Yanny stares at me while I unpeel myself from the plastic seat, picking up my bag with numb fingers. He indicates for me to go before him, and the door slams behind us, the sound echoing through a wide hallway with a polished wood floor. There’s a staircase leading down on the left, and another leading up past a row of windows on the right. The sun blazes in over a green sports field, where a group of kids are playing what looks like hockey.

I stare at them. I didn’t bring any sports clothes with me – I’m not sure I even own any. There’s so much I have never thought of. So much I’d never imagined, even with all the books on schools I’ve read. My stomach is churning with nerves, and my head thuds with the beat of my heart, but there’s also a little glow wickering deep within me, because I really did it – I got this far.

Let the adventures begin, says a little voice inside my head, and I hold on to it, even as Yanny leads me through a maze of white-walled corridors.

This is school. This is normal. This is what I wanted.

I don’t know about normal schools, but I don’t think this is one.

Here, there is a great staircase that shimmers like a trick and leads up to an old, ornate wooden door. Silver charms hang from the sweeping curved banister that remind me very much of the ones I set at home.

How can that be? Am I imagining it? Is it the berry Peg warned me about yesterday, making me see things? I train my eyes on Yanny and ignore the staircase, focusing on everything else that’s going on around us. So much buzz and noise and heat and tripping down steps and through corridor after corridor, it’s a relief when finally we stop in the doorway to a classroom where the sun streams through wide glass windows, and bags and coats are flung about like autumn leaves.

What was that staircase? Did I really see it?

‘What do those stairs lead to?’ I ask in a whisper as I follow Yanny into the room, trying to sort of hide behind him. The room is warm, and my coat itches, and there are at least two dozen other kids in here, most of whom are chatting in low tones while a woman with grey-streaked hair glowers at a computer screen.

‘What?’

‘That weird staircase, with all the charms.’

‘Charms?’ He frowns. ‘I’m not sure which staircase you mean. Probably just more classrooms.’

But now he’s staring at me, and his eyes are just a little too wild. That staircase is definitely hiding something. Can there be magic here, at the school? This nice, ordinary school, which I came to because I wanted to know what it was like to be truly human, in a truly human world? Nan’s told me that some humans have an affinity for magic, but surely not to the extent that they’d hang charms? Why would they even need them? Unless there are fae here?