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Helena and Alma went exploring. Lilja pointed down the side of the slope. “It was right there where he caught us.” She laid her hand against her throat. “I don’t even remember her name. The girl. Isn’t that odd?”

“She had a long, happy life because of you,” I said.

Lilja blinked up at me. “You truly think so?”

“I can’t know for sure, but I know you saved her.” I pulled Lilja close. “Are you frightened?”

“Not yet. It’s just a mound of dirt now.”

“If it had been summer, I would have picked you a lily-of-the-valley,” I said and kissed her cheek.

She brushed a lock of my hair behind my ear. “And I would have picked you a whole bouquet, Selma.”

Back at the sleigh, we switched to Alma driving and Lilja and I sitting in the back. Helping each other, we distributed the sausages and bread for our lunch.

“I thought about something,” Helena said to Lilja after her first bite. “Were you tied to the mountain like you were to the mound?”

“Yes.”

“How did you escape then?”

“We didn’t.”

“But you made it out of the mountain. How?”

Lilja stuffed a piece of bread in her mouth and chewed before she answered. Her appetite had improved since she had confessed to us who she really was. It was as if she was becoming herself more each day. I loved that while at the same time it made my heart feel as if it had been stomped on.

“Those symbols on the bracelets I made,” she said. “My father didn’t teach me those. Not willingly, anyway. I learned them by watching him. I was very good at not being noticed, and when he was absorbed in his work, I would tiptoe around his workshop. It took me years, maybe even decades, to figure out the power of each symbol, but it was the only thing I had in abundance—time.”

I thought of how I had watched her study the objects in both mine and my uncle’s store, as if trying to figure out how everything worked.

“In Alfrun’s dungeons,” Lilja said, “there was no wood and no paint. There wasn’t much of anything at all, except cold and darkness and hunger. There was stone, though. The walls, the floor, the ceiling. All of it was stone. I chipped at it. With my nails at first, then later with a sharp piece of rock. Again it took me years, I think, to gather enough pebbles for us all and to scratch the symbol that unclasped our magical chains into them. I made myself another one—a spell of silence. Late one night, holding both those pebbles in my hand, I managed to get the keys from the guard as he was dozing. Mind you, these aren’t normal keys but magical ones. There was no way of opening the doors without them. The others followed me out. There are miles of tunnels to walk through until you get outside, but it was night. The court was sleeping. It seemed like we walked in the dark for half an eternity, but finally we reached the outer door. The keys worked on those too and then… then we were free.”

My throat had gone dry. “But not for long?”

Lilja shook her head. “They worked, the spells, but only on the guards. Alfrun’s too powerful. She sensed we were fleeing. She came after us in the guise of a wolf.” Lilja let the sausage in her hand sink to her lap. “She tore a girl to shreds in front of all of us. She bled out in the snow.”

I took Lilja’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why not you?” Helena asked. “If you were the one who came up with the plan?” Her question was so blunt I almost cringed, but Lilja didn’t seem to mind.

“To tell you honestly,” she said, “I wanted it to be me. I would have paid any price to stay free. Even… even death. Alfrun senses such things, so instead she came up with a different punishment for me—a freedom that wasn’t a freedom at all. An eternity as a doll, played with and admired but dead as stone. When I screamed, there was no sound. When I tried to move, my limbs stayed still. I couldn’t even blink.” She shook her head. “The things I saw. Ugly things, beautiful things, tedious things, festive things, sorrowful things. Each and every one made me burn to be a part of them. To be alive.”

“She’s unspeakably cruel,” Helena said, and the fury in her voice surprised me. Despite what she had been through herself, Helena wasn’t an angry sort of person—but she was right to be this time. Alfrun was a monster.

Alma switched the reins from one hand to the other as Helena handed her another slice of bread. “If you knew the symbols from your father,” she asked Lilja, “why didn’t you flee his mound?”

“I was a coward. I hadn’t gathered my courage yet. With him, I was always frightened, but under Alfrun’s mountain, I found the rage in my heart.”

I pulled up my sleeve and held out my wrist. “Tell me what the different ones mean.”

If one of the beads broke or was lost, I wanted to be able to recreate it.

Lilja pointed at the first bead, a silvery green one. “This is the one that wards you from some of Alfrun’s strength.”

“Like when she tried to hurt me?”

“Yes.” Lilja’s finger moved on to the second bead, which was a royal blue. “This one gives you courage.”