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Before our eyes, the skin fused over the flesh. Alma repeated on each gash, and within moments, Helena’s arm wasn’t just healed but entirely unblemished. She didn’t have a single scar.

“How does it feel?” Alma asked her.

Helena flexed her fingers, then bent her elbow. “Like before. Like it never happened.”

Alma slipped the disk into the pocket of her coat. “Now we know the magic works. That’s a small mercy.”

“A giant one, I daresay,” Helena said. She bent in and kissed Alma on the cheek. “You’re too modest, sweetheart. You’re our genius.”

“It’s true,” I said. “You are.”

Alma blushed. “Let’s go,” she said. “Time is running short.”

The horses had calmed, and when I pulled at the reins, Poppy and Clover jerked forward, eager to move again. “Do you remember what the place with the gate looks like?” I asked the others.

“I remember the tree,” Alma said. “We’ll recognize it.”

We kept ascending ever higher, and I was sure we had missed the spot when Helena pointed ahead. “There it is.”

She was right. It was the tree where I had tied up the horses before. Where the opening into the mountain had been was nothing but a snowdrift now. I reined in the horses. “I don’t suppose you brought a magic chisel,” I told Alma.

“Sadly, no.”

“How in the world do we get inside, then?”

Alma smiled. “Magic, of course.”

I watched as she opened the book on her lap. A snowflake landed on my sleeve, then another, then a third. The next moment a blizzard was raging all around us.

“More of Alfrun’s tricks,” Helena said. “She’s determined to keep us out.”

She crawled onto the bench between us, and I pulled a blanket over all three of us to spare the book from the snow.

“We just need to find the symbol for ‘open’ and then find a way to write it. Maybe just in the snow?”

She leafed through the pages, and Helena and I bent closer to see. There were so many runes, but none seemed to be the one we were looking for, and my heart beat like galloping hooves in my chest. It had to be close to noon now. Time was running out, and we weren’t even inside the mountain yet. It robbed the breath from my chest to think that I might never see Lilja again, that she would wait for me in vain. The letters turned to dark splotches, and I blinked away the tears because I couldn’t sit here and wail. Lilja needed me.

Helena bent forward and took my hand. “We’ll find a way,” she said. “We will.”

I nodded and Helena’s eyes fixed on something behind me. I turned. The snow had vanished, and the mountainside was gaping darkly even through the storm. The door had been opened, but no one was in sight.

“Hrafn,” Alma said. “It has to be him.”

“Why would he help us?” I asked.

“He wants to get rid of Lilja without waking the ire of the other elves. If she’s freed, she’s not there to cause trouble for Alfrun, and he relies on her for his position.”

“You belong at a court,” I said. “Your scheming is impressive.”

She shook her head. “I belong in Norstad with you, Helena and Lilja, and we’re going back there. All of us.” She crawled back into the sleigh, and I could just about make her out through the whirling snow as she stuck the copper knife into her boot. “Let’s go.”

I tied up the horses like I had the last time. Helena placed some hay for them on the ground while I tied the blankets to them to keep them warm in the snowfall.

“Do we bring in the spears and the rifle?” I asked with the box with the doll under my arm.

Alma tapped her lip as she considered. “Only the knife. What if the gate closes if we try to bring the others?”

“Come on,” Helena said. “Before it closes again.”