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Elfreda was directly in their path.
So was the wolf pit.
“My notebook!” She sprinted, heart smashing against her ribs. She snatched the notebook seconds before the flock thundered past, splitting around her, a musky odor thick in the air.
She turned, furious, prepared to scream in Georgina’s face, but Georgina wasn’t chasing the flock like a ravening wolf. They were fifty yards away, chasing Miss Poskitt and Miss Mahomed, all of them laughing too hard to do more than stagger in circles. Behind them, the meadow inclined gradually toward the hill, that slight rise giving Elfreda a perfect sight line to the ram. He was enormous, his hoof pawing the ground.
“Watch out!” This time, Elf’s voice carried. Georgina whipped around. They caught her eye, still laughing, brows just beginning to pinch with the presentiment that something was wrong.
The ram backed up. He lowered his horned head.
Georgina half turned. Miss Poskitt and Miss Mahomed followed their lead. The three stood stock-still as scarecrows. Then Miss Poskitt shrieked.
The ram charged.
Miss Poskitt broke left, and Miss Mahomed broke right. Georgina didn’t move. The ram rose onto its hind legs as it closed the final yard, and Georgina lunged to the side. The ram’s front hooves slammed back down. It bucked and wheeled and charged again. Georgina dodged, and the ram wheeled.
“Over here!” Elfreda waved her notebook at the ram like a flag.
It was no good.
The ram charged. Georgina feinted before diving, and the ram changed directions. He tucked his head and barreled after Miss Mahomed.
“Miss Mahomed!” Elfreda realized she was running.
Miss Mahomed looked over her shoulder and screamed. She zigzagged, but the ram tracked her, bearing down. Georgie was running too, and Miss Poskitt had changed course, swinging her bonnet, trying to attract the ram’s attention.
He rose onto his hind legs and butted, missing Miss Mahomed by inches. She screamed more loudly.
Elfreda watched her as she tripped and crumpled, and so she didn’t look where she herself was going. She banged into Georgina with jolting force. Her teeth clattered, and she tasted blood. The notebook sailed from her hand. Georgina’s arm wrapped her waist, bracing her. Time seemed to stand still. She was pressed against Georgina, head twisted, eyes on the notebook as it hung in the air. Then time restarted.
The notebook swung open. Her grandmother’s papers spilled out, the pages catching the wind, fluttering across the meadow.
“Let go of me!” Elfreda kicked Georgina’s shins with all her might. “You’re like a curse!”
Georgina let go, and Elfreda hit the ground. Hip, elbow, shoulder, head. She howled with pure, lupine rage. “Georgina Redmayne, I swear to God, I will destroy you!”
Georgina wasn’t looking down at her. They were staring off, horror stricken. Elfreda looked in time to see it too. The ram driving into Miss Poskitt, sending her flying, her body limp as a rag doll.
10
Two days later, Georgie knocked on Elf’s heavily studded, profoundly unwelcoming front door. Rust from the iron knocker left a red smear on their yellow glove. The sight made them feel like Macbeth, or worse, as if they’d uttered the word Macbeth inside a theater. Guilt and superstitious dread turned them from the door, just as it creaked open.
“You’re not the post boy,” came a disappointed voice.
“No.” Georgie turned back. “Agnes?”
The last time they’d seen Elf’s younger sister, she’d been a scrawny child of nine or ten hugging a pet rabbit with worrisome enthusiasm. She was much taller now, a waterfall of dark hair rippling to her waist, no rabbit immediately apparent.
“Georgina!” Agnes opened the door wider. “Elfreda said you’d returned and that you were twenty times as terrible as she remembered.”
Georgie winced. “Lovely. Warms the cockles of my heart. Is she in?”
Agnes regarded them. “Did you cut your hair?”
Georgie touched the cropped locks that peeked out from their plumed French bonnet. “I did. They call this style the Titus.”
“Is it fashionable?” asked Agnes. “Beatrice says one must be fashionable.”
