She walks among us, strolling lazily through the pasture while we skitter out of her way. We crowd up around the edges of the pasture or stand among the natural bluestone battlements jutting out of the hillside, and we watch her. We murmur, but we keep our voices down on account of her sharp ears. Sometimes she laughs at our fright and tells us to run, but we can’t run too far because Mister is with her. We won’t none of us go so far that we can’t see Mister.

Mister’s eyes are only for her, not on us or the trees like they should be. Maybe there’s nothing left for him to guard against in the trees, since she’s already here. It’s her eyes that are for us. They take in the whole flock sometimes, and other times she picks us out as individuals, but her gaze spends more time crawling over the shape of our bodies then looking at our face. Sometimes she sneaks up on us unawares, or she and Mister crowd into the rocks after us and we aren’t fast enough to squirm away, and she runs her tapering claws through our wool, right next to the skin, tracing the shapes of our shoulders, our hips, our thighs. Sometimes she moans appreciatively, little grunts of pleasure. Sometimes she nibbles her black lips. Sometimes she licks them. It makes us shiver, it does.

It wasn’t always this way. Mister used to have a Missus, but that was years ago, before I was born. We don’t talk about her, or what happened to her – even the ewes, and they’ll talk about anything. It makes Mister grumpy to hear us say her name. The gods used to walk among us with Mister too, and that too was before I was born. The gods have a different name for Mister that the ewes know, but we’re only supposed to call him Mister.

Things are different now. Now the gods send him up to pasture with us by ourselves. Now Lambing is almost over already, and we’re still up in the hill pastures, alone with Mister. Well, not quite alone. She’s here. But the gods haven’t come, and our wool is thick and matted, and the lambs are still among us and unnamed.

Mister’s at his best when she’s around. He holds his chin high, his ears perked, and his tail wags like a leaf in a windstorm when he doesn’t check himself. He keeps himself clean, too – white as bright as the clouds and black as glossy as the lake at night – and he winks at us and tells us we’re all good lads and lasses and barely snaps or shouts at all. When she’s gone for more than a few days, he goes back to how he was before she came: he just growls and snarls at us for so much as a ‘how do you do, Mister?’

* * *

“Jeremy!”

I blink. I was staring off at nothing again – maybe at where she and Mister were minutes ago. It’s Ellie calling me, and when I turn, she beckons me to follow after her and rest of the two-years. We were all got the Spring Lambing before last, so we know all about how this should work – how the gods should have already brought us down to their valley to shear our wool and take the new lambs. Ellie is practically a ewe already. The real ewes have started calling me and most of the other guys “mutton”. They won’t tell us what it means, but it’s just a nickname, I guess.

“C’mon, Jeremy! She’s coming this way!”

She is, too, her and Mister. I know that we are safe – we aren’t lambs, after all – but I run after Ellie anyway and crowd with my cousins into the battlement. We all smell of months’ worth of wool-wax and rain and the thick pasture grass, but Ellie smells especially of clover. I nuzzle up against her, pushing into the scrum.

* * *

It only started a few weeks ago, right when Lambing began and the smell of birth blood mingled with all of the wildflowers and pollen and fresh green shoots of sweetgrass. That’s when she came first. Mister had been sour with us all winter long and spent most of the days sunning at the top of the rocks. I guess we were keeping better watch than him, because the ewes made a big stink when they saw her at the edge of the pasture. She just sauntered across the grass, picking her steps lazily and caressing us with her eyes. Her mouth hung open, her tongue lolled when she wasn’t licking her lips, and we all got a nice view of her sharp teeth. I suppose they weren’t that different from Mister’s teeth, but something about the way she eyed us said they were for more than nipping. She was lean beneath her coat, slender and curvy, and with those legs of hers she was tall enough to look over Mister’s head. We only came up to his shoulders, the tallest of us. We all bounded away from her as she passed, and she snickered with a certainty that said she could have caught any one of us – even Edmund – if it ever came to a foot race.

She plopped down beside Mister on his rock, and lounged there until he opened his eyes and realized he had company. He didn’t seem as surprised by her – as concerned by her – as we wanted him to be. They just chatted for a long while, while the sun went in and out through the clouds, and then they disappeared behind the rocks together. We all knew what they were up to – he moaned almost as loud as she did. She had a filthy mouth, and the things she shouted made the ewes mutter. Besides, we weren’t stupid; Ellie and I had been fooling around through the winter – mostly together, sometimes pairing off with other cousins. All of the girls paired off with Edmund at least once, and even some of the ewes seemed to look for excuses to find themselves alone with him, when our two rams were off being ornery with each other. The ewes didn’t call Edmund “mutton” – they called him “ram”.

Once she and Mister emerged from behind the rocks, still sharing noisy kisses, Mister whistled, calling us all to assembly. No matter what we thought about her, Mister was standing straight and had his shoulders back and had a sparkling glint in his eye that I hadn’t seen before, so none of us drug our heels as we gathered up around him. I waited for an announcement in his booming voice, but he just stood there, his fingers twined in hers, only slipping apart as she stepped away into the flock, among us. We all shuffled away from her as best as we could, but she didn’t follow any of us. She sauntered straight into the clump of lambs. While we watched, wide-eyed and silent, she crouched among them, cooed to them, stroked their ears and kissed their faces, and eventually chose one to tuck up beneath her arm. None of the lambs were talkers yet – they still aren’t – but that one just stared back at us with eyes as wide as ours and quivered until the both of them disappeared into the woods at the edge of the pasture. Mister snapped once when the ewes began to mutter, but that was the end of it. At his signal, we dispersed into the pasture again.

She came again, a few days later, and after she and Mister had their fun she found another lamb to her liking and carried her off to the woods while we watched. The ewes glared thorns and brambles at Mister, but he shrugged them off. When she came again, and again again, the ewes began to complain.

“The gods will be angry with you! You’re a bad dog, Mister!”

Mister just snorted. “The gods don’t care. Where are they, if they care? They haven’t come.” When the ewes accused him of blasphemy, he shouted over them. “What do you care, either? Those lambs aren’t even old enough for names yet, and none of you know who they belong to, beside the flock. They’re not like pups – named in the womb – each one a rightful dog as soon as they’re born.”

The ewes muttered.

“You will have more lambs in the autumn, and many of you are still carrying now. There will be plenty, don’t you worry.”

The ewes couldn’t argue with logic like that. None of us could ever argue with Mister once he made sense of things.

Still, none of us liked it when she came and took a lamb. One afternoon, when we two-years were standing in a patch of ryegrass that had shot up almost overnight after the rain, I saw Edmund watching her especially closely. “It’s not right,” he said.

Ellie and I listened, but Tom blew a raspberry. “Mister says it’s right.”

“It’s not right,” Edmund argued. He had a way of getting right to the point. The ewes liked that about him.

“You gonna do something?” Janna asked.

“Yup.” Edmund stamped off across the grass after her. She was nearly at the woods already, almost out of sight, so he had to stamp pretty quickly. Ellie and I and a couple of others followed him. We didn’t catch her before she left the pasture, so Edmund stood at the edge of the grass and glared into the woods where she disappeared. The rest of us waited a pace or two behind him, but we glared at the woods, too.

We could hear the lamb whimpering, even if we couldn’t see either of them through the trees. We could hear everything – her soothing cooing, her wet, noisy kisses. Then we heard the slap of her tongue and the snap of her jaws and a crunch like a dozen branches breaking at once, and we didn’t hear the lamb whimper any more. It sounded like when Mister caught a gopher in our grass and took it back to his rock, except Mister always had harsh words for the gophers first.

The next time she came into our pasture, we were ready for her. We all gathered up behind Edmund and glared where she could see us. She smirked at us, so we knew she got the message, and after she left we congratulated Edmund. He still wasn’t happy, though.

The ewes complained again, but Mister had them count the lambs and there were more than the highest number the ewes could count to. Even Mister could only tell us there were more than two dozen, and that proved it, didn’t it? The ewes nodded, but they didn’t stop muttering.

* * *

“Is she still coming?” “I can’t see anything!” “Stop crowding me!” “I can smell her.” “You’re just smelling where you dribbled pee on your foot this morning.”

Edmund lifts his head – he’s an inch or two taller than the rest of us, and everyone closes their mouth to hear what he has to say. “Yup, she’s coming right this way.”

Ellie and I don’t care. We’ve pressed all the way through the scrum to the rocks at the back of the battlement, and it’s dark and crowded and safe back here. We take advantage of our tangled limbs to tangle ourselves up a bit more. I kiss her ears and tell her how lovely she is and how glossy her wool is, and she nibbles my neck and nuzzles into my chest. I may not be Edmund, but I have a pretty nice chest.

I guess we don’t really notice the change in the crowd – the change in everyone’s voices, and how the scrumming press switches from milling to urgent and violent – until we look up and see that she’s wading right in among us. Everyone is packed too tightly for anyone to escape, and everyone’s confused, so no one can escape her stroking, assessing claws, not even Edmund. Mister is nowhere to be seen.

She’s not quite as slender as she was before; her belly has filled in and even bulges a bit, but she’s thicker in every direction. Her coat is sleek instead of scruffy. She’s slinky and oozes wanton lust in a way that doesn’t compare to Ellie, even when she’s at her most flirtatious. It’s foreign to me, but beguiling. When she sidles through the crowd, every brush of her hips against my cousins is a caress. Every touch of her claws lingers, glides through their wool as if none of us were matted. Her pale blue eyes fall on Ellie and I, and I guess she gets the wrong idea about us, seeing us still tangled together. Well, not entirely the wrong idea.

“Good,” she says as she crouches down next to us, only loud enough for us to hear. As it turns out, that doesn’t have to be very quiet, since in that moment the jam clears and the rest of our cousins break out of the battlement and flee for other parts of the pasture. “I like this.” She takes my ear in one hand, gently rubbing the velvety skin between a finger and her thumb. “More lambs next season, hmm?” Her other hand slides down Ellie’s belly and rubs it suggestively. “But you’re doing it all wrong, my sweets. Let me show you.” She settles onto her knees, and there, in the rocks, she shows Ellie and me how to “make love”. That’s what she calls it – “making love” – but it doesn’t feel like love when she’s there between us the whole time, kissing us both, squeezing Ellie’s breasts, placing my hand on hers and telling me when to move down a row, slipping her fingers into our mouths and …other places us both to make us ready, and taking me by my root to thrust me into Ellie. She coos just like she did for the lambs and strokes our hair. She has a dirty mouth and a smirk that doesn’t go away, even when I get her to cry out and shudder. After she’s done – she tells us she’s done, and to stop touching her – Ellie and I hold each other until she leaves.

“What’d she say to you lot?”

We both glance up in surprise; it’s Mister. He snuck up on us without a sound. I heard from the ewes that he used to do things like that, but I never saw it before for myself.

“Nothin’,” Ellie and I reply in unison.

“Don’t ‘nothing’ me. What did Lady tell you?” Mister glances at us in the way that doesn’t leave us much room for disobedience.

“Lady?” Ellie asks, buying us a few moments’ to think of a story. “I thought she was your new Missu-”

“No!” Mister barks, cutting her off. “She’s a Lady. But you treat her with just as much respect or more, and you do whatever she says, same as me.” He stares us down until we nodded. “Now what did she say?”

We fall over ourselves telling him everything we can remember, except the parts that we just can’t repeat, until he’s heard enough and waves the rest of it away. He tells us to carry on as he turns his back on us, and, hesitantly, we do.

* * *

Lady keeps coming back, and we can tell the lamb flock is dwindling, even if the number is still too high to count. It’s gone from many to less many. She’s showing it, too – her body is continuing to fill out. Mister can’t keep his fingers off her hips when they walk together, and sometimes I seem him squeezing her breasts, just like she showed me.

Edmund and some of the others keep up the good fight – they glare at her just as ornery as a ram would – but she doesn’t mind them. I hear she barely even takes the lambs outside the pasture now, just into the first row of oaks, before she kisses the lamb on the mouth, opens her jaws wide, and… And, crunch.

Ellie and I don’t go with the others – Lady knows us. She makes a point of finding us now, no matter where we hide, whether we’re together or not. It’s better when we’re together, because sometimes she’ll leave us alone to “make lambs” after a few minutes. When we’re by ourselves, though, she doesn’t let us go so easily. She likes to touch, to kiss. She likes us to practice with her. It’s the worst when her lips are still stained red from her meal. We’re not the only ones she singles out from the flock, but that doesn’t make us like it any more. It doesn’t’ stop the rest of the flock from looking at us funny, either.

* * *

At last we hear the roar of the machines from the valley below and the gods come. They’re not the same gods as last year, and not even Greta, the oldest ewe, can remember seeing these gods before, but they take us down into the valley to their buildings and shear us and wash us and take the lambs away, so life is good. Since we’re in a pen now we don’t need Mister any more, and we only see him from time to time, on the other side of the gate. The gods don’t ever yell at him about the missing lambs, so I guess they don’t know or don’t care, and Mister is right, as usual. There’s a rumor running through the flock that we two-years are going to find out what “mutton” means soon, but the days go by and we just mill around in the pen and eat the dry grass the gods bring us.

* * *

It’s night when Lady appears again, in our pen, in the midst of us. She slinks low to hide her profile among ours. At the same time that she mutters for us to be quiet, she rubs up against us, tracing the newly-shorn outlines of our necks and shoulders with her claws.

“The gods will have you now!” hiss the ewes. “Mister’s not here to speak for you.”

She scowls at the ewes in reply. “One voice above a whisper and I’ll have all your throats! Hush now, like good sheep.”

The ewes do hush, though we’re all awake and standing now, trying to keep our distance from her. “You’ll not have any of our lambs this time, at least,” someone says. “They’re all inside the buildings still.”

“It’s not lambs I’m after,” Lady says, and the chuckle in her throat is chilling. Then her eyes find me, and she pushes her way through the crowd. “Jeremy, my sweet – just who I had in mind.” Before I can protest, she scoops me up under one arm. “And Ellie, too. Good.” Up Ellie comes, right beside me. Lady’s fingers dig into my belly as she holds both with one hand. She places a finger to both of our lips and kisses the top of our heads. “Shush, please. …and one more, I think. You’ll do.” She grabs one of our cousins with her free hand.

“I’m Carl,” said Carl, when she managed to get him up under her other arm. His voice trembled with fear.

“I don’t really care, sweetie. Just stay quiet and come with me.” And like that she starts slinking back toward the gate of the pen, and I see that she has it open a crack.

“This is not right!” It’s a new voice, and I twist under Lady’s arm to see Edmund. He’s planted himself right in front of her, and has his hands on his hips. He’s got that glare of his down now, just like a ram, and he’s giving it to her in double-helpings. “You can’t do this, Lady.”

She chuckles. She’d probably pat his cheek if her hands weren’t full with us. “I can do whatever I want. Watch me.”

It’s impossible to argue with logic like that; even Edmund knows he’s been outsmarted. Still, he doesn’t back down. “Then put them back; take me instead.”

“Oooh…” Lady quivers. “That’s awfully sexy, sweetie. But, no. You’re a ram now, not mutton – that’s what Bartholomew said.” When Edmund looks at her blankly, she adds, “Mister, to you. You have to stay and make more lambs.”

“I’m a ewe,” Ellie reminds her, softly.

“You’re scrumptious, is what you are, so shush.”

A bark sounds from across the valley, and that seems to remind Lady she wants to hurry. She tucks us up against her sides and runs.

She’s so fast, even carrying us three. The ground flies by beneath us, too fast to make out details. Dirt and short grass and roads give way roots and stones and the underbrush of the hillsides. When she leaps – across a stream, or over a tall root cluster – she clutches us against her, beneath her coat. Her skin is warm and giving – supple now, instead of loose like when we first saw her. Ellie and I jostle together against each other and her row of breasts. Ellie and I know better than to squirm or cry out, but Carl doesn’t, so she gives him a hard pinch, and whispers that if he makes a sound, the next pinch will be with her teeth. We can see them gleaming in the moonlight, her teeth, like two skylines of snowcapped peaks behind her black lips. She licks them frequently. We can hear Carl moaning after that, but he does it quietly.

As we reach the woods, I can feel Ellie begin to tremble. Her eyes are wide, and she’s nibbling her lips the way she does during thunderstorms. I kiss her, hoping to calm her, but it probably doesn’t help that my teeth are chattering, too.

We don’t stop until we reach a cave in the woods. It’s barely a cave, really – just a hollow in a stone pile with an overhang – but inside the walls are worn smooth, and the floor is carpeted with moss and a thick layer of moulding leaves. The air is thick with the smell of her. She sets us down against the back wall, and lifts a stern finger. “Wait right here. Or else.” She strolls back out of the cave and we can hear her lapping water from the brook at the bottom of the stone pile. We wait in silence, watching the cave mouth. We’re not interested in “Or else.” I don’t even look at Ellie, though our fingers find each other and intertwine.

When she returns, Lady stops underneath the overhang, reaching up to grab the stone lip and stretch her back. She’s silhouetted against the deep blues and browns and greens of the forest night. Her joints snap and pop as her back arches. “Well, well, well.” At first her claws slide along the stony ceiling, but then she runs them down her side, through her coat and around her bare belly. Her hips sway as she steps slowly into the cave. “There’s no reason to rush things, I suppose. You know, sweeties, Bartholomew won’t be the only one who misses our trysts for the next several moons. I’ve grown accustomed to being touched, being loved. It distracts me from the cold nights, from the loneliness, from the hunger…”

Ellie understands her first. With her fingers still twined in mine, she takes a few hesitant steps toward Lady. Lady wraps her arms around both of our shoulders to draw us in against her chest, then bends down to shower our faces with her wet kisses. Ellie and I both beckon toward Carl, first subtly, then more urgently as he doesn’t respond, but he remains curled in a whimpering ball against the back of the cave. Lady doesn’t even seem to notice – she pushes me down to my knees beneath her legs and thrusts her hips forward. Ellie remains clutched to Lady’s chest, kissing each of the little nipples that swell from her pink skin, like two rows of berries. She uses us both quite thoroughly, in ways I will not describe except to say that when she is done and we all lay panting and tangled together in the moulding leaves, Ellie and I are as permeated with the scent of her as her cave is, and the three of us are slick with sweat and saliva and other spent fluids. Eventually she rises, carrying us back to the rear of the cave, and lays us in the bed of moss with strokes and kisses and affirmations of what good sweeties we are.

Still cooing, Lady scoops up Carl and strokes his trembling nose as she carries him back to the mouth of her cave. She whispers things too him too low to be heard, but the silhouette of his ears lie back on his head and he nods. She kisses him, sloppy tongue swirling around his muzzle, until he begins to kiss her back. Then her jaw opens wide. Quick as I can I cover Ellie’s eyes and pull her to my chest, but we can’t block out the sounds – the crunching, the slurping, the gulping, her grunts and snuffles and quick stolen breaths. The worst are her little moan – they’re quick and quiet, accidental sounds that escape her throat. They sound too much like the noises she makes when I’m between her legs.

We can’t sleep, not even after she’s done licking her fingers and lips and stares quietly at the moon through the trees. When she begins to snore, I tug on Ellie’s arm. “Let’s go.”

“We can’t. She’s blocking the way.” Ellie points, but I’ve already seen that she is lying across the mouth of the cave. We can still figure out a way past, I’m sure.

“Plus,” Lady adds, between snoozy smacks of her lips, “I won’t be so friendly if you try to leave.” One of her eyes opens and fixes me where I sit. It only drifts closed again when I nod and settle back against the wall.

* * *

The mood the next morning is tense. When we wake, Lady has already bathed in the brook, and she invites us down to do the same. Her invitations are like Mister’s – they don’t leave any room for refusal, even if hers are made through wide, toothy grins and sparkling eyes. She takes us to a clearing in the woods, too, and tells us it’s our new pasture, but she’s not like Mister. She won’t let us out of her sight, and not even far from her fingertips. Most of the day she keeps one of us in her embrace – pressed up against her, or lying in the curve of her body, or sitting in her lap. She’s too generous with her kisses and her touches, and without the rest of the flock there to see us, she’s even pushier than usual. Her stomach is swollen and stiff now, but there’s more beneath her taut skin than just a reminder of what happened to Carl.

“It’s my litter,” she says, after she’s “invited” me to rub her belly. “Four pups, I think. I can feel them inside me. Four hungry little mouths to feed.” She winks at me.

* * *

It might be two days later, maybe three. Ellie and I are already familiar with the new routine, the new pasture. I’ve admitted to Ellie when I was sure that Lady could overhear that I liked spending time alone with Lady, curled up in her arms, her fingers tracing along my throat or up and down my belly and between my legs. I thought maybe Lady would leave Ellie alone after that, but she didn’t. Now she just doesn’t let me wander away when she’s entertaining herself with Ellie. I haven’t had any rest since.

She has us both with her – under her, really. She always wants us to sprawl on the grass and she plops down between us, throwing her legs and arms across us possessively, like some eagle might fly by and see us and think we’re open for the taking. “I’m having trouble choosing who’s next.”

“What do you mean?” Ellie asks, but she glances over at me.

In answer, Lady’s belly rumbles. I flinch away from her, but she leans forward, pinning me with a hand at the center of my chest and grins at Ellie. Only now do I realize that her stomach has shrunk again to a gentle, pudgy curve. I stare at it now. It happened so gradually over the last few days, and I was never good at gradual.

Lady runs her tongue thoughtfully along the inside of her teeth, like she only just noticed them. “What I mean, sweetie, is that there’s nothing you can do for me that he can’t, as delicate and diligent as your lovely tongue is.” That’s not exactly what she said, but I’m not going to repeat what she said. “But he-” her fingers walk down my stomach and grabbed a handful between my legs “-has something you don’t.” Her fingers roll my tenderest flesh casually, and when they come away sticky, she licks them clean with a preoccupied suckle. “Of course, you poor sheep have nothing on Bartholomew or any other of my kind when it comes to a good-” making love session, basically “-but one has to make do, doesn’t she?”

“I’m a ewe,” Ellie reminds her. Her brows knit worriedly.

“She is,” I agree, and I reach out to squeeze Ellie’s hand.

“She might just be.” Lady shrugs, “And that makes the quandary, doesn’t it? If you two listened to anything I told you, she should be pushing a lamb out just a few weeks before my litter – just in time, hmm?”

“She will!” I am quick to respond. Ellie looks at me, but doesn’t respond.

Now Lady’s fingers explore Ellie’s belly. “But no bulge yet, sweetie.” They slide up and gently twist one of her nipples. “And she still looks more like a child than a mother.”

“She will,” I insist.

“And if you’re wrong?” Lady grins a mouthful of teeth at me.

“You’ll figure something out.”

“I’m sure I will, Jeremy. I’m sure I will. It’s decided, then.” She slides her leg across Ellie to settle squarely atop me, and shoos Ellie with a wave of her fingers. “Not too far, though, sweetie. Don’t make me regret my decision.”

Ellie is hesitant, but she takes one step back. I nod. Her eyes water and she nibbles her lips, but I nod more firmly and she turns and runs.

“Don’t cry now, sweetie.” Lady drops to a crouch over me. I guess my eyes are watering, too. She brushes away the welling tears with the back of a claw, then kisses my cheeks. “It’ll all be okay.” Her tongue rolls over my cheeks where she kissed, tracing the streaks left by the few tears that escaped. When her tongue slides into my mouth and her lips close on mine, I can taste salt.

“It will be so fast you’ll never know,” she whispers into my ear. Her hands knead the muscles on my chest and my ribs roughly, almost painfully, before she grips my arms tight. “Just one big kiss…”

I squeeze my eyes shut as her mouth opens wide.

“Stop!”

My eyes startle open. Edmund stands a few paces away, glaring, hands clutching one of the gods’ tools. It has sharp metal on the end. Ellie stands another pace behind him, in his shadow.

For a moment I think she’s going to demand to know he found her, how he got out of the pen, and just what he thinks he’s doing. Lady is surprised for that same moment, but then she scowls, offended. “How rude! Can’t you see I’m busy with something private here?”

“Oh.” Edmund blinks, then takes a step back. “I… I’m sorry!”

Lady’s scowl softens, and she dismisses him with a shrug. “Just give me a few minutes, and I’ll be with you, okay?”

“Yes. Yes of course. I’ll be right over here.”

Lady smirks until they’ve gone a few steps away. Her tongue swipes over the saliva that’s collected on her lips, and then her mouth yawns wide – a black cavern lined with gleaming white teeth rushing toward me.

I only hear the slurp of swallowed saliva before the crunch.