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Soon Georgie was also sobbing for breath.

Last night, the trees had swarmed in darkness like denizens of a mythical greenwood, party to the revelry of outlaws, vagabonds, and witches.

They’d seemed animate, ready to march to Dunsinane under their own power.

Now Georgie leapt their stubborn roots and wove between their expressionless trunks.

The trees were once again typical trees, filled not with spirit but timber.

The morning was a typical country morning.

Why, then, did Georgie still feel sorcery, darkling bright, flowing in their blood? Why this buzzing in their ears?

Elf ran quick as a hare through the woodland, and they followed, heart tumbling loose in their chest. She passed between two oaks at the woodland’s edge. The sun spilled over her. She was racing into an ocean of clear morning light, her long shadow black on the vivid green grass.

Georgie slowed, sun dazzled, watching Elf open the distance between them. She’d almost reached Holywell Rock. Was she heading for the bluff?

She spun toward them. “Holywell Rock!”

They’d barely slept. They’d spent the previous hours cycling through emotions, stirring up the sediment of all their hopes and fears even as they strained for clarity.

Then Elf had flown through the doorway, and their body and soul had made the same decision.

But they’d yet to turn that decision over fully in their mind, to examine the angles.

It was still revolving, occupying every thought.

And now she wanted them to think about something else.

They rallied their forces.

“What about it?” They trotted on until they reached her. “You’re not saying the answer to the riddle is Holywell Rock.”

“Holywell Rock,” she repeated. “Why is it called Holywell Rock?”

“All I know is we could call it by another name, and it would smell as sweet. Or weigh as much. Feel as hard? What’s the most rocklike quality of a rock?”

She pushed her hair over her shoulders, face flushed with eagerness, and exasperation. They loved that look. But maybe they were about to earn a kick instead of a kiss.

“It’s in the Domesday Book.” They hurried to redeem themself. “It has been Holywell Rock for a very long time.”

She nodded. “Holy. Well. Rock.”

They turned their gaze from her face to the rock. Their pulse had been returning to normal, but it tripped, then began to sprint.

“There’s a well?” they attempted. “The rock was rolled over it?”

“More conjecture.” Her voice was suddenly hesitant.

“But imagine, yes, there was a well, a sacred spring, known to the nuns of the abbey. They hid the hoard inside. Sexburga solved the riddle, but there was still great danger from the Northmen, raids and the like, so she had a rock moved over the well. And by the time of William the Conqueror and the Domesday Book, the well itself was forgotten, and the rock was a landmark, with a name that was just a name.”

They were still gazing at it, Holywell Rock.

It had always loomed large, this boulder sitting on the line between two properties contentiously divided.

Even as a child, if they stood on top of it, they could see over the hedges, into the forbidden realm of the enemy.

They’d often climbed up with their wooden sword, to glare at Marsden Hall, at the tower, guarded by a dragon that they longed to fight, vanquish, and befriend, assuming the vanquishment wasn’t mortal.

They’d passed embarrassing lengths of time atop the boulder, waiting for glimpses of the dragon, and for glimpses of the haughty girl who’d refused to introduce them to said dragon when they’d asked.

And beneath the boulder, all this time, a treasure had been waiting for them , for them and for Elf.

“It’s here.” They turned their gaze back to her. They had no doubt.

She nodded again. “We have to lift the rock.”

They laughed. There was no other fit response. She’d run to them with the knowledge of the hoard’s location flaming in her brain, and then she’d run back, too excited to waste a single second. And now what?

“We can’t lift it.” They stated the obvious.

She knew. But she tilted up her chin in refusal. And they weren’t about to let her down.

“That leaves us one option,” they said. “We must levitate it.”

This time, she didn’t need convincing. She sifted through her hair, searching for stray pins, and twisted the dark locks into a messy knot. Her eyes fixed on the rock with such dauntlessness and determination, they almost expected it to roll itself out of her way.

It did not.

“Ready?” She circled behind it. They paced closer and crouched, pawing at the grass to see if they could wedge their fingertips beneath.

No. Emphatically, no.

“Are your hands on it?” They put their palms on the rock, shifting their weight from foot to foot, settling themself. The rock was cool and scabrous, with luridly colored lichens and tufts of moss.

“Yes,” called Elf.

“Ready, then.”

She sent up the chant. “Light as a spirit. Light as the air.”

“Light as a spirit,” they chanted with her. “Light as the air.”

Their nose itched, and their thighs burned, and some bird was calling them a twit, repeatedly.

“Um,” they said at last. “Maybe it doesn’t work when we can’t see each other.”

And when the thing to be levitated weighed over a ton.

Moving this rock would take an army.

Unless…

They sidled backward and gave the rock a narrow-eyed look. “How would you quantify its weight in horses? Two? Two and a half?”

They stood, shaking out their skirt. “One more option.”

—

Charles Peach was in a field, pulling weeds from a row of robust-looking plants. Georgie approached, mindful this time of how they stepped.

Peach looked up and startled. His tanned face turned white as lime.

“Those aren’t turnips,” observed Georgie, upon closer inspection of the plants. “You’ve planted mangel-wurzel.”

“Aye.” Peach straightened abruptly.

Georgie tried not to look too impressed with themself. They’d but recently fallen asleep over “An Account of the Mangel Wurzel, or Root of Scarcity” in Annals of Agriculture , volume XI.

“A vigorous crop,” they declared. “Very healthy.”

“Aye.” Peach was squeezing a weed in his fist. He seemed strangely skittish.

Shouldn’t their shared revelry have brought them closer?

Or was the shared revelry precisely what ailed him?

He and Georgie had rubbed shoulders on an occasion quite beyond the bounds of propriety.

Midnight memories of scantily clad swimming, laughing, singing, and dancing suddenly filled the space between landowner and tenant.

Oh dear. That was awkward. And Peach and Phipps had danced rather lustily, hadn’t they? In full view?

No wonder the gigantic farmer looked one heartbeat away from bolting.

Georgie thought what they might say to put him at ease.

While they thought, Peach spoke.

“Last night were a bit of a frenzy,” he said, gaze shifting to the left. “Everybody jumping about like grasshoppers.”

“Jolly good fun.” Georgie tried to sound as jovial as possible. “Everybody deserves some.”

“Aye.” Peach’s gaze shifted back. “You won’t go making any big fuss, then, out of what was a trifle?”

His tone wasn’t wheedling, or threatening, but wary.

“I wouldn’t dream of making a fuss,” said Georgie, and paused. “If it wasn’t a trifle, even better.” A longer pause, as they debated their next words. What the hell?

“I don’t think it’s a trifle to him,” they said.

Peach’s mouth opened but no sound came out. The weed fell to earth. He looked down at it. And then—Georgie’s sinking heart rose up again—a dimple flickered in his cheek.

It seemed the right moment to hasten on.

“I came to ask your help,” they declared. “There’s a boulder I need moved.”

Peach lifted his eyes. The dimple was gone. He looked like the old Peach, not apprehensive, not besotted—annoyed. Powerfully annoyed.

“I know.” Georgie winced. “I haven’t been any help to you , not as yet.

But I’ve been reading about husbandry and listening to whoever will tell me more.

I’m learning all I can, because I want to invest in the land productively and beneficially.

” They gave Peach a winning smile. “I recognized the mangel-wurzel.”

Peach grunted.

“And I plan to dismiss Mr. Fletcher,” they continued, with all the credibility they could muster.

“There are complicating factors, but I am going to do it. And then I’ll fatten the cattle, splendidly.

I’ll bring a portion of the park under cultivation and buy spent brewer’s grains to supplement the hay and cabbages and turnips.

I’ll see to repairs. I’ll bring in new manures.

I’ve learned a shocking amount about manures.

There’s dung, of course, and coal ash, and lime, but I am most interested currently in gypsum.

It’s used extensively in Germany. Raw, not calcined.

Six hundredweight to the acre. I have an idea to—”

“Botheration,” muttered Peach. “That’s enough.”

He’d said the same to his brother last night, in the same voice. It was firm and yet fundamentally benign. It was not the voice of an ogre.

Georgie grinned, encouraged. “You don’t doubt me, then?”

“I don’t doubt your tongue will keep running like an overwound clock.” But there was a glimmer of amusement in Peach’s resigned expression. He looked across the field to where Elf was waiting by the ruins of the wall.

He brushed the dirt from his hands. “Where’s this boulder?”

—

Georgie and Elf had led him halfway there when he stopped short.

“The boulder,” he said, glancing about at his surroundings, suspicious. “It’s never Holywell Rock?”

Georgie hesitated. “Let’s see, shall we?”

When Peach saw, he shot Georgie a glare. “It is Holywell Rock.”

“You hoped for something smaller.” Georgie could understand. “But you’re Charles Peach! You carried a horse.”

Peach pointed at the rock. “That’s three horses.”

“Three?” Georgie frowned. “Ponies, maybe.”