‘What kind of weird snow is this?’ Ethan complained. ‘It’s messing up our photo.’
‘This isn’t snow,’ Shay said. ‘It looks more like—’
‘Stars,’ Stella said. She put out her hand and one of the flakes landed in the middle of her gloved palm, where it sparkled and shone. ‘Perhaps these are starflakes? Maybe you only find them at the coldest part of the Icelands? They’re falling right here and nowhere else.’
The others glanced around and saw she was right. The starflakes only drifted down around the castle, making a faint ringing noise when they knocked into each other, rather like wind chimes.
‘That must be why the fairies gave you your second name,’ Beanie said to Stella. ‘Because you come from the same place as the starflakes.’
In another moment, the starflakes had stopped falling, and lay twinkling in a shining silver carpet. Once the photo had been taken, Beanie produced some bottles of beard oil, which they emptied in order to fill up with starflakes to take back with them. They didn’t melt or break underfoot, but chinked together like tiny diamonds.
After storing the starflakes away on the sled, the junior explorers finally turned their attention to the double doors of the castle looming above them. They were made of white marble, shot through with sparkling veins of silver and gold, and they had intricate pictures carved into them: icicles and crowns and snowflakes ran all the way around the edge and, in the centre, there stood a tall, beautiful woman in a fur-lined dress, with a glittering crown upon her head.
‘This is definitely a snow queen’s castle,’ Ethan said nervously. ‘We should leave. It’s not safe here.’
Stella walked over to the nearest window, her boots crunching on the twinkling starflakes beneath her feet. She lifted her hand and squinted through dirty glass at a deserted room. It looked like it had once been some kind of dining room, with a hugely long table taking up most of the space, and ornate candelabra placed along its length all covered in cobwebs. The tapestries hanging on the walls were frozen stiff, and there was a puddle of what looked like spilled wine on the flagstones by the fireplace, frozen solid.
‘The castle is deserted,’ Stella said, looking back at the others. ‘There’s no one here.’
Shay walked over to the doors and tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge.
‘Locked,’ he said.
‘Perhaps there’s another way in round the back,’ Stella said.
‘I really think we should leave,’ Ethan said. ‘I have a bad feeling about this place.’
Stella reached her hand out toward the door, wanting to see for herself that it really was locked. But, before her fingers could make contact with the wood, there was a soft click, the handle moved down a fraction, and the door swung open just slightly, exposing a sliver of darkness that led into the hallway beyond.
Stella looked back at the others, almost beside herself with excitement. She therefore couldn’t help feeling a bit annoyed with Ethan when he decided to put a dampener on things by grabbing her sleeve and saying, ‘Stella, please, let’s turn back. I can sense magic in there and it’s … I don’t know … it’s dark, somehow – it feels bitter.’
‘The frosties and the carnivorous cabbage tree were pretty dark and bitter too but we still faced them,’ Stella said.
‘Yes, and I was the one who got bitten both times—’ Ethan began, gesturing pointedly at the plaster on his hand.
‘Oh, I’m sure nothing’s going to bite you in here,’ Stella interrupted impatiently. ‘Besides, that plaster is from Dora pecking you. What’s got into everyone? What kind of an explorer just walks away from an abandoned castle without at least having a look inside first? I’m going in. You can all stay outside if you want to.’
And with that, she reached her gloved hands forward and pushed both doors open wide. The sunlight behind them spilled into the corridor, illuminating the dusty flagstones nearest their feet and allowing them to pick out the massive chandelier suspended above them, and the vast curved staircase leading up to the next floor. Much of it was still in shadows, however, so Stella took a step inside to take a closer look at everything.
The moment her snow boot crossed the threshold, something happened. The half burned candles in the chandelier above her burst into life, as did the sconces on the walls, casting out a golden, flickering light that illuminated the entire room. Stella saw that there were tapestries frozen onto the walls here, too, and a couple of stone trolls guarded the staircase.
But, most astonishingly of all, the air around Stella began to sparkle and glitter. The hood of her cloak fell back, as if pushed by an invisible hand – and then a tiara formed on her hair right before their eyes, curling tendrils of white gold twisting around ice gems and pale crystals and cold chips of cut diamond.
Stella reached up to snatch the tiara from her head and stared at it in astonishment.
‘This … I, I remember this. I’ve seen it before, in my dreams,’ she said.
The others stared back at her, all equally gobsmacked, and then a whispery female voice spoke, seeming to come from all around them: ‘Welcome home, princess. We’ve been waiting for you for a very long time.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘Who said that?’ Stella asked, looking all around.
‘To your right,’ the voice said.
Stella turned and found herself staring straight into her own reflection in a huge, ornate mirror. The tiara, she noticed, was no longer in her hand but somehow back on her head again. She snatched it off hurriedly. The white gold felt cold, even through her glove. ‘I can’t see you,’ she said.
‘Look closer,’ the voice came again.
She looked back into the mirror, and this time, she saw a pale face
