The grassfire crept towards the granary. This one was worse than most; it got so big that the whole village together could do nothing but watch. Everyone’s grain, a whole year’s worth—for eating and for selling both—was about to go up in flames.
That’s when Crazy Goat Lady showed up with her small flock of sheep. Yeah, she has sheep too, not just goats—the weirdest-looking sheep you ever saw, with a sort of black mask on their faces and rough wool in streaks of white and rusty red. No-one I know has seen the like, or knows where they came from. But sheep are just something she keeps; it’s goats she’s cuckoo about.
Normally you’d wonder why she and the sheep would show up like that, but right then nobody cared. Truth be told, we all could do without a daft old bag and her daft sheep getting in the way. Those sheep sure were dumb, just like their mistress—not scared of the fire like any normal animals would be; instead, they looked at it with a sort of interest, and some even tried to get closer. Crazy Goat Lady didn’t look too worried about it, either. She even sorta waved them on. ‘Course, the men tried to pull her off to the back of the crowd, to shoo her sheep away—the last thing they needed was having to pull mad women and sheep out of the fire, on top of everything else. She just nattered on about coming to “help out”, “lend a hand”, and the like. Just how was she gonna help out—treat us all to a lamb barbecue? Nice thought, too bad the timing’s off.
While everyone was trying to make the crazy lady see reason, one of her stupid sheep reached the flames and… took a bite. ‘Course, the flames just filled up the gap right away. But the sheep stood there chewing, like it was real juicy grass in some paddock. And when it was done, it took another bite. By then, some other sheep tucked in as well; pretty soon, the whole flock was there, munching away on the fire without a care in the world. When I could finally tear my eyes away, I saw everyone else standing there, just as dumbstruck.
Now, each bite didn’t take much out of the flames, but the fire didn’t get closer to the granary anymore, either. It took us a while to catch on that the fire was getting smaller as the sheep grazed on. Dunno how long it took—an hour, two maybe?—but in the end we all formed a bucket chain and put out what remained.
Once the fire was gone, and everyone realised our grain was safe, the whole village was all over Crazy Goat Lady. The women were clucking over her, the men were shaking her hand, and every self-respecting farmer wanted a closer look at those sheep. Strangely enough, the woman herself didn’t look too happy about all the attention. I couldn’t hear everything over the din that she mumbled back at people; all I caught was stuff like “looks like some of the goats got loose…” and “…least I could do…”. Well, she’s called crazy for a reason. No one else seemed to listen, anyways. All you could hear was, “You saved our bacon” this and “We can’t thank you enough, Val!” that. Val??? ‘Course, her mama didn’t name her “Crazy Goat Lady”. Duh.
In the end, she managed to get herself out of the crowd somehow, rounded up her sheep, and headed home. Crazy Goat Lady lives by herself a little way out of the village, on a farm with paddocks for her goats and sheep to graze on. I dunno if she ever had family, or where they went. When I think of it, this is unheard of in a village like ours, where everyone minds not just your business but your great-gGrandma’s as well. Me and some other kids followed a little behind, to see what other crazy things the sheep could do. In truth,—they were dead boring, even for sheep. They just plodded along, not even stopping to graze on the grass by the roadside; perhaps their bellies were too full from eating all the fire.
There wasn’t much to see at Crazy Goat Lady’s farm, either. Her cottage was on the smallish side and kinda rundown. The flowers in her front yard looked nibbled on, as did the cabbages in her garden. There was some washing drying on a line off to the side of the cottage, and a mean-looking brown-and-white goat was giving it the evil eye. Something about that roused the woman more than anything else, even the grassfire before. “No, Daisy!”, she yelled, but it was too late. The goat bleated testily—and the gout of flame that shot out of her mouth set the washing on fire.
Victoria Chvatal is a writer and poet who grew up in the USSR (now Ukraine) and lived in Australia and Israel. She currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with her family. Her short speculative fiction appears in Nature (Futures) and a forthcoming anthology A Crack In the Code.
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