Flint snorted. ‘Find something that’s forgotten and then blow it from the stars? I was all for trusting in Eska’s voice but what you’re suggesting is downright impossible. It doesn’t even make sense!’

Whitefur stayed very still. ‘And there I was thinking you were an inventor. Someone who believed in impossible, illogical things.’

Flint narrowed his eyes. Up until an hour ago, he had thought all Erkenwald’s grown-ups were imprisoned at Winterfang and yet here was Whitefur, an adult walking free and armed with all sorts of surprising knowledge. ‘What do you know about my being an inventor?’

Whitefur shrugged. ‘I can see the magnifying class poking out of your rucksack – infused with rainbow essence, I assume?’

Flint gasped. How could Whitefur know that, unless . . .

‘I’m guessing you found the Wanderer’s Shield, into which the earliest Wanderers carved their knowledge of magic.’ He paused. ‘We thought it had been lost years ago. I’m glad it’s been found by someone open to Erkenwald’s wonders.’

Flint’s eyes widened at the realisation of what he had stumbled across. Then he sniffed. ‘Yes, well, I’m not doing any more inventing because it keeps getting me in trouble.’

‘Brilliant ideas often meet with scorn,’ Whitefur replied, ‘in the beginning, anyway. But you’ll show them, boy. You’ll show them all when you find the Frost Horn.’

‘If we find the Frost Horn,’ Flint mumbled.

Whitefur clasped his hands together. ‘We Wanderers believe that after the North Star breathed life into Erkenwald he hid the Frost Horn somewhere in the kingdom so that its magic might hover over the land long after he left. No one has ever found it but I’ve heard it said that the songs of the Feather Tribe talk of this horn. And it’s my belief that if you can find these outlawed children they might be able to help you.’

‘Do you know where they are?’ Eska asked.

Whitefur shifted. ‘I think they’ve gone into hiding in the Lost Chambers, a warren of secret passageways inside the Never Cliffs, but I don’t think anyone has ever found them either.’

‘So we’re searching for two things no one has ever found?’ Flint said.

‘Following magic is almost always a complicated affair.’ Whitefur paused. ‘But if you can find the Feather Tribe and win their loyalty they will talk to you about the Frost Horn.’ He glanced at Flint. ‘You’ll need the Fur Tribe on your side, too, eventually, because only when all the tribes unite will we beat the Ice Queen.’

‘Unite the tribes?’ Flint nearly choked on his words.

Eska blew out through her teeth. ‘So, if we find the Lost Chambers, if we make friends with the Feather Tribe and if we then locate this Frost Horn, we’ve got to blow it from the stars?’

Blu poked her head out from under the table. ‘Stars long way, Eska.’

Whitefur smiled. ‘Yes, a long way away, but possible to reach, with magic on your side.’

Blu clambered out and placed her chubby hands on her hips. ‘What you talking about? And where’s cup of tea? Pebble and me thirsty.’

Whitefur nodded. ‘I quite agree, Blu. Impossible things are often easier to believe after a mug of tea.’

Eska set about brewing some pine-needle tea and roasting a rabbit she’d caught the day before while Blu padded up to Flint and leant close to his ear. ‘What happening, big brother?’

Flint put an arm round her waist. ‘We’ve got to find something, Blu.’

‘Find Ma?’ she asked hopefully.

Flint shook his head. ‘Not yet but soon.’

Blu picked at her dirt-clogged nails. ‘Miss Ma, Flint. Miss her. Love her.’

Flint nodded. ‘Me too.’

And then, into the quietness of the hideaway, Blu began to cry – little snivels that choked her throat and made her shoulders shake. ‘Ma,’ she sobbed. ‘Want Ma.’

Whitefur stood up and bent down on one knee, holding out his hands.

‘Blu,’ he whispered. ‘I have something for you.’

She wiped the tears from her face.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘Give me your hands.’

Blu looked at Flint who nodded. Then, very slowly, Blu walked towards Whitefur and held out her hands. The old man wrapped them in his, as if they were precious little stones, then he closed his eyes and drew in a very deep breath. His chest and shoulders rose beneath his furs, his old, cracked lips drew tight and then he opened his mouth and let his breath out. Tiny flecks of snow spread from his lips into a cloud of falling silver that glinted in the lamplight and showered around Blu.

Eska looked up from the stove and gasped. ‘What is it?’

‘Diamond Dust,’ Flint whispered. ‘It occurs when snow freezes to ice as it falls . . . only Erkenbears have breath as cold as this.’

Blu blinked into the dancing flakes, her face full of awe, and Whitefur continued to breathe out, his eyes still closed, as the Diamond Dust filled the hideaway, scattering glitter around Flint and Eska. And they laughed then, at the touch of ice on their faces and the sight of magic working for them alone.

Whitefur opened his eyes and the Diamond Dust vanished. Then he smiled. ‘It will protect you on your journey through the Never Cliffs. At the time when you need help most, say my name.’

‘You’re an Erkenbear, aren’t you?’ Flint said quietly, trying hard to make sense of things, because the lines that divided all that he knew – tribe and non-tribe, animal and human – seemed to be blurring. He frowned. ‘I don’t understand how but you are. I know you are.’

Whitefur stood up and winked at Flint. ‘You do say some very strange things.’ He glanced at the stove. ‘Now, Eska, how about that pine-needle tea?’

They talked long into the night – of Eska’s parents and the times before the Ice Queen’s rule, of the battle and the choir of stolen voices – and it was several hours later that they emerged from the hideaway on to the ledge behind the waterfall.

Whitefur bent down and picked up a bundle of long, thin objects. He handed them round. ‘Skis and poles. I found them in a food store out on the Driftlands and I brought a set for each of you. They have strappings for your boots and you’ll need to fix them fast because up in the Never Cliffs you can’t afford to put a foot wrong.’ He glanced at the eagle looking on from her nest. ‘Does she have a name?’

Eska nodded. ‘I call her Balapan.’

Whitefur smiled. ‘Like Blackfina’s song . . . Your mother had a beautiful voice and many a night, when we crossed paths, I heard her sing to you round the campfire. Songs of orcas in the deep and eagles in the skies. Balapan, she used to call the king of the birds, an old Erkenwaldian word for the wind because she felt that only eagles – and the Gods – really knew the power of the skies.’

And, at those words, Eska’s soul shook. A week ago in the Giant’s Beard she had found her way back to a memory of her ma and, though the Ice Queen might have used dark magic to steal her past, it was clear that some things, like love, were stronger even than an Ice Queen’s curse.

‘I must go now,’ Whitefur said. ‘Tusk guards are patrolling Deeproots and I want to make sure the Fur Tribe stay safe.’

Flint smiled at the thought of Tomkin discovering that an Erkenbear Wanderer – who was most definitely magical, and therefore completely illegal in his brother’s eyes – was keeping watch over Deeproots.

Whitefur looked from Eska to Flint to Blu. ‘Good luck in your search for the Lost Chambers. And remember, you have the wild on your side and the wild doesn’t play by ordinary rules.’

The group watched as the old man slipped out on to the rocks lining the river and, as they peered through the gap beneath the tumbling waterfall, they saw him walk under the starlit night. But when he was past the rowan trees, some way down the river, he stooped to all fours and his rhythm changed, from the measured gait of a man to the thundering power of a beast. Flint blinked. Ever since meeting Eska, his world had begun to shift and, while at first these changes of perspective had rocked him, now he was beginning to see that things weren’t as black and white as he had thought. And as he turned back inside the hideaway he understood a little better. Eska had a tribe after all – one made up of eagles and Erkenbears – and, day by day, it was growing.