more. I think I know someone who might know something about this.’

‘Now?’ asked Peter. ‘You’re going to go out at this time?’

‘It’s the right time. Believe me. This can only be done at night.’

Peter’s curiosity was piqued. He felt completely awake and, though he sensed this couldn’t be real, an excitement for the unknown pushed him to carry on.

‘Let me go with you, Uncle Basilius,’ said Peter, surprised at his own determination.

‘I don’t know, Peter. I’m not sure it’s appropriate.’

‘Please. I’ll behave myself.’

‘It’s not that, the place I’m going…’ He thought carefully about his words, looked into his nephew’s eyes and added, ‘Your parents wouldn’t allow it.’

‘My parents never let me do anything that’s not organized, supervised and boring. They’re not even here and, if they left me here with you, they knew perfectly well what they were doing so they must have thought of this too,’ replied Peter.

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ Basilius Hoffman’s laugh filled the room. ‘You’re sharp, those are good arguments. Very well. If you decide to come with me, you’ll have to keep a secret.’

‘A secret? What do you mean?’

‘The place where we’re going is hidden to most and must stay like that for the time being.’

‘I understand… I won’t say anything, I promise. You have my word.’

‘You may well be a true Hoffman. Perhaps… yes, perhaps destiny gave you this opportunity for some reason,’ declared Basilius as his gaze bore deeper into Peter, as though he was trying to get into his nephew’s mind. ‘Do you know, Peter? The place where we’re going could change your life forever. You would never have to be concerned about your worries or your problems again.’

‘If that’s true, then I want to go with you. I’m tired of living in fear – in fear of my parents, of my schoolmates, of not being able to make a decision of my own. I want to do this, Uncle Basilius.’

Although it didn’t look like it, Basilius Hoffman knew this would be one of the most important decisions Peter would ever take and only over time would the consequences of his choice become clear.

‘Very well, Peter. Wrap up because it’s cold out at night. Be ready in ten minutes,’ ordered Professor Basilius.

Peter didn’t hesitate a second before running to his room. He opened one of the suitcases that were still in the corner, took out some large brown boots, some gloves and a feather-filled jacket.

While he was getting dressed, he asked himself over and over again what this mysterious place where they were going could be. He started to think that perhaps his uncle wasn’t as dull as he had imagined and that the day had more in store than he had given it credit for that morning. Once he had finished getting dressed, he put on a woollen scarf and raced down the stairs. Seven minutes and eight seconds later, he was ready and waiting for his uncle at the front of the house. When the time was up, a voice came from the top of the stairs.

‘May I ask what you’re doing waiting down there? Come on. Come upstairs right away, we don’t have all night.’

Peter was even more intrigued.

He climbed the stairs, and together they returned to the study. Uncle Basilius was wearing a thick jacket and carrying an old gas lamp to light the way. The study was as big as Peter had imagined and in the dim light scared Peter a little. Passing by the shelves, the professor picked up an old leather bag that still had some mud on it from Australia.

‘He’s just come back from the other side of the world,’ thought Peter, ‘and already he’s starting a new adventure.’

They went through the laboratory and stopped in front of a shelf. Peter looked around and felt overwhelmed by the weight of secrets the books must contain and by the mysterious halo surrounding this sanctuary.

Uncle Basilius took a thick volume down from the shelf and put his arm into the hole left by the book. There was a click and then the sound of a mechanism turning. The piece of furniture separated from the wall, giving way to a hidden passage.

‘It’s not as simple as it looks. Get it wrong when activating the opening mechanism, and you can say goodbye to your arm,’ remarked Basilius sombrely.

The passage was barely three metres long and stopped in front of a wrought-iron spiral staircase that climbed into the darkness. Peter followed his uncle up while the metal structure groaned threateningly.

Finally they reached the top, opened a trapdoor that let the cold wind of the night in and emerged outside. They were in a small tower on top of the roof. There was nothing unique about it, except for a bronze bell that was the size of a pumpkin and hung from a wooden branch.

Peter looked around him until the fog blurred his view. The city spread out in front of him like a silent sea of rooftops. Only the wind and the occasional miaow broke the sense of peace.

Uncle Basilius put the lamp to one side and, searching in his bag, produced a small, golden hammer, similar to those used by geologists, and started to ring the bell. The sound was sharp and clear, and it seemed to awaken a soft wind that cleared the fog as it spread over the rooftops, like a rippling wave after a small stone has been thrown into a pond.

Once it had stopped ringing, he hit the bell again and did so three times. Then he sat on the stone floor and took out a pipe made of bone.

‘Now all we have to do is wait,’ declared Basilius while the smoke from his pipe floated off into the night sky.