Dogma

Reflecting the new autumn moon, the river Styx lapped lazily along its course. Heryshaf the sheep watched his reflection shimmer upon its dark glassy surface. Hanging in the night sky, the moon appeared to be the eye of a giant cyclops, observing everything below it hungrily, as though ready to pounce. A light breeze ruffled his shaggy fleece as he munched on a stalk of moist green grass.

The rest of the flock had started behaving coldly around him.

They said he had been asking too many questions. Questions about sheep, and why sheep were sheep; about life and death; about why things were the way they were.

These were matters, he had been told, that did not concern him.

Heryshaf thought this was a strange thing to say. If life and death did not concern him, he wondered what did.

Tonight, as he stared into the river, something felt different.

His reflection seemed wrong.

Not very wrong. That would have been easier.

Just wrong enough.

Heryshaf tilted his head.

The sheep in the water tilted his.

He raised a hoof.

So did the other sheep.

Heryshaf made a sound and, for some reason, even that did not sound quite like him.

He stopped chewing.

For a moment he could not tell whether he was looking down into the water or whether something in the water was looking up at him.

His heart began to beat faster.

The moon watched from above.

Dark clouds moved slowly across it like bars.

And Heryshaf had the sudden, terrible feeling that he had been asleep for a very long time.

He stepped closer to the river.

"Who are you?" he whispered.

The sheep in the water asked him the same question.

Heryshaf touched its face with his hoof.

At once the sheep broke apart.

His eyes went first. Then his nose. Then the moon. Circles spread across the black water until there was nothing left of any of them.

Heryshaf stared.

The ripples faded.

His face returned.

So did the moon.

Everything was exactly as it had been before.

Which, Heryshaf thought, was somehow worse.

A hoof struck him on the rump.

Heryshaf nearly fell into the river.

It was Miriam, his cousin.

"Heryshaf," she said. "It's your uncle!"