Read Online Tales of the Zodiac - The Goat's Tale by PJ Hetherhouse - Free Book Online

always trying… that the sun moves faster across the sky. You meant that that the sky moves like you. Ha ha!” he grins toothlessly.
    “I’ve heard that story so many times, Father. It’s not even clever. You work harder, time passes quicker.”
    That story, for my father, is the story that he bores people with every time he wants to talk of my precocity. I scrape up the last of my yoghurt with my finger and sigh. For a moment, there is silence as we stare out to sea and the emergent red sun.
    “You’ll be reet. I promise.” His hard, black eyes seem, for a moment, soft. I don’t answer; I can’t spend my last morning with the man in conflict.
    My father, always my hero, his rugged impenetrable exterior, his fierce pride and determination, is becoming frailer and more human by the day. And despite our differences, I understand that it is what he has taught me that has made me who I am. The discipline, the determination, that he has infused into my life has led me to the school and maybe even to the cusp of knighthood. It has also now brought me to the brink of death.
    “You’re making it difficult. You can’t make those promises. You don’t know what will happen.”
    “I’ve seen it,” he replies knowingly. When my father is not relying on laboured goat metaphors, he is attempting to pass himself off as Ynys Gwyn’s resident mystic. He is aided in this delusion by the fact that there is a general consensus amongst the islanders that if anyone is going to be a mystic, it will be the slightly senile, semi-feral, near naked goatherd who inhabits the wild east of the island. I, however, am not so easily drawn in.
    “And that is supposed to make me feel better?”
    “Nope. I think you’ve already decided nothing’s gunna make you feel better.”
    He chuckles and rises from his resting place on the stone. He moves to offer me a rare hug. His tanned, sinewy body is covered in hair and his sour, salty smell is not the most pleasant but, nevertheless, this hug is the most useful thing he’s done all morning.
    “I need to go.”
    “So you do.” He releases me from the hug, slapping me on the back as he does so.
    “Goodbye, Father.”
    “Goodbye, Son. And remember – push the sky away.” We do not say any more; there are no tears, no declarations of love. Men like us do not need to say such things.
     

Nine
     
    I set off towards Arberth, the location of the bridge to the mainland, lost in thought. Upon receiving the orders from Vesta, my reaction had been a pragmatic one. I could not change the course of events that I had been faced with and so resolved myself to prepare in the best way I could. There is nothing quite so wretched as to fail through lack of preparation.
    In some ways, I am lucky. The harshness of a goatherd’s life has prepared me for the wilderness in a way that nothing else could have: the butchery of animals, the preparation of forage, the building of shelters and tolerance to the cold were all things that I didn’t need to learn. And, whilst I understand that the coldness of the island could never compare to the snow and mountains beyond, I have still been taught to respect the cold. As boys go, I feel equipped to fight the elements better than most.
    Furthermore, long days with my father have taught me everything I need to know about the sun. It is perhaps the only other subject besides goat husbandry in which he truly excels and, despite what he might claim, the sun is his first god. In exchange for his worship, it has turned his skin into wrinkled leather. Nevertheless, just a casual glance at the sun will tell him the time, the season and his bearing. As with all men who limit their horizons, he is an expert in everything he needs to be.
    In accordance with what I already knew, I memorised the map provided by Vesta and studied the sun in the sky. It would be imperative to know which way to walk whatever the time and whatever the weather. I could only hope that my travelling