“What are you doing, Jem?”
Gruff’s shadow falls over me a few days after the entire debacle with my ruined dome. I am out the back of the house, working on a few personal projects. I was hoping to keep this a secret, because Gruff is still convinced that he can chase off all the baddies in the world with his big manly horns. I’m sure he can keep some of them at bay, but let’s be real, there are only so many bucks he can smash in the the head with his head before that’s not going to work anymore.
“I am carving some weapons. Stakes. We can dig holes and put them inside…”
“And skewer the goats. Excellent idea.” He takes the knife from me. “Trust me when I tell you that you are safe, Jem, and stop devising traps that will only hurt us.”
“You have no defenses, Gruff.”
He sighs and looks at me with eyes of emerald frustration. “Do you really think I have no defenses, Jem?”
“I don’t see any. You haven’t told me about any. You could share them if they existed, and you could make me feel better.”
His lips curl into a smirk. “I don’t want you getting into them. I don’t want you getting into trouble. What I want is for you to tend to the herd. There are pens to be cleaned, water to be carried, and grain to be fed.”
“You’re hiding your technology from me. You don’t trust me.”
“No,” he says. “I don’t. Your impulse to shoot first and ask questions later doesn’t give me much confidence. You’re lucky I let you keep the weapons you do have, given the way you wave them around like punctuation at the end of sentences.”
“That’s an exaggeration.”
“Maybe,” he allows. “But only a little. You don’t need access to more weaponry. You need to go clean the goat pens. Now.”
He sends me off to work like I’m his slave. I don’t want to do any labor, certainly not filthy goat-tending labor, but my choices feel limited. I can’t just run away into the woods. The bucks have my scent now and as bad and bossy as Gruff is, he is not passing me around half a dozen wild bucks.
I do as I am told. Gruff has that expression on his face that tells me he’s losing patience with me.
Strumpet has mixed in with the herd but comes running when she sees me. Her little face lifts my spirits. She puts her head down and rubs it against my leg. It seems to satisfy her. I scratch her neck and between her horns. “We’re stuck here,” I tell her. “At least they’re not after you anymore. You’re…”
It occurs to me that she’s probably going to have kids. That puts a smile on my face, though I don’t know if this world will be able to withstand the impact of Strumpet babies. She is starting to look a little wide around the tummy. I thought it was all the native forage.
“Strumpet,” I say, crouching down to look her in her little goat eyes. “Are you going to have a baby?”
“She is in kid.”
Gruff has come up behind me. Maybe to check on me. Maybe because he truly doesn’t trust me out of his sight. Smart guy. I wouldn’t trust me either.
“When will she have babies?”
“Judging by the timing of our meeting, I’d say we have quite a matter of weeks left before she has her babies.”
“Babies? More than one?”
“I suppose it depends. Sometimes first timers have singles, and I’m not sure what your Earth stock are bred for, but I imagine she will have at least two. It’s the most common number, especially for a doe who has already kidded.”
“She’s already had babies?”
“Yes. See the udder development…” He stops and raises a brow at me. “Do you not know anything about goats?”
“No.”
“They didn’t… how… why do you have a goat you know nothing about?”
“It was a joke. They were mocking me.”
“They chose to mock you with a goat?”
He is confused. In his world, a goat is a precious and treasured creature. It is respected for giving life and milk and meat. Those who trained me had no respect for those that give. They only had respect for that which destroys and harms.