Rosa flew at the plum trees, stumbling through the snow, desperate to collect as many plums as possible. She would not be able to get them all, she realised that. Her hopes of quietly filling the sack with the fruit had vanished. But she could not have come all this way for just one single, solitary plum. She had to at least try to get more. Only the black apple trees fell upon her at once, and suddenly they were savage things, baring their teeth and hissing and drooling.

She suddenly felt that they would gobble her up if they could, tearing her apart with those monstrous teeth. Beatrice had told her once about how the trees could easily swallow a rabbit down whole. If the dragon had not been with her, then perhaps they would have done the same to her. But the clockwork beast roared out its fury and its white flames set the trees alight the moment they touched them.

One apple tree recoiled straight back into a plum tree and the fire spread to it instantly. After that, the other plum trees quickly caught alight too and the air became filled with purple fire and the smouldering smell of burning regret. The magical plums shrivelled upon the branches, their skins blackening and blistering.

Then, above the roar of the flames, a voice spoke her name and Rosa turned to see Beatrice standing behind her. She had pulled a cloak on over her nightgown, along with a pair of boots; her hair was long and loose down her back, and her mouth was twisted into a grimace of pain as she took in her burning trees and the clockwork dragon still blowing fire down upon them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Beatrice’s opium dreams had been particularly unkind that day, and when she first emerged from the cruel cocoon of them, she could not quite tell what was real and what was a nightmare. She awoke to the smell of smoke and jerked upright in her bed to see the flicker and leap of dancing shadows across her bedroom wall. The crackle and spit of flames mixed with hideous, inhuman screams that surely must not be real, but part of some opium terror.

She leapt from her bed, staggered to the window and looked out upon a scene that filled her with a sickening horror. Her beloved black apple trees were all on fire, their dark branches bent and writhing beneath the flames like tortured, twisted limbs.

Oh, please, she thought as she threw on a cloak. Please let this be an opium nightmare.