George knew there was something under his bed.

He could hear it breathing after his parents put him to bed and said goodnight. When they closed the bedroom door behind them, darkness swallowed the room. George could hear the creature shifting its huge muscles beneath its slick, scaly skin and the insidious scratching of its claws on the underside of his bed, the rank animal smell of its body filling his nostrils.

George kept himself wrapped in his duvet, knowing that if he so much as stuck a toe out of its protection the monster would leap upon him and swallow him whole.

Night after night George lay awake in his bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying very hard not to move. If he fell asleep, even for a moment, he would wake to find the monster leaning over his bed with slathering jaws. If I don’t move, he told himself, it can’t see me.

He trudged to school in the morning with purple smudges beneath his eyes and the attention span of a gnat. He couldn’t concentrate in lessons and his parents and teachers were becoming increasingly concerned.

One night, before they left him to sleep, his parents asked him, “Why are you so tired all the time, even when we put you to bed early?”

“There’s a monster under my bed,” George told them, “and if I fall asleep it will eat me.”

His parents exchanged glances, and they stayed with him until he fell asleep. But he woke in the darkest hours of the night, when dawn was little more than a distant hope, he heard the monster slithering and licking its lips beneath his bed.

George went to school more tired than ever the following morning, and all day it was all he could do to keep from falling asleep at his desk.

When he got home, his parents were waiting for him with a present. It was a book called St George and the Dragon, and before he went to bed that night his parents read it aloud to him and showed him the illustrations. George shivered to see the dragon with its shining black scales and teeth like knives; it was too close to his imaginings of the monster beneath his bed. But on the next page he saw St George thrusting a sword through the dragon’s throat, and the beast fell dead at his feet.

When the book was finished, George’s parents handed him another present – a little wooden sword – and said to him, “This is an exact replica of St George’s sword. It can only be wielded by someone who is named George and, if you keep it beside your bed, no monster can get anywhere near you.”

George grabbed the sword and held it close. He felt it humming beneath his fingers, as if it was alive with magic.

When his parents said goodnight, George felt the fear creeping back through him. But he gripped the sword tight, and he realised that he could hear no sound from beneath his bed. The monster was gone, scared by the power of the sword, wielded by a boy named George.

George rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, and fell asleep with one small fist still clutching the handle of the wooden sword.