This throws Rose, but only for a second. “Game is another of our words for magic, like playing. What I’m saying is that I might have magicked fairies here.”

“Nice,” he says with a smile. “I’d like to meet a fairy.”

“No you wouldn’t,” I say. “Rose’s fairies bit, and they weren’t tiny things. They were normal sized, and they didn’t even have wings.”

Perhaps it’s all this talk of biting fairies, but something makes us fall quiet as we float toward the pink light.

Then Rose says, “Can you two hear that?”

We can. It’s coming from up ahead: an ominous crashing sound. “Is it thunder?” I say, although that doesn’t seem to go with the beautiful pink light.

“Maybe another river?” suggests Rose.

“Nah,” says Win. “That’s a waterfall.”

As soon as he says this we know that he’s right. We cling to the ice, suddenly aware that while we’ve been chatting about fairies the raft has picked up speed. Now it’s shooting straight toward the end of the tunnel. No, I correct myself, it’s shooting straight toward the top of a waterfall.

Rose drops to her stomach and starts to paddle with her hands, trying to force the block of ice toward the rocks at the side. I help while Win does spells. But he’s either panicking or his run of good magic has worn out because all he manages to do is fill the tunnel with colored smoke.

“Slouchy fire!” he shouts. “Whisper fly!”

“Win, stop it!” I yell. “We can’t see a thing!”

Our craft gets caught in a current and starts to spin around. Rose and I give up trying to paddle and Win stuffs his wand back in his onesie and we just hold on to each other. The edge of the waterfall is getting closer and closer. I think it’s Win who starts screaming first, then Rose and I join in. At least, I think we’re screaming. The thundering of the waterfall is so loud, it’s all we can hear.

“This is it!” shouts Win as we reach the very edge. “I LOVE YOU GUYS!”

And then our little raft, which has carried us safely through the mountain, slips between two rocks . . . and gets stuck.

We look at each other, wide-eyed, hardly daring to believe our luck.

“Still love you,” whispers Win.

“Don’t move,” says Rose. She’s closest to the mouth of the tunnel and is able to lean into the mist and peer down. She whips her head back in. “It’s a seriously big drop,” she says. “It makes the On-Off Waterfall look like a leaky tap. If we fall down there then we will definitely, you know, d—”