Woferl leapt up first. “Let’s go,” he whispered eagerly. Before I could refuse, he had risen and hurried to the door.

“Woferl, wait—” I started to say, but it was too late. He had already rushed out. I slid my feet into my pair of slippers and followed his path, into our living room and out our front entrance, down the flights of stairs that would lead us to the main street.

My feet crunched on snow. It surprised me so much that I cried out and stopped in my tracks.

I stood in the middle of the Getreidegasse with a sky full of stars above my head, illuminated by the brilliant light of two moons hovering over opposite ends of the street. The city was deserted, the dim streetlights fading into the darkness around us. The snow did not look like how I remembered it from earlier that evening, dirty with mud and ice, shoved onto the sidewalks in heaps. This snow was clean and white, untouched. I looked up. All the windowsills were covered in this pure snow, so soft that I thought it would feel like a warm blanket to the touch. I reached down and put my hand against its surface. It fell apart against my fingers.

The snow layers the forest in white, like frosting on the cakes at the bakery.

Woferl’s voice echoed somewhere ahead of me. When I looked in its direction, I realized that the little crooked path I’d once seen from our window had now reappeared at the end of the Getreidegasse. It led away from the buildings and toward the dark forest of upside-down trees, and at the forest’s entrance stood the same sign that had been there when I’d last seen it. Now, though, I could read the words.

“To the Kingdom of Back,” I whispered.

Next to the sign was Woferl. He waved at me. Somewhere in the forest behind him, I glimpsed Hyacinth’s lean figure heading deeper in. I gathered up the bottom of my nightgown, shook snow from my slippers, and hurried to my brother.

We walked in silence. The path started with cobblestones, but as we continued, the cobblestones began to fade away, growing sparser, until we walked on dirt lined with blankets of snow. Woferl pressed against me as we passed the trees. Their roots reached up toward the stars and cut the sky into slivers. Their leaves curled at the bottom of each tree, and in them were pools of still, black water, with no bottom that I could see.

I remembered my own warning about the pools and pulled us away from their edges, lest we fell in. Our surroundings had grown so dark that I could barely make out the path ahead. I tried not to look behind us. Shadows crept into every crevice when there was no light to push back their edges, breathing life into things that shouldn’t exist.

“Are you afraid?” I asked Woferl.

His small shoulders trembled. “No,” he lied. “Where do you think the path will lead?”

“Well, I can’t be sure,” I said, trying to keep him calm. “It is your turn to tell me a story, remember? Tell me, where would you want this path to lead?”

Woferl smiled. “To the shore!” he exclaimed in a hushed voice. “To the white sand and warm ocean.”

As he spoke, pinpoints of light caught my attention. They flitted from tree to tree, clusters that glowed blue, the same tiny faeries that had appeared in our music room on the first night. With them came the curious sensation that Hyacinth must be near. Sure enough, one of the lights came to rest in my hand. It felt like a feather.

This way, it cried. This way.

And with their light and that of the two moons, our path was illuminated just enough for us to see it winding deeper into the woods.

We walked for a very long time, until the forest grew darker and darker, and the trees grew closer and closer together. I wondered if perhaps we had missed a trail that could have branched away, that Hyacinth may have gone a different direction. The tiny faeries had faded away too, leaving us wandering alone through a colorless world.

Finally, when I was ready to turn back, the darkness of the forest began to fade and I saw what seemed like a strange blue light appear on the tree trunks. “Do you see that, Woferl?” I said to him. “Maybe we’re almost there.” He didn’t answer. It was just as well—I did not want him to ask me again whether or not I knew where this path could lead.

The end to the forest was so abrupt that I stumbled on my slippers. The last of the upside-down trees now stood beside us, and in front of us stretched a shore of white sand that hugged the edge of a deep sapphire ocean, its color interrupted by two perfect silver reflections of the moons.

I caught my breath at the sight of it. This was the ocean from my very first dream.

Dozens of blue seashells lay winking against the white sand. Woferl noticed me admiring their color and, on impulse, picked one up and shoved it into his pocket.

Hyacinth was waiting at the edge of the water. Tonight, he looked more like a boy than ever, his tall, slender frame covered with skeleton leaves, his hair rumpled. His eyes reflected the ocean. “Are you cold?” he asked me.

I shook my head. The winter chill that had clung to us on the Getreidegasse and the dark forest path did not exist here, and the ocean’s water lay as still and flat as a mirror’s surface.

“Good.” The princeling nodded at us. “I have a task for you both.”

“What is it?” I asked.

Hyacinth gave me a sidelong smile and gestured toward the water. “I need a night flower,” he replied. “You can find them at the bottom of this ocean, inside a hidden cave. I’m unable to get there myself. You see, I cannot swim well.”

“These flowers grow inside an underwater cave?” I said.

“Yes,” he replied. “This cave is a lovely grotto, and inside lives an old witch, with wrinkled hands and long white hair. I sealed her in the cave long ago with the rising waters, and she has remained there ever since. She has stayed there for so long, in fact, that her feet have become part of the cavern floor. She cannot move from her spot, and her powers, although terrible, weaken when the twin moons are not aligned. Still, you must be careful. She can call great golden fire with her hands and engulf you with its flames. She feeds on the night flowers that grow along the cave walls, and anything else she manages to reach.”

Woferl’s vision of a guardian for the ocean, I thought. A sudden sadness filled my heart. “She must be very lonely,” I said.

Hyacinth turned his eyes to me. “Do not take pity on her. She will try to lure you to her with a sweet song, the most beautiful music you’ve ever heard in your life, so potent that sometimes sailors can hear it across many oceans. They call her the Queen of the Night.” He stepped closer to us. “Do not approach her. Do not look into her eyes. Do not talk to her. She is not what she seems.”

I swallowed, distracted by his nearness, and promised that we would not.

He turned away from us and pointed out toward the still waters. Not far from the shore lay a series of rock formations, carved from limestone, and when I looked from a different angle, the moonlight washed them into silver.