THE WEATHERMAN LIED. He said there’d be snow. He said there’d be a cold snap, but all we’ve had so far is mist and rain. It’s better in the Advent house – it’s proper Christmas there, at least, and outside it’s all frost and ice, like something in a story, with icing-sugar icicles hanging down from the roof and a fresh scatter of sugar snow over the lake. Some of the peg-dolls are skating there, all muffled up in hats and coats, and some children (they’re supposed to be Rosette, Jean-Loup and me) are building an igloo out of sugar cubes, while someone else (Nico, in fact) is dragging the Christmas tree up to the house on a matchbox sledge.

I’ve been making a lot of peg-dolls this week. I’m putting them round the Advent house, where everyone can see them without really noticing what they’re for. They’re really cool to make, you know; you can draw on the faces with felt-tip pen, and Zozie brought me a box of scraps of ribbon and cloth for making the clothes and the other stuff. So far I’ve got Nico, Alice, Madame Luzeron, Rosette, Roux, Thierry, Jean-Loup, Maman and me.

Some of them aren’t finished, though. You have to finish them with something that belongs to the person: a strand of hair; a fingernail; or something they’ve touched or worn. It isn’t always easy getting those things; and then you have to give them a name and a sign and whisper a secret into their ear.

With some people, that’s easy to do. Some secrets are easy to guess: like Madame Luzeron, who feels so sad about her son, even though he died so long ago; or Nico, who wants to lose weight, but can’t, or Alice, who can, but really shouldn’t.

As for the names and the symbols we use – Zozie says they’re Mexican. They could be anything, I guess, but we use these because they’re interesting, and the symbols are not too hard to remember.

There are a lot of symbols, though, and it may take a while to learn them all. Plus I don’t always remember which names to use – they’re so long and complicated, and of course I don’t know the language. But Zozie says that’s OK, as long as I can remember what the symbols mean. There’s the Ear of Maize, for good luck; Two Rabbit, who made wine from the maguey cactus; Eagle Snake, for power; Seven Macaw, for success; One Monkey, the trickster; the Smoking Mirror, that shows you things that regular people don’t always see; Lady Green Skirt, who looks after mothers and children; One Jaguar, for courage and to protect you from bad things, and Lady Moon Rabbit – that’s my sign – for love.