Fernando dismissed his grandmother’s imagined concerns. He was confident that the success of his ventures would soon allay them. The goats were bringing in a bit of profit already. The exceptional quality of their milk at market outweighed the locals’ superstitious suspicions that the old witch had cast charms on the well water and hay to enrich them.

Fernando’s grandmother didn’t care much for money. He suspected she never much had, even when she was young. But she did like the long pleated green gypsy skirt he bought for her with the farm’s first earnings. That and a pair of raw amethyst earrings, to bolster her spiritual sight.

He thought that the installation of a chicken coop might further cheer her. She was always going to perilous great lengths to scavenge bird eggs from jungle branches and cliff faces. But at the flock of brightly-colored hens pecking about for pests, she only shook her silver head with solemnity.

“The snakes will surely kill them. Only the goats are clever enough to avoid being bitten and choked.”

A shade too clever, some of these goats, Fernando thought darkly. He glanced to the black billy goat, whose sideways pupils returned his glare perversely. The wayward animal had yet to be tamed. Because of its aggression, Fernando had tethered it up himself to one of the shelter beams inside the pen. The goat had the bad habit of charging the gate whenever it was unlatched, attempting to bowl over whomever was attempting to pass through. With the exception of Fernando’s grandmother, of course.

The black billy goat’s resentment had only festered at this additional confinement. It had taken to bleating its low growlsome bleat now almost without ceasing. Determined to break the willful creature, Fernando ignored it.

But it seemed his grandmother could not.

One morning Fernando woke to find that the black billy had not only escaped its tether but had busted out of the pen entirely. With its wicked horns and its sheer hard-headedness, the animal had broken past a weak spot in the fencing, leaving a gaping rend in its wake through which a few other meandering goats had trickled out.

The fugitive black billy, of course, was nowhere to be seen.

Fernando raided the goat’s usual brushy haunts past the treeline, but these had been forsaken. Fuming, he spent the rest of the morning rounding up the other straggling escapees and mending the fence. From the shade of the porch, his grandmother watched him at a wary distance. As Fernando mounted the porch steps, she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eye.

“The rope seemed tight on him, so I loosened it.” She hazarded a glance at Fernando, then ducked her chin. As he continued to stare her down, she raised her eyes again in sudden defiance and said, “It’s not right to keep such a proud animal tied.”

Fernando remained stonily silent. After a moment, his grandmother lost her nerve. She lowered her head and fell back as he resumed his ascent.

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La Gorgona © CS Dark Fantasy