“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!”
“We want to bring them home!”
“You?” She points her parasol at me. “You have failed them.”
I put my hands on my hips. “To be fair, I didn’t even know about them until last week.”
“Mages,” she hisses. “Treacherous. Traitorous. Takers! When have you ever protected anything good?”
I’m standing before her, below her. “I’m not here to defend magicians,” I say. “I can’t. We’re terrible. Even the best of us are the worst. I’m just here to help this doe. She’s scared and alone, and she’s never done this before.
We can help her. Take us to her— please. ”
The dryad is glaring at me. She draws her busted umbrella closed … Then she whirls around and sails off deeper into the Wood.
I snatch Niamh’s hand and run after the nymph. Into the Wood, into the Wood. Into the murk. I push branches out of my way, and Niamh holds them back. It should be green and lush here. You should still be able to see the sun.
This is dark magic, wild magic.
I keep an eye on the dryad flying ahead of us. She’s hoping to lose us, I think. Hoping to leave us lost. We run after her. Niamh lifts me over a fallen tree that blocks our way—chest to chest, both our hearts clattering.
The dryad gets away from us. Disappears. We stumble around, looking for her.
“There!” Niamh whispers.
A clearing. Through the trees. Where sunlight falls in solid gold bars.
We move closer. This could be a trap—there are stories, about girls who enter the Wood and never leave. I’m holding Niamh’s hand. “Can you hear that?”
Ahead of us—something is crying, bleating.
We walk into the light, into a circle of grass. There’s a stone marker, and a doe lying on the ground before it, panting.
The dryad appears, hovering above the stone, watching us.
“There’s a good girl,” I say, kneeling in the grass next to the goat.
“How long has she been labouring?” Niamh asks.
The dryad ignores her. She settles onto the stone, sitting with her back to us.
It’s a grave, I realize. A wide slab of marble, nearly as tall as Niamh, etched in a typeface I think of as Watford Gothic. EBENEZA PETTY, it says.
SHE LIVED FOR WATFORD AND DIED DEFENDING IT. MAY SHE REST IN MAGIC AND
SLEEP IN PEACE.
The doe moans. I shake my head and make myself focus: Her eyes are closed. Her body is limp. Her legs are covered in yellow gunk. “She’s been in labour a long time,” I say.
Niamh touches her belly, and the doe’s eyes snap open. Wings unfold from her back, like magic. She tries to bite Niamh and fly away, all at once.
I dodge between them, wrapping my arms around the goat’s neck and holding her against my chest. “Shhhhhh, it’s all right, it’s all right…”
The doe settles again, panting.
Niamh scoots back and opens her shoulder bag. “Let me see your right hand, Agatha.”
I frown at her, but I hold out one hand, hugging the doe with the other.
Niamh scrubs my hand with some sort of wipe. Then she squeezes clear jelly in my palm and rubs it through my fingers. She doesn’t have to tell me what to do next; I’ve watched enough YouTube videos.
I shift myself around the doe—she doesn’t fight me—and slide my fingers into her birth canal. She cries out. She’s so tired, she’s been here all day. We never should have left her.
The kid is right inside. I can feel it.
“It’s backwards,” I say. “Stuck.”
“You’ll have to get the legs,” Niamh says.
“I know.”
“All right, I’m right here.”
I lean over the doe, holding her. Her wings beat against my face. I’m in her up to my elbow. Niamh is right beside me.