He answered, distant and indistinct, and she sighed with relief. The mist, even though she’d created it out of nothing, was acquiring a solidity that unnerved her. She started to head towards where she thought Crows was, when she stumbled. She looked down, and a white rope of smoke was coiling around her ankle.

She jerked her foot through it. It unwound and reached forward again, its indistinct tip questing and probing. In her enthusiasm, she’d done something else other than summon fog.

‘Crows!’ She broke into a run again, and it was like a thousand little hands pulling her back. She twisted to shake them off, but they were insubstantial and momentary, forming and dissipating at will.

There was something building behind her. She could feel it growing and forming a shape, and she wasn’t going to outrun it. She’d made it. She’d have to confront it. No more running.

Mary stopped, clenched her fists, and closed her eyes. Then turned and opened them again. It was like staring up at a wall of albino squids, tentacles writhing without purpose or rhythm, moving ceaselessly and never resting.

She’d done this. She’d brought it into being from her own mind. It was her, though, her life manifested as a monster, inchoate and unreasoning. From birth, through life, nothing but thrashing and never anything solid to grip on to.

Until now, paradoxically when she had only the clothes she stood up in.

She held up her open palms. ‘I’m not you anymore.’

The tentacles continued to churn. They reached for her, recoiled from her, an endless dance.

‘You can go if you want. I’m different now.’

They faded, grew back, faded. The fog and her fear gave them permission to exist. And actually, she didn’t mind that much. Perhaps there’d always be a part of her that’d be wild and chaotic, formless and searching.

‘Okay. Stay, then. But you don’t rule me. The Red Queen is going to be fierce and brave, and never run away from anything ever again. She’s going to be beautiful and strong and happy, and she and Crows are going to rescue her friends. If you’re coming along, you do what I say from now on, not the other way around.’

She stood her ground, and the monster folded itself back into the mist, slowly, until there was a moment when she thought it had gone, but it hadn’t. Then the whiteness faded, stretched out and grew ragged. She could see the trees, and through the trees, the lake, and by the lake, Crows.

He raised a sceptical eyebrow as she approached, breathless.

‘You know that, like most things, magic is not safe.’ His shadow-drawing hung in tatters behind him.

‘Now you tell me.’ Her own mist was a few streamers still curled in the hollows of trees. She straightened her back. ‘It didn’t hurt me.’