They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Cap
We took the flock up to the high pasture in the second week of May, the way my father had, and his father before him.
It is a two-day climb.
The ewes go first, with the lambs butting at their flanks.
The dog runs the edges and the shepherd follows.
I had done it for five years in a boy's coat.
This time I did it in a grey wool skirt, with my brother's coat over it.
The coat was warm, and it was his, and I was done pretending it was anything but mine.
My hair had grown.
It lay on my neck in dark uneven curls, and Amaia had trimmed it straight with the shears the night before.
She did it by the fire with her tongue between her teeth.
She said it looked like a lamb's after the first shearing.
"That is not a compliment," I said.
"It is the best thing about lambs," said my sister.
She came up with us as far as the lower fold.
A neighbour's family kept a hut there, three miles below the high pasture.
A boy from the next valley had come up with their sheep.
He was sixteen, thin and long-wristed, with a shy red face and a txistu stuck in his belt.
He had walked beside Amaia's pony the whole climb and had barely said a word.
"He's mooning," Gotzon said at my elbow, dry.
"I am watching him," I said.
"I know you are.
"So am I."
Amaia was laughing.
She had her braid over one shoulder and a stalk of grass in her teeth.
The boy had taken out the little flute and was playing her something, badly.
She was telling him it was wrong.
I thought of the bowl on the stones, and the shaking, and the cord on her wrists.
I did not say anything.
I stood in the long spring light with my hand on the dog's head and let it be as it was.
"She'll be all right," said Gotzon.
"She is going to be better than all right," I said.
"She's going to give that boy a very hard time."
"God help him," said the old man, with great satisfaction.
I left her there with the neighbour's wife and the old steward, and a promise to be back by evening.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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