Tamsin was in the Goat Pens before the first bell, with her breath going up white in the lantern-light and her hands in the straw of the old nanny’s stall. She talked to the goats in full sentences. She had always done it. The goats were the only company in the Hold that answered her the way she wanted to be answered, which was by listening, and by turning round when she came near, and by not asking her to explain herself.
“The hay is dry,” she told the old nanny, who was grey about the muzzle and had lost two teeth in the autumn. “It came up from the west barn on the cart and it smells of the summer. The snow will not last past the thaw, and when the thaw comes the mud will be over the boots, and you will complain about it, and I shall not blame you. You are allowed to complain. You have been very patient all winter.”
The nanny pushed her nose into Tamsin’s palm and blew out a long warm breath, and Tamsin laughed quietly and rubbed the velvet place between the horns. The rest of the flock stirred in the straw. There were twenty-two goats in the Pens this winter, not counting the kids, which were born in the spring and would be counted then. They were not the goats she had known. The old herd had gone in a bad year, when the fodder ran short and the Hold…
