Rose responds with a cry of her own. She screams in Hati’s face and it gets louder and louder. The wolves start to whimper, tails between their legs, and they back away. Hati gets her hand free and sends a punch toward Rose, but Rose just wraps her hand around Hati’s fist and forces it back down, all the time screaming at the top of her voice.

“Rose has totally lost it!” says Win.

Mitch grins. “No, she hasn’t. She’s found it.”

And then a strange thing happens. It’s not just a scream coming out of Rose’s mouth, but glittering splinters of ice. This is no puff of frosty breath. It’s like the dragons’ fire, and it pours out of Rose faster and faster, until the two girls are half hidden in a storm of white. I look at Mitch and Win, wondering if they’ve done a sneaky spell, but they look as amazed as me.

“I knew she was a warlock,” whispers Win.

Rose falls silent and gets to her feet. Her billowing cloud of ice moves with her, twisting around her arms and legs. Then she stands over Hati, raises one fist in the air and yells, “HEAR ME ROAR!”, slamming her foot down on the ice.

There is a crack like thunder. I’m not sure if it comes from the ice or the sky, but I feel the ice shift beneath me and freezing water slops over my feet. I look around, dazzled. Crowky is still marching toward us, the Box held high, but he’s unsteady on his feet. He slips and I realize that a patchwork of cracks is spreading across the ice like a spider’s web.

Rose is still standing over Hati. She looks like a magician as her storm continues to twist higher and higher up her raised arm. Finally it breaks away from her fingertips and floats up into the sky, where it forms a huge shifting shape above us. Flakes escape and drift down on my face.

Then, except for the groaning of the ice, everything is quiet.

Hati staggers to her feet. She finds her hat and pulls it down on her head. Then she whistles for her wolves.

One skulks over to her, Flea, but the rest run in different directions, jumping across the cracked ice, heading toward land. Hati watches them go, then turns and trudges away. Without her wolves she looks like the girl that she is. Flea pads behind her, until they are just shadows. Then the sun shines a little brighter and she’s gone.

The four of us flop down on the ice. We know we’ve only got moments until Crowky arrives, but we don’t rush back to the boat or try to get away. We’re too exhausted to move. For a few precious moments we rest, while up in the sky Rose’s ice cloud continues to shift and swell.