Bianca couldn’t face going to the park and seeing Finn after she’d failed to stop Gwen from taking a silver book home. She dreaded hearing the news that she feared was coming. Tonight, after midnight, little Gwen would be found frozen.

Frustrated that she had nothing to show for her efforts, Bianca returned home. Finding the house was empty, she went into the kitchen and threw herself into a chair at the table, dropping her head into her hands. It felt as if there were something impossibly big and powerful behind what was happening in the city. She knew the weather wasn’t something a person could control, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the wintry spell of the past two days had something to do with what was going on. She had never known a December cold enough to freeze milk.

She rubbed her hands together to warm up her icy fingers, then pulled her diary from her coat pocket. Nothing added up to much in her head – her mind was buried in an avalanche of thoughts – but, perhaps, if she set everything down on paper, she might see a pattern or have an idea. Bianca thought she might draw a map of the city too, marking the places where strange things had happened. She’d seen people do that on TV shows. She wanted to know who or what she was up against. It felt as if she were chasing someone who was invisible.

Opening her diary, she turned to the first week of December, reading over the scraps of notes she’d made so far. She considered the strange poem that was carved into the ice pedestals that Finn and Casper stood on. She hadn’t got close enough to see if it was also on Sophie’s.

DARK DAYS GROW EVER WARMER.

WINTER’S ON THE RUN.

ICE BECOMES A LIQUID,

BENEATH A SEARING SUN.

WHEN THE SEASONS ALTER,

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.

WITH THE HEARTS OF CHILDREN,

WINTER WILL LIVE ON.

What did it mean? She read it out loud, but it made no sense to her. She didn’t like the last line. It made her shudder.

In the box marked the first of December, she wrote FINN FROZEN. Then, in the box for the second, she wrote SOPHIE & CASPER FROZEN. Tomorrow would be Monday the third. Her pen hovered over the empty box for a second, and then she wrote GWEN FROZEN. Would there be more ice children? Had there been more than one silver book in the bookseller’s box? A dreadful thought popped into her head.

One child had been frozen on the first of December, two on the second. Would there be three children frozen on the third? And four the day after? That would mean there were at least three silver books, possibly more! What about the next day and the day after that? Would there be five on the fifth and six on the sixth? Her mind reeled at this terrifying idea.

When will it stop?

What if it doesn’t?

Bianca looked down at her diary, taking in the dates. She felt dizzy with the certainty that, like a deadly advent calendar, each day would reveal more frozen children, unless someone could put a stop to it.

Getting up, she tore a blank sheet from an A4 pad on the sideboard and brought it back to the table. On it, she drew a crude map of the city, marking the outlines of the park. She wrote FINN in the rose garden, SOPHIE in the bandstand and CASPER by the boating lake. She wondered where Gwen would be found, and shivered. Sketching in the circular library to the right of the park, she moved her hand down to add in the cathedral, City Hall and the market square. She marked the place where the bookseller had been with an X, then added two Xs to the library. These were places she was certain children had picked up silver books.

What she didn’t know was how the books had got to the library or into the bookseller’s box. She suddenly remembered the hailstones she’d seen under his table. There had been hailstones around the base of Finn’s pedestal.

Are they a clue?

She wrote HAILSTONES down in her diary.

On her map, on the south side of the market square, she drew the canal and the bridge that crossed it, marking the industrial area and, beyond it, the docks. Inside the industrial area she drew a little factory.

Bianca remembered she’d written the name of the factory in the back of her diary. She turned the pages and stared at the words: DOWNY FALLS BOOKBINDING FACTORY.

Her pen hovered above her map.

‘It’s a bookbinding factory!’ she gasped.

How had she missed that?

She had been so intrigued by the peculiar children pretending to be a man, that she’d failed to see what was right in front of her face! The factory made books!

Bianca thought of Jack with the strange hand and how glass had magically appeared in the broken windows. Jack and the boy in the bearskin had spoken about being on a mission. What was it? Were they working for someone? Who could it be?

She drew a circle around Downy Falls. Was this the place the silver books were coming from? Bianca felt certain it must be, and that the four peculiar children had something to do with it!