I can’t see.

I can’t breathe.

All I can hear is the silence that rings hollow after Zara’s scream. I get to my feet slowly, and all my chest is cramped and tight, and the shadows swarm around me.

‘Zara?’ My voice is a whisper. ‘Zara!’

‘I’m here,’ she says. ‘Is that the shadows, Stella? I can’t see them, but I think I can feel them – it’s horrible. I feel so hopeless, like my heart is breaking . . . I thought I knew what that felt like, but maybe I didn’t . . .’

I move towards her voice, but the shadows are stronger. They form into their wolf selves, and their teeth glint against the darkness.

‘Get away from me,’ I hiss, stretching my hands out to feel for her, silver sparks breaking the air.

They hiss back, snakes in the frozen grass between the trees.

‘Zara, keep talking!’

‘I thought when we moved here, and Dad stayed behind, and I cried so much that my throat hurt . . . I thought that was what it felt like. But here, it feels like something’s got its hand around my heart. And I keep seeing his face as we drove off. And I wanted Mum to turn around, but she just kept driving, and her knuckles were all tight on the steering wheel. I knew she was just as torn apart as he was, and we’d done all the talking and all the packing, so I knew we weren’t just going to turn around, but I was so angry, I didn’t care.’

She’s silent for a moment, and then her voice comes again, softer now.

‘I didn’t want to come here,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want a new start. I didn’t want to be away from him. I didn’t want to see my Mamani crying. And people said they were wrong to separate, because they’d made a promise . . . but they rowed so much. And even when they weren’t rowing, they were sad. And now they’re not. Or they are, but not so much. Dad laughed, when we went bowling, because we were so rubbish at it, and I realized I hadn’t seen him laugh for so long. And Mum . . . I mean, it’s not easy, but she doesn’t look so . . . pinched. She has new friends. That has to be a good thing. Doesn’t it?’

I keep going, towards her voice.

‘It sounds like a good thing,’ I manage through gritted teeth, using the lantern to batter at the flanks of the wolves; steeling my shoulders against the wings of the shadow owls. ‘New friends are a good thing.’

Finally I see her, head down, eyes closed, her back against a broad oak tree, and I reach out through the shadows to grab her arm. She turns to me, wild-eyed, and gives me a great big wobbly smile, as I pull her in and hold her close.

‘It’s OK,’ I say, and she laughs, because we’re about as far from OK as we could be, lost in this cursed forest. ‘We just need to keep going.’

‘You know you’re glowing,’ she says, pulling back after a moment.

‘Like moonshine?’

‘Yes!’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘That’s got to count for something.’

‘What are you doing?’ says a familiar voice, as a thin faelight cuts a new path through the shadows.

Yanny, his hair standing on end, smoke licking at the ground by his feet, eyes on fire. His fiery whip curls from his wrist and flickers with amber flames. Yanny in warrior mode. Utterly wild and looking very cross.

‘I’m going to the palace,’ I tell him.

‘Good . . .’ He hesitates. ‘Have you thought about what you’ll do? What he’ll be like?’

‘Not too much,’ I say. ‘I know what he’s like. I know what he was before my mother died. And I know what he is now.’ I don’t know how to explain what I’m going to do; I don’t even understand it myself. But I know there is power here, inside me, and in the acorn that pulls me onward. ‘You’ll just have to trust me.’

He looks so conflicted, but there’s no time for more talk – the shadows are coming thicker and faster, and it’s all we can do to keep parrying them with his whip and my lantern. If we don’t do something now, they’re going to consume us all.

‘Go, then,’ he says, his eyes flicking up at Teacake. ‘You’ve got your army with you – I’ll stay here and watch your back.’

I nod. ‘Where are all the others?’

‘They’re on their way,’ he says. ‘We’ve done this before. You go – break the curse, and all this will be over. Don’t worry about me.’ He gives a wicked, glittering smile, and my heart pounds as I return it.

‘Be careful, Yanny,’ says Zara, and she sounds as afraid for him as I feel. He’s just a slight, bright thing against so much darkness.

He winks, and the shadows come between us, and I put my fingers on to the acorn at my neck, just to check, and there it is, shining at me through a sudden opening in the trees – a swathe of ice as barren as my father’s heart.

I stumble on the wiry roots and slam my way through the bracken, fighting as much as running, fending off the brittle twigs that claw at my clothes, Zara by my side.

How could we leave him on his own?

I keep twisting through the trees, knowing that if I stop for even an instant, I’m going to turn back around and tell him we were wrong, there’s nothing we can do better than fight by his side. But the way gets colder as we go, and I know we’re getting closer to what Nan and I sought, so many times, except we never got this far. We didn’t fight through the clinging, fractal ice spider webs that splinter now against my cheeks and snap against the outthrust palms of my hands. We didn’t see them.

Zara is quiet as I pull her behind me. Teacake shifts on my shoulder as I turn back, and her breath is coming in great plumes of steam, her eyes wide, lashes coated in fine feathers of ice.

‘You’re sure about this?’ I ask, because Zara is brave, and she’s far more than I ever imagined a friend could be, but she cannot feel the thrum of the acorn on the copper chain beneath my shirt; she does not fight for a family she only barely remembers. For a forest full of magical creatures.

She fights for me, and for Yanny.

She digs the heel of her hand into mine, and she doesn’t speak, but she sets her chin and nods, and we forge onward together, and it gets colder still as we go, and then there’s a row of tall, slender silver birches before us, gathered tight, branches interwoven. We tread around the outside, but there’s no break between them. Their roots are glinting arcs of ice, with limbs tightly laced, and their shadows already alive, boiling across the frozen ground. Tiny creatures nestle up high in the glittering canopy, looking down with large, unblinking eyes. Bats, and squirrels, and stoats – all dark-eyed and white-furred.

His creatures.

He will know we’re coming.

The shadows are waiting.

‘So much for stealth,’ I whisper.

Zara shrugs. ‘Stealth is overrated. What we need to do is burst through roaring.’

‘Really?’ I shiver at the thought, but Teacake yowls on my shoulder with a furry, feline sort of a nod.

Zara shrugs. ‘What’ve we got to lose?’

I stare at her. ‘Ourselves!’

‘We’re already lost.’ She grins. ‘You’ve been lost for a lifetime, Stella. You’re famous for it, remember!’

I stare up at the twisted branches of the trees, willing for a parting, for the slightest gap. We don’t have time to linger, while Yanny fights alone. One step down into the packed snow, four inches deep and creaking like old wood. Teacake drops from my shoulder and prowls ahead, and the trees stand like white-bearded silver sentries, shoulder to shoulder.

‘I’m coming,’ I warn them, my heart catching at the thought of hacking through those gathered branches. The acorn grows warm at my neck, and a tiny flash breaks through the winter air. ‘I need to get into the palace, so I’m going to run, and we’re going to fight you until we’re through . . . unless you get out of my way.’

One more step.

The trees do not part – if anything, they seem to bunch tighter, lowering their crowned heads. The white-furred weasels scramble into their hiding places, and there’s a deep, resounding boom, a great rumble deep down below us. We stagger, my knees are shaking, my head is full of shadow and fear, and then a great tide of snow and ice breaks from the tangle before us, rising up before plummeting down to the ground in a mist of cold so deep and thick that it rushes into our eyes and our mouths and throws us down.

Teacake bounces up first, her coat streaks of snow and shadow; she is hardly more than a blur of pink nose and green eyes. She pounces on us, her silver claws like needles, and she doesn’t stop until we’ve scrambled up, wincing and complaining.

This is hopeless . . .

Except, when I can see again, I realize perhaps it isn’t.

It is still winter here, and the land is thick with shadow, but the trees are only limed with frost now – they aren’t clogged with it. There are spaces between their trunks. They’ve cleared the way.

I look at Zara. She braces herself, as I do the same, and then we run straight through those gleaming silver trees, and they lift their arms up high so that not a single twig touches us as we go, and the acorn around my neck bursts into golden light, and there is no shadow made in the world that I will not fight to finish this.