The next moment her room filled with a powder-blue light. She sat bolt upright and stared around the nursery. It was transformed. Dozens of ice roses wound around the posts of her bed, each petal as clear and cold as glass, their thorns like crystal, their stems sparkling in a layer of frost as fine as lace. Strange flowers hung down from the ceiling, shaped like trumpets, casting a blue glow over everything, from the rocking horse in the corner to the doll’s house on the shelf. Leaves and branches crowded the open nursery window, which was barred for safety, but the trees still managed to poke their fingers of twig through the gaps.

Some snow had blown in too. Beatrice saw it piled up in drifts in the corners of the room, despite the roasting heat of the day and the fact that everyone complained almost constantly about how it was one of the longest, hottest summers they could remember.

But there the snow and the ice roses were, twinkling and sparkling in the soft, pine-scented light. Beatrice scrambled to the edge of the bed and touched a rose, felt the icy kiss of its petals, before hurrying over to the snow itself. It was the coldest, softest powder – perfect for snowmen and sleigh bells, frost fairs and plum puddings. The flowers filled the room with the scent of winter and fairy tales.

She raced to the window, but the leaves crowding the frame were so thick that she couldn’t see properly through to the outside and could only make out the occasional flicker of lantern light beyond. She could hear the garden, though – strange songbirds calling to one another in the darkness, toads croaking, fountains splashing and perhaps even a tiger’s roar.

She turned back into the room and froze. A white frog sat on her bed, holding a letter in its mouth and staring straight at her with bulging black eyes. Beatrice’s nanny shrieked whenever they saw a frog in the garden, but Beatrice loved them and had always enjoyed collecting frogspawn and hatching the froglets. She’d never come across a frog like this one before, though. It almost seemed to glow in the dark. And it wore a pale golden crown.

When Beatrice looked at the envelope in its mouth, she saw her name printed there, so she slowly reached out and took hold of it with her finger and thumb. The frog released it at once and hopped away to settle itself upon her pillow.

Beatrice turned her eyes to the envelope in her hands. Her full name was written across the front in an elegant script, and the back was sealed with a purple wax crest sporting an emblem of a frog wearing a crown. Flowers entwined all the way up the back of the letter, and songbirds and spiders graced the loops of her name. Beatrice opened the envelope and a white ticket fell out into her hands: