Page 278 of These Tears

47

By noon on the third day, Elias is officially late.

I watch the forest trail through the window, while boiled eggs cool untouched on my plate. Later, I scatter the animals’ morning feed, manage two bites of reindeer meat for lunch and leave the rest.

Brute and Menace are more than happy to assist me with the leftovers.

When the clock passes three, every small sound in the cabin begins to carry too far.

I grab the truck keys.

Anders promised someone would call if the journey changed.

No one has.

Three days is too long for goats, paperwork or another incomplete explanation.

I am done waiting for the Nielsens and Halvorsens to decide what I am allowed to know.

Just as I burst out of the house, sending Menace and Brute scattering into a fervent sprint, I zero in on Anders’ truck approaching from the treeline.

I wait until he parks and jumps out of the vehicle.

‘Going somewhere?’ he asks, eyeing the keys in my hand.

‘I was actually going to see you.’

‘Oh?’ he says merrily and heads behind the truck, where I now realise a small livestock trailer is hitched behind.

The last living things Elias brought home were enough for my intuition to kick in and send me a step back towards the door.

The smell reaches me then, suggesting whatever is inside has already declared war on my senses. I imagine horns and teeth and fire coming out of a pair of nostrils.

‘So it was fate that I come here!’

He unlatches the trailer and lowers its ramp with a metallic scrape.

Goats.

They peer out, each wearing a halter with its lead secured to a rail.

They blink at me bleakly like criminals being escorted from court.

Anders clicks his tongue, guiding them down one at a time while Brute and Menace freeze and stare, their noses working.

‘Three were transported this morning,’ he says. ‘Jakob left instructions for the pen. Take this one.’ He places a single lead in my hand. ‘Keep her beside you. Don’t wrap the rope around your wrist.’

My qualifications remain limited to panic, but at least he has reduced the number of creatures attached to me to one.

I meet his smiling face and study it longer than politeness would allow, searching for a crack in the warmth. There is none. Just the same old softness around his eyes as he nods towards the newly fenced pen by the shed.

As we start walking, the goats clatter behind me nervously. Anders checks the posts, tests the mesh and tightens the wires. He moves about, showing me where the water trough should sit so they don’t turn it into a swimming pool, and mentions something about plants along the fence line.

Finally, he brings feed from the truck – a few hay bales, a sack of goat pellets, a tub of loose mineral and something he insists is only for treats, not bribery – though bribery works – and stacks it all neatly in the feed shed before giving me the gist.

‘Never trust a goat near anything you value,’ he says as he dusts his callused hands off with a smile at a job well done.

‘Thank you for your help, Anders. Truly. We rely on you so much.’