She had thought they were heading towards one of the garden’s dead ends, but then the path turned a corner and the white frog paused beneath an archway. Only it was not an arch Beatrice recognised. Her garden had two gates – the one covered in ice roses that formed the main entrance into the garden, and the one decorated in ordinary sugared plums that led to the supper booths. This gate was something entirely different. It was hung all over with keys.

They were a variety of sizes, from those tiny enough to fit into a lady’s jewellery box, to heavy ones large enough to open a castle’s door. The lantern light sparkled over their colours – gold and silver and white and black, cast in steel, and iron, and marble, and brass. Some were extraordinarily ornate, royal keys to unlock royal treasures, whilst others were plain and humble. Together they made up a beautiful array that took Beatrice straight back to playing with her mother’s key chest. And as she walked closer, she realised that these keys were in fact the exact same ones.

She stared at the key with a gargoyle’s head on the top that had always so fascinated her, and the tiny white one with the snowflakes etched into it, and the wooden one onto which she had carved her own name. There it was, her name looking back at her. How could this be? These were not just any keys. They were her keys. The ones she had thrown into the wishing well the day her mother died. So how could they also be here?

Beatrice looked at the frog, which had stopped and seemed to be waiting for her on the path just up ahead. She glanced back the way she’d come and it seemed even more unfamiliar than before. She saw the path was made from white marble rather than gravel. Had that been the case before? How had she failed to notice that the path beneath her feet was smooth and that her boots did not crunch over it? Either way, she knew there were no white marble paths in her garden. They were something from that other garden, the magical one that belonged to the Spider Queen.

She turned back towards the frog and passed beneath the gate hung with keys. Lanterns flickered from pines that she did not recognise, and gold spider webs sparkled from the branches, along with pink sugar mice and glass angels. And, most delightfully of all, she could see black apple trees up ahead, quite unharmed and reaching out their branches towards her. She now knew for certain that she was no longer in her own garden at all. Somehow, somewhere along the way, she had slipped into another one altogether.