teacher!” His accusation was quite gentle, but not so that of another pupil whom Muko soon realised was called Trupacius. A self-styled leader in the class, this boy had such an air of authority that no-one ever tried to interrupt him.
“No-one does that and gets away with it,” he declared pugnaciously. Then he advanced on Muko, first pointing at him and snarling “You rat,” and then, with the same finger, poking him hard in the chest.
A line had been crossed. Out of nowhere but clearly audible to everyone came the voice of an Imaginary.
Over the couple of weeks that he'd been in the school, Muko had gleaned a certain amount of information about the Imaginaries. First of all, they always appeared out of the blue and disappeared into thin air. No-one from the normal classes knew where they lived nor how they moved about through the school. But the absolute most important thing to remember according to the older classes was that:
'You never mess with Imaginaries, and you never go against what they're saying. Even when they're younger than you.'