Bunny pressed her palm to the triangle of light in her chest and waited for it to tell her where to go. The light burned, as it did every day. She was mortal, dark-bodied, and the only one who had ever tried to earn her way back to the shining ones. No mortal had been welcomed into their realm since the first age. She meant to be the first. But the light gave her no direction now. It only hurt. She had walked Betrinia for days. The shining ones did not speak to mortals, so she read the light instead. Bright meant she neared her goal. Dim meant she strayed. For three days the light had stayed flat and sullen. She had a memory of the realm, soft as a dream: a high place, snow, cold air that tasted clean. That was all. She did not know which way to turn. She climbed a slope of loose stone and stopped. A spider sat in her path. It was white, with wide butterfly wings and a cluster of round black eyes. It did not run. It lifted two legs and pointed uphill, then waited. Bunny's chest flared. The light brightened so fast it stole her breath. She gasped and clutched her ribs. When the pain settled, she understood. The light answered the spider's direction. This creature knew the way. "You," she said. "You're taking me home." The spider turned and climbed. Bunny followed. Each time it pointed, the light swelled, and she chased that brightness up the mountain. Snow began to crust the rocks. The air grew thin and cold and clean, exactly as she remembered. Her legs shook, but she kept the spider in sight. At dusk they reached a wooden lodge built against the peak. Antlers crowned its roof. A carved mask stared from the door. Thick fur lined the windowsills, and snow banked the stone steps. The spider stopped at the threshold and would go no farther. Bunny stepped inside, certain she had arrived. She had not. The lodge was only a lodge, warm and empty of the shining ones. But in the back room steam rose from a great round basin. Its water swirled with stars, with spinning wheels of light, like a piece of the night sky poured into stone. She had seen that sky before, in her dream of the realm. She leaned over the edge. The light in her chest blazed brighter than it ever had. The heat in her ribs turned sharp, almost unbearable. She understood then why the spider had led her here. This was no destination. It was a door. The spider had brought her to the water. Now she had to decide whether to go into it. Bunny set one hand on the cold stone rim and looked down into the swirling stars.

The fairy lifted from the sealed crack and darted away. Bunny reached for it, but her hand closed on cold air. The small shape flew low over the dead ground, trailing light, and slipped into the dark between the ruins. That fairy carried the starlight she had torn from her own chest. If it vanished, she might never get that light back. She ran after it, boots slipping on the ice. The fairy wove through a graveyard of broken rides. It passed under a towering wheel of glacial metal. Frozen cars hung from its spokes, each shaped like a snarling face, jaws open and dripping with icicles. Bunny ducked beneath a cracked gondola and kept her eyes on the small light. It climbed toward the top of the wheel and stopped there, hovering, too high to reach. "It likes high places," said a flat voice. Bunny turned. A snowman stood near the wheel's base. Yellow stains marked his lumpy body. His eyes glowed red, deep as two tunnels, and when he looked at her she felt him search for something soft to press on. She had not met him before. She did not trust him. "Help me get it down," she said. "Climb," Smearsh said. "Or it stays up there until the cold eats it." Bunny looked at the frozen wheel. The supports were slick with ice. She started up anyway, gripping frosted bars, pulling herself past the snarling cars. Her chest burned where the light had been, but now the burn felt empty, like a hole. "You gave it everything," Smearsh said below her. "Now you're chasing a thief you made yourself." "Stop talking," she said. "You think the shining ones will take you." His voice stayed flat. "You have no light left to show them." The words found the crack in her. Her grip shook. She almost let go. Then she saw the fairy above, resting on the topmost car, its wings slow and tired. It was not fleeing. It was waiting. Bunny pulled level with it. She held out her open hand and did not grab. "I need some back," she said. "Not all of it. Just enough." The fairy watched her. Then it drifted onto her palm. Warmth spread from its wings into her hand, up her arm, into the empty place in her chest. A faint triangle of light flickered there again, thin but real. Not what she had lost. Enough to stand. She climbed down slowly. Smearsh watched her reach the ground. His red eyes dimmed, as if the crack he wanted had closed. "Small light," he said. "It's mine," Bunny answered. The fairy lifted from her hand and hovered at her shoulder. It pointed its tiny light upward, toward the massive wound splitting the glacier far above. Bunny followed its gaze. The fairy would guide her. But she would have to climb to that break, and only her fire could close it.

Bunny started up the glacier wall. The fairy flew ahead, marking the way with its small light. The massive wound split the ice far above, wide as a river. Her boots found cracks in the frozen face. Her chest held only a thin triangle now. She climbed anyway. Behind her, snow crunched. Smearsh followed. He did not grab or strike. He only climbed below her, slow and patient, his red eyes burning up at her back. "You can't close that wound," he said. "Your fire is almost gone." Bunny kept climbing. But the triangle in her chest dimmed. Each word pressed on the empty place. The light flickered, and her grip went weak. She stopped on a narrow ledge, breathing hard. "The shining ones watched six travelers die," Smearsh said. "They'll watch you too." Her light shrank to a spark. Her hands shook on the ice. She looked up at the wound and felt the climb was too far. Smearsh's words were winning. She had to stop listening, but his voice crawled inside her. Then something moved near his lumpy body. A small shape hung from a cord around his neck. A shrunken head, brown and stitched, its mouth stretched open. Thin white smoke curled from its teeth. Bunny stared. The head was whispering too. The doubts were not Smearsh's. They came from the thing he carried. "That head feeds you the lies," she said. Smearsh's eyes flared. "It only speaks what you already fear." Bunny clung to the ice and understood. The whispers were not true because she believed them. They were a trick strung around a dead thing's neck. She did not have to carry them. She let the fear fall away like loose snow. Her chest answered. The thin triangle steadied, then burned brighter. The light pushed back against the cold. Smearsh climbed higher, reaching for her ankle. The fairy darted down past Bunny's face and shot toward the glowing wound. Light tore from the crack in a flash. A shape burst out, long and bright, made of lightning and every color at once. A drake, faceless, crackling, formed from the realm's trapped starlight. It coiled once around Bunny, warm and electric, then dove at Smearsh. Smearsh lost his grip. The shrunken head swung and squealed its whispers into empty air. The drake's light struck him, and the snowman tumbled down the glacier wall. His red eyes shrank to two dots, then vanished into the shadow below. Bunny pressed her back to the ice and breathed. The drake hovered beside her, humming with power. Its light flowed into her chest. The triangle grew full and bright, brighter than it had been since she tore it out. The doubts were gone. The tempter was gone. Above her the wound still gaped, waiting for her fire. But now she had light enough to climb, and a drake of starlight to climb with. She reached for the next crack and pulled herself up.

Bunny pulled herself up the melted channel and reached the wound. It gaped above her, wide as a river, bleeding starlight into the cold. Far below, a huge crystalline figure braced against the glacier walls. Freudburgemur. He had held this realm together while Bunny climbed, and now his arms shook. His ice cracked along every seam. He was giving out. "Seal it," he called up. His voice ground like stone on stone. "I cannot hold much longer." Bunny saw the truth in his sagging shoulders. If he let go before she closed the wound, the whole glacier would fall on her. She pressed her chest against the ice. Her light poured into the break. It was not enough. The wound was too wide, and her fire had dimmed from every sacrifice before. The gap kept bleeding. Freudburgemur groaned. A crack split the wall near his head. "Your fire is small now." The blue glow returned beside her. Sof', the golden figure, faceless and old. She had drowned the whispering head with Bunny before. Now she looked at the wound, then at Bunny's weak light. "It won't close alone." "Then what do I do?" Bunny said. Sof' did not answer at once. Reaching for old knowledge seemed to cost her. "My light is older than theirs. It hurts to give." She pressed one golden hand flat against Bunny's chest. Blue light flowed into the triangle. The fire there flared, white and hot, bigger than Bunny had ever held. "Now," Sof' said. "Fast. I can't hold it open long." Bunny shoved her burning chest into the wound. Pain tore through her. The fire spread along the gash like flame on dry wood. Ice melted and ran, then froze again, clean and whole. The leak of starlight choked off. The glacier stopped shaking. Freudburgemur sank down the wall, spent but still standing. "It holds," he said. He almost looked like he might smile. He did not. "The realm holds." Bunny clung to the sealed ice, gasping. Her chest still held light, faint but steady. The wound was gone. Sof' stepped back. Her blue glow had thinned to almost nothing. Giving part of it had hurt her more than she showed. "I told the light I'd live for it," she said, flat. "I gave some away instead." She did not explain. Then a dark shape stood on the ledge where no one had been. A figure in a black suit and bowler hat, faceless, calm. Eridgenin. He watched the sealed wound without any sign of relief. "You fixed their ice," he said. His voice was plain, like he read it off a list. "Good. Now they have to decide." "Decide what?" Bunny said. "Whether to let a mortal come home," he said. "They buried that story once. They'd bury it again." He did not say more. The point was made.