Owen Sheers - Resistance

When she reached the field she knew immediately that at least a third of the flock was missing. Those that were left had bunched together at the far end where the snow was shallower. At the other end the wind had swept a massive drift over the height of the hedge. Fresh snow spun off its edge, sculpting a delicate curl like the blank page of an open book suspended in the breeze between turning and falling. That was where the other ewes would have been lying. Against the hedge, trying to find some shelter. And they were still there somewhere, trapped under the weight of drifted snow.

Sarah waded through the field and began poking her crook into the drift. She’d only ever known this to happen once, and even then Tom had got to the ewes before they’d been completely covered. With William in the valley and Maggie’s radio, they’d never been taken unawares by the weather. Sarah didn’t know if she’d find the ewes alive or dead. Or even if she’d find them at all.

She called to the dogs, shouting above the confusion of wind and flurried air. “Seren! Fly! Cumby now; cumby, girls!”

The dogs bounded up to her, their coats flecked with snow, their breath steaming. Sarah ran her crook along the drift, “Cum’n girls, cum on now.” Fly was the first to climb onto the firmer snow at the base of the drift. She began trotting along its length, her nose low. Seren followed her and soon both dogs were pawing at the same patch, throwing the snow between their legs. Sarah joined them with the spade, digging until she saw a smudge of grey-white wool. Dropping the spade she dug with her hands instead, freeing the ewe’s front legs, scooping the packed snow from off its back and heaving it into the field. It was alive. Stunned and dumb with cold, but alive.

In this way Sarah mined the ewes from the drift, the dogs scenting them out and her birthing them, their coats clogged with ice, into the morning’s thickening blizzard. Each one was worse than the last and Sarah knew she’d soon uncover a body of wool no longer panting for breath. Her face burnt with exhaustion and tears. She hated Tom. And she hated the other men too. For leaving, for running away. Over the past two months the loss of their husbands had been changing within all the women and Sarah was no exception. The questions, the hurt and fear had been gradually overshadowing her concern. She’d felt it altering every day, felt the vacuum of Tom’s missing curdle and calcify into something harder. This sudden blizzard had broken it open, but like an insect struggling from the case of its pupa, her grief had transformed, emerging bitter and injured into the cold light of day.

After half an hour of finding, digging, and pulling the sheep from the snow, Sarah was too exhausted to be either surprised or scared when Albrecht and Alex emerged from the white-out behind her. The dogs signalled their arrival, standing on the drift, barking over her shoulder. Sarah turned in time to see them coming through the mist and snow, two ghosted bodies, their faces obscured with grey scarves. One of her knees was bent deep into the drift. Her left hand held the head of a ewe, gulping for breath. She remained like that until they were close to her. Albrecht bent to her ear, pulling the scarf from his mouth, flakes of snow melting against his glasses.

“Where are they?” he asked, raising his voice over the wind. “How many more?”

Sarah waved her free hand along the drift. “All along here. Follow the dogs.”

Albrecht turned to speak to Alex, but he was already up beside the hedge, his legs covered to the hip, digging with a short-handled trench shovel. Seren barked beside him, her ears pricked and her thin ribs rising and falling under her wet coat.

It was Albrecht who found the first dead ewe. He was digging with his hands, excavating around the animal’s back towards its head like an archaeologist uncovering a fossil. He knew before he saw its glassy eye that the sheep was dead. He’d seen enough death to recognise its pattern upon a body, human or not. Even so he pulled the animal free, bringing it sliding down the lower part of the drift, its stiff forelegs curled under its chest. Climbing out of the deeper snow he walked over to where Sarah was digging.

“This one,” he said, bending close to her ear again and thumbing towards the ewe’s carcass. “It’s dead.”

Sarah looked up at him, frowning. The scarf had slipped from her head and her dark hair hung in wet strands across her face. For the first time Albrecht noticed her eyes; the flecks of gold in the green of each iris.

Alex shouted to Albrecht in German from further up the field. He too was dragging the lifeless body of a ewe out of the drift.

“And that one,” Albrecht said to Sarah. “Also dead.”

Sarah returned to the hole she was digging. Albrecht waded into the drift and together they threw back the snow until Sarah felt the soft give of a sheep’s muzzle. She cleared a space about the nostrils, and removing one of her gloves, held her bare palm before them. There was nothing.

Albrecht was still clearing the snow from the ewe’s head, but now Sarah stopped him. “No, don’t,” she said, touching his arm. “The crow’ll only get the eyes.” With one sweep of her still-gloved hand she brought the freshly dug snow falling back over the hole, covering the velvet of the ewe’s dead face.

“I’m sorry,” Albrecht said. Sarah didn’t respond but just sat back for a moment, sinking into the drift. Feeling the hard-soft snow both support and embrace her, she suddenly understood how the sheep could have done this. How they could lie here and let themselves slowly drown. A gentle death. A warm, bright, gentle death. An easy death. All she’d have to do was lie there. Stay still and let this white world swallow her whole. Let the snow knit her shroud, flake by flake, until there was nothing left to mark her presence except the slightest of tremors across the drift’s smooth surface as she allowed her last and longest breath to leave her.

“Mrs. Lewis?” This time Albrecht shook Sarah’s shoulder. The snow was still falling heavily and it had already settled thickly on her head and her arms. Slowly, Sarah looked up at him, as if rising through a dream.

“My sergeant says these two must be helped. They’ll die if they stay here.”

Sarah turned to look at the two ewes lying on either side of the big German soldier. They were alive but they’d given up. The others they’d freed had, after a moment of shock, made their way over to the rest of the flock at the far end of the field. But these two were still slumped on the ground. Their sides heaved with breathing but through no will of their own. They were already dead, but that didn’t matter. She couldn’t lose any more.

“Bring them t’the house,” Sarah said quietly, pushing herself out of the snow. Albrecht looked at her blankly, the flakes falling heavily between them. “Those two,” she said again louder, pointing to the sheep. “Bring ’em up t’the house.” She turned away from him and walked along the destroyed drift, pitted with their searching. At the far end Tom’s crook stuck out of the bank of snow like a question mark bereft of its question. Sarah grasped it as she passed, heavy-stepping on towards Upper Blaen, calling the dogs after her. She looked back just once to see Alex, one ewe already over his shoulder, lifting the other onto Albrecht’s back. The German officer was bent over at the waist, one leg braced forward and his hands behind him. His uniform was soaked dark over his knees and clumps of snow clung around the cuffs of his sleeves. Stood like that he reminded Sarah of an illustration in one of her schoolbooks when she was a girl: Atlas crouched in anticipation, ready for the weight of the world to be set upon his shoulders.