“Too cold? Ha!” she says, but her teeth are chattering and her fingers shake as she pours the contents of the bottle on to the frilled edges of her tail. Immediately the liquid turns bright blue and starts to fizz. “Ooh . . . ow! That’s a bit cold,” she admits with a sheepish smile.

“What does it do?” asks Win.

“It freezes stuff,” she says, then she slaps her tail down into the water, once, twice, three times. And stuff starts to freeze.

There’s a cracking sound and the water around the boat turns to ice. Mitch thwacks her tail up and down, beating it away from us. “I don’t want you here,” she mutters. “I want you over there!”

Suddenly she stops pounding the water and turns to us. “Listen carefully. This ice is going to spread out to sea until it traps the Alisha—fantastic—but unfortunately it’s also going to trap you two in this swan-thingy in the sea as well.”

“What?” I say.

“I know, not so good. The thing is, confession time, my magic is flipping awesome, but once I let it go, I can’t really control it. So in a moment I’m going to swim like mad and get you as close to the Alisha as possible before you get stuck.”

“What happens then?” asks Win.

“I’m going to find warmer water and air, and you’re going to get out and walk to the Alisha.”

“Will the fog last long enough to hide us from view?” I say.

“Probably,” she says, then she grins and dives below the water.

Mitch does swim like mad. Her tail cuts through the water so fast that it’s a blur and her hair streams out behind her. We bash through the ice and water sprays up around us. The paddleboat has become a speedboat. Mitch only slows down when the ice becomes too thick to smash through. Then she guides us down ever narrowing channels.

I’m not surprised when the swan’s puffed-up chest hits a chunk of ice and we come to a juddering halt. Within seconds the water around us has frozen, locking us in place. The fiberglass body of the swan starts to make alarming cracking sounds and when I peer over the side I see Mitch waving at us from under a thick layer of ice. Her hair wraps around her webbed fingers and I see her blue lips mouth, “That way!” as she points in the direction the boat is facing. Then, with a flick of her tail and a blown kiss—or maybe an escaped bubble of air—she’s gone.

Now Win and I are alone in the middle of a frozen ocean. The silence is uncanny. Fog rolls over the side of the boat and the paddleboat groans.

“Let’s go and get Rose,” says Win, and together we climb onto the slippery ice and walk into the fog.

Chapter 49