Everyone groaned. It wasn’t that people didn’t like the Old Town Winter Fair. They did. But things always went wrong during fairs, fetes and open days. It was far better, in all the teachers’ opinions, to keep things well-structured and predictable. Get the children in, lock the doors and try to teach them something—anything—before the end of the day. That, translated into Latin, was the school’s motto, pretty much. Or it would have been if anyone had ever thought to have a motto.

“We do, presumably, have a plan?” said the headmaster.

“We’re sending five children to the university,” said Mrs. Beathag Hide. “Some first years expressed a desire to learn creative writing, and as you know, we have forged some links with the new writer in residence there. There will be workshops, I believe, for the lucky children.” The way she said “lucky children” didn’t make them sound very lucky at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The Old Town University traditionally held its open week during the Winter Fair. There were workshops for children, and public lectures for people who couldn’t afford to go to university and wanted to learn things for free. The beautiful old butterstone buildings were, for one week only, covered with colorful balloons.

“Ah yes,” said the headmaster. “A Terrence Dark-Heart, I believe?” He gave Mrs. Beathag Hide a searching look, or as much of one as he could manage at his age.

“Terrence Deer-Hart,” corrected Mrs. Beathag Hide. “Yes. A dreadful, sentimental children’s writer now apparently working on some dire epic for adults.”

“Remind me again why we are sending the children to him?” said the headmaster wearily.

“The other lecturers in the department are rather interesting. Dora Wright is now there, of course. The new head of creative writing is Professor Gotthard Forestfloor. He’s the Scandinavian novelist we talked about last week, if you remember. There’s also Lady Tchainsaw, the Russian avant-garde poet. The visiting professor, Jupiter Peacock, is also a rather intriguing person. You may recall that he claims to carry around with him the spirit of the ancient writer Hieronymus Moon in a small ceramic bottle stoppered with a cork. The children are bound to learn something. And we’re only sending five of them. The others will be doing Winter Fair crafts with children from the Mrs. Joyful School.”

“What about Blessed Bartolo’s?” asked Dr. Cloudburst, peering at a test tube which had something dry and black stuck at the bottom of it. It looked a bit like tea that has been left in the staff room over a long weekend, but was probably more dangerous than that. “We won’t be sending any more children there, surely?”

It seemed no one could remember what the arrangement was with the Blessed Bartolo School, or what had happened to the children who’d gone there last year. Had they ever come back? Perhaps not.