Connor: Since you were discovering things as you went, you must have been startled when the story twisted on you and Molly Grue announced that she was going along on the quest.

Peter: I was as startled as Schmendrick, and just as powerless to stop her.

Connor: The story fits together so neatly in the end that I find it hard to credit your claim that you were flying purely on instinct. For example: in the original 85-page fragment that you wrote, the Butterfly makes no mention of any Red Bull. In the version we all know today, he does…and then Mommy Fortuna makes references to the Bull and King Haggard, as do Molly and Captain Cully, each new mention giving the reader another clue or two towards the big picture. Are you telling me you added those things in later, after you found your way to Haggard’s castle?

Peter: No, I was always leading towards Haggard and the Bull, certainly. But I was also sort of deliberately painting myself into a corner to see how my imagination would be stimulated to get out of it. I’ve done that.

Connor: Back to names. Hagsgate. Drinn. Prince Lír and King Haggard….

Peter: Hagsgate comes from Haggard, obviously: it’s named that because it’s the way you go to get to Haggard’s castle. But the town was there before Haggard came to this country, and it probably had a different name before he did. Town names can change. Drinn is just one of those names you pick when you are trying to select the right syllable, and it had the perfect sound for the gag I wrote about Drinn’s money calling to him from Schmendrick’s purse. “Haggard” I knew about because on the one hand it is a particular look, but on the other hand it is also a falconer’s term. It’s what you call an undomesticated hawk, a bird that knows the rudiments but is not reliable. If you fly a haggard, you might never see it again, it might go back to the wild. The thing about Haggard is that I’ve never really been able to see him as a villain. There’s enough of him in my own character that I’ve always felt sorry for him. That speech of his about knowing that nothing was worth the investment of his heart, and he was always right, so he was always old? That’s one of those three-quarters truths I recognize. As for Lír, his name was a double surprise. I have a distinct memory of sprawling across my bed and going down a long list of one-syllable names that I’d scribbled out‌—‌I knew the prince’s name had to be one syllable‌—‌and when I finally came on Lír I liked the sound. But what I didn’t realize, even though I should have, given how much mythology I’d read, was that I was borrowing the name of one of the greatest of Celtic sea gods, Llyr. And I certainly hadn’t thought it through to the realization that when he eventually succeeded his adoptive father he would become King Lír, echoing Shakespeare.