“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!”