One day he decided he had had enough. He folded himself into an envelope addressed to an old friend and hopped into a postbox. They hadn’t seen each other in a decade or more but when the envelope tore open it didn’t matter. They drank tea that had gone cold while they talked, and competed to see who was worse at naming birds, until finally he felt he could face the train ride home.

The tide seemed to be coming in a little further these days. The sea level rising, she supposed, although it seemed to go out as far as ever. She could imagine the sea disappearing from the earth twice a day, and rising up to cover it in between. It seemed the sort of thing that happened now. She skimmed a stone, not really trying, and it bounced until it disappeared into the mist, higher and further each time.

If you get bit by a snake the important thing is to identify what kind of snake it was. I don’t think there are any snakes around here but I always have that in my mind even so. You don’t have to know snakes, just spot the colour and markings and size so that you can tell someone who does. I practice by looking at the things around me. Long branch, deep green leaves with pointy ends. Bright red crisp packet, family size, crumpled. It makes me feel much calmer.

The wise wizard told him that each bead on the bracelet had a different power. Freeze time, conjure fire, heal poison. The wise wizard was five years old and had got the beads out of a bucket labelled ‘Mega Craft Fun Time’, but here, now, poisoned by an ice spider on a crumbling ledge, it seemed worth believing her.

He had been looking for his glasses for twenty minutes, and it had just occurred to him that they were most likely propped up on his head. The thought was intolerable. To have wasted so much time on something so foolish… He kept searching, keeping his hands away from his head and his eyes away from mirrors.

Our old rotary clothesline was a universe machine: spin it fast enough, and it would open a portal to an alternative world. But mum always shouted at me before I reached the necessary RPM. Now I am old and responsible with nobody to shout at me, I rig it up to an electric motor and let it spin until reality tore around it. I stepped through to a world completely changed, one where I had invented interdimensional travel at seven. I wondered why nobody there had ever visited us. Probably worried my mum would shout at them.

He span the little shaving mirror around and around on its pivot. One side was magnified, the other flat, or as flat as they could make it for the price point. He was trying to decide which distorted face looked truer. The flat side caught more of his face, though a wave in the surface made it look narrower than it was. The magnified side was wobblier still, but he liked how it showed the blood vessels in his eyes. He couldn’t choose. Both faces looked right, trapped there in the corner, bounded by a little circle.

The beast had come down from the hill. Unusual, since it was made all of iron and brass, but not beyond the means of a bloody-minded crew of pranksters. It was in the town square now, up on its hind legs and ready to take the head off Sir William’s statue. Down away from the sky, it looked bigger, and in the play of passing headlights it seemed to breathe.

The tree wasn’t lit right. It looked like it had been dropped into the world by some cosmic Photoshopper. When the wind blew, it didn’t move at all. I reached out to touch its bark, and felt myself fall clean out of the world.

Her chain of office was beginning to annoy her. Not because it was heavy and cumbersome and knocked against her collarbones, although it did. It was the hack symbolism of it. The symbol of power is itself a burden? How clever. She could have borne even that, but she was learning that she didn’t really have any power at all. Just the burden. She lifted the chain over her head, and wrapped it around her fist.

Ben’s carvings always seemed to lose their heads. Bird or bunny or squirrel or fox or bear or human or gruffalo, it didn’t matter: within a year they all stood headless in the woods. Ben suspected vandalism. Everyone else said he ought to make the necks thicker. But the real trouble started when the heads grew back.

He tweezered all the springs and gears into place, going by memory and common sense and a single blurry photograph. It felt like a magic spell. He thought when he was finished the watch ought to let him time-travel. It didn’t. It didn’t even tick.

I found a genie in a battered old oil lamp. He said he was tired and could only grant little wishes; nothing life-changing. I wished to be really good at ten-pin bowling. The genie was concerned about me going pro, so we agreed restrictions. He also warned me that it wouldn’t be fun anymore, with the magic helping. But I never liked bowling. I used to feel so self-conscious. Now once or twice a year I eat chips and bowl strikes and everyone looks at me amazed.

I sit in the branches of the young oak and wait for it to lift me to the sky. As I wait, I watch the other trees. They seem to be growing faster than mine. Even the other branches of my tree seem to be growing faster. One day, I will realise that the tree cannot grow tall where I am weighing it down. I will see that every branch but mine has reached over me and covered the sky. But for now I sit and wait, feeling terribly pleased with myself.