Rosa checked to make sure the twins were still asleep before tiptoeing out into the corridor and down the stairs. It had taken her many hours of patient work to craft the carousel, and she didn’t want to have to make replacement ponies. She paused long enough to pull on her furs and winter boots, then went out through the front door and round to the back of the house where the horses had fallen. The night was ferociously cold, but clear and still – heavy with the promise of yet more snow. She reached the spot beneath the nursery window, half-fearing that she would find only a collection of broken cogs and clockwork.

Instead there were tiny hoof prints, leading straight into the arboretum of Scots pines. Rosa sighed, but pressed forward. The ponies’ mechanisms would freeze if she left them overnight and could damage them. She frowned as she trudged through the snow, wondering what could have possessed them to behave like that. She’d never had clockwork creatures run away from her before. Truly, it was most puzzling. And if she’d known they were going to trot off so fast, she would have been sure to bring a lamp …

Just as the thought occurred to her, there was the soft flicker of lamplight up ahead and she stopped in surprise. It was past midnight. Surely there could not be anyone else out at this hour? Even the groundskeeper and gardeners would be tucked away inside their cottages. And yet there were certainly lanterns hanging from the branches, clearly marking out a path through the pine trees.

The snow crunched, deep and soft beneath Rosa’s boots, as she made her way further into the arboretum. Between the stark outline of the spindly branches, she thought she glimpsed the white blur of some large shape up ahead. A familiar tune suddenly drifted through the darkness, icy notes hanging in the air like stars to guide her way. It was the lullaby melody from the carousel. Only Rosa hadn’t brought it with her – it was waiting inside the house. But the tune sounded different somehow: no longer tiny and tinny enough for music boxes and nurseries, but fuller and clearer and somehow coloured in, as if it formed part of the real world now, instead of a child’s frosted fairy tale …

Rosa turned a corner of the path and stopped abruptly. She had found her little ponies. And she had found the Carousel of Icicles.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN