It must be past midnight when we get back to Win’s cave and curl up in sleeping bags by the fire.

I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep straight away and I barely think about Rose and what she’s doing on Mitch’s island. But the next morning, as we’re getting ready to go to the Tangled Forest, I wish that she was with us. I know that she’d love what we’re about to do—go looking for unicorns—so I write her a note telling her where we’re going and I leave it under a stone by the entrance to Win’s cave.

If she comes back, she’ll know where to find us.

Win and I walk along past the river, then through a meadow. I use the map to trace our route while Win dashes ahead of me, pushing flowers out of our way and surprising fuzzies and the odd monkey. I can’t wait to see my first unicorn, but I still find myself hanging back to look at things. I breathe in the minty smell of a Roar sunflower and let a ladybug crawl over my arm. Its spots are a dazzling gold one moment, pink the next.

“Hurry up!” shouts Win, and I run to catch up with him.

“This is so different from last time,” I say.

“I know.” He shakes his head bitterly. “No bikes.”

This morning when I told Win that there was no point taking one bike, it didn’t go down well.

“No,” I say, “I mean Roar’s back to how it used to be, full of creatures and flowers, and there are no massive sinkholes to fall into.”

“Or scarecrows waiting to grab us,” adds Win.

“Exactly!”

We leave the meadow and walk in the shadow of the Tangled Forest. The trees are huge and their fat trunks tower over us. Branches twist together, forming a thick wall that seems impossible to get through.

“How do we get in?” I say, looking for a gap between the trees.

“I know a special way,” says Win. He has an excited gleam in his eye, but won’t say any more. Win’s always loved surprises.

As we walk alongside the forest, Win tells me what he’s been up to since we left. A lot of practicing “mind-blowing” magic, it seems, and hanging out with the Lost Girls. “Obviously Stella didn’t want me to,” says Win, “and she kept trying to get rid of me and telling me to go away, but the little ones nagged her to let me stay until she gave in.”