“Go on! Out with it!” The flittery creature places her hands on her waist in impatience and bares her teeth at me.
Felicity puts her pale face to the bones on the other side. “Gemma, come on. Just say something!”
“What is your fear?” the gate asks again. A cold wind blows from the other side, chilling me. The clouds churn and boil, gray and black.
“I fear the Winterlands,” I say carefully. “I fear what I will find there.”
The gate’s cold breath pushes out in a long, satisfied sigh, as if it smells my fear and loves it.
“And your wish?”
I do not answer straightaway. The bitter wind slaps my cheeks, makes my nose run. The heart of the Winterlands is impatient.
“Your wish,” it hisses on.
“I…I don’t know.”
“Gemma!” Felicity pleads from the other side.
The fairy zips around my head till I’m dizzy. She digs her claws into my shoulder. “Tell! Tell!”
I bat her away and she snarls at me.
“I don’t know! I don’t know what I want, but I wish I did. And that is the truest answer I can give.”
The heart beats more quickly. The gate rattles and moans. I am afraid I have angered it. I shrink back. But the gate creaks open, the bones banging in the harsh wind.
Felicity grins at me and reaches out her hand. “Let’s go before it changes its mind!”
My foot hovers near the entrance, then comes down on the rocky ground of the other side. I’m inside the Winterlands. There are no flowers here. No green trees. It is black sand and hard rock, much of it covered in snow and ice. The wind shrieks and howls across the tops of the cliffs and nips at my cheeks. Great handprints of dark clouds move on the horizon. Small puffs of steam rise to meet them, creating a billowing mist that casts everything in a thin wash of gray. There is a feeling to this place, a deep loneliness that I recognize in myself.
“This way!” The fairy bids us follow her toward the craggy mountains, pockmarked with ice, that guard the horizon.
Our feet leave faint traces in the black sand as we walk.
“What a melancholy land,” Ann says.
It is barren and mournful, but it does have a strange, hypnotic beauty.
There isn’t another soul for miles that we can see. It’s eerie, like a town that has been emptied. For a moment, I think I see pale creatures watching us from a distance. But when I shine the torch, they are gone, a mirage of the mist and the cold.
I can hear the sounds of water. A narrow gorge cuts through the cliffs and a river runs straight through it. Keep to the river, Circe said, but this seems to be certain death. The current is fierce, and the pathway on either side of it looks no wider than our feet.
“Is there another way?” I ask the fairy.
“None that I know of,” she answers.
“I thought you said you were a guide,” Felicity mutters.
“I do not know all, mortal girl,” Golden Wings snaps.
We tread lightly on the rocks, careful not to slip on the patches of glassy ice that show our pale faces like ghost mirrors. I take Wendy’s hand and help her through.
“Look!” Ann shouts. “Over there.”
A magnificent vessel floats through the mist and drifts to the black sand of the shore. The boat is long and narrow with oars sticking out of holes in the sides. It reminds me of a Viking ship.
“We are saved!” Pippa shouts. She hikes up her skirts and rushes for the boat. The factory girls follow. I grab Felicity by the arm.
“Wait a moment. Where did that boat come from? Where does it go?” I ask the fairy.
“If you want to know, you will have to take the risk,” she answers, showing sharp teeth.
“Come on, Gemma,” Felicity pleads, watching Pippa and the others get ahead.
“We’ll be fine,” Ann agrees, taking the torch from me, ready to run.
“Might be treacherous for the sightless one.” The fairy lifts a lock of Wendy’s hair and puts it to her nose, inhaling, then gives it a lick. “Leave her behind. I’ll look after her.”
Wendy holds fast to my arm.
“I most certainly will not,” I say.
The fairy flutters near my mouth. “She’ll only slow your passage.”
“I’ve had enough of you, I think.” I blow hard and the green shining beastie tumbles through the air. She curses me as I lift my gown and run for the boat, pulling Wendy quickly behind me.
“Right,” I say, stepping into the pitching craft. “We’re on our own now. Let’s keep our wits about us. There could be traps. There could be trackers—or worse.”