Callum risks a fast look back. His body thickens, as gloopy as sludge, like he’s sprinting through fog in a dream. The Chlause’s hissing anger mounts. It’s there in his mind, nipping at his neurons, trying to snatch control. Are they coming?

Don’t know. Can’t see. Callum whips around again, dragging Jay in a death grip. He’s never run this hard, or sweated this much, even when he cared about competitive skiing. Kira’s ahead of them, racing like a drunk. Romy?

Don’t know. Can’t see. The sun glares, far too bright.

‘Callum,’ Jay pants, at the end of their arms. ‘I can’t go this fast.’

‘You can.’ Callum jerks him on. The chalet’s getting closer, so close the letters on the wood are clear: KAR. One more dip. One more hillock. He has to get his brother out. He has to follow Kira.

Run.

By a fallen oak, Vasi looks up sharply. ‘Something,’ he says, ‘has happened.’

Mathew takes the opportunity to stare through the greenery, sinking into his mind. After all Vasi’s told him, aliens could land, and unless they brought his daughters, he wouldn’t much care.

‘Something…’ Vasi angles his head like a listening bird. A woodpecker whistles. A tall fern bristles. His knotted eyebrows mesh. ‘Oh, dear.’

Mathew sighs, and rolls his neck. None of this is the leshy’s fault. ‘What?’ He leans against the oak, its girth as high as his chest. ‘What’s happened?’

Even in the sunny green, Vasi’s old face is hacked from stone. ‘The worlds are splitting open.’

Ready? the Whisper asks.

Not really. Making sure he knows she’s still pissed off, Freya nods. It’s the strangest situation she never thought she’d be in: a live huldra, a dead huldra, and a score of invisible wisps of wind crowding a passed-out witch.

The Whisper spreads its wings. Freya flashes with remembered pain: white swans, the fossegrim, the tunnel through her skull. When she’s finally free, no one’s going near her head again.

It was necessary, the Whisper murmurs. Thank you, Freya.

Freya slits her eyes, bracing herself, but one leaving is nothing when you’ve been a gate for them all. In a blink, the Whisper lifts and leaves, like anxiety resolved.

A strange feeling twists her gut. It feels like a shadow of twenty years ago, when Anneliese left her behind.

Freya, the Whispers say, in their breathless, flighty draught. The blue flames crackle.

Yes, yes. Freya crouches. I know.

Shaking Taika’s shoulder, she rolls her tired eyes. By all accounts, it’s a terrible plan, steeped in magic and supposition and spearheaded by ghosts. Great. Digging her nails into Taika’s skin, she huffs. This, now, is rock bottom.

Freya.

The Whispers lace their way through her fingers. Waving them off, Freya squeezes Taika hard enough to bruise.

Taika groans in her throat, but her eyes stay closed. Four seconds. Five.

‘Well, Taika, I tried.’ Standing, Freya pulls a face, and kicks her in the side.

Anneliese winces. Taika jolts. Her braids slap the stone, and her eyes unstick. A slurred, bleary nngh vibrates in her throat.

The Whispers hiss like snow on sparks. Fluttering Freya’s coat zip, their draught swirls down. Taika’s eyes widen, and glaze.

I can’t keep her. The Whisper is a murmur, already faint. She’s fighting. Lift her up.

Freya does.

Hold her fingers to the wall.

Freya does this too. Taika weighs nothing, dark skin and bone, and hoisting her up, spine to chest, Freya presses her hand to the wall.

Move right, the Whisper instructs. Freya obeys. Down.

Lines of blue fire spark where Taika touches stone. They sizzle in a vicious burst, and spread in webs of ice: four branches, a slash for the ground. A spiny tree. Whiteland.

Freya’s scalp prickles. It’s magic, true magic. Taika talked about it, but practised on her own, and Freya never asked why. Even the Huldra avoid magic, for the feeling that scuttles from its energy. It’s life growing where life shouldn’t be, roses blooming in rot. It skulks from the blue fire, circling the cave, and as it crawls, as it mocks, it leaves her cold. Bone-shatteringly, achingly cold.

Let go, the Whisper breathes. Freya drops Taika like a corpse. This is bad. Sickening. Wrong. Her spirit is draining, becoming less her, as though it’s pushing against her skin. No wonder witches cause open mouths, hushing tongues, and scandal. Can she call it wicked?

The blue lines flare, and Freya’s thoughts scatter. The symbol is changing.

She steps back. The fire snakes out, branching new lines, touching the old and branching again until the web engulfs the wall. She moves back again, away, away. Anneliese’s ice is an aura, but the cold barely registers. The web is becoming a picture.

In the back of beyond, it’s a beautiful day. A lane winds up through fields and trees, sunned by the clearest of skies. The sun shines in a vivid haze, and distant enough to be small and blurry, four people walk. Two girls, two boys, oblivious to danger.

Anneliese’s breath catches. ‘Is this the door?’

So this is Urnäsch. Freya stares. It looks so…nice. ‘Yes.’

No, the Whisper breathes, frailer than an autumn leaf. Around Taika, the others surge. The door is somewhere else.

Freya starts with shock. ‘What?’ she exclaims. She’s high-pitched, young, like a whickering child, but right now, it doesn’t matter. ‘This is the only place I’ve ever…’ She works her mouth, staring at the wall. Fields, bright colours, a beck. ‘What is it, if it’s not the door?’

A spyglass. The Whisper is dying, the brittle leaf crumbling. Clever, splitting her magic like that. You were right. His voice rattles in a dying throat. It’s a base. The door can be opened from here, but…

Anneliese meets Freya’s eyes, and holds them. ‘But what?’

The Whisper’s reply is almost regretful. But it sits above the Kyo. The others swell around them. Freya, I suggest you run.

What are you planning on doing? Anna asks, once Freya has pushed through the thin blue flames. Her loosened shackles are ill-fitting, complex; words present a tongue twister, even in her mind.

Taika holds a lot of magic. Strained and fading, grasping at life, the Whisper mirrors how it feels to be nothing but a soul. She can…project. It drifts out. Here. When I… It crackles, a wartime radio. The signal starts to die. Now.

Anna looks between Taika and the day on the wall. Fear can’t hold her like it did when she was human, but it whittles her grip on her half-body, worse than when she gave herself up. The trade on the ice was meant to be the end.

End, the Whisper echoes in a gasp. Touch her…now. The others swirl around Taika, rippling over her dungarees. When I say, you have to speak.

Suddenly, Anna understands. Hope curls through her like smoke as she crouches, touching Taika’s temple. She’ll be banished back to the desert after this, but if Kira and Romy are finally safe, as they should have been last year… She swallows, easing down to her knees. Taika’s skin is hot beneath her blurry fingers. She’s heard of this magic. It’ll work.

Once upon a time, she was interested, but now, it leaves her cold. Cold, and as sick as Freya looked. This is the darkness that led to the Chlause. Taika’s too young to have meddled.

Focus. The Whispers wind through her, colder than she is. Anna shivers.

The Chlause… the one inside Taika manages. It’s becoming hard to hear. Sense. Come for us and them, too… Tell them. Have…

A long, long pause. Longer, longer, longer. Anna focuses on Taika, willing herself not to look at the wall, to break whatever the Whisper is doing to try and make this work.

RUN.

Anna’s mind throbs with the shout, the vicious, dying growl. Does the Whisper know it’s dying? Can it stop? Smoky hope bleeds into fear. Kira. She shuts her eyes. Romy.

Anneliese, the Whisper sighs, fainter than ever. Talk to…Chlause… Push us.

Behind Anna’s eyes, Urnäsch unfolds. Taika starts to tremble. Anna holds tight. ‘Run. Escape into Whiteland.’

She’s never moved so fast. Driving her bones through the blue-fire warmth, Freya bursts from a tree in a close-knit grove, kicks through bushes, branches, roots, and blunders into a run. If she isn’t there when they all fall through, they’ll keep on going to the Kyo.

What a plan; what a game. What a gleeful range of faces, on tenterhooks to kill.

Not kill. There’s that at least; if she’s not quick enough, no one will die, unless the Kyo want to play with Callum and Jay. They rarely meet men, and despise them when they do.

If she helps them now, is she saved?

Just run.

She hadn’t thought the door would be close to a village. Haavö, no less, with the crazy witch-sniffer. Speeding up past it, she battles through the snow, ignoring the grizzled man by the slope, his startled skis askew. Her nails sting in her palms. Every vein in her body throbs. She’ll make it.

The human in her is screaming.

They’re being pushed out. Both the Chlause and Taika herself, rising to blurry consciousness, are fighting.

Anna had to leave. The Whisper wasn’t strong enough to keep her there, not with the phoenix creeping in, so now, she watches and tries not to crumple.

The Chlause take Kira. Kira, then Romy, then Callum, as the boy creeps away. Kira shouts something, and he drops.

Anna inhales, colder and colder. With her children verging on ruin, she’s never felt so useless, and when the magic surges through again, she could cry.

An image of Taika solidifies, cumbersome, staggering forward, speaking. Anna could holler, howl, beat her fists against the wall. The Whisper’s talking to Kira and Romy, and all she can do is watch. It’s vile, viler than the desert. Without scuppering everyone’s chances, she can’t even try to help.

Callum’s hauling the boy to his feet. Kira and Romy are standing still. Anxiety slaps her, again and again. Why are they standing still? They should be running. Freya should be there by now.

A flare of energy flames around her. Anna bites back a cry. The cave shakes. The image might break. Dizzied by the throbbing, Anna sways on her knees.

In Urnäsch, the Chlause stop.

The door is open. More a thought than ever, the Whisper quavers.

Kira and Romy start to run.

Kira’s chest clamps shut like heartburn. Karliquai clouds with black, but she falls to its feet in the grass. What do they do? Did anyone say?

No. Shaking her head free of clouds, she swallows a breathless, desperate panic. Nothing moves. Nothing changes. What do they do? There’s nothing here. She grasps a corner of the splintering wood, dragging herself to her knees.

Her head plunges. Everything’s cold, and she tumbles down, nauseous, weightless, Alice in the dark. Rushing in her ears. Fire in her blood.

Before she can scream, it’s over.

‘Kira!’ Someone tugs on her arm. ‘Get up. Get up, Kira.’

The darkness doesn’t lift. The fall wiped her mind. She left her tongue by Karliquai.

‘Move!’ The someone heaves her up.

‘I’ll take her.’ Someone else is here, an animal smell. The air is colder than bones. ‘Trust me, Kira.’ He lifts her away. A whimper burbles up inside her. ‘It’s all right, Kira. You’re okay. You’re okay.’

The lights sputter and die. The fire, the candles, the image and its underlying web; in a blink, they whine to black.

Taika’s body exhales, and stills.

Anna shuts her eyes. A scream is building, a rumble within her: no, no, no, no, no. They were so close, so goddamn close. There must have been enough time.

The darkness settles, sour and dead. Please, Anna begs, to no one and everyone. The rumble is a river, bursting its banks. Let them all have been quick enough. Please.

The Whispers rise through the rock in silence. Anna is blown away.

 

Beside the fallen oak, Vasi turns to Mathew. His rock-hewn expression has lost its shine. ‘Your daughter is back.’

The woodpecker whoops. Mathew stares. ‘Here?’ A chill pools within him, sliding through his body; after everything, one of them’s here? ‘Where?’

Ahead of her, Kira disappears.

‘Kira!’ Romy shrieks, but the sound is barely there. Kira touched the chalet, and vanished. Romy cuts her eyes to Callum, but his face is out of view. They’re almost there, all of them. Ten metres. Five.

None.

Jay reaches it first. He slaps the balcony, but nothing happens. ‘Crap!’ he yells. ‘How do we do it?’

Romy hits the steps with the force of a juggernaut. The wood is warm on her shaking skin, but she doesn’t disappear, scraping down the steps to the grass.

‘What the hell did Kira do?’ Callum spins in a circle, yanking his sweat-slick hair.

Lapping the chalet, Jay punches the wood. ‘She’s not here.’

Romy drags herself up with mounting anguish. This is not how it ends. This is not where it ends, in a field with a whole lot of fuck all, by a hut that was meant to save them.

Romy.

Mary, mother of god. Romy’s bowels shift. Her legs lose their bones. Halfway down the hill are the Chlause.

The priest, the Ugly, some she doesn’t know. A man bedecked with fire.

The doll smiles, just a twitch. Too late.

Romy grabs Callum’s arm. ‘What do we do?’

Callum shakes his head, pinning Jay to his side, his face tuned to terror. ‘I don’t know. Shit. I don’t know.’

Animals in stolen hides.

Unbidden, the song that started it all slams back into her brain. It’s a physical roar, a deafening force. Romy crashes and burns.

Dig the grave and watch them cry.

The phoenix steps forward.

Singing her way into black, she sways. I hope the wilderness will call.

Let’s become a carnival now Ragnarok is visceral.