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"Oh, not this again," Ann snarls, leaning her head against the boulder.
Felicity is taunting me with the poem. She knows it reminds me of Miss Moore. Like a whirling dervish, she throws out her arms, spiraling faster into ecstasy.
"Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
'I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady of Shalott."
Her hands fly out against the cave wall to stop her fall. She rolls her body against the craggy surface till she's facing us again. Strands of hair, wet with perspiration, stick to her forehead and cheeks. She's got a strange look on her face.
"Pip, darling, do you really want to see your knight?"
"More than anything!"
Felicity grabs Pip's hand and runs toward the cave's mouth.
"Wait for me," Ann yells, following after.
They spill out into the night like Bedouins, with me trailing in their wake. The cold air is a shock to our damp skin.
"Felicity, what are you up to?" I ask.
"Something new," she teases.
The sky, indifferent earlier, pulses with the light of a million stars. There's an early-autumn moon, buttery golden, riding high over spun-thin wisps of cloud that tell us all it will soon be the time for harvest, the time when the farmers raise a pint to the legendary murder of John Barleycorn.
Felicity howls at the globe in the sky.
"Shhh," Pippa says. "You'll wake the entire school." "No one will hear us. Mrs. Nightwing had two sherries tonight. We couldn't wake her if we placed her in the center of Trafalgar Square with a pigeon in each hand." She lets loose with another howl.
"I want to see my knight." Pippa pouts.
"And you will."
"Not if Gemma won't take us."
"We all know there's another way," Felicity says. In the moonlight, her pale skin glows white as bone. A chill works its way up my spine.
"What do you mean?" Pippa asks.
Something stirs in the trees. There's the sound of twigs breaking and movement, quick and furtive. We jump. A deer wanders closer to the clearing. It has its nose to the ground, sniffing for food.
"It's only a deer." Ann exhales in a whoosh.
"No," Felicity says. "It's our sacrifice."
The moon dips behind clouds for an instant and our faces are mottled with light.
"You aren't serious," I say, coming out of my sullen stupor.
"Why not? We know they did it. But we'll be smarter." She's like a carnival barker trying to entice a crowd into a sideshow tent.
"But they couldn't control it" I start. Felicity cuts me off.
"We're stronger than they are. We won't make the same mistakes. The huntress told me"
