I love the story of the Snow Queen more than anything. My dad used to read it to me when I was little. I used to curl up inside the curve of his arm, warm against the frostiness of the story. He would say things like ‘Can you hear the snow whispering, Orla? Can you hear the ice?’ We would listen for a moment to silence, and imagine the streaking snow and hear the creak of ice in it.

‘Would you like to meet the Snow Queen?’ Dad asked me.

I nodded and shivered. ‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe you will, one day.’

Dad died last year, and nothing has been the same since. Nothing.

I was always sure that the Snow Queen was a real person, and that I really would meet her one day. I would know her as soon as I saw her. She would be irresistibly beautiful. I imagined she would be tall, with long white hair and eyes as cold as ice. She would try to steal me just as she stole Kay in the story, but I would never go with her. I used to daydream the strange adventure that Kay’s friend Gerda had when she was searching for him, the people she met on her journey: the Robber Girl and the old woman in the igloo, the crow and the reindeer, and there was a part of me that longed for the magic and mystery of it all.

The house was so quiet after Dad died. So cold and unfriendly.

But one Sunday in early December everything began to change. That was the day the magic and mystery started.

For once Mum was home. This was unusual. Usually, she was out, working, walking, doing things, anything not to be in the house that didn’t have Dad in it any more. She left me to look after my little brother. I kept telling her it was against the law, I was only thirteen, but I don’t think she cared. During the week I had to take Flynn to the Infants and collect him again on my way home. I was supposed to stay with him until she got back from work. I didn’t, though. Why should I? I thought. I hated being in the house too. I hated that waiting, awful silence. And Flynn was always too tired by that time to go trailing round with me. Mum said that he mustn’t be left in the house on his own, so I used to leave him standing at the front door, and I carried on walking round the block and through the shopping precinct with my friends, until they’d all dropped off at their houses, and then I would go home and let him in. If it was raining, he waited in the shed. He moaned at me for that, but he was all right. He couldn’t come to any harm there.

But that Sunday, we were all home. It was one of those yellow days when the sky moves from dark to lightish to dark again without any real change of colour. We were almost a family that day. Mum was cooking in the kitchen. I was watching a film on my tablet. I had my earphones on because Flynn was making so much noise, scrabbling in his Lego box and talking to himself. At least he wasn’t begging me to ‘play’ with him as he usually does. He never gives me any peace. So I was lost in my film when a sudden rapid sort of cackling sound made me look up. The room turned icy. Flynn stopped and looked up sharply, too, his face suddenly alert. I lowered my tablet and took out one of the earphones.

‘What was that?’ I whispered.

‘No idea.’ He bent down again to his building.

I stood up and went to the window. Maybe I hadn’t heard anything, not really. How could I have done, over the noise of the film? But I had felt something, for sure. I’d felt such a coldness, a stillness. And so had Flynn. I knew he had. It was as if someone had passed by our house and cast a shiver over it. Gran used to say, ‘Someone just walked over my grave.’ She would shudder and pull her knitted cardigan tighter round her bony shoulders.

I went and opened the front door and peered down the street. It was empty. No people, no cars, not even a cat on its loping prowl.

‘Shut that door!’ Mum yelled from the kitchen.

‘I think it’s going to snow,’ I said. I love snow. It always brings a kind of magic with it.

‘I hope not. There’s no snow forecast anyway. Shut the door now. I work my fingers to the bone keeping this house heated, and you go and squander it in thirty seconds.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ I said, half to myself, but Mum heard me and came into the hall with a clutch of cutlery in her hand.

‘Wouldn’t what?’

‘Work all the time,’ I muttered.

‘Oh, Orla. I have to. You know I do.’

I closed the door and went back to my film, but I couldn’t settle. I was tense and uneasy. Flynn listlessly shovelled his Lego bits into their box and started to play with his Minecraft pieces. But he wasn’t mumbling to himself and whooping and sighing any more. He was completely silent. After a bit, he stood up and gazed out of the window at the darkening street, as if he was listening and watching for something.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked him, uneasy again.

‘Nothing. Leave me alone!’

Mum came in and closed the curtains. ‘Stop bickering, you two,’ she said. ‘This is Home Sweet Home, remember?’

Next morning Flynn and I walked to school together. At the corner of our street, I always meet up with Zania and Kirsty, my best friends, and he trails behind us, but at that moment we were still together. And just like the day before, I had a strange sensation that time had dawdled and strayed away for moment, making the traffic pause, as if there was nowhere for it to go. For a second all sound stopped, all colour faded, and I felt as cold as if I had been gripped in ice. I paused, and so did my brother, but a second later the sensation had passed. I turned to Flynn, and he looked away, lips tight.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Why are you looking like that, then?’ He can be so annoying at times. He knew something strange had happened, so why was he pretending again that it hadn’t?

A woman in a long pale blue coat was walking away from us. She must have walked right past us, yet I hadn’t noticed her. She was very striking, with straight, shimmering hair that was almost white. As if she had felt me looking at her, she stopped and turned her head. Her eyes were icy blue. For a second she reminded me of someone, and I realized that she looked just like my childhood image of the Snow Queen. She smiled at me, a cold, hard, beautiful smile, and then her gaze lingered on Flynn. Again, I turned to look at him. His eyes were shining.

‘Who is she?’ I asked him. He shrugged and pulled away from me. I glanced back. Children were piling off buses and out of cars, mingling and shouting and jostling. There was no sign of the woman in the pale blue coat.

I forgot about her until the end of the school day. I collected Flynn, left him outside our house, and wandered off with Zania and Kirsty. Kirsty asked us in to see her new dress, and we all tried it on and did each other’s hair.

‘Will Flynn be all right?’ Zania asked. ‘It’s really dark outside.’

‘He’s fine,’ I said, annoyed at being reminded about him when I was enjoying myself.

I suppose it was quite a bit later than usual when I arrived home. It didn’t matter. I knew Mum wouldn’t be back from work until after six, so she wouldn’t know, but I was feeling guilty now about leaving Flynn on such a cold night. I saw immediately that there was no light on in the shed. Why wasn’t he in there? I wondered.

‘Flynn,’ I called. ‘Flynn, stop messing.’

I couldn’t find him. I searched behind the bushes in the garden in case he was hiding. I went into the house and switched on the lights. I took off my coat, turned on the TV, tried to be normal. But my heart was beginning to thud. Where was he? Surely, if he was out there in the cold and dark, he’d come running in when he saw the door was open and the lights were on. I called again, searched again. He wasn’t there. Flynn wasn’t there.

For one panicky moment I remembered the strange woman in the long coat. She knew Flynn. They had looked at each other. He had pretended not to see her, but he had. I remembered the ice moments, and her brittle smile, and how Flynn’s eyes shone when he looked at her. What if she actually was the Snow Queen, and she had stolen my little brother, just like she had stolen Kay in the story? No, it was crazy to think like that. But then where was he?

Perhaps he’d followed me earlier; perhaps he’d gone to the shopping precinct for warmth. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? I went racing down the road. I had forgotten to put my coat back on, and the air was beginning to spit, more sleet than rain, with grits of ice in it.

‘Flynn!’ I kept shouting. ‘Flynn!’ But my voice was swallowed in the roar of the rush-hour traffic. I ran along the whole of the shopping precinct and back again, and then I did it again, and at last I stopped for breath in the bright doorway of Tesco. I was shivering with cold and fright. A Big Issue seller was sheltering in the doorway, too, hopping from one foot to the other to keep himself warm. He was wearing frayed jeans and old trainers, and his feet must have been nearly frozen.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Here y’are.’

‘No, thanks,’ I muttered, and then I saw that he wasn’t holding out a magazine for me to buy, but a two-pound coin. His hands were red and raw with cold.

‘Take it,’ he said. ‘You look half starved. Go and get yourself a nice cup of hot chocolate from the cafe.’

I shook my head. ‘I’ve lost my brother,’ I whispered. ‘Have you seen him?’ I hesitated. ‘He might have been with a woman in a long blue coat.’

The man narrowed his eyes. ‘I know that woman.’

‘Do you?’ I was surprised, and quite relieved. Was she just an ordinary woman after all? But what did she have to do with my brother?

‘I’ve seen her often enough, walking round the town. Yes, I saw her not long ago, and she had a little boy with her. About five, he was.’

‘That’s Flynn!’

‘He looked quite happy.’

I remembered the rapt expression on Flynn’s face when we had seen the woman this morning on the way to school. What on earth did he think he was doing, wandering off with her? He could be in terrible danger. ‘Where did they go?’

The man blew on his fingers one by one, as if they were birthday candles that refused to go out. ‘I think they went down Chapel Alley, just over there. But you watch out. That’s where the Alley Gang hangs out. Not for your sort, that lot. Get yourself that hot drink instead.’

‘I have to find him,’ I said. ‘But thanks.’ I rolled the bottom of my school sweatshirt round my hands to try to keep them warm, and made my way through the traffic towards Chapel Alley. I knew about the gang that hung out there. I’d seen them loitering, swigging from cans, girls shrieking and boys loud as lions. Mum called them louts and tarts. ‘And be thankful I’ve given you a decent upbringing. Never have anything to do with rough kids like that.’

I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. I wanted to turn away and run back home, let myself into the warm house, make toast for me and Flynn. Flynn wasn’t there, though. Flynn had been stolen, and it was all my fault. Why had that woman stolen him? The story of the Snow Queen came flooding back to me. I thought about the piece of ice in Kay’s heart. I thought about him being trapped in her frozen palace. No, she isn’t the Snow Queen, I tried to tell myself. But if she wasn’t, who on earth was she? What would happen to him? I would never be able to go home until I’d found my brother, even if I had to walk around all night.

I calmed myself and walked into the black shadow of Chapel Alley, away from the bustle of shoppers and the cheerful Christmas lights of the High Street. I could hear the gang, the snap of their cigarette lighters, the twitter of their voices. I felt tiny and timid, as if I was a mouse venturing into a den of wild cats. A motorbike throbbed. Boys threw their voices against the walls like bouncing balls. Girls screamed with laughter. They all seemed to have to make a noise. I could see that one of the girls was straddling a pushbike, jabbing at the bell again and again in an angry, bored sort of way, and there was something about the way she did it that made me think she was their leader. She was wearing a red woollen scarf, and every so often she whipped the end of it round her neck and glared at everybody.

I shrank against the wall and tried to creep past, but one of the boys saw me and decided I was just right to make a game of.

He twisted his face into a snarl. ‘Who said you could come down our alley?’

‘Yeah, like no one comes down here without our permission,’ another one growled.

They crowded round me, holding out their arms to stop me going any further. The girl with the red scarf just watched them, smirking. A scar-faced boy started tweaking my hair.

‘Eh, it’s Goldilocks!’ he laughed. ‘You won’t find no bears here, kid.’

‘Only you!’ a girl giggled at him. ‘Paddington, your mam should’ve called you.’

I was sick with fright, panicking because they were trapping me there. ‘Let me get past,’ I begged, desperate. ‘I’ve got to find Flynn.’

‘Ooh, Flynn! Is he your little teddy bear?’

‘Leave her alone,’ the scarf girl said suddenly. ‘She’s only a kid.’ She walked her bike forward and parked it in front of me, like a shield. ‘What are you doing here?’ She didn’t speak in the brutal way of the others.

‘I’m looking for Flynn,’ I said. ‘He’s my brother.’

‘There’s no Flynn in my gang,’ she said.

‘He’s only five,’ I told her.

‘Five! He’s a dwarf, then! She’s not Goldilocks, she’s Snow White!!’ the hair-tweaker said.

The girl shoved him with her elbow. ‘Think you’re so clever, don’t you? Shut up, the lot of you!’ she snapped, and amazingly they did.

‘I think he’s been stolen by someone,’ I said. I couldn’t bring myself to mention the name of the Snow Queen in front of them, to be taunted again. And I had no idea who she was really. ‘A woman with white hair and a long blue coat.’

The girl whistled slowly. ‘Oh, yes. They came down here all right. Walked right through us as if we didn’t exist. The little boy didn’t look as if he’d been stolen, though. He was holding her hand and smiling up at her.’

‘It’s him, I know it is.’ Why, oh why, does that woman make him happy? I thought angrily. He used to be happy with me; he used to hold my hand like that. I started to move away, but the girl put her hand on my arm.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take my bike. Go on. You’ll be much quicker. Go on, take it.’ She helped me to get on it. ‘You’ll have to stand on the pedals, you’re such a titch,’ she told me. ‘Go straight to the hovel at the end of Townhead Lane. You know where that is?’

I nodded. ‘I think I do. I’ve never noticed a hovel there.’

‘Take my word for it.’ The girl was speaking urgently now, as if she knew exactly what I had to do. She suddenly made me think of the Robber Girl in the story. But how could she be? How could these people have come into my life? I had to trust her, though, because I had no idea what else to do.

‘Leave my bike with the old lady there,’ she went on. ‘She’s my grandma, and she’s a strange person, I warn you. But she’ll tell you where to go next. And here, have my scarf. You look freezing. Quick!’ And she pushed me away.

When I reached the end of the alley, I stopped, not sure which way to go. I could hear the gang shouting, ‘Go left! Go right! Go straight ahead! Turn round!’ And then I saw a white cat staring at me with strange ice-blue eyes. It turned and darted across the road and disappeared into a farm track, and I recognized it as Townhead Lane. I had never noticed before how narrow and bumpy it was, how overgrown and snaggly the hedges were. I followed the cat, swivelling into the dark and silence, desperate to find my brother and take him home. I felt as if the real world was slipping away from me. Of course there was no Snow Queen, I kept trying to tell myself. Of course the girl with the red scarf was just an ordinary girl. And yet something made me carry on, as if I was in the grip of a nightmare and couldn’t wake myself up from it. The old woman would tell me what to do, the girl had said. Hadn’t Gerda been helped by an old woman who lived in an igloo?

It was sleeting now. Wet, sharp flakes were bumbling in the light of the bike lamp, making the farm track slithery, pitting into my eyes like wet darts. As I rode, I kept shouting, ‘Flynn! Flynn!’, hoping that any minute I would see a small boy darting towards me. But no boy came. I was alone. The track was getting steeper. The sleet had turned to snow, buzzing relentlessly towards me. There was no sign of the cat. When the track was too steep, the bike wobbled sideways and I fell off, and then I saw a small light that seemed to be set inside a pile of rubble.

I picked up the bike and wheeled it towards the light. I could see now that it came from an old barn of some sort, reeking of acrid woodsmoke. This must be the girl’s grandmother’s place. Not an igloo at all. How stupid I was to have thought that, or to have believed that she could help me. She wouldn’t even know who I was.

A door opened, the pale light flickered and a voice called, ‘You, girl! Here! Here you are!’

An old woman stood in the doorway, arms folded, smiling as if she had been expecting me. The white cat was winding round her boots. ‘Come in, come in, you’ll perish out there! Temperature’s dropping like a stone. Eh, but it’s no place for a child like you.’

I wasn’t cold, though I was exhausted. I’d never cycled so far before. But I had to go on. ‘I’m looking for my brother,’ I said. I was so tired that I could hardly speak.

‘Oh, yes, I know you are. The little boy,’ the old woman said. ‘Come in, come in,’

Thinking for the moment that she had Flynn safe in her cottage, I stepped inside. The heat was almost overwhelming, but the woman drew me closer to the spitting fire. A pot of stew was hanging over it, bubbling like a witch’s brew, and it smelled wonderful.

‘Is Flynn here?’ I asked. I gazed round at the room. It was nearly bare except for a bed of some sort next to the fire, with a bundle of ragged blankets heaped on it.

‘Oh, no, she’d never bring him here! A queen in my hovel?’

I started. So I was right. It was the Snow Queen who had stolen Flynn. The old woman touched my hand. ‘Sit down on the bed and I’ll give you a bowl of mutton stew. It’s all I have, but it’s good and hot and it’ll keep you going. You’ve a long, hard journey ahead of you, if you intend to carry on.’

Once more I felt like crying. Would it never end? Would I never find Flynn? Was he locked in ice somewhere? What on earth could I do if he was? All I had wanted was to get him home. Mum must be in from work by now. She’d have found the house empty. She would be angry with me, and frantic with worry. ‘I have to go on,’ I said wearily. ‘I’ve come all this way, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.’

‘He’s all right,’ she said. ‘For the moment. Believe me. It’s you I’m worried about. You need looking after, you do.’ She stirred the cauldron and ladled out a helping. She sipped a little herself, and emptied the rest into a chipped bowl. ‘Here.’ She held it out towards me. ‘It’s good. I want you to eat before you go on.’

I was so tired. I would have given anything to lie down and cover myself with the stinking pile of rags.

‘Please can you tell me where Flynn is?’ I begged her.

‘I do know, and I will tell you. Eat, go on.’

‘Is he with the woman in the long blue coat? Is she the Snow Queen?’ There, I had said it. Nothing seemed real any more. If I had really slipped into that world of ice and story, what would become of me? What would become of Flynn?

‘Ooh, she’s a beauty, she is! Skin so pale, eyes that shimmer like ice, long white snowflake hair . . . I’ve known her all my life!’ the old woman crooned. ‘If you’re going to find her, you have to be strong. You’re a fine, good girl to have come all this way, but I tell you, you have to be strong. Here. Eat.’

She held out the bowl again. Her eyes were so full of concern and kindness that I took it and ate the stew. It was delicious.

‘Good girl. Now I’ll tell you what I know. She lives up in the castle beyond this house. That’s where she’ll be. That’s where the boy will be.’

I stood up quickly, but she held out her hand to stop me going yet. ‘It’s a good climb up there. You’ll follow this track, but it’ll be rough and stony soon. You’ll lose sight of it, but take my torch and follow the cat. The higher you go, the colder it will be. The snow will soon turn to ice, and those flimsy shoes of yours will never get you there. Take them off, and wear these old boots of mine, and you’ll be quite safe.’

‘And Flynn will be there?’

‘I promise you. Flynn will be there.’

I was afraid, but something even more powerful than fear had taken over. I had no name for it yet. I slipped off my school shoes and wriggled my damp feet into the leather boots the old woman had been wearing. The white cat stretched himself awake from his nest of rags in front of the fire and sauntered over to the door. He turned his blue-eyed stare towards me, and then scratched open the door with his paw. The blast of icy air nearly drove me back inside again. My only thoughts were that I must go on, whatever lay ahead. I had to find Flynn. There was no going home without him.

‘Keep climbing, my dear. I wish you luck when you get there.’ The old woman closed the door behind me, and there was no more light from her hovel, and no reek of smoke. I was alone again in the swirling snow. The cat had disappeared. I trudged on, thinking how helpful everyone had been to me – the Big Issue seller, the girl in the red scarf and the old woman. I wondered where Mum was now, what she was thinking, what she was doing to try to find us. And I thought about Flynn. He should never have gone off with a stranger. But I should never have left him on his own. I was the only one who could rescue him, and he was somewhere up there in the icy, terrifying darkness.

I tucked the scarf inside my sweatshirt and marched on, head down, following the tiny dance of light from the torch. If there had ever been a track, it was covered now, but what I could see were paw marks, and sometimes they doubled back, as if the cat had run back to make sure I was still coming. I couldn’t see him at all, but then what use was a white cat in a snowstorm? And then suddenly he was there, stopped still right in front of my feet so I nearly tripped over him. He turned his face towards me, and then crouched and let out a low moan. Was he afraid, too? I wondered. Or was he telling me to go on alone? I looked up, and there was the castle looming ahead of me, and slowly, one by one, lights began to flicker in all the narrow window slits.

I bent down and stroked the cat’s wet back. ‘You don’t have to come any further,’ I told him. ‘Not if you’re afraid.’ And instantly, he gave a small mew and scuttled away into the darkness.

I walked slowly and steadily towards the castle, trying to control the pounding of my heart. ‘Keep going, keep going, Orla’, I kept muttering to myself. The steps up to the castle were so slippery that even in the old woman’s sturdy boots I was skidding. My fingers found a railing and clung to it, burning cold though it was, and I hauled myself to the huge oak door and pushed it. It was bolted. I banged on it weakly until my fist hurt, and then I heard laughing, cackling voices behind me and around me. Blue, darting flickers of light danced like small phosphorescent imps.

‘She won’t let you in yet!’ the voices screeched. ‘Not until you give us things!’

‘Give you things?’ I felt like crying with frustration. I was almost too exhausted to speak. ‘But I don’t have anything to give.’

‘Give us your scarf!’ they said, and the red scarf was whisked away from my neck before I could save it. ‘And your torch. Ooh, give us that!’ Again, the torch was snatched out of my hand. ‘What else? What else?’

‘I didn’t give you anything! You just took them!’ I shouted. ‘And they weren’t mine to give.’

‘Oh, that doesn’t matter! What’s theirs is yours is hers is ours! And back again. Ooh, look at her boots!’

Now they were fiddling with my bootlaces, lifting my legs one at a time and tugging off the old grandmother’s boots, and away they went, snickering, and I was left standing in my thin school socks. Desperately, I banged on the door again. It opened immediately.

I walked into a great, lofty hall lit by candles. Their flames flattened like the cowering cat until the great door closed silently behind me. How warm and welcoming it felt now in all that dancing light! This was not at all what I had expected, not a bit like the story of the palace of ice. I tiptoed forward. From behind one of the other doors, I could hear music, and the high laughter of little children, as if a party had suddenly been switched on. Eagerly, I ran to the door and opened it.

I saw Flynn straight away. He was not pushing cubes of ice around like Kay in the story, not wrapped in frozen chains. He was sitting on the floor by a big open fire, playing some sort of building game with other children. They were all laughing. I couldn’t remember when I had last seen Flynn looking happy. The beautiful queen woman was standing near them, smiling, but as soon as I moved from the doorway, she turned, very slowly, and looked at me. The music stopped. The laughter stopped. All the other children stood up quietly and drifted away. Flynn was left, sifting the Lego bricks just as he did at home. He looked up for a moment in my direction, frowned, and lowered his head again. It was as if he hadn’t even seen me. Or hadn’t wanted to.

‘Flynn, Flynn!’ I whispered urgently. ‘Come on! We’ve got to go home!’

‘Home!’ the children moaned. They were walking slowly round the room now, not together but separate and lonely and in different, aimless directions as if they didn’t know each other, didn’t see each other; heads down, hands behind their backs.

‘Home!’ the queen repeated. ‘Home! Do you call that home, when you leave a little child all on his own outside his house?’ She stood in front of me, so I couldn’t see my brother.

‘Who are you, and who are all these children?’ I asked, trying to hide my deep shame at her accusation, trying to be bold and not intimidated by her.

‘These are the lonely children, the doorstep children, the home-alone children. And I am their protector, their queen. I bring them here to be warm and safe. I bring them here to be happy.’

‘They don’t look happy,’ I muttered.

‘Oh, they were until you came, my dear. You have made them unhappy.’

‘But will you never let them go?’

‘Of course. When they have proper homes to go to.’

I tried to get past her. ‘Flynn,’ I called. ‘Come to me. I’m going to take you home.’

‘How dare you?’ the queen shouted, and drew herself up tall and terrifying, eyes hard and cruel. ‘How dare you try to take him away from me?’

I thought of the moment I had walked into the room. I remembered the sound of fun and laughter, the sense of happiness in there. Could I take Flynn away from that? But he didn’t belong there! She couldn’t keep him! ‘You must let me,’ I begged. ‘I’ve come all this way, in all this weather, with no coat on my back! I didn’t take the money for a hot drink, I didn’t run away from the Alley Gang. I went all the way in the snow to the grandmother’s house, and then I climbed up here, and it was bitterly cold and icy, and I let the cat go even though he was my only company. And now I haven’t even got a torch, or a scarf, or boots, and I want to go home. But not without Flynn. Not after all that. You must let him come with me.’ I turned away, not bold any longer. I didn’t want her to see my tears, which were coursing freely down my cheeks. I didn’t want her to see that I was afraid of her. Maybe I could have pushed her aside and grabbed Flynn and made him come with me, but I was too frightened to do that. Besides, what might she do to me if I tried? Turn me to ice?

As if she knew what I was thinking, the queen stepped away so I could see my brother again. ‘Flynn,’ I called weakly, but still he didn’t look up. He just kept playing with the coloured bricks as if he hadn’t seen me, or didn’t know me, or didn’t care that I had come for him.

The queen smiled. ‘Everything you say is true, Orla. Oh, yes, I know your name. And I know everything you have been through to get here. I know you’ve done all these things. But have you learned nothing on your journey, child?’ Her voice was sweet and gentle.

So, it had been a kind of test, I realized. Had she made all those things happen to me? Was it a kind of game to her? And why, and what was I supposed to do, what was I expected to say? I felt small and alone, and far more frightened by her gentle, smiling manner than I had been of her anger.

This time she didn’t stop me when I stepped towards Flynn. I sank down helplessly on the floor next to him, knowing now that I was completely in the queen’s power. Flynn shoved some of the little bricks towards me, and I saw that they weren’t building bricks or Lego, but something like jigsaw pieces made up of fragments of letters. He had stuck several pieces together to form his name. He sat with his arms looped round his knees, looking at the letters, frowning. I was aware of the queen watching me. I was aware that the lonely children had stopped their restless wandering and formed a silent circle round us all.

I gazed helplessly at the pieces. I had a puzzle to solve, and I would never get home until I had solved it. I concentrated on what I had just told the queen. It was all true, she had said, but what had I learned?

I pictured the Big Issue seller, his raw red hands, his frayed jeans. He was poor, yet instead of asking me for money he had given me some of his own. I thought about the Alley Gang. Instead of attacking me, their leader had given me her scarf and lent me her bike to help me on my way. The grandmother lived in a tumbledown shack and yet she had invited me in. She had hardly anything in her cooking pot, yet she had fed me. Even the cat had brought me as far as he dared towards the castle.

I picked up the jigsaw letters and fitted some of them together. KINDNESS, I wrote.

The queen didn’t even look. I could hear her tapping her foot on the ground. ‘Not enough!’ she snapped. ‘Not enough!’

I felt myself beginning to shiver. I glanced at Flynn. His face was pale. I could see his breath hazing. I could hear, very faintly, the crackly laughter of the imps.

I shifted the jigsaw pieces round again. What was greater than kindness? What more had those strangers given me?

‘I know, I know!’ I shouted suddenly. I fitted the letters together. CHARITY.

The queen laughed. ‘Charity!’ she repeated. ‘Is that what a home needs? Charity? Is that all you’ve learned on the way here?’

My tears were burning on my cheeks, turning themselves into tiny, frozen drops.

‘Look into your heart, Orla, before it turns to ice,’ the queen said. She sat down by Flynn and put her arm round him. He rested his head on her shoulder. His eyes were shining, he was smiling again, but he was pale, paler than ever, he was almost transparent now, a ghostly, still figure.

I remembered how he used to smile at me like that, how we used to play together, draw pictures, make up stories and songs and silly jokes. How I used to read to him at bedtime, cuddle him when he fell over. It wasn’t his fault that Dad had died. It wasn’t his fault that the world had changed, and that Mum was always out, and that I had to take her place and look after him. He was only five years old – how could any of it be his fault? I’m going to lose him. The thought that he was drifting away from me, that he was choosing to stay with the queen, that I would never see him again, was more than I could bear. It was breaking my heart.

Suddenly, I knew the word the queen wanted. I knew the word that meant more than the kindness and the charity that the Big Issue man and the girl with the red scarf and the old woman with the hot stew had shown me. I knew the word that had been even more powerful than fear, and that had driven me on to find my brother. I reached out for the jigsaw pieces. I only had to make four letters. With shaking hands, I fitted them together. LOVE.

The queen clapped her hands with delight. Flynn jumped out of her arms and ran to me. He put his arms round me and hugged me just like he always used to, and I hugged him tight, tight.

‘I’ll always look after you,’ I told him.

There was a distant sound like bells peeling, and I realized that it was made up of many voices, many names, over and over again. The children around us were laughing excitedly, hearing their own names called. Then I heard someone calling Flynn’s name, and then my own. ‘Flynn! Orla!’ over and over again. And the voice was Mum’s.

‘It’s Mummy!’ Flynn shouted. ‘Can we go home now?’

The other children were shouting, too, dancing up and down, clamouring to be allowed to go back home because their mothers and fathers were calling out for them.

‘Of course you can go!’ The queen laughed. ‘Everyone’s ready for you now!’ She ran round them all, kissing and hugging them, waving them goodbye as they all ran to a far door and disappeared down a brightly lit corridor.

She turned to me. ‘You’ve learned the most important word of all,’ she told me. ‘Love. Never forget it, Orla.’

‘I won’t,’ I promised.

‘Off you go, then. Follow the children. And don’t come back, ever.’

I took Flynn’s hand and walked along the corridor to a line of many doors. I knew which one to open, because my school shoes were in front of it. I slipped them on. ‘It’s going to be cold outside, Flynn,’ I told him. ‘And we have a long way to go. Are you ready?’

He nodded, too full of happiness to worry about that. He clutched my hand again and we went through the door . . .

. . . and it opened straight into our house. Mum was standing with her back to us, clutching the phone. She swung round when she heard us, dropped the phone, ran forward and knelt on the floor, hugging us both at the same time. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

‘I’ve been so worried about you!’ she said. ‘The door was open, I didn’t know where you’d gone! I searched everywhere, up and down the street, the school, everywhere. I was just phoning the police!’

‘Orla came and found me,’ Flynn said. ‘A lady was looking after me. She was a bit like—’ he looked at me helplessly ‘—a lady in a story.’

‘A bit like the Snow Queen,’ I added. ‘But kinder.’

Mum laughed. ‘The Snow Queen! I’m sure! You’re home, you’re safe. That’s all that matters. Hot baths, supper, bed and a story.’

We sat together when we were ready for bed. ‘This won’t ever happen again, I promise,’ Mum said. ‘I’m going to change my work hours so I can spend more time with you both. Now who’s going to read?’ She put one arm over my shoulder. Flynn snuggled into the crook of my arm. We didn’t need a book, because I knew the story off by heart. And as I told it, I could hear Dad’s voice, from all that time ago.

Would you like to meet the Snow Queen? Maybe you will, one day.