Until this month a class at Emberwick was a room with pupils standing in it. Now they sit.

The Lecture Hall has eight banks of desks, and each pupil picks a place by their own nature. The bold go forward. The wary take the back. Friends find each other, and one pupil who was up too late comes in last and takes the end of a row by the door.

The other rooms

The other rooms each got their own scene. In the Chalk Room pairs face off on the chalk circles while the rest watch from the walls. The greenhouse has a work table between the beds. In the library it is heads down at the reading tables, with one latecomer still hunting a shelf.

Nobody is placed by hand. Who sits beside whom depends on who has made friends in that game.

Each of the four houses now has something in its rooms that is not right.

• Halloran. A lamp in the common room that nobody lights.
• Thornwick. One flagstone that is always wet.
• Vaelstrom. A window in the upper room that won’t stay shut.
• Duskmere. Count the candles in the lake glass at night.

You can leave it alone for seven years. If you touch it, you can ask one of your housemates to look into it with you, and it takes a step each year. They answer by their own temper. Some refuse the first time.

The fourth year

In the fourth year it ends with two great creatures in the room, and you keep one. Your housemate takes the other into their own deck. You will see it again.

The catalogue grew to 433 creatures this month, and every one of the new ones is painted.

Size

They come in six sizes now, and size counts. A big creature crushes a small one. One big enough will pick up what it hits and throw it. When a colossus walks, the small things beside its feet stagger.

Weapon and body

Each card also shows a small inked mark for what its creature strikes with and what it is made of, because that counts too. A mace bites stone.

Lessons are fought by the same rules. The professor does the sums on the slate, and they come out the way the duel does.

A Cup duel should not feel like any other duel. Before the first creature reaches the field, you should know where you are and who is watching.

So the two Cups at Emberwick each have an arena of their own.

Orchard Court

The Junior Cup is played at Orchard Court, a round brick court reached through the arcade beside the school shop. It sits under the orchard trees, and in autumn the leaves come down across the brick. The house stands ring the court, and on a Cup day they fill with pupils in their house colours. It is a small arena, made for younger players.

The Great Hall

The Open Cup final is played in the Great Hall. The candles are lit and the house tables line the walls beneath the banners. Every house is in the room. Reaching the final should feel like walking into a room that has been waiting for you all year.

Names and pins

Each year’s cups have names of their own. In your first year they are the Lantern Moth Cup and the Stag Open. By your seventh they are the Owlet Cup and the Dragon Open. Whoever wins keeps the pin for good, pupil or player, and a pupil’s pins are shown beside their name.

A book opens for every posted round. Pupils bet their own Marks on it, and a bad loss can start a grudge the school talks about.

Your common room at Emberwick has a painting on its wall, and in your first year it is barely begun.

There is a figure in a hooded cloak of the house colour, a patch of lake, a little sky, and all around them bare brown ground where the paint has not arrived yet.

The painting finishes itself a little more each year you reach. By your fourth year the world has started to come in around the figure, with a shore and a lantern burning at their side. By your seventh it is whole.

Why we made it

We wanted one thing in the game that you cannot hurry. A painting changes only as the years pass, and the only way to see it whole is to reach your seventh year.

It is also the quietest way we have of showing you that time has gone by. You come back to your common room and the painting has changed a little. You might not notice until one evening you do.

Emberwick keeps four holidays through the school year: Lake Night, Ghost Night, the Midwinter Feast and Founders’ Day. When one comes round, the castle changes for it.

This month we dressed the rooms for two of them, Ghost Night and the Midwinter Feast.

Ghost Night

Ghost Night comes in autumn. The Great Hall and its entrance fill with carved pumpkins, in piles and in rows, and clusters of candles. Among them stand ghost lanterns, which burn a cold, pale blue instead of gold. The courtyard gets its pumpkins and candles too, and each of the four common rooms is hung with autumn garlands. Duskmere, which keeps the rooms under the lake, gets a ghost lantern of its own.

From your second year, something else happens on Ghost Night. At dusk a pale figure stands at the far end of the east corridor, facing the window, and then it is gone. You may know the face.

The Midwinter Feast

The Midwinter Feast is the warm one. Evergreens strung with small lights go up in the Great Hall, and gifts pile up around them. Candles stand in holly and wreaths are hung. Every common room gets a garland and a small tree with gifts of its own.

The daybook

Each holiday has its own line in the morning’s daybook.

• Lake Night. Lanterns on the water at dusk.
• Ghost Night. The lamps are kept low.
• The Midwinter Feast. One table for the whole school.
• Founders’ Day. The old names are read out.

Lake Night and Founders’ Day will get a log of their own.