She’s probably hypothermic. Frostbitten, too, because she can’t feel her toes and wouldn’t dream of looking at her fingers.

With dawn hinting at the fringes of the sky, Carol stumbles toward her car. She hadn’t even locked it; the key’s in the ignition. Usually, she’d berate herself, but who cares? Her sons are gone.

If only she’d been faster. If only Jay hadn’t run. She could have pulled them out of it, and it wouldn’t have dragged him along. When they fell into Urnäsch, he fell, too.

A sob bubbles and bursts from her throat as she jerks the car uphill. Funny; she thought she’d run dry. The night died as she crouched in the snow, shivering, calling, crying until her throat was razed to the ground, and it felt like an age. An era. An eon. Layers of thermals or no, she’s lucky to be alive.

The car vibrates. It’s in the wrong gear, but her hands are too numb to change up. What she should be doing is slowing, but no. Manhandle the metal over the train line, up behind Les Sapins. Down, down, down the road, jerk to a stop at an angle. Others be damned if they want to pass.

The blue dawn is bitter, blurry. Carol blunders away from the car, through the gate, past the hutch. Her feet are bruising blocks of ice. She didn’t know Hazal kept rabbits.

‘Hazal!’ Numbly, Carol bangs on the door. The chalet shudders. She can’t feel her fists. Her throat needs lemon and ginger and rest. ‘Hazal!’ Bang. ‘Hazal!’

The door jolts open. ‘What?’ Hazal hisses.

Lost in her urgency, Carol trips. Her lips are thick and puffy. ‘Hazal—’

‘You wake up all the school.’ Hazal’s shrivelled olive face is war. ‘What you—’ She visibly double-takes. ‘What’s happened? Come in, but quiet.’

Hazal steps back. Carol stumbles forward. The house is a furnace.

‘Thank you.’

‘Sit.’ Snicking the door shut, Hazal points to a grey, velvety sofa. Just as clumsily, Carol sits. ‘I get you a blanket, you explain. Coffee? To warm you up?’

The coffee kicks like a sleep twitch. It’s far too strong for the early morning, but that’s Hazal. Excited: herbal brandy. Upset: herbal brandy. Potentially hypothermic: herbal brandy. Soon, Carol’s shivers subside, and then, the story comes out.

‘Did you know what Talie did?’ Carol asks, her voice croaking. Her head is top-heavy; what’s the last thing she ate? She’s as bad as Kira. Carol pulls her gaze from her coffee to Hazal.

Carefully, Hazal shakes her head. ‘I knew she did something.’ Hazal folds her arms, rigid in her robe. Her tired, bony face is cut, webbed with a bluish bruise. ‘But Talie refused to tell me. She did it to get me away from the woman.’

Dully, Carol rubs her eyes. ‘The woman?’

Hazal puckers her mouth, as if she wants to spit. ‘Not woman, sorry. Huldra. It come for me, made me sleep. Didn’t leave until Talie did what it wanted.’

Carol grips her cup. Her fingers throb. ‘To send the girls to Urnäsch.’

Hazal’s Adam’s apple bobs. ‘Oh, oh, Carol.’ She ducks her head, pressing her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. So sorry. I should have gone around, ask if anyone saw Talie, know what she did. But I was so much shocked from what happened, and I didn’t, and I never thought it hurt you. Your sons…’ Hazal trails off, her voice hitching.

Callum’s face fills Carol’s mind, turning as she and Jay shouted. Jay, crashing into his brother, in time to disappear. The girls, who deserved none of this, but keep yanking Callum into danger. If she could get her hands on a witch, like the one helping the Kyo, she’d be tempted to have him enchanted. She’d be more than tempted, if it meant he’d forget he ever knew Kira McFadden.  

‘Carol?’ Hazal says.

Blearily, Carol looks up.

‘Did you hear me?’

Carol blinks.

‘I repeat.’ Hazal lifts her hands. ‘We can’t get into Urnäsch if the Chlause don’t want.’

Grief swells so fast that it churns into nausea. Carol’s mind becomes an echo: we can’t get into Urnäsch if the Chlause don’t want. She knew this already, but god, a reprieve, a shred of possibility, something. Anything. Saying it out loud makes it real.

‘But…’ Carol swallows the rock in her throat. ‘But you got out. You and Yavuz.’

Hazal folds her hands together. ‘Not by help from outside,’ she says. ‘There is nothing we can do ourselves.’ She looks off, toward the makeshift run. Two piebald rabbits snuffle around. ‘If they escape to here, they do it. It not easy. You have to keep running until they can’t reach you.’ Her hands start to twist. ‘It eats your life, and your strength, and many cannot. They have to stop.’

‘And those that don’t?’

‘They have to know how.’ Intent, Hazal leans forward, but not toward Carol. Urnäsch is a magnet, drawing her in. ‘Many, most, do not care, or cannot find out, but like Anneliese in Whiteland, there are some that do…’

Carol watches, waits. Her hope may gutter, but it will not die.

‘They need time,’ Hazal says, when Carol doesn’t speak. Her careful words are slow. ‘Time to learn how to get out. I do not think your boys and the girls will have it, before the fire.’

Carol’s face flinches, and Hazal’s eyes flit to her.

‘I’m sorry.’ Hazal presses her knees together, tightly coiled on the velvety couch. ‘We had time because we were young, and the fire happens at an age we did not reach. They are strangers, and old enough, except Jay.’ Hazal meets Carol’s eyes. ‘I think we have to ask in another place for help.’

Whatever the meaning in Hazal’s gaze, Carol doesn’t catch it. ‘Why can’t we do it?’ Breaking the connection, Carol looks off into the fireplace. Towers of ash look ready to collapse. ‘If we go back to Karliquai, the Chlause will come.’

Lifting her knotted fingers, Hazal drops them with a sigh. ‘Carol.’

‘The door will be open, and then—’

‘Carol, listen.’ Hazal’s tone is a gunshot crack. ‘You know more than that. They will know we’re not innocent. They will recognise you, and maybe me. Even still, how would the children find where to go? It takes time they do not have.’

Hazal lets this hang before leaning forward, this time into Carol. ‘We—you—talk to the Whispers. They might know something, or can do something. If the huldra sent the girls to the Chlause, there is a reason that involves Whiteland. Can you see it being different?’

The wall clock chimes. Eight a.m.: a jay. Staring through the ash, Carol swallows. ‘No.’

Towers, glinting cities, monuments of stone. Shrugging off the blanket, Carol shuts her eyes. Breakfast time clatters through the walls from the dorms. Adults order. Children laugh. Baked beans mix with bacon, bread. The rabbits squeak and snuffle.

Carol sits up straighter. The walls of her mind are down.

The curtains start to rustle.