Out on a walk, she heard her mother call her name somewhere far away. The sun was just on the cusp of setting, and it was time to return home. She turned and walked through someone’s orchard - she marveled at how plump and red the cherries on their trees had been. Cherry season was almost over, and they had hardly picked any of theirs.
She’d gotten so turned around she did not immediately recognize that this was Ura’s orchard. Just beyond the trees stood their white home - taller than the others, decorated with blue paint on the ornate window frames. She stopped for a moment, looking at the home that, would have been her own home soon. But no more. Her eyes fell to the doorway. It was open so the summer air would flow through the house. In the depths of the mud room, she saw someone facing her. It was Ura. She was too far to see his expression, but his stance was tense, back straight, and feet set wide apart.
Val braved a couple of steps forward. All she wanted was an explanation. Why had he avoided her? Why was he afraid of her? It had been six months since they’d spoken a word to each other. She took another step, feeling that if she approached too fast, she would scare him off.
To her immediate relief, he stepped forward too, but that relief changed fast to worry when she saw his face in the light. His eyes were harsh, his jaw clenched, and his mouth turned downward to a scowl. She felt such a lash of hatred that she took a step back.
His voice was hushed as if he did not want anyone in the house to hear him. “It’s you! It’s YOUR fault!”
Val stared at him blankly, feeling her hands begin to shake in the confrontation.
“It’s your fault the crops failed! It's your fault that families will starve! You brought it here from the forest!” She saw his fingers had been curled into fists. Before she could gather the nerve to say a word to him, he’d retreated and slammed the door.
Val was caught by surprise by his violent wave of emotion. She had not been ready for this confrontation and did not know what to think of his words.
She heard her mother call again. She could not tell if there was an urgency or if she was simply wondering where her daughter was in these evening hours. She sounded… strange. But still, Val picked up pace.
Unexpectedly, no one was there when she arrived. She’d taken a boiled potato out of the linens it was wrapped in and sat down to eat. Ura’s words continued repeating in her mind as an echo that did not cease.
Yet again, that night she lay awake.
The next morning, the household woke up immediately to the sounds of a woman wailing outside. Val and her mother got dressed as fast as they could. They rushed to where one of the older ladies thrashed on the ground. She was not yet a grandmother, but grays had gently touched the crown of her head. She knelt, her hands clutched to her chest and head low to the dirt. She cried out, her groans desperate and heart-wrenching. Many people were surrounding her, trying to comfort her, trying to calm her. Val tried to get through but was pushed aside as the woman’s friends crowded her with their coos and condolences.
“All dead!!” the woman wailed. “All dead! We’d gone out there, and they were all dead! All but one!” She collapsed, yowling again.
Dead were the flock of sheep, the largest in the village. Through word of mouth, Val had found out that the wailing woman was the wife of the shepherd - they’d both gone out to the pasture in the morning to find the field full of corpses. Some had their throats crushed, some their heads. Some lay with wounds, and some with their guts spilling into the grass. The only sheep to escape this was the heavily pregnant ewe that had been left in the barn that night.
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This was devastating news for everyone. With the winter wheat gone and the livestock reduced by half, they would have a very difficult year. Talks of starvation were whispered across every gossip circle and behind closed doors. Truly, they would struggle, but their gardens and what remained of the pigs and cows would do. But these people did not know anything but plenty. Did not know a day without bread or a week without meat. And for this, they had been fortunate, as many places around the region had much, much less than they.
Some spoke of the wolves coming from the Deep Wood. Some said it was the bears. The elderly insisted it was the devils that came and killed the sheep. And no one was willing to walk alone, anymore.
The somber mood hung heavily in the air. There were no bonfires that night, no songs. No people walking hand in hand. Everyone had locked their doors and closed their curtains before the sun had even set. The disappearing rays of light rolled slowly across the quiet houses and empty orchards. This sort of silence had not been felt in the village ever before, at least not in the time anyone could remember.
A stillness enveloped Val. She felt very little - as if what she had witnessed had broken something inside her. By this time, she was used to her long waking hours and sparse sleep. But her legs grew restless this night, tossing and turning in frustration. She tried stretching them and pulling them closer to her body - but nothing helped. She grew so angry that she got out of bed and paced the room. She’d circled it so many times that even that became unbearable.
Val was the reason all of this was happening. She was at fault for bringing it here to the village. Out in the forest, when they saw the silver stag, it followed her back.
And now it was tormenting her and haunting all who’d been nearby. She did not know how to make it stop. She did not know where to seek counsel - even if she could, they would never believe her.
Before she knew it, she was outside her home. Her anxious pacing had brought her to the yard. She jumped up and down in frustration, begging the restlessness in her legs to disappear. Deciding that she would just go for another walk, as she had done so many evenings, she left the enclosure of the gates.
A mosquito landed on her leg, and she squashed it with the palm of her hand. It was dark, and they hung like a cloud above the villages, especially in the summer. The bonfire smoke kept them at bay, but this night she was entirely at their mercy - she had not even thought to bring a shawl to hide under.
Her irritation at everything around her grew. Val felt like screaming into the air until everything that her life had turned to would escape her in that violent breath. But instead of screaming out herself, she heard the pleading baa of a sheep.
The animal had sounded in distress. After the day's events, alarm had gripped Val in its clutches. Careful not to make noise, she crept around her neighbor’s home and listened for the sheep again. Concealing herself behind a shed, Val stared hard into the darkness trying to see inside the barn. No lights were burning. An opening in the ceiling was left ajar after someone climbed out onto the roof, letting a bit of early moonlight inside.
The sheep bleated again in fear, and Val heard it struggle against the latch on its pen. The air smelled of hay and manure and a thick, nauseating, and sickly smell that she could not name - she could almost taste its foulness on her lips. She edged closer, the shapes of the stalls and the animal coming into focus.
There was something else there.
It sat gripping the support beam above the sheep’s stall, its body parallel to the ceiling. Val felt her face grow cold and pale and her stomach tightened as she tried to make out what the creature was. It reached out what looked to be an arm- or a leg? The joint was facing backward from where the head seemed to be. It gripped the stall and lowered itself down and closer to the animal, whose movements were growing more desperate. This was the pregnant ewe that had not been with the others in the field when they’d perished.
The sheep baa’ed - and Val saw the creature open what looked to be its mouth, its jaw hanging loosely - and to her horror, it baa’ed right back into the ewe’s frightened eyes. It was a guttural sound, almost like that of the sheep, but also foreign and just uncanny enough to make Val’s heart drop.
She saw the lunge and pressed herself against the wall. Her eyes did not need to see because her ears had heard - the quick squeal and rip, as if paper, the wet slosh, and the crack of a bone being broken. She’d heard such sounds when an animal was being prepared for meat or when a dog was given the remains of a chicken carcass for dinner. She was unable to take it any longer. Val felt like she needed to scream, but the scream wouldn’t come - the next thing she knew, her legs were carrying her away. She ran without hardly taking a breath.
The only thing she wanted was to shut the house door behind herself - safe in the room aglow with the light from the stove.
Safe.