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Bleats wafted through the fog. On the facade of the house at the meadow’s edge, the white paint had peeled like rotten skin on a corpse’s forehead, exposing walls built of mismatched rocks in precarious balance. Above six crooked windows, walnut-brown tiles crowned the structure like a sun-scorched straw hat.

I hastened through the overgrown grass, searching for a sheep’s four-legged silhouette. Beside me, a garment snapped in the wind with a crack of cloth. I kept moving until Mother clicked her tongue at me.

“Follow me.”

In her mane, ash-gray strands twisted like storm warnings. I trailed her, arms crossed over the portfolio I clung to. Shivers ran through me. I should’ve brought a scarf.

From the shed at the meadow’s corner came bleats like a tortured soul’s wails. Mother stopped by a fence where a lamb hung skewered by barbed wire, its neck and chest hooked. From its gaping mouth dangled threads of saliva. Eyes bulged grotesquely. With each twitch, its wounds spilled tongues of brass-scented blood that stained the wire and steamed. A dark pool grew at its hooves.

“Don’t bother claiming you’d penned all the sheep and this lamb slipped out,” Mother said. “You rushed your chores to vanish into whatever hole you like to hide in.”

She spoke as if forcing air through her larynx exhausted her energy, and at each word she questioned if the effort was worth it.

I uncovered my mouth and crouched near the lamb. Stroked the coarse fur along its back while its warm body shuddered under my palm.

As if the sun had eclipsed, darkening the world, I envisioned Father surging from the horizon and rushing across the meadow toward me, footsteps quaking the earth.

When I stood, a dizzy spell blurred my sight. I scanned the meadow, skin prickling. Mother’s bony fingers grazed the portfolio’s edge I clutched. I braced for her to snatch it, but she bent instead to grab a handle hidden in the grass.

“I’ll keep to myself what you’ve done.”

She pried open my right hand and placed an axe’s smooth wooden grip into my palm. The heavy metal head dragged my arm down.

“For what?”

“Kill it.”

Fire seared my gut. I gulped.

The lamb probed the air with its crimson, glistening tongue as if parched. Each spasm rattled the wire in metallic shrieks while blood oozed from the beast’s wounds thick as honey; surely its body held less than it had spilled. A bleat rippled from the shed in a cold current as if a ghost were weeping.

“I can’t.”

“You prolong its agony. And it’s suffering because of you. Do your duty.”

I knelt, pressing my brow to the lamb’s feverish chest, inches from wire barbs gouging flesh. My fingers tangled in its matted fur. Underneath, muscle fibers quivered.

I swallowed to steady my voice.

“Maybe it’ll heal. Give it time.”

Studying its neck wounds, I wondered how I could lift the lamb without slicing deeper, but Mother yanked my sweater’s collar, making me stumble back. As she snatched the axe, the momentum flung me onto slick grass, sprawling sideways. She glanced away through her ashen hair, as if seeing me pained her.

“You learn nothing. Your head always in the clouds. Nothing good’s going to happen to you.”

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Author’s note: I wrote this novella in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in the collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.

This may be the worst conceived scene of all I’ve translated so far from my work ten years ago. I had trouble even envisioning what I meant in some of the original text.