We wanted very little.
Grass, water, somewhere dry when it rained. A patch of shade in summer. Enough room for the lambs to run before they grew sensible.
There was plenty of grass. That was what made everything so difficult to understand.
“Why can’t they eat it?” I asked the Creator. “Look at these hills. We couldn’t finish them if we grazed all our lives.”
I was speaking about the wolves.
I had nothing against them personally. If they had stayed beyond the ridge, I would scarcely have thought about them. They could have had their own valley. Their own stream. I would even have let them have the clover near the lower gate, although it was the sweetest.
But they wanted us.
My brother had been taken in the spring. For several nights afterward, I woke whenever another sheep moved beside me.
So when I prayed for a world without wolves, I meant it.
Most of us did.
The older sheep said such a world was waiting for us after death. There would be grass that never dried and water that never muddied. No teeth in the darkness. No sudden running.
“And the wolves?” someone asked.
“There will be a place for them too.”
He did not mean another meadow.
We found this comforting. Some spoke at considerable length about the fires. I preferred the descriptions of the grass, but I always listened to the part about the wolves.
I wanted to be certain.
The troublesome ram began visiting us toward the end of summer.
He was easy enough to recognize. One horn bent forward, and a strip of wool was missing from his side.
At first, we liked him. He spoke gently to frightened lambs and stood beside sheep the rest of us found tiresome. Once, when an old ewe slipped into the drainage ditch, he stayed below her while we argued about the safest way to get her out.
She climbed over his back.
For two days afterward, he walked badly.
We admired that.
The trouble began when he started talking about the ridge.
“I’m going down the other side tomorrow,” he said. “You can come with me.”
Nobody answered immediately.
“The other side,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“There are wolves there.”
“I know.”
An old ram beside me stopped chewing.
“Then why would we go?”
“There are creatures there who need help.”
“Wolves.”
“Yes.”
We waited for him to explain the misunderstanding.
He did not.
A ewe near the wall drew her lamb closer.
“If the Creator wants us down there,” she said, “he can remove the wolves first.”
Several of us agreed.
The ram looked toward the ridge.
“I’ll be leaving at first light.”
He asked again a few days later.
By then, we had discussed the matter thoroughly.
One sheep had a bad leg. Another was watching his sister’s lambs. The grass on the upper slope would soon be gone, and we ought to make use of it. Winter was coming. There were responsibilities.
All true.
I had responsibilities myself.
Some became angry with him.
“Have you forgotten what they do to us?”
“No.”
“Then stop asking.”
He went away.
For a while, the meadow was peaceful again.
I could hear the stream. The lambs were asleep. A breeze moved across the grass, turning it pale and then green.
I remember thinking how little stood between us and happiness.
Only the wolves.
That evening, a young sheep asked a question.
“Do the wolves want us all dead?”
We were gathered near the wall.
“They kill us, don’t they?” someone answered.
“Yes. But do they want there to be no sheep anywhere?”
“That would be rather foolish of them,” the old ram said. “What would they eat?”
A few of us laughed.
The young sheep lowered his head.
I tried to return to grazing.
The grass was tender there. Usually, I could have stayed in that patch until dark.
But I kept hearing the question.
We wanted no wolves anywhere.
Not fewer. Not wolves kept safely away. When we spoke most confidently about the world to come, we wanted the last of them gone.
And we wanted it forever.
I looked at the lamb sleeping against his mother’s side.
Somewhere beyond the ridge, there would be young wolves sleeping too.
I had never included them in the picture.
I had prayed for wolves to be wiped from the earth as easily as I might have asked for the rain to stop.
I found the crooked-horned ram beside the stream.
He was trying to reach a place on his shoulder. There was fresh blood beneath the wool.
“Another one?” I asked.
He nodded.
“After you went to help?”
“Yes.”
I stood a little farther away. I could smell it.
“You see,” I said.
He waited.
“This is what they are.”
He lowered his head to drink.
I wanted him to argue. I had prepared several things to say.
Instead, I heard myself ask, “Are they all like that?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been there.”
I watched the water move around his feet.
“They killed my brother.”
He raised his head.
“I know.”
“You didn’t see him.”
“No.”
“There wasn’t enough left to—”
I stopped.
He stayed beside me until I could speak again.
“I don’t want to become food.”
“Neither do I.”
That answer disturbed me more than anything else he had said.
I had imagined that he possessed some strange appetite for suffering. Perhaps pain scarcely troubled him. Perhaps he was made differently from the rest of us.
But his shoulder shook when he put weight on it.
“Then why do you keep going?”
“There was a young one caught in some wire.”
“A young wolf?”
“Yes.”
I looked toward the ridge.
“It will grow.”
“I expect so.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know.”
I stamped a foot.
“That isn’t an answer.”
That night, I asked the Creator my old question.
Why should we suffer? We were gentle creatures. We ate the grass. We hurt nobody.
But I could no longer finish it quite as comfortably.
It was true that I did not tear anyone apart. I had no teeth for it.
It was also true that, lying safely among my own kind, I had imagined whole hillsides burning and called the thought a consolation.
I had wanted every wolf destroyed, including the one caught in the wire.
I still wanted my brother back.
I still wanted the wolves away from our meadow.
Yet something had gone wrong with the peace I was asking for. I could hear it now in the ease with which we discussed their fires.
I lay awake for a long time.
Before dawn, the ram passed the wall.
“You’re going again?”
“Yes.”
His shoulder had dried dark.
“Has the young one been freed?”
“Not yet. I couldn’t manage it alone.”
Behind me, the flock stirred. Someone asked where he thought he was taking me.
“I haven’t said I’m going,” I answered.
And I hadn’t.
There was good grass below the wall. I knew exactly where to find it. By midday, the sun would warm the stones, and I could lie there with the others.
The ram began walking.
I watched him reach the bend.
Then I followed, slowly enough that I could still have stopped.
At the top of the ridge, I asked him to wait.
Below us, something howled.
My legs stiffened.
He stood beside me. He did not tell me there was nothing to fear.
For a while, we listened.
Then, from farther down the slope, came a smaller sound.
Something was pulling against the wire.