Page 33 of Last Rites

“The godsdamned sheep!” Anders bellowed. “You’ve been mooning over the critter all day, of course you let it go.”

I glanced around, searching the cleared area and finding the crate that had contained Delilah still in the patch of grass, but empty. The door hung open, and the rope that had been securing it was frayed on the ground.

Kit stepped forward and slightly in front of me, deflecting Anders’s wrath. “Penny was with me. In town. And the sheep was here when we left.”

Anders’s red face twisted in disdain. “Always so eager to defend him. Have you considered finding a less troublesome man to fuck?”

“Anders!” Rosie snapped, and Kit seethed.

“That’s too damn far.” He’d nearly unsheathed his knife as he pressed forward, muscles bunching beneath the linen of his shirt.

My skin prickled with angry heat, and my fists clenched as I prepared to follow Kit into battle, but Isla lurched into the space between us.

“If it’s gotten away, it’s only getting farther!” she shouted, her pale face brightly pink all the way to the tips of her ears. “And farther still while you stand here and bicker. Unless you want to steal a sheep from some farmer and bring more misery on this town, we’d best find the one we brought!”

I wasn’t sure if I was more inspired by the point she made or the fact that I’d never heard her speak above a murmur, but I found myself nodding along. Everyone else must have felt similarly because the heat in the air dissipated in favor of cooling calm as new instructions were given.

“We’ll find her,” Rosie said, and as good as I felt about not having to rob the people whose water supply we were about to foul, I still didn’t feel good about poor Delilah’s fate.

Taking Kit’s elbow, I turned to begin a weary trudge into the woods, but Anders called after us.

“Oh, no. You two don’t go together this time. I made that mistake once. You each take one of the girls.”

Kit tensed again, readying for protest as the lumberman tagged on.

“Sorry, maybe I should be more specific. You don’t count, Penwell; you only act like a girl.”

“Bastard,” Kit grumbled, but this time he didn’t reach for his knife.

“Rosie, you go with him.” Anders waved her toward me. “Wherever he leads you, go the opposite way. I bet he knows exactly where he hid the damned thing.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Rosie was already stepping up beside me.

Kit gave me a look, his expression somewhere between sympathy and rage. “Be careful,” he said quietly, reaching out to tug my sleeve, just once.

“You too,” I murmured. “And if Anders says one more word like that⁠—”

“I’ll sit on him,” Kit said. “Crush his lungs. End of problem.”

That earned him a faint smile from me, but it was gone as quickly as it came. My boots were already moving, crunching through the brittle leaves as I turned toward the darker part of the woods.

Rosie followed without speaking, though I could hear the tension in her steps, sharp and deliberate beside me. The shadows deepened as we walked, the smell of moss and rot rising from the earth, thick enough to swallow our words if we’d had any to share.

I didn’t want to be out here. Not without Kit. Not chasing a sacrificial sheep like some villain from a cautionary tale. But there wasn’t much room for want anymore. There was only what needed doing, and who we had to be to get it done.

12

Kit

The woods were silent but for the crunch of twigs and last autumn’s leaves under our boots. Twilight gave way to night within minutes, and it was all I could do to keep Penny and Rosie in sight as Isla and I searched for Delilah. The waning moon high above was our only saving grace as its light gave us something to see by with the sun tucked away beneath the horizon.

“Did Penny really release the sheep?” Isla asked at length. “I wouldn’t blame him if he did; this whole thing is terrible.”

I shook my head while holding aside a low hanging branch for her to pass.

“No. I suspect she chewed the rope free and wandered off. Not surprising, since she’s been two days in that crate with no food and little water. She probably found a field somewhere to graze.”

We lapsed into silence again as we walked. When we started to veer too far from Penny and Rosie, I adjusted our course and halfheartedly searched the murky darkness for the bright flash of moonlight on wool that never came.