Because Kokoro had her own wish, and she desperately wanted it to come true.

That Miori Sanada would vanish from the face of the earth.

How wonderful it would be if this girl – who’d humiliated her for liking the smell of rain – had never been born. With the palms of her hands she gently touched the mirror’s cool surface, and pushed through.

IT FELT LIKE BEING LIFTED up, bodily, into a pool of light. She held her breath.

She dared to open her eyes again and found the same tall grandfather clock, flanked by the staircases. In front, a bright stained-glass window.

She clutched her tote bag and scanned the room. There had been seven of them. Now there was no one. She found herself slightly relieved to be alone.

She turned around and looked at the mirror she’d just slipped through, now beaming out all the colours of the rainbow, like sunlight reflecting off an oily puddle. Two of the other six mirrors lined up in the castle foyer were likewise shining. The one on the far right, and the second one from the left. The remaining four appeared like ordinary mirrors, reflecting the staircases and, she realized with a start, herself.

Maybe the mirrors only shine when the kids are actually in the castle?

She sensed that the Wolf Queen might suddenly turn up to explain things, but when she spun around again, she was still alone.

She felt a little deflated, but suddenly a thought occurred to her. The mirror she’d emerged from was the one in the middle of the row of seven. There were no name plates to remind them whose mirror was whose. She thought she’d better remember which was hers, something she hadn’t noticed before.

In the silence, she thought she heard a noise.

So somebody was coming.

She set off cautiously in the direction of the sound. It seemed to be coming from deeper in the heart of the castle, and it didn’t seem to fit. It wasn’t the tinkle of the piano from before, or the murmur of voices. It wasn’t a sound that belonged.

If she wasn’t mistaken, it sounded like the electronic beeping of a video game.

IT LED HER TO ANOTHER room with a fireplace, sofa and table, the sort of space that in an ordinary house might be called the living room.

In a castle perhaps it was better to call it a drawing room, or the parlour. She wasn’t exactly sure what the right word was, but it struck her as the sort of room you brought guests into, where people gathered.

The door was open so she walked straight in.

Her eyes alighted on two boys.