The young Beatrice was well accustomed to ice houses – her own home’s grounds had several of them hidden amongst the foliage – but this one belonged to the Winter Garden and so she had immediately hurried towards it, already marvelling at whatever delights she might find inside.

Before she could reach the open door, a tiger stepped out. Instead of black-and-orange stripes, it had shone with the light of a hundred tiny stars. Each whisker was a thread of moonlight, its fur was a haze of star-glow, its eyes were galaxies. Beatrice had thought the tiger the most majestic thing she had ever seen, or could comprehend. She was so shocked by the sheer size of him that she stopped and recoiled backwards, sitting down hard in the snow.

‘Isn’t he magnificent?’ a voice had said behind her.

Beatrice had looked up and seen the Spider Queen. She wore a shawl of cobwebbed lace across her shoulders, and flakes of new snow settled in her greying hair. Her spiders were in the trees all around her, already spinning their extraordinary webs into the spaces between the branches, their silk as fine as fairy thread. Beatrice stood up and dusted the snow from her dress. She longed to ask questions about the tiger, but her tongue was still a useless lump of flesh in her mouth. Instead she pointed at the big cat, sparkling on the ice-house steps, and looked back up at the Spider Queen, who smiled. A spider – white as milk – crawled up her arm and settled itself on her shoulder.

‘Some of the plants and animals in the garden come and go,’ she said. ‘But the tiger has been here since the beginning, and he’ll be here until the end.’ She looked down at Beatrice. ‘Have you ever heard of navigating by the stars?’

Beatrice shook her head.

‘People say there is one star in the whole of the night sky that doesn’t move, called the North Star. If you find it in the sky, then you will always be able to locate true north.’

The spider ran down her arm onto the tree branch, where it began to spin an elaborate galaxy web in shining threads of silver – an entire daisy chain of stars.

‘But what most people don’t know,’ the Spider Queen went on, ‘is that there’s a second star in the sky that is fixed, and that is the Tiger’s Eye. It forms part of the White Tiger constellation and it marks the place where pure magic lives. Which is why you’ll always find the tiger right here, in the garden. The most magical place in the world.’

Beatrice had never seen anything like the tiger before, yet as she stared at him she felt the most curious sense of déjà vu. Surely she had been here before, dazzled by the beauty of the tiger, and the magic of the garden, and the wonder of the universe?