The ewe had entangled her horns in the bars of the gate. The harder she struggled, the more firmly it had her by the head. “Keep still, you silly beggar,” murmured the man. “You’ll break your neck.”
And she might do that, too, if she continued to struggle. So he spoke to her more calmly, “Be still, my girl, be still.”
She was nearing exhaustion. How long had she been here like this? The man looked at her anxiously. If he manhandled her, treated her roughly, she could lose the lamb she carried, and he could ill-afford the loss.
The ewe was frightened, gasping, her tongue lolling. The twisted horns clicked and clattered against the crossbar. The man kept still, holding her steady, speaking soothingly. But he could not free her, not without help. He thought of shouting – but that would alarm her again, and who would hear it, eh? Up on this empty hillside among the barrow-graves, his words would be swallowed up in distance, lost in the roots of the little windswept hedges. Blown away and wasted.
He peered into the gathering dark, and then into the eye of the ewe as she watched him. It was a long way back down the hill to Littlemoor Farm. It would be bathed in blackness by the time he had run down and returned with his brother Isaac and a lantern. The darkness came so soon at this season, at mid-winter. The thick cold was settling. Both man and beast felt it clawing at their lungs and shuddered. Was it safe to leave her? Or would she struggle on and injure herself? Would Isaac come looking for him, if he didn’t return at nightfall? The man considered these questions carefully. “I am too stupid to find an answer,” he said to the ewe, and upon looking into her face in the failing light, he saw a gleam pass through her eye. “Saints preserve us,” he muttered, “she is giving up the ghost. It will all be lost.” And he sat back down on the damp, cold ground in despair.
But the light in the ewe’s eye grew stronger. She was watching something, watching intently. There was a light, moving, swinging as only a lantern could. Someone was striding up the hill. The man’s heart leapt. It must be Isaac, surely it must be Isaac! But no. Even from this distance, the figure was too tall to be Isaac. Far too tall. So who…? Who would be up here in the icy dusk? There was nothing to be done but wait and see, and so the man and the ewe waited quietly together.
The figure approached in silence, and set down the lantern. The sheep began to struggle and the man opened his mouth to beg for help, but the figure lifted a finger to its lips in the half-light, and man and beast fell still. And then the ewe was free. One moment pitifully trapped in the gate, the next standing gasping beside it. She fell to her knees, trembling. The man felt the icy dew in her fleece as she leaned against him, her breathing becoming steadier. But the gleam in her eye had gone out. He turned to the stranger. But there was no-one there at all, no lantern. Nothing but damp darkness.
The man stared around, perplexed. Images from half-remembered stories of shepherds and lost sheep, of green men and ancient saints ambled through his mind. “What has just happened to us?” he said aloud. “Something unnatural is abroad tonight! What was that figure – man or spirit? Is it magical, or miraculous?”
The ewe struggled to her feet. “How should I know?” she said impatiently. “I’m a sheep.”
Kathy Sharp is the author of fantasy novels Isle of Larus http://tinyurl.com/olfyskv and Sea of Clouds http://amzn.to/1wYCPH0. Perfect mid-winter reading!
