It’s dark when I leave for school, and the ground is winter hard. My breath steams against the brittle cold air. Teacake follows me all the way down the lane to the river and when I look back the house is just visible, lights glimmering in the windows, frost sweeping down over the roof. I reach down and give her a fuss and tell her to head home. Green eyes linger on mine, and then she turns and starts to head back.

‘Good girl,’ I whisper with a smile, watching her go. She’s a tiny bright figure trotting down past the unruly hedgerows. I wonder where she did come from. As I stand there watching, I can just make out the call of the centauride, deep in the woods. Winterspell is a dark sweep up Cloudfell Mountain from here, a chill mist gathered about the lower reaches, and folds of new snow at its peak.

Teacake stops dead, her ears pricked. And the dawn chorus begins with a clamour. I take a deep breath and turn my back on all of it, heading into school, and up the stairs, through the charms to the hall in the round tower for my first magical assembly.

Principal Ashworth is like a cricket at the front of the room, constantly moving, his fingers fiddling with the edge of his cloak. I scoot in, find Yanny, and take a seat in the rickety wood chair next to him. Round windows look out to a still pink sky, and the metalwork on the spines of all the books in the twisting vaults of the tower gleams.

‘Morning,’ I whisper.

I’m shaky with nerves; it feels like the first day all over again. There are about a dozen kids in here, and most of them are looking at me. I smile, and a couple smile back. Others definitely don’t look as friendly.

‘Drop your glamours, if you’re still wearing them,’ Principal Ashworth says. ‘Save your energy. You are among friends!’ He beams.

‘How do we know that?’ asks one girl sitting towards the back of the room, looking at me with a scowl on her face. Her dark hair is piled up on top of her head, held there with what look like ice-blue knitting needles.

‘Because you put your trust in me, and I have kept your safety for generations,’ snaps Principal Ashworth. ‘A little scepticism can be forgiven. But a lack of manners, Tash – that is an ugly thing indeed.’

She folds her arms and slouches down in her chair, letting her glamour slip. Her features change by infinite degrees, so that her eyes are silver, with narrow, catlike pupils, and her hair is roped like fine looping vines around the needles. She glares at me as I watch and bares her teeth at me; they are steel-bright and dagger-sharp. I turn back to the front of the room, trying to repress a shudder.