During the days that followed, Eska bound her ankle with caribou hide and filled every waking hour learning how to face the wild head-on so that she was ready for the Never Cliffs when the time came. She took care of her shadow when fishing; she learnt to spot camouflaged snow hares by the flicker of their eyelids; she got her hunting ritual down to just a few words; she tracked snow buntings and geese to see where in the snow they plucked the mountain cranberries from; and, with each hour that passed, she grew to understand Balapan more. She knew which yap meant ‘yes’ and which meant ‘no’; she could tell the difference between a hiss and a squawk and a cry from the clouds that could only come from an animal that knew it was free.

What she didn’t understand though was her voice – how every morning since the Ice Queen’s visit her throat felt tighter and sorer than the day before and a strange iciness seemed to linger on her tongue. At first she had put it down to fear, but as the days bled on, and each morning her throat became increasingly painful and the cold in her mouth grew sharper, Eska felt sure the music box key and Slither’s contraption were behind things. Was the Ice Queen inching closer and closer to stealing her voice?

On the sixth morning after the Ice Queen’s visit to the valley, the morning Eska planned to leave for the Never Cliffs now that her ankle had healed, she woke to an almighty crash.

She sat bolt upright in her bed and reached for the dagger under her pillow. The anthem from Winterfang was drifting through the valley, but Eska listened beyond that. There was another noise – a roaring, churning, raging sound – and it was coming from just outside the hideaway.

Eska leapt out of bed, clasping her knife tight, and strained her ears towards the door. She recognised that roar . . . It was water – gallons of it – pouring down the valley. She edged towards the window and pulled the sacking back. Balapan was still there, tucked up in her nest, because she could tell without even opening her eyes which were the noises to be frightened of. And this ear-splitting roar was nothing to do with the Ice Queen. This was the wild talking.

Eska threw on her furs, then opened the door to her hideout.

The frozen fall was no longer there. Instead, a torrent of water burst over the ledge above her, cascading through the sunlight in a glittering curtain. Eska pushed her hair back from her eyes and peered through the water.

She could see the whole valley, snowy hills spliced into slithers by the waterfall, and she knew that, although her ankle was strong enough for the journey onward now, and with the midnight sun only five days away she needed to press on, she would miss these hills. They’d come to feel a bit like home. She cast her eyes towards the largest hill, the one whose snow still clung in knee-deep layers, and blinked. She could have sworn she saw something dark moving across it. She squinted harder. These shapes weren’t moving like animals; they were moving, unmistakably, like humans.

Eska swung her quiver over her shoulder, then crouched in the opening between the rock face and the waterfall. Balapan’s eyes were fixed on the hillside. Whoever it was out there, the eagle had seen them, too.

For a while, Eska just watched, but, when two figures swung into clear view round the middle of the hill, she frowned. They were a long way away, but even from this distance Eska could see that they weren’t especially tall and they weren’t clad in ice armour either.

‘Members of the Fur Tribe?’ she whispered.

Eska watched the figures slogging through the snow, then she listened to the Ice Queen’s anthem and thought of the command the queen had given to her guards. Were the Fur Tribe still safe now that Tusk guards patrolled the forest? She knew she shouldn’t care – this was a tribe that had cast her out – but somehow she did, despite what had happened.

She glanced up at Balapan. ‘Come on. Let’s take a closer look. I need to know that Flint and his tribe are safe.’

Eska strode off. The eagle didn’t follow, but the pull of other people drew the girl away from the waterfall. She kept to the rowan trees at first and when out in the open she darted between rocks and ridges. She couldn’t risk being seen just in case the figures were in fact Tusk guards.

But when she reached the foot of the largest hill and squatted down behind the boulders at its base, the remains of a long-ago landslide, Eska heard Balapan cry. High-pitched, drawn out, it was a warning.

Eska scoured the hillside for the figures and saw them halfway up, two dots against the snow. The Ice Queen’s anthem drifted away, then there was a loud grinding sound and, before Eska could even cry out, an enormous chunk of snow broke free from the summit and began sliding down the hill. The figures ran, but, although they were nimble and fast, they couldn’t outpace what was coming. Because this was no ordinary avalanche. This was a hillside under the Ice Queen’s control and for some reason it had waited until now to attack.

The snow swallowed everything in its path and as it surged down the hill it seemed to gather itself up into a roaring mass of white. Eska’s mouth dropped open. The avalanche was full of faces built from the snow itself – horns and fangs and bulbous noses, hooded eyes, pointed ears and gaping mouths – and they leered forward, spreading jagged wings, as the snow roared around them.

Realising that the avalanche was now only metres away from the figures below, Eska leapt up on to the boulders, her instinct to help overcoming her fear of who these people might actually be.

‘Move to the side, not down!’ she yelled. ‘You can’t outrun this!’

But her voice felt sticky in her throat, as if the words were only just struggling out. She darted round the side of the hill and threw her arms up in the air.

‘Over here!’ she cried. ‘Over here!’

The figures swerved towards Eska. But the avalanche was moving faster now, and with a hideous roar the faces in the snow swallowed the figures and continued to tear down the hillside. Without thinking, Eska rushed towards the pulsing wall of snow. She could hear voices screaming from inside the avalanche, then something small was tossed up into the mist. It landed by Eska’s boots and she snatched it up. It was a necklace made from willow twine and for a second Eska paused, as if half remembering something, but there was no time to think. If she didn’t yank the victims free, they’d suffocate or be dashed to their deaths on the boulders at the bottom of the hill.

She charged on up the mountain, ignoring the spray of ice on her face and the cries of the golden eagle circling above, then she flung her bow to the ground and, as the avalanche reared above her, she fixed her eyes on the figures tossing and turning at its edge, and charged into its throes.

For a second, the world turned white, but Eska knew she had to act before the snow spun her upside down so she reached out, grabbed hold of an arm and, as the snow raged around her, she yanked hard and, just a split second before she lost her footing completely, she burst free from the avalanche. She pulled back from the figure and gasped.

She was face to face with Flint.

And suddenly she realised who the willow-twine necklace belonged to.

‘Blu,’ Eska murmured as she watched the avalanche storm towards the boulders at the bottom of the hill.

Flint blinked at Eska in disbelief, and Pebble did the same from his parka hood, then he scrambled to his feet after his little sister. But the eagle had beaten him to it and he watched, open-mouthed, as the bird dug its talons into Blu’s shoulders. The snow faces snarled and hissed and one or two flung jagged wings towards Blu, but Balapan had her now – she wasn’t letting go – and as the avalanche raged on the eagle dragged Blu from its sway.

Eska watched the writhing snow smash into the boulders at the bottom of the hill and, as it spilled out into the river and was carried from the valley, she thought about the Ice Queen’s enchantment: I summon you foothills under my hold. Take the girl and the boy into your fold. The hill had waited until both she and Flint were in the valley so that it could ensnare them both at once.

Flint tore down the hill towards Blu who was lying to the side of the boulders, but Balapan rushed towards Eska and this time the eagle didn’t land beside her. She swooped on to the girl’s shoulder and, as Eska stood on the snow-strewn hillside, she felt the bird’s talons wrap round her bones and she wondered then about her past, about whether she’d ever been held this tight.