Unable to answer their questions, Bianca remained silent.

‘She’s tired,’ her mum said, getting up and putting her hand on Dad’s arm. ‘The doctor said we should let her rest.’

Her dad nodded, rising to his feet and forcing a smile. ‘How about I make us all some lunch?’

Mum and Dad left the living room, going into the kitchen and shutting the door. Bianca could hear them talking in low, urgent, undecipherable tones.

She looked around the room, at the fire in the hearth, the family photographs on the mantelpiece, the books on the shelves. She shouldn’t be here. She needed to get back to Winterton. But if the winter solstice was tomorrow night, the last silver books would have already been made and given out. It would be impossible to get hold of one now. And she didn’t even know if the book would work for her a second time.

Peeling back her blankets, Bianca sat up, putting her feet on the floor and testing her legs. They felt wobbly. She stretched herself as she stood up, careful with her stiff body. Her joints popped and cracked.

Going to the window, she peered through the blinds and saw a crowd of people camped out on the pavement. For a second, she wondered what they were doing out there, then realized they were waiting for news from her. News about their own children. She let the blind snap shut.

Her head ached at the flurry of thoughts whirling around her skull. She wanted to save Finn, and all the frozen children, but to do that she had to find a way to save Ishild. Saving winter felt unimaginably impossible when you were just one eleven-year-old girl, with less than a day to do it.

Bianca sank down onto the rug in front of the fire and stared into the flames. The heat on her cheeks brought to mind the haunting memory of Ishild’s features sliding down her face as she melted. Somehow, the Snow Queen’s connection to Finn was sustaining her. Only when Bianca had separated them had Ishild begun to melt.

Bianca thought about what Jack had said, that once Ishild was gone they would follow. She couldn’t bear the thought of winter disappearing. It was her favourite season. What would it mean for the snow creatures? If there was no winter in the world, where would they live? How would they eat? She knew they wouldn’t survive. If winter departed, then so would Pordis the reindeer and Sposh the snow hare and Monodon the narwhal and Lumi the snow leopard and Grendel the polar bear. Bianca found she was crying. It felt so impossibly hopeless.

The story of The Vanishing World came back to her, and she remembered, after reading it, how eagerly she had offered her heart to the Snow Queen. She knew she would do it again, and so, she was sure, would all the Ice Children.

It hadn’t been the silver book that had been powerful. The book was just frozen water, after all. It was the story inside the book that had changed her.

She heard Ishild’s final words to her.

‘I am old and new.

I am truth and lies.

I’m made from everything and nothing.

I have the power to change the world.

What am I?’

The answer to Ishild’s riddle was suddenly so clear that Bianca laughed.

‘It’s a story!’ she whispered to herself. ‘A story has the power to change the world.’

She looked at the bookcase in the alcove beside the fireplace, scanning spines until she found what she was looking for. A volume of fairy tales. Opening it to the contents page, she ran her finger down the list, flipped to the right page, and began to read.

When she closed the book, Bianca looked thoughtfully at the rectangular cover. Who had decided books should be rectangular? Surely a book could be almost any shape? Something one of the grey twins had said answered her question: ‘If you read, you know a book is a door . . .’ Bianca thought this was right. When you opened the cover of a book, you stepped into another world. She sat bolt upright as an idea struck her. She suddenly knew how she might get back into Winterton.

Bianca wouldn’t have called what she had in her head ‘a plan’, but she knew what she had to do next. She pulled on her coat, which was hanging on the back of a chair drying out by the fire, and wondered what had happened to the yellow dressing gown. Was it still in Winterton? Taking her orange diary and pen from her pocket, she wrote:

Dear Mum and Dad,

I’m very sorry for running away again. Please don’t be cross with me.

I can’t explain what I have to do – it won’t make sense – but I’ve got to try and save the others.

I’ll be in the park at midnight, tomorrow night, with Finn.

I love you.

Bianca

X

Sitting down on the sofa, she pulled on her boots and laid the note on the pillow. She knew it would hurt them, but what else could she do?

Wiping the tears from her eyes, she went to the door and opened it a sliver. The kitchen door was still closed. She tiptoed across the hall and into the downstairs toilet. She couldn’t go out the front way. There were too many people there. The window was small, but she knew she could get out of it. She’d climbed through it in the summer when Mum had locked her house keys inside the car and sent Bianca to open the front door from the inside.

Sliding out of the window backwards, she felt her feet land in a deep drift of snow.

Good, she thought. The snow will muffle my footsteps.

Taking care to keep low, Bianca hurried to the gate at the bottom of the garden. It was a struggle to open, because of the snow, but she moved it enough to wriggle through.

Once she was in the alleyway and hidden from her parents’ eyes, she began to run.