“Welcome? Hmmm. But do balloons really make people feel welcome?” said Orwell. “Has there been a study? Are there facts and figures? Surely they just have a cheapening, mind-numbing, distracting effect. Oh, for goodness’ sake!”

While he’d been in discussion with the student helper, Effie and Raven had tacked up two rows of cheerful bunting above the Faculty of Linguistics stall, and Maximilian had blown up a number of yellow and purple balloons. They were doing an excellent job. There were several reasons for this. One was that they were very helpful and nice children. Another was that they too hated bunting and balloons and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. They wanted to be alone in the library to talk privately and look at magical, forbidden books.

Effie, Raven and Maximilian needed to chat particularly urgently about something peculiar they’d just seen. Laurel Wilde, who had recently joined the university’s Creative Writing Department, and Dora Wright, who had once taught at the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange, but who now also taught here at the university, had been in the dimly lit corridor just beyond the Great Hall, laughing and joking with Terrence Deer-Hart, the children’s author who, of course, had been in league with Skylurian Midzhar, and who had been involved in the kidnappings of both Laurel Wilde and Raven Wilde. What on earth was going on?

Not only that: Dora Wright seemed to have undergone a complete transformation. The children hadn’t seen her since September, when she’d won a short story competition and then been captured by the Diberi. She’d then been made to work in a factory creating cheap fiction that was destined to be read, pulped and then sort of boiled down into tainted lifeforce for the Diberi to use in their evil schemes.

Back in September, Dora Wright had been a normal teacher who wore unflattering long skirts and flowery tops with sensible shoes and baggy tights. Now she was resplendent in a black chiffon gown with a lurid stormy-purple feather boa. She had dyed her hair a sort of pinky blue color and somehow made it much, much bigger. It no longer flopped at either side of her head like the pelt of a dead creature, but rose alarmingly toward the heavens like a cat that had taken fright at something. Her eyelids were heavy with sky-blue eyeshadow. Particles from her perfume were currently heading into outer space. There were bits of glitter in constant orbit around her.

“What do you think happened to Miss Wright?” said Maximilian, attaching another yellow balloon to the end of the pump.

“She does look very different,” said Effie. “Quite nice, though. I mean, you definitely wouldn’t lose her in a crowd. But more importantly, why was she talking to Terrence Deer-Hart? I didn’t think they knew each other.”