A prequel novella set thirty-five years before Northern Lights, telling the story of how Lee Scoresby – a twenty-four-year-old Texan aeronaut who won his balloon in a poker game – first met the armoured bear Iorek Byrnison. Arriving on the windswept Arctic island of Novy Odense looking for work, Scoresby and his dæmon Hester stumble into a conspiracy involving a corrupt oil magnate, a crooked mayoral candidate, and a hired killer from Lee's past in the Dakota Country. When he joins forces with one of the island's despised armoured bears, what follows is part frontier western, part Arctic thriller – a gunfight in a warehouse, a daring cargo heist, and the beginning of one of the most enduring friendships in Pullman's universe. Published April 2008 with illustrations by John Lawrence, Once Upon a Time in the North is a compact, action-driven companion piece to His Dark Materials.