Niamh lowers an eyebrow, thoughtful. “Let’s try. I can carry the doe, with magic, if you can manage the kids.”
I turn to the first kid, still lying where I laid it in the grass. The dryad is hovering above it. She looks meeker than she did before, her head down, her mossy hair hanging in her eyes. “I’ll take care of this one,” she lilts softly. “I’ll find a place for it to sleep.”
“All right,” I say.
“Ready?” Niamh asks me. She’s been ignoring the dryad; Niamh only has time for things that are useful.
I nod and pick up her bag. And then the little goat, the live one. Niamh lifts its mother in her arms and walks steadily back into the forest.
I feel like I should say something more to the dryad—
No. I feel like I should say something to Ebb.
I look up at her stone marker. There are flowers growing all around it, vines winding up and around the marble. I didn’t notice that before.
The dryad is watching me from a few feet away.
I whisper to the stone: “I did what you told me to do. I ran.”
The dryad drifts closer.
I drop my voice even more. “Thank you.”
I leave then, before Niamh gets too far ahead of me.
“Do you know where you’re going?” I call out to her.
“No!” she shouts back. “Hurry up, so I can follow you.”
It’s daylight again at the edge of the Wood. When we walk through the trees, the rest of the herd is waiting for us. They jump and bleat when they see the doe in Niamh’s arms. A few of them spread their wings—they’re feathered, just like a pegasus’s.
I kneel and hold the baby out—a little doe—so they can see her.
“Careful,” Niamh says.
“It’s all right,” I say. And it is. The goats nose at the kid and crowd around Niamh’s legs to check on the mother. “You’re very special goats,” I coo, “aren’t you?”
One of the billy goats flaps his wings and lifts off the ground, flying in a circle around us. A few of the others join him. I laugh and look up at Niamh. She’s already smiling at me.
“Niamh,” I say. “I wonder . . .”
I stand again, and start walking towards Watford. Niamh walks with me. The goats leap and bound and flit around us. Across the Great Lawn, over the drawbridge, through the courtyard. There are a few people milling around outside the White Chapel. They stop and stare. I keep walking, back to the barn Ebb shared with the goats. The doors swing open for us, and the goats follow us in, making themselves at home. Niamh casts a spell in one corner, to freshen up the straw, and we set the mother and child down together.
Niamh is beaming. At the goats. At me. When her hands are free, she gets them around me. I hook my arms behind her neck. More of her hair has fallen into her eyes, and it makes my knees weak. Thank magic she’s holding on to me, holding me up. Niamh kisses me again, and I want to draw a line through everything I considered a kiss before. I never knew a kiss could ask this much from me.
80
SIMON
Jamie and I end up in the stolen van. He doesn’t know how to drive, but I think I can manage. (Though my only practice has been on American highways.) He hasn’t eaten all day, so we stop at a KFC and eat our chicken in the car park. Neither of us says a word till we’re finished.
“What’ll we do if we get caught with this van?” Jamie asks, shoving his rubbish into a paper bag. “Neither of us have magic.”
“I guess we’ll have to wait for Baz and your mum to come fix it.”
“Well,” he says glumly, “I’m used to that.”
“Getting arrested?”
