Any Way the Wind Blows (Simon Snow, #3)(42)

“The first—Are you serious?”

Niamh is holding her hands up. “It doesn’t matter, Agatha. It’s ancient history.”

“As the person who was actually kidnapped, multiple times, it doesn’t feel like it was all that long ago.”

“Look, I’m sorry I mentioned it. I’m sure it was very dramatic for your whole … circle.”

“There was no circle, ” I say, my voice getting high, but Niamh isn’t listening. She’s on her feet.

“Hell’s spells,” she mutters, jogging away from me.

I stand up to see what she’s after—

There’s a goat nosing around in the field, a hundred feet away.

Niamh is running towards it, her wand held out in front of her. “Come on, billy. Come on…”

I run after her. The goat is watching Niamh now. It’s a big white one, with long horns and a beard. Niamh is twenty feet away from it. She stops running, like she’s afraid to startle it. She slowly raises her wand. “Get your goat!”

The goat just stares at her. Chewing.

Niamh looks like she’s trying to decide whether to make a run for it. The goat looks like it’s making the same decision. It breaks first—scampering deeper into the field. Niamh runs after it. I run after Niamh.

“You’ll never catch it!” I yell.

“I have to!” she yells back.

After a few minutes, I’m too spent to keep up. Niamh keeps running.

(Thighs still competitive, it seems.) “Niamh,” I shout, “you’ll never catch it!”

“I have to!”

The goat pauses to look back at her. Niamh powers towards it. The goat runs again. Oh, there’s a fence; Niamh’s going to corner it against the fence.

Clever girl, but then what? The goat’s horns are a foot long. I get out my wand and try to think of a few first-aid spells. (My first-aid spells are pants, too.)

The goat sees the fence and turns abruptly. Suddenly it’s headed towards me. Sweet Circe, it’s headed towards me! So is Niamh. “Agatha!” she shouts. “Catch it!”

“Catch it?” I scoff to myself. “With my giant goat net?”

The huge, horny goat is barrelling towards me, and I start to move out of its way, but Niamh is screaming my name. “Agatha! Don’t let it go!”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I say, holding my wand out to the goat. Honestly, the only spell I have at the ready is “Ashes to ashes.” The goat stops running just as I’m about to cast it.

It cocks its head at me.

My wand is already pointed, so I decide to try something. It won’t work.

I’m an anaemic magician, even on a good day. (Iron pills didn’t help.) But I go ahead with it anyway:

“Mary had a little lamb!” I sing softly at the goat.

It watches me tap my wand in the air, then looks at me like, Not a lamb, sister.

I keep going. “Little lamb, little lamb!”

The goat’s still watching. I can hear Niamh pounding closer to us.

“Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow!”



Niamh has slowed to a stop behind the goat. I’m waiting for her to tackle it, but she turns to me instead, motioning for me to go on.

“Everywhere that Mary went! Mary went, Mary went!”

The goat takes a few nimble steps towards me. I look at Niamh and point urgently at it. She points back at me and mouths, “Keep going!”

I give her what I hope is a furious look, but I tap my wand in the air again.

“Everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go!”

The goat is nosing at my trainers now, its horns rubbing up against my shins. I take a step backwards. It looks up at me and steps forward.

“It followed her to school one day,” Niamh whispers.

I swallow. “It followed her to school one day!”

Niamh has my arm. She’s urging me backwards.

I keep singing— “School one day, school one day!” —then whisper to Niamh, “What are we doing?”

“Leading it back to Watford.”

“You take over.”

“Why would I do that, Agatha? It’s under your spell.”

I keep walking backwards. The billy goat follows, not a care in the world now, like I have it on a leash.

“It followed her to school one day, which was against the rules!”

When we get to the Watford gates, there’s no one guarding them. Niamh opens the latch and holds one side open. I step through. The billy goat looks around. It glances up at me, then trots through and away, out onto the Great Lawn.

Niamh is frowning at me in a very pleased way. “Good show, Agatha.”

“Won’t it just get out again?” There’s a wall around the Watford grounds, but it’s mostly just for show. There are spells to keep out Normals and intruders, but not wildlife. (That’s probably why the Humdrum sent so many creatures after Simon.) If the goat got out once, it will get out again.

“I’m not worried about them escaping,” she says. “I’m worried about them leaving.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“We can’t exactly keep the goats of Watford in a pen. They’re supposed to know they belong here. They shouldn’t just be wandering away.”