He’s up again, reaching for her wand. Wellbelove lets him have it. I wonder for a moment if he’s forgotten that he doesn’t have magic. But he’s not casting a spell . . . He’s just flicking the wand—holding it so that she can see.
Since when does Snow understand advanced wandwork?
He gives the wand back to Wellbelove, and she imitates him, hooking her wrist.“Join the club!”
The goat cocks its head at her and scampers closer.
Wellbelove beams up at Snow. “It’s working!” She casts the spell again, rolling her wrist more precisely.
The goat goes prancing towards the herd.
Agatha grabs Snow’s arm, delighted. “Who taught you that?”
“Ebb,” he says. “I can probably remember a few more tricks. Though I think her staff was better suited for this . . .”
The two of them trade the wand back and forth, while Snow teaches her the apparently fine art of magickal goat herding.
They look like a painting, standing there. Or a photograph from the 1940s. Wellbelove is wearing wide-legged blue trousers and a white cotton eyelet shirt. Her hair is down. Straight as a pin and shining. Her colour is high.
Snow stands easily at her side. Comfortable with her in a way he is with almost no one else. He’s got on lightweight grey trousers and that blue argyle shirt I lent him—that I bought, hoping to give to him someday. His curls are bouncing in the breeze.
Crowley, they’re pretty together.
A goat ambles towards me, nosing at the grass—then seems to catch my scent and startles away. “Good instincts,” I say.
Are these goats really magic? Or is Brody having us on?
I look for her on the far side of the meadow. She’s been trying to get a closer look at one of the goats—the pregnant one, I assume. But now she’s just staring at Simon and Agatha. Simon’s holding Agatha’s wrist, helping her with a big swooping gesture. It looks like choreography.
I let my head fall farther between my knees. My hair shades my eyes. I’m getting too much sun.
“Should we bring them in?” Snow shouts. “To the barn?”
“We can try!” Brody calls back.
I decide to help by staying out of their way.
The three of them get on one side of the goats and try to drive them towards the school. The goats aren’t having it. They’re running through the gaps.
“Enough!” Brody finally says, leaning over to catch her breath. “This’ll do. I’ve never managed to round them all up before. Maybe they’ll stay together for a while.”
Simon crosses his wrists on his head, frustrated. “I thought theylikedbeing together . . .”
“They do, normally.”
“Niamh thinks they’re grieving,” Wellbelove says.
Snow looks stricken. “They miss Ebb?”
Agatha nods.
He looks around him at the goats, newly sympathetic to their terrible behaviour. “So we just leave them here? Alone?”
“They have food and water,” Brody says, “and they can go home whenever they want. We can’t make them go.”
Snow sighs and reaches down to pet the nearest goat. “Don’t run off,” he says. “You’ll regret it.”
Wellbelove looks a bit beaten. “It does feel wrong to leave them . . .”
