‘You know what this walking reminds me of?’ Callum angles a lacklustre kick at the wall. ‘You’d think once a lifetime was enough.’

Kira nods, her stomach gurgling. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if we’d kept that food.’

Squinting at the ceiling, she sighs in a puff. It’s the last throes of a sunset, and although it’s brilliant, blinding, rich, it’s not the first they’ve seen. She resists the urge to give it the finger.

‘I’d love some cheese on toast.’ Heartily, Callum exhales, looping an arm around her neck. Kira blinks. Ever since they heard Romy and Jay, he’s been uncommunicative. ‘Wouldn’t you? The Leerdammer melting. The smell of basil.’

Kira blinks again, and frowns. ‘Um. This isn’t helping my stomach.’ She extricates her neck. ‘Personally, though…’ She thinks. ‘I want cookie dough. The biggest lump of cookie dough that’s ever walked the Earth.’

‘So do I.’ Callum groans. ‘God, this tunnel never ends.’

‘You’re not wrong.’ Taking Callum’s hand, Kira looks around. Since they heard Romy and Jay, they’ve gotten nowhere. Red rock around them, twilight above, the faint smell of must; they’re goalless, and lost. ‘At least in Whiteland, we walked with purpose.’

‘At least in Whiteland, we knew the rules.’ Callum cranes his neck around a corner, and cautiously, they go on. ‘Rule one: encounters were fairly straightforward. There was a fine line between “help” and “kill,” but you knew it straightaway.’ He cocks his head, and frowns. ‘Was there actually anything else?’

Disquiet flutters in Kira’s chest. The dusk is dwindling fast, leaving the tunnel in purpled gloom. Nothing’s happened so far in the dark, but sometime, something has to. Sometime, somewhere, they’ll meet the Chlause.

‘You had to hold on to your mind,’ she says, before this thought can root. Waking up separated, bagless, and solitary doesn’t make meeting them sound so great. ‘Whiteland played with us, but we knew it, and could guard against it.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Whoa.’ Kira jerks them both to a stop. It wasn’t there before; it can’t have been. She only just looked around. ‘Like that.’

In the belly of the upcoming bend is a hole. The size of a cockeyed manhole cover, it plunges into black, and torn between relief and unease, she stares. The tunnel is varying; they’re getting somewhere.

Or, the tunnel is varying, and its demons are awake.

‘As much as I’m sick of the aimless walking…’ Callum looks across at her, one eye on the hole. ‘Do we think this is good or bad?’

Relief. Unease. Relief. Unease.

If they don’t chance the minotaur, they’ll never leave the maze.

‘Good.’ With a wash of bravado, or maybe bravery, Kira squats beside the drop. At the bottom is a second, stony tunnel, close enough to count the bricks. ‘Are you coming?’

Sweeping her chopped hair aside, she looks back at Callum. His face is more familiar than it’s been since they got here: even before Whiteland, she often received woman-what’s-wrong-with-you? looks.

It’s comforting, but he’s still being slow. She lifts her eyebrows. ‘Callum?’

He bobs on the balls of his feet. He frowns. He eyes the dubious hole. ‘Ah.’ With a grumbling sigh, his shoulders slump. ‘Ugh. I guess I’m coming.’ Closing the gap between them, he lowers himself to the hole. ‘Give me a minute, and I’ll go first.’

Sliding her legs into empty space, Kira slips neatly down. Her feet slap and echo, but her knees hardly jar, and cautiously, she straightens. Behind her is a wall; before her is a tunnel. Damp, grey bricks emit an unsullied glow, like sun or moonlight through windows. ‘It’s fine,’ she calls. ‘No demons.’

Yet.

‘A fact which you know now.’ Callum echoes down beside her, sporting either a second or continued look of rebuke. ‘What if it hadn’t been?’

Kira glances up at the hole. A crooked space of violet light, the evening marches on. ‘Let’s go.’

Callum blows out his cheeks. ‘Fine.’ He rocks into a walk. ‘You’ve made our bed now, anyway, even if it is the pits.’

Again, he’s not wrong. Kira tenses, skin prickling, putting up all of her guards. The tunnel looks, feels, tastes, and smells like a journey from the dungeon to the gallows. The walls glisten. The ceiling drips. Their feet ring like bells. She pulls up her hood and burrows, shivering. How are the walls so damp? Every so often, the drops become trails, catching the shafts of light. She tugs Callum’s sleeves down over her hands. The red-stone tunnel was an autumn evening; now, with their breath a mist in the air, they’ve returned to a winter’s night.

Talking of beds, though…trudging through the shadowed stone, a weighty weariness creeps. No sky, bright or otherwise, holds her cold attention, and fatigue is a crucifix, damning on her back. Far too many sleepless nights, in far too short a time. Her legs have a dreamer’s stubbornness. Her eyes feel every blink.

A yawn threatens to break her jaw. ‘When we find anything remotely soft,’ she says through another, ‘I’m napping.’

The yawn slips into Callum. ‘Same. There’s never’—he dodges a puddle—‘a snow hole when you need one.’

For a teasing moment, his eyes meet hers. Kira flares with heat. So he has been remembering. Does that make it better or worse?

Worse. Smiling, Callum looks away, and Kira sighs to herself. If they were in Middelburg, and none of this had happened, and he hadn’t had to leave…they may be out in the cold still, but walking by the river, or on their way to eat, or at a rustic New Year’s market.

Doubt expands like the pupil of an eye, and it feels like quicksand, a whirlpool, space. Would they really go to a market? Can she see them travelling, watching movies, drinking summer beer? If they could live without being set up, would they ever manage to be normal?

Down with the monarchy, up with the oppressed. The thoughts she’s been suppressing since she got to Callum’s house march forward with trumpets and flags. There’s no time to send them packing; with bayonets, cannons, and the cavalry, they’re in, and damn, they’re here to stay.

She and Callum are based on adversity. On racing toward something, and away from something else. If it all stopped; if they weren’t in a cave, a breath out of danger; if they hadn’t collided on New Year’s Eve, when they’d thought the other was dead; if they snatched more than moments, and an end to uncertainty; if they weren’t currently all they had, and if other lands and memories became the past, and they sat back, and thought of the future…

Kira banishes the thoughts with a lockjaw heave. Breathe. Be present. The air is damp and tart. The stone is slick, and radiates cold. At this rate, they’ll never have to deal with the future. Not in an outside sense.

Oh, god.

‘What’s wrong?’ A pace or two ahead, Callum stops. The sound of her footsteps failing was loud. ‘Did you see something?’

He scans the walls. Dripping and glinting and haughty, they watch. They listen. They plot. They pry.

‘Not literally.’ Crossing her arms, Kira rejoins him, but her brain has fluted elsewhere. Up, up, up through the stones, red and grey, through the galloping sky, to the world beyond the snow. The real world, of pinking sunsets, royal sunrises, and a future, or lack thereof.

‘Not literally?’ Callum presses. She doesn’t look up; suddenly, her head is too heavy. The doubt expanded to the stars, and now, dilating and fusing to iron, it’s a chain around her chest. ‘Have you had another predictive dream? An epiphany?’

Link by hope, the band constricts. She can almost hear it clinking. ‘Of sorts,’ she murmurs. Her voice seems to come from far away. ‘I know you were joking, but it only just hit me.’ She drags her head up. ‘This isn’t like last time.’

Callum’s eyes flick up and down her face, and he frowns. ‘What do you mean?’

Link by hope by bubbling mass, she’s magma, lava, a storm. ‘I mean, I’m not some overzealous innocent, playing the hero.’ Folding her arms, Kira swivels to face him. ‘I had a place to go home to, if not a whole family, and the whole point was us getting back there. You had even more; you weren’t a part of the freak show that made the village sing. You didn’t have much at stake, if anything, other than staying alive, and that was only once you came with me. But now…’

She twists the ends of her shortened hair, a frantic, fevered motion. Callum’s frown cuts deeper, and he works his mouth. ‘Kira…’

‘You know what it looks like back home.’ The tunnel feels a world away. Her skin is growing hot. ‘You nearly died. The police nearly found us. They’ll come back to the house, and if we’d stayed on the outside, even if we ran somewhere else…’ She ducks her head, fighting her lungs. She’s starting to shake. ‘We can’t go back.’

She looks back up again, a rough wooden doll. ‘Certainly not yet, and who knows if ever? Really, Callum, who knows?’ Her voice pitches. She can’t drag it down. ‘However long we wait, we might still be found, and if we did escape, whoever sent the huldra and my dad, let’s say, okay, it’s the Kyo, would come after us again. Maybe they’d never stop. And what’s worse is that wherever we are—’ She dodges Callum’s hands, trying to calm her, trying to speak, and steps clumsily back toward the wall. ‘We don’t even know where we are, only that it’s probably definitely not the haven we wanted, and we have no clue about the future. We might not have a future. No.’

Jittery, she stumbles back again. Her arms whip out to block his. ‘Kira,’ he’s saying, ‘Kira, calm down,’ but she ignores him. Everything blurs, far too hot. He doesn’t know, doesn’t see. Doesn’t care?

‘We killed a predictable future when we chose to listen to Talie.’ She braces herself against him, speaking through her teeth. Her breath is a whistle. She’s burning. Callum just stop just stop. ‘Now everything’s changed. People say it about love, or a job, but for us it’s real. We have nowhere to go, and this whole time, we’ve been joking like everything’s fine. Sauntering into different worlds, like it’s nothing.’ Her arm flies out. ‘Like it’s nothing, like we do it every day. We’ve thrown away everything, but we had to, right, if we didn’t want a massive shitstorm, and now, who knows?’ Her voice cracks. She’s almost shouting, a cry like a bird in a cage. ‘Maybe that would have been better than this, but we didn’t stop to think. We just left. Three rocks and no hard places, because whatever we do, we’re fucked.’

She flings a glance down the catacomb.

In that second, Callum has her. ‘Right.’ Seizing her arms, he pushes her back.

‘Hey!’ Kira cries, straining against him, but he shoves her into the wall. ‘Callum, get off. This is stupid.’ She struggles. The damp is freezing. ‘Get off!’

Raising her hands in his, Callum pins them beside her head. Déjà vu dizzies her, distant and strange, and she drifts out of herself. It’s a mimicry of Callum, a replica, a clone, of things he’s done before. It’s not real.

‘Sometimes,’ Callum says, ‘it’s the only way you’ll listen.’

He grips her wrists, and through her angst, she forces herself to focus. It isn’t just strange; it’s demeaning. They’re past this. ‘Callum, let me go.’

‘No.’ He grips her pincer-tight. The more she wriggles, the more he pinches. Frustration licks at her edges. ‘Yes, we’re between three rocks, and it’s fucked. I’ll give you that.’ He lowers his face to hers. ‘But a freak-out isn’t going to help. I told you this before: if we don’t joke, we’ll go mad.’ He gestures with his hand and hers. ‘So we have no idea where we’re going, or what we’re going to do; dwelling on it every second will only make it worse. The way you’re demonstrating is really quite stunning.’

Frustration boils. ‘Don’t patronise me.’

‘For God’s sake, then listen.’

Driving her wrists into the wall, Callum sets his jaw. Kira tips up her chin and does the same. She’d cry if she was alone, but she’s not, and he’s rapidly becoming a git. ‘Fine,’ she says through her teeth. ‘Then talk.’

Callum loosens his grip a tad. ‘Thank you.’ He meets her eyes. She drops them. ‘We are where we are,’ he continues, more gently, ‘and we’ve done the things we’ve done. All we can do is hang on to our heads. We keep going, and stay alive, and find Romy and Jay, and work out the rest when we need to. Did you know what you wanted to do after uni?’

Kira blinks at him. Her thoughts are limping. The tortoise overtaking the hare, her chest stilling its flutter. From the inside out, she’s growing cold.

‘Did you?’ Callum asks.

Clutching her irritation like straws, she shakes her head.

‘Neither did I.’ Callum sighs in a gust, ducking his head. ‘Not really.’

Kira shuts her eyes. All of a sudden, she’s breathlessly tired. ‘What’s your point, Callum?’

He looks up. His face is shadowed, full of hollows and dips. ‘When you were a kid,’ he says, ‘did you know where you’d be at nineteen? Did you think about being an adult at all?’

Kira shakes her head again.

‘Exactly.’ Callum releases her wrists. ‘You couldn’t, could you, when you didn’t know what even teenage life was like.’

Kira’s hands fall to her sides. Winded, exhausted, she lets them, and the straws drift away. As much as he’s manhandled her, and wronged her, and put her firmly in her womanly place, at least she’s calmer.

Still…

‘Yes?’ Callum steps back, turning his hands palms-up. ‘Agreed? None of us know much until we’re nearing it, full steam ahead. Often, not even then. Or ever. We’ve left our world behind, and that makes it seem worse, but we’ll work it out just the same.’ He lifts his hands to cup her face. ‘Now let me fucking kiss you.’

Before she can think, or blink, he pulls her in, his stubble scratching her skin. Not soft, not earnest, like he’s been before, but urgent. It feels like falling.

She falls, and it’s winter, in the middle of the night, when your terrors are real in the dark. He moves his hands to her lower back, urging her closer. He’s cold. Her eyes sink shut, but she wills them open. The fires from the sunrise kindle again, and she wills them to stop, for the tunnel to stay, for the catacomb not to get burned away, because this isn’t right, it’s greedy, and hungry, and crawling, and—

The wall behind her gives out.

‘Ah!’ Kira loses her breath and her balance, clutching Callum for support. He staggers, planting his legs on the stone, keeping them both upright. Her thoughts have been snuffed, pinched like a flame. She hugs him, hard.

For a moment, they’re still. Cheek to jaw, hearts rebounding. There was something, though. Just now, there was something, a feeling. Something.

Yes, there was. A wall.

Kira twists around, her belly swooping. Where the tunnel should be, there’s a wall, and where the wall should be, there’s a church.

She stares. Against her spine, Callum tenses. ‘Okay.’ Twisting back, Kira licks her lips, oddly calm. ‘So this is us.’

The tunnel’s gone, and the church surrounds them. Behind Callum sits a set of wooden doors, embossed with iron and a corrugated ring. On one side skulks a stained glass window, of snowcapped mountains and two walkers and their dog approaching the top. On the other stands a rich, empty table, a window of a river and a yellow sky, and the beginnings of a wall of mismatched doors. Slowly, Kira turns back.

Callum cinches her waist. ‘And so starts our trial.’

She thins her lips. ‘Don’t joke.’

‘I’m not.’

He lets her go, stepping forward, trailing his fingers along her back. Pews extend around them, up to an altar and a pattern of burning. Nothing adorns the sides of the church, and the tapering spire is bare; were it not for the windows, and the ugly crosses, dumpy on the altar and warped on the walls, it would feel completely abandoned.

As soon as she thinks it, it’s wrong. Indistinct incense wafts through the air, and the hairs on her arms stand up. They push against the hoodie, electric.

The faintest strains of music drift. A choral piece, it cranks like a gramophone. ‘I feel…’ She swallows. Her mouth has dried. ‘Like I’m in the Triwizard Tournament.’

Callum doesn’t smile. She’d hoped he would. ‘Maybe.’ He moves between the pews, tracing lines on the stone. ‘But we don’t know the rules. We must have to do more here, more than keep our minds.’

Sandy dust drifts up from his fingers. Kira watches it go. ‘There’s nothing to say it’s a game,’ she says. The chains are back, and burning. Edging down the aisle, she tries to dowse the flames. ‘Whiteland wasn’t, in the end.’

‘We’re not in Whiteland.’

‘And don’t we know it.’

Folding her arms protectively, Kira looks around. Stained glass in every wall, varied in menace, its colours falling bright on the age-old floor. The church should belong to a graveyard; it epitomises the Victorian Gothic, from its thin bones to its cheerful countenance, creeping like a bow-backed widow up a misty, forgotten path. Nothing good lies here. It’s tangible, palpable, like a room’s energy after a row. The stones are watchful. The church is alive.

Nothing tells her to stop at the altar. Nothing tells her to look up, at the same time as Callum, at the window of the crowded, burning girl. Like a puppet, she follows her instincts.

Her instincts skewer her whole. By the window hangs a crude wooden cross, and hanging from the cross is her sister.

All the blood she’s ever had drains away through the floor. ‘Romy!’ Kira screams, blackened by terror, hit by horror in a deep black hole. Stumbling toward the steps, she sobs, swilling with sickness and blood. ‘Romy!’

A second allegory swims from the shadows. Kira’s head bays, and she staggers. Jay.

Jay, stretched out, crucified, a mirror on the right of the burning girl. Their chins on their chests, their arms horizontal, their legs limp and free. Callum barges past her with a bellow but she freezes, her mind growing dizzy as it yells, going numb. Romy’s hair is streaked with blood. Her arms drip red, her wrists bound to the cross, and Jay.

Oh, hellfire, Jay. Carved in his chest, raw and sick, are five words.

Time to come home, girls.

Kira’s knees and palms jarr hard on the stone at the base of the godless cross. She lifts her screaming, howling head. A yelling sob rips from her throat.

Romy’s dead eyes look down.