After Shuggie got bored in the library in Rickmansworth and long before his career as an illegal race driver, Shuggie took a break from the daily routine. Unfortunately, it didn’t end well.

Shuggie came to in the soggy bottom of a nettle and dog-pooh bag filled ditch. On balance, he thought, it wasn’t the worst place he’d ever woken up. He had a raging thirst, of course, a head full of broken glass, naturally, and, upon closer inspection, no shoes. Again. He took a deep breath, immediately regretted it, and sat up slowly. Very slowly. But still not slowly enough to prevent the wave of dizziness which almost overwhelmed him.

The sky was grey, the air damp, and the only sound was the distant cry of a seagull. Where the hell was he this time?

He squinted around. Roadside. Some trees. A sign in the middle distance. He hauled himself upright, his socks immediately wicking up gallons of swampy moisture from the ground. He checked his pockets. No phone, no wallet, one half of a crumpled fiver, and a receipt from a pub called The Anchor, wherever that was, with a note scrawled on the back in very dark pencil:

“YOU OWE ME FOR THE SWAN.”

That was, well… odd.

Shuggie groaned under the weight of his hangover and made his way towards the sign, stepping gingerly to avoid gravel. The letters swam in and out of focus for a moment before resolving into something legible:

WELCOME TO DUNBEG.

Dunbeg. That rang no bells at all. He scratched his itchy crotch, as if that might shake a memory loose, but all he got for his trouble was mud on the crotch of his trousers to match the mud everywhere else. He suddenly realised also, that he smelled quite a lot like a five-day dead fish. He checked himself for injuries, found nothing except a suspiciously damp sleeve, and decided that was a problem for later. First things first, shoes, then answers, then, ideally, a massive fried breakfast and a pint.

He made his way into the dour village of Dunbeg, an uninspiring collection of buildings squatting under a sky that seemed permanently on the verge of rain. It was the kind of place where people noticed a stranger immediately, and Shuggie, soaked, sock-footed, and dishevelled, wasn’t exactly blending in. A gaggle of older woman, who may, or may not have been gossiping the day away outside the shop, clocked him, stopped talking and withered him with a gaze that could have stripped paint.

A pub. That was what he needed right now. He spotted one up ahead, a squat, low, off-white and stone-grey building with a battered wooden sign swaying in the breeze. The Marmalade Frog. Promising. He made his way inside, the warmth hitting him like a wall. A few heads turned his way. The barman, a thick-set man with shockingly luxuriant ginger nose hair and with the air of someone who had seen everything and liked none of it, looked him up and down.

Shuggie cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a lost and found?”

The barman raised an eyebrow. “Depends. What’ve you lost?”

“Eh…” Shuggie hesitated, considering the many possible answers to that. His dignity? His self-respect? His grasp on how, exactly, he had ended up here? He settled for the immediate problem. “Shoes.”

The barman exhaled slowly. “Ah.” He nodded towards the fireplace. “Those’ll be yours, then?”

Shuggie followed his gaze. There, drying by the fire, were a pair of battered brown shoes. One of them had a single, large white feather sticking out of it.

Well. That was both encouraging and at the same time slightly worrying.