Free Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South by Diane Duane

down the street, stopped and listened. The voices were too soft to make out words, but there were two of them, one low and amused, the other higher, insistent. Mariarta walked toward them.
    She came to the fencing of the pasture by the river. No campfire was lit there. But in the starlight and moonlight she could see the strangers’ sheep as they grazed or dozed on their feet. Darker shapes were there, too: most of them didn’t move. One sat on a stone. Another stood nearby.
    “I said no, herdboy. You’ve not enough money for one of these. Not even your mistral did.”
    “Please, signur. I have to have one. Just one.”
    Urs, and the chief ‘Nanin herd. Mariarta shivered.
    “So how much do you have, then?”
    “An eighth denér .”
    The herder laughed softly. “That wouldn’t buy even one of that lamb’s ears. Go home, boy, and forget this.”
    “Please, I’d give anything—”
    “If you had anything.”
    Why must he do this?   Mariarta thought, as Urs kept pleading. Unless the other boys had shamed him into trying to get this lamb when he couldn’t get “the other”—
    “You said all your ewes bear twin lambs twice a year,” Urs was saying. “If it’s true, you’ll have plenty more!  Just one—for kindness—” He was stammering now, almost crying. “I saw it—I can’t help it—want it so much, so much, the pretty thing—”
    Mariarta turned to leave, her insides twisting with sorrow.
    “‘If it’s true’,” the ‘Nanin chief said. “You’d make me out a liar, boy?” But the voice was amused. “Maybe there’s something in what you say. But what you have is too small to think of as a price. And a price there must be.”
    Urs said nothing.
    “Down on your knees, then,” said the chief herder. “Tell your beads once over, so I can hear. Then the lamb is yours.”
    There was no telling whether Urs had his beads with him, but he could count. He said the padernostras and  salidamarias in frantic haste, and the ‘Nanin herder listened in silence. That silence somehow smiled.
    “There, then,” said the chief herder. “Take the ramling, boy. It’s weaned off milk. I’ll tell your mistral when we leave this morning that I gave you the lamb.”
    Mariarta saw Urs’s black shape run across the grass to fetch the lamb. The other black shape didn’t move. It was looking at her.
    She hurried away. Not until she was home in her bed did Mariarta feel safe again. Sleep did not long elude her.
    In her dreams, the wind roared like a beast.
     
    •
     
    The herds left early. When Mariarta came down to restart the fire, just before dawn, she found a scrap of parchment under the front door, with her father’s name written on it. She gave it to him when he came into the kitchen for his bowl of porridge; he spread it out on the table with one hand, puzzling the letters out.
    Then he frowned and started eating  “Odd, this. They left Urs one of their lamblings. Says here he paid for it. What with?”
    “It can’t have been money,” Mariarta said softly. “He had little.”
    Her father pushed the scrap away. “I don’t like it. Dealing with the little people in cash, that’s one thing. But doing deals with ‘Nanin in anything but money...isn’t wise. The debt has a way of increasing.” But then her bab sighed. “Never mind. He’s just a poor boy. Why would anyone bother doing him harm?”
    The rest of the village heard the news, and went to the lower pasture to see the lamb. Urs was the center of attention, and proud; but the lamb seemed to be the chief cause of his joy. It really was beautiful and loving, rubbing against Urs like a cat, bouncing away to graze, then running back to him like a child to its mother. He would carry it in his arms, petting it and talking to it, until it squirmed to be let down to graze. Always it would come running back to him, gazing at him with those odd light eyes, adoring.
    The herdboys were singing a different song this morning, as Mariarta heard