Niamh makes a disparaging noise in her throat. “He’s not the reason people stared at you.”
I spin around, and she nearly walks into me.
“What doesthatmean?” I demand, even though I know very well what it means. I know why people stare at me. Of course Niamh would find the meanestpossibleway to say,“You’re beautiful.”It’s another thing I can’t help that she holds against me.
At least she has the decency to look embarrassed. “I mean . . .” She looks at the ground. “I don’t know what I mean . . .”
I step closer to her. “Don’t you?”
“Sister golden hair,” something says—something with a voice like crushed leaves, hardly a voice at all.
Niamh and I both freeze.
“Is that you . . .” the thing asks, lingering on every consonant.
I slowly turn towards the heart of the Wood. A nymph is floating there, half in darkness.
“Itisyou,” she says. “The golden one.”
She moves closer to us. Into the light.
I know this dryad. She’s followed me through the Wood before. Watching, never speaking. She used to look very smart—in a yellow velvet jacket and green petticoats, her mossy hair pinned up with yellow ribbons.
Her skirts have turned to rags now, and the ribbons are long gone. Her hair hangs in her face and creeps down her chest and arms. She looks overgrown. Forgotten. More like a tree than a person.
“Golden one, golden one,” she whisper-sings, “what do you seek?”
I walk closer to her.
Niamh catches my arm and tries to hold me back—I shake her off.
“I’m looking for a goat,” I say.
“The Goats of Watford,” the dryad says.
“Yes.” I step closer.
She’s hovering in the air. Trembling. The shadows of a thousand leaves dance over her. Her eyes used to glow, I think. But not now. Her face is scabbed over with bark. “The Goats of Watford are lost.”
“Not yet,” I say.
“Yet and yet,” she singsongs. “They wander and roam . . . and fly.”
“We’re looking for them. We’re looking for a doe.”
The dryad is holding a parasol. She twirls it onto her shoulder and opens it. The silk is rotting away from the ribs. “Sister golden hair . . .” she says. “Your friends were here. I don’t like them.”
“My friends?”
She frowns. Pebbles and sticks whorl in the air beneath her. “Tell me now . . . What do you seek?”
“I told you—a goat. A pregnant doe. She’s in the Wood.”
“How do you know who walks in my Wood?”
“I have a feeling—”
The dryad bends at the waist to shout down at me, one hand clenched in her torn skirts. “The Goats of Watford are lost! They have no keeper! No hook, no crook, no one to lead them home!”
