I milked for a moment, then stopped. I needed Dice to remind me what I was supposed to be doing. Was it too soon to milk again? I’d lost track. Resolute, I left the sheep still locked into the feeder, and I left the milk pail in the middle of the floor. Four cats, bewildered by their good fortune, darted in from the corners.

I should have noticed my mind wasn’t working right, but you can’t notice a thing like that from the inside. I stumbled over the ice in the courtyard, slick and rippled as mucous, and forgot I was going to ask Dice for help. I made my way to the creek. The woods were high with snow now. Afternoon. The landscape was only four colors, white snow, black trees, lapis sky, and lavender shadows. The half-moon burned in the sky, and I almost thought I could see the stars piercing through.

I stomped the ice, jumping on it till it cracked with a gunshot noise, and I fell into the water. I was planning, I think, to soothe my arms by bathing them—so the swelling would diminish, so I could pick up the milk pail and hand it to Sara, so I could milk twenty-nine more sheep, and feed them, and water them, and then start with the cows again.

I had my arms thrust up to the shoulder in the quick black water. They’d gone tingly and numb. And then the very last of my sense told me to take my arms out of the creek and walk to the long house. I headed back up, though terrific squalls fought to keep me down. I had to crawl through the courtyard, and when I reached the porch, the sky was bursting with pink stars.

The landscape was silent. A blizzard was coming, maybe.

* * *

Dice was there for some time, lifting up soup on a prison-issue spoon. I stared, mind-boggled. “What happened to the sheep?” I asked Dice, my tongue like a rock.

“They’ll be all right,” he said.

“No—” I said. “I left them in the feeder.” I kept talking about the sheep. Dice was gone and every bed was full. Sara was here, and Gemini. Was anyone still healthy? I saw Rainer, gray colored, dropping down from his bunk like a spider.

“I’ll go see the blessed sheep,” he said. “Now shut up.”

* * *

At least one day passed. I remember the ink-blue night flooding down the windowpanes. Then the hills were bioluminescent green with putrefying fox fire, or so they appeared—maybe it was sunlight of another day. No one brought water or broth that night or day, though many called out asking for it. One unidentifiable white morning, I thought I saw Bay gliding through the courtyard, waist-deep in snow. His car wasn’t there. The forest road must have still been impassable.