Lambs

An awful cry from the field. The sound trapped in the morning fog as if the wail itself had become lost in the low haze. It sent the crows batting frantically from the treeline. As a rifle would. 

Eve shot from her sleep and upright on her bedstead. Her heart was a triphammer that rose up her throat and thundered in her head. She threw the sheets from her body and swung her legs out onto the ground, squinting at the light that poured through the window in gold streams. 

Then the cry again. 

With her vision wavering and crouching low through the door, she stepped barefoot out onto the open prairie. 

The lambs. And her mother stood over them draped in a black, tattered shawl. In that moment Eve saw her mother, a crooked figure, standing in the field with the fog rolling in around her ankles and the lambs with their throats pulled out and eyes rolled backward in their head —in that moment she saw her mother as death itself. 

Eve took a step forward. And with each step through the mist, more lambs revealed themselves. Laid out like sacks of wheat and just as lifeless. Some of their faces contorted and frozen in fear. Others, with their eyes turned heavenward, appeared almost at peace. As if death could not have come any sooner. 

Mother, she said. 

The woman did not turn. Instead, she remained standing with her palms facing skyward as a picture of confusion.

Mother. Eve put her hand on her mother's shoulder and the woman turned, wide-eyed and distant to her daughter. 

The lambs, her mother said. The lambs.

Eve placed her hands on her mother's back, turned her around, and ushered her into the cottage. 

The lambs, she said again. 

I know, mother. Sit down.

The cottage's thatched roof was low and the kitchen was small and empty save for the splintered table and chairs in the middle. By the window there was a cooking pot, rusted and empty. On the table a candle reduced to a puddle of wax. The mother sat down.

Some water, Eve said. She disappeared from the cottage and returned with a rusted pail and sat it on the table. She grabbed a ceramic cup from the cupboard and submerged it in the water which appeared black as oil in the sullen light.

Her mother took a sip and sat it on the table with disgust. Your father, she said.

Don’t worry about father.

When he sees what has happened. 

When does he come back?

Her mother dropped her head into her hands. Tomorrow morning, she said. 

Eve ran her hand and fingers through her mothers hair. It was straw-like and lifeless. She got up and grabbed the pail and returned through the door onto the fields. 

The well, a cobblestone circle, sat in the grass and leaned perilously to one side. She made her way to it. The fog had dissipated now and the full extent of the damage fell away before her. Seven lambs. Five full-grown sheep. Their wool was matted black with blood below their throat. Their legs pulled upward below their stomach, and their hooves split. And the grass beneath the fallen animals dyed black in puddles of blood. 

Not a scream. Not one bleat or howl or shrill yelp. The animals had died in the night. In silence. She set the pail down by the well.

There was a wheelbarrow perched next to it. She figured that she could heave the animals one by one onto the steel base of the barrow and wheel the barrow far from here, maybe beyond the treeline. She’d bury the lambs. As for the sheep, she’d leave their remains for the birds. The wolves.

Of course, she felt terrible about it. After the hunger tore through the land, the livestock was their best chance at rebuilding a steady life. 

But while the hunger — the famine — passed, leaving a mass graveyard of withered peasants in its wake, her own hunger seemed only to grow.

Yes, she felt terrible. But the hunger turned her into someone different than herself. Someone, something. An inner longing for blood that nestled in her stomach like some benign demon. For now, it had been fed.