The Goatherd
Mari was too young to help with the goats; five years old, the Delivery Man said when he brought her, and besides that she was too easily distracted, too clumsy. But she would wake up early with him and after breakfast, she would wander the field while he worked, crouching to inspect whatever caught her eye. For months millipedes fascinated her, their many legs, their smooth, shiny shells, and over those months he saw many millipedes—from babies only just hatched, translucent, legs still growing in, to old millipedes, long enough to stretch from her wrist to the tips of her fingers. From across the field he would know if she found one; he’d look up from the goats to see her running toward him, through the tall, waving grass, her hand raised. When she arrived, out of breath, she would present the millipede to him, set it on the ground in front of him, and without a word, run back across the field to where she’d been searching before.
They spoke little, words here and there. In the morning: “Would you like some milk?” Don’t know why he asked, he would have poured her milk anyway, even if she’d refused. Part of his job as father. And part of his pleasure, too, thinking of the milk coalescing unbreakable around her bones, and even simpler than that, the way she tipped her glass back to get the last drops, the hint of pink that appeared in her sallow cheeks. In the evening, when he had locked up the goats and they retired to the house, exhausted, he would ask her: “Would you like some music?” And she would choose from his records while he would cut her a hunk of cheese and bread and pour her a glass of milk and himself a glass of wine, and open the windows to let the music drift out and a breeze drift in.
She liked waltzes because of how the notes swayed against each other. The goatherd did not consider himself as knowing how to dance, but he had learned a few steps from his schoolboy days. A simple box step, a turn. When he wasn’t so tired, he would dance around the room, arms holding an imaginary partner. Soon Mari wanted to dance, too. She liked spinning in circles until she collapsed against him, giggling. Her small head pressed against his stomach, her arms barely able to fit around his waist.
In this way the days passed until the Delivery Man came for Mari. He came at night, just after sundown, and when the goatherd opened the door, Mari put down her bread and walked over to the Delivery Man, her gaze averted again to the ground. Quiet, shy: the way she’d been when she’d gotten here many moons ago. The Delivery Man nodded at the goatherd, who did not say anything because he was preoccupied thinking about how he should say goodbye, and then they were gone.
The next girl liked to talk. She made up stories about the goats, imagining the oldest goat as king, the younger bucks plotting the king’s murder while embroiling themselves in love affairs with the does. When he brought the goats out, she ran from goat to goat, whispering fervently to each one. She spent hours brushing their hair in the evening.
He once caught her swinging herself onto a goat’s back, the poor goat’s legs buckling under her weight. “I just wanted to ride one,” she said as he dragged her off.
“You’re too old for that,” the goatherd said. She was older than Mari—eight years old, the Delivery Man said—though she didn’t act like it. When he told her to stop telling tales about the goats, she instead pretended to be one: rolling around in the grass, grazing on inedible berries that she threw up later. He spent half his time chastising her and went to bed every night exhausted and aching. He liked it in the morning, alone at the table; she slept past sunrise and was hard to wake.
After a year, he told her it was about time she stopped causing trouble and started to make herself useful. He taught her to wash the dishes with gentle soap and scrub the floors with lye; taught her to milk the more docile of the goats, to separate curds from whey, to press cheese into blocks. She complained at first, saying she was tired, that she wanted to play, and she’d do the job halfheartedly, leaving them with dirty floors and moldy cheese; but after a few months her complaints dwindled, and after a few more they disappeared altogether. The goatherd was satisfied with this, feeling as though he had properly instilled in her the work ethic fatherhood demanded he instill, and they settled into their routine.
Sometimes in the morning, he would enter the kitchen expecting the girl to be there, even though he had no reason to, and, taking a seat, it would seem as though there was something missing, even though everything was as it should have been.
The third girl was old enough—eleven years—to help him with his work, but she was often sick, and the goatherd ended up neglecting his goats to tend to her. Some days he resented this. He felt sorry for his goats, who cried when they were penned up too long, and besides that he craved the light of the sun. Whenever he was able to settle her into a fitful sleep—usually late at night—he would retreat to the kitchen, at first to have his glass of wine, then, as her illness progressed, his glass of whiskey. During those long, interminable days, he thought he might have been better off without any girls at all.
But other days—and he never knew, waking up, what kind of day it would be—he took pleasure in fulfilling his duty, in denying himself his wants, in pulling the blinds closed and sitting vigil in the room where she slept. Feeling the heat of her forehead through the damp cloth he swapped out every twenty minutes, it became, in those endless hours, a second kind of sun. A center around which he revolved, a reason in the morning to rise.
On days she wasn’t sick, she would get up early, before him. Sometimes she hadn’t been able to sleep at all. He would find her in the pen with the goats, her face buried in the shag of a goat’s flank, breathing gently, the goat’s head resting against the girl’s back. When he shooed the girl back to bed while he took out the goats, the goats would cry after her until they reached the field.
When the Delivery Man came for the girl, the goatherd had to carry her, coughing, from her bed into the Delivery Man’s arms.
The fourth girl was a teenager, a foot taller than the last girl, her chin almost level with his, her skin always flared with red bumps. The Delivery Man said that she, too, was recovering from a long illness, and required extra care. It seemed to the goatherd that fresh air would be good for her—shore up the lungs—but whenever he tried to coax her outside, she ignored him, preferring instead to stay in her room with the door shut.
She ate as lightly as the last girl, so dinners were quick: she would take one, two bites of cheese, meat, bread, a sip of water, then flit back to her room. At night, the goatherd was sometimes kept awake by her coughing, sharp even through the wall. The next day, dulled from lack of sleep, he would end up making mistakes with the goats; he’d feed them too much, try to milk the bucks until they kicked him.
Some nights, after listening to the coughing for hours, he went into her room, even though she had told him repeatedly not to. Some nights she was still in bed; some nights she curled on the floor. Some nights she stood, leaning against the bed post in order to stay upright.
Always she moaned in frustration when the door creaked open. “I’m fine. Go away.”
Here the goatherd was paralyzed by indecision. Stand closer or farther? Comfort her or stay quiet? Pat her on the back or hold her hand? Or leave? Yes, why not leave? But wasn’t it his duty to stay?
“You’re not fine,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she said forcefully. “Why don’t you go tend to your goats and leave me alone?”
After such nights, they would spend weeks without saying a word to each other.
She was with him the longest, which was hard. With him she turned fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, most days sullen, some days angry. After a year, the goatherd began to hope that the Delivery Man would come and take her away from him, relieve him of his responsibility. He was only a goatherd, after all.
One morning, days before she was to turn seventeen, he went out to the goat pen and found it empty. He went back into the house and realized that the girl’s room was empty, too. In a panic, he ran to the field, calling for them, terrified for the goats, his only livelihood. What if the girl had let them fall into a ditch, or led them into a coyote’s den?
Eventually he found them in an overgrown garden past the boundaries of the goatherd’s property, the girl perched on a rock watching the goats feast on the bushes and shrubs. She looked up and smiled at him, but her expression quickly dampened upon seeing his face. “I felt better this morning,” she said when he demanded an explanation. “And they wanted out.”
“It’s not your job to take the goats out,” he said, his voice constricting.
“Yeah, my job is to be sick, and lie in bed, is that right?”
“You want to be useful? Then try doing your chores.” The goats’ ears perked up; they started bleating. He forced his voice low and calm. “You can’t just do whatever you want around here.”
The girl hunched her shoulders and said nothing. He guided the goats back home, the girl trailing behind him, and when they returned, the girl went to her room and slammed the door shut.
Overnight, five of the goats sickened: three older goats and two bucklings. They lay splayed in the pen, eyes half-closed, breathing shallow. The goatherd called the village vet when he found them in the morning. Nightshade poisoning, the vet proclaimed. There was nothing to do but let them die. The goatherd sat with them until it was dark, nursing the living and grieving the dead.
Eventually he stood and went into the house. The girl was reading in bed when he opened her door. He grabbed her wrist, ignoring her cries, and dragged her out to the goat pen. Struggling in his grip, she stilled when she saw the bodies. “Poisoned,” he said.
There was a cruel satisfaction in watching realization dawn on her.
“This was your fault,” the goatherd said, letting go of her wrist. “You killed them.”
“I didn’t mean to,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I’m sorry.” She began to cry.
The goatherd heaved the bodies of the goats out of the pen, wiped off his hands, and shut and locked the pen door.
“I hate this,” the girl said, watching him.
“What do you hate?”
“I hate this place. I hate you.”
The goatherd didn’t say anything for a long time. He watched the goats, who stuck their noses through the gaps in the fence, reaching for the bodies of their fathers and brothers. Then he headed for the door into the house. “I’m going to bed.” She didn’t move. At the threshold, he paused. Their backs turned to each other. “I hate you too,” he said.
By morning, she was gone.
The fifth girl seemed familiar to him. She was seventeen, quiet and shy with sallow cheeks. The morning after she arrived, she joined him at the table for the sunrise. When he poured her milk, she drank it eagerly. Neither of them moved, not even when the goats cried to be taken out.
“Do I know you?” the goatherd asked.
Their eyes met. “Maybe,” she said.
“How many fathers have you had?”
“Four.”
“Tell me about them.” He realized he had never asked any of the girls this, had not given a thought to where they came from and where they went.
“The first was kind and gentle. He’d bring me out to the field with his goats and I’d play while he worked. He loved his music. He danced to it. You look like you dance.”
The goatherd had not danced in a long time.
“What about the others?”
The girl thought, drawing a finger down the condensation on the glass. “The second one was stern, and obsessed with working. He didn’t like any of the games I wanted to play with him. The next one was a drunk. Sometimes he would have too much to drink and forget about me for hours. The last one was helpless. He was the worst one. He never looked at me. It was like he’d given up. He expected one girl and got another, and decided it was easier not to know me.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged.
When he finally brought the goats out, she came with him. The air made her cough, so they found the shade of an oak for her to rest. She giggled when the goats came up to her to nuzzle the palm of her hand. He joined her for lunch, bringing a handful of wild berries to add to the bread and cheese. For hours after they lay side by side in the grass, watching wisps of cloud drift across the sky. She hummed a waltz that he remembered.
That night, a knock on the door. “You can’t,” the goatherd said when he opened the door to the Delivery Man. “It’s only been a day.”
The Delivery Man beckoned. The girl stood in the goatherd’s shadow. “I don’t want to go,” she said.
The Delivery Man shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was gravelly. “You can’t stay here.”
“Why not?” The girl clung to the goatherd’s sleeve. “He’s my father. Why can’t I stay here?”
The Delivery Man sighed. “He’s not the only one who’s your father.” The man turned to the goatherd. “And she’s not the only one who’s your daughter. They all are, or will be. You can’t just pick and choose.”
“One more day,” the goatherd said. “Please.”
Bleating of the goats. From the kitchen, soft strains of music, aroma of baking bread. How many before them had pleaded for more time? How many had been granted it? The Delivery Man checked his watch, clicked his tongue. “One more night. But that’s all I can do for you.”
He left. The goatherd closed the door. Looked at the girl, who stood quietly with her face turned to the ground. He knew now what he would say as goodbye, what he should have said the first time. Remember me as I am.
They ate, played music, and warmed themselves by the fire. They danced, the goatherd shuffling her through the box step, the turn. They talked about what they could say to the Delivery Man to buy another few days. Maybe a week. And if they had a week, why not a month? A year? Why not the rest of their lives?
When he fell asleep, the goatherd dreamed: of lush grass, goats resurrected, his cabinets cleared of empty bottles, the record playing endlessly while he and the girl—Mari, that was her name, Mari—ate breakfast, watching the sun rise through the kitchen window.
Loud, insistent knocking woke him in the middle of the night. He stumbled to the door, his hands trembling, expecting the Delivery Man.
But it wasn’t the Delivery Man. It was a girl. They looked at each other in the moonlight, wary.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m your daughter.”
He turned around. Realized what he had not noticed, half-asleep: Mari was gone, the pile of blankets still shaped around her absence.
He pushed past the new girl, thinking wildly that he could still catch her. But there was no sign of her.
“The Delivery Man,” he said. “Where is he?”
“Gone,” the girl said. “He didn’t want to wait for you.”
“He took her,” the goatherd said. “My daughter.” It made him want to weep, the thought that Mari would be with a stranger: a man who could not be trusted or relied upon. A man who, surely, would be a shadow of the father that he had been to her. That he could have been for her, if only he’d had the chance. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
She folded her hands together. Her voice small. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to my last father, either.”
He wondered who her last father had been. If they, too, had loved each other. “I’m sorry.” He hesitated, then put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him, her eyes damp. “Maybe one day you’ll see him again.”
This girl had a little crooked smile that he had never seen on any of his daughters. “Maybe you’ll see her again, too. You never know, right? Who the next one will turn out to be.”
He invited her in. They sat at the kitchen table. Already the twitter of birds waking, the goats moving around in their pen. Soon over the distant horizon, the soft light of a new day.
“Are you hungry?” Don’t know why he asked—his duty to feed her. But then, this girl was older. Almost fully grown; she could speak for herself. So he waited for her answer. When she said yes—yes, I’m starving, I thought you’d never ask—with that smile he would miss when it was gone—he rose to prepare breakfast.
Julia Hou is a writer from Queens. Her work appears in New Letters, Fourteen Hills, The Journal, and elsewhere. She is the 2026 Epiphany Fresh Voices fellow, and has received support from Vermont Studio Center, Bread Loaf, Tin House, and Kenyon Review.