Shepherd of the Black Sheep Read online

  SHEPHERD

  of the

  BLACK SHEEP

  Kristopher Triana

  Copyright © 2018 by Kristopher Triana

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 978-1-940250-31-1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Interior Layout by Black Heart Edits

  www.blackheartedits.com

  Artwork by Jeff West

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  Visit us online at

  http://www.bloodboundbooks.net

  For Danielle

  Because you’ll always be my little sister

  Save your people and bless your inheritance;

  be their shepherd also, and carry them forever.

  ~ Psalm 28:9

  PROLOGUE

  There were two little girls in the woods.

  They stood in their boots, ankle-deep in the snow, jackets open to the winter breeze that blew long hair about their shoulders. Gentle flurries had fallen through the dead fingers of the branches above them, dusting their wool caps and making the little balls on top look like snow globes.

  At ten and a half, Alice was the younger of the two by a few months—a pretty blonde with a splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks, lips in need of ChapStick. In her hands was a spiral notebook filled with notes and stories pertaining to Sopheria, the magical fairyland she and her best friend Paige had created together. Paige stood across from Alice with her own notebook in hand. It contained some of their other stories and notes, including illustrations she’d done in multicolored pen.

  Paige was quiet and passive. There was a hushed sadness behind her eyes, reflecting the amount of hardship she’d seen for such a young girl, hardship Alice couldn’t understand. Paige’s sad brown eyes matched her hair, which was so dark it appeared black in the gray light of the afternoon, blacker than even her mother’s had been when she was alive.

  Paige would be eleven in March, and was also eleven inches taller than her friend, but her size and seniority didn’t stop Alice from being the bossy one.

  “Let me see,” Alice said, taking Paige’s notebook.

  She flipped to the middle of the book where they’d left off the day before. They’d only had a few hours yesterday after school, but now it was Saturday, and they could spend most of the day together. Even in the chill of December they always worked together on their Sopheria stories and characters at the same spot in the woods. They would make notes while they were apart, but all of the final decisions had to be made here in their private cove, together. Though they never spoke of it, both girls felt that the magic of their fantasyland could be harmed, perhaps even broken, by interference from the outside world—especially grownups.

  “I think Sir Rowan should ask Princess Katandra for her hand in marriage,” Alice said. “He’s beaten the great beast Og. He is the bravest knight in all of Sopheria.”

  Paige nodded. “Yeah. But Slagon is coming.”

  “Once he leads the Knights of Rose to victory over The Dark Ones, he will return home to take Katandra’s hand, and all of Sopheria will celebrate!”

  Faint snow began to fall about them. Then there was a rustling sound, and when Alice looked up her smile faded. The wind grew fiercer, colder, and there was a sudden flash of steel catching the muted sunlight just before the two girls started screaming, and only one was able to run away.

  PART ONE

  BLESS THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN

  CHAPTER ONE

  Three days earlier

  From atop his horse, Tom Hargrave looked past the livestock pens and out into the open pastures that wound down the snowy slope. Tapping the Appaloosa, his spurs jangled like sleigh bells, and the horse moved on down the path that was partly camouflaged by the fresh dusting of snow. The horse’s coat matched the land—white with spots of brown, accompanied by the striped hooves, mottled muzzle and the white sclera in the eyes that made it a true Appaloosa. The chill of daybreak was deep and wet. Mist rose from the horse’s nostrils.

  Tom gathered the reins. “Come on now, girl.”

  Old Essie was his favorite horse on the ranch, but at twenty she was getting on in years, and Tom had found that she’d gotten fussier in that time. He got her trotting down to the automatic water basin where he’d lined up the heated buckets. Now that winter was making its intentions clear, Tom could see he’d have to do some shoveling if they were going to be accessible. In a way he’d always liked the snow because it covered the smell of the cow turds, but as he’d gotten older the cold had grown meaner, harder on his bones. He still did much of his own work on the ranch, digging postholes and flanking cattle. He was already looking forward to springtime when mother nature would take a little pity on his hands, back and toes. But it wasn’t even Christmas yet. He had a long way to go and so did his livestock.

  Christmas, he thought. What the hell am I gonna do without Betty or Dawn?

  He’d never been good at buying gifts. He’d always struggled picking presents for Betty when she was still alive, and after she died it made it all the harder for him to pick them out for their daughter. Dawn was grown by then, but somehow that just made it more difficult. And if he hadn’t been good at picking out gifts for his daughter, somehow he doubted he’d do much better with his granddaughter, Paige. How could he make their first Christmas together special?

  “I’m an old man,” he said to the horse. “I don’t know what these kids today want. Seems like all they like is phones.” He often spoke to himself, but when he directed it at the animals it didn’t make him feel like he was getting soft in the skull. “Ain’t giving no cell phone to no ten-year-old girl. You can believe that, Essie.” The horse snorted as if in reply and Tom cracked a grin. “Damn Christmas is a pain, ain’t it, girl? But I guess there are worse things.”

  He could think of plenty worse things. The approaching holiday weighed down on him like wet sandbags, but beneath that was the anxiety of the forthcoming years of holidays and other milestones kids go through. Paige had been with him for eleven months now, but this would be her first Christmas here on the ranch with Tom, and also the first Christmas without her parents. She had never been a very talkative child, and little had changed after the accident. She was damaged from it, surely, still grieving. He understood that. His own grief had gone from a sharp, debilitating misery to a dull ache that stalked him like a vulture. Tom never thought he’d be burying his own child. But while he was trying his damnedest to connect with Paige, the girl seemed to drift more and more away.

  Paige seemed even quieter than normal, more prone to playing in her room alone instead of pestering him or blasting the TV. Most of the time she was writing or drawing pretty pictures—fairies, unicorns, knights in shining armor. He liked to encourage that, but at the same time he felt like she was too withdrawn. He worried this isolation might stunt her social skills. It made him blame himself for not having any answers when it came to lifting her out of that pit of sadness he knew too well. He’d writhed in it years ago when Betty had been diagnosed with blood cancer, and could have suffocated in it when Dawn and her husband died in that wreck, had it not been for his responsibility to take care of Paige. He stifled his grief for the kid’s sake and tried to focus on the fact that he was her guardian now, no matter how big of a surprise that had been.

  He was happy to care for Paige. She was his kin and he loved her. But being a sixty-five-year-old widower didn’t make him the most likely caregiver for such a young girl.

  A grandson would have been easier, he thought. Tom understood what came with boys—the sports and the roughhousing, the bravado of the male ego. He’d been a boxer in his younger days and understood the competitive drive that came with testosterone. But that knowledge hadn’t done much good when raising his own son. He hadn’t raised Scott any better than he had his daughter, so maybe understanding one sex better than another didn’t amount to much.

  At the far end of the fence, Tom looked out at the valley that stretched toward the thick expanse of woods. The trees were slouched, burdened by snow, and he couldn’t see or hear any birds. In the distance, a branch must have snapped under the weight of the snow, and in the thick silence its crack was as loud as a gunshot. It made him flinch and Essie riled beneath him, spooked. He patted her.

  “Easy, easy.”

  Looking over the ranch, he let out a long exhale. This was his land, his home, a place that had absorbed so much of his love and sweat. Somehow it had transformed into something he’d never intended it to be, a cursed dirt haunted by the echo of a family lost, a family he felt he’d failed. This ageless land was tainted now, a valley where dreams had shattered like glass and only the memories that stung seemed to stick. But it was his land and all he knew: these hills, these cattle, these sheep and the cold, hard earth itself.

  He hoped he could continue to learn from it and not let it swallow him like that pit of sadness. He could also learn from his granddaughter, as long as he remembered to listen. She wasn’t bitter toward him or distant like his son Scott had become, and she wasn’t lost forever the way her poor mama was. Paige was a clean slate. Only now was she getting to know him. He wanted to make the right impression, and not just with simple Christmas gifts.

 
Having Paige isn’t a burden, he thought. It’s a second chance.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Tom glanced at his granddaughter as she stretched out on the floor. She lay on her belly, propped up on her elbows as she worked on the puzzle that was splayed out on a plastic play mat. It was one of the thousand-piece ones Betty had loved. A picture of Van Gogh’s almond branches was on it. Paige was good at the puzzles, and when she did them she displayed a quiet contemplation that was beyond her years. She was well past dolls now and demanded more of a challenge from toys, such as friendship bracelet kits and the old electronic Simon game she’d found out in the shed, which had been Scott’s once upon a time.

  It was Wednesday night and while she had homework he figured she still had a few hours to get it done. He had let her play in the woods with Alice until the sun started to go down, and Paige had pouted because it got dark so early this time of year, but she had obeyed him, so he wasn’t about to get on her case about math and social studies just yet.

  He could see her from the kitchen. He was making himself a steak and would have liked Paige to try out one of these sirloins from the most recent slaughter, but she was young and finicky, so he was making her a chicken cutlet, also from the ranch. Unlike the cattle, which he sent off for processing, he killed and defeathered his own chickens just like his mother had taught him to when he was a boy. Paige liked peas, so that was her side dish, with a small bowl of applesauce for desert.

  Jep, his yellow lab, sat by his side, watching the food intently, obedient enough to not touch it or jump up.

  Tom tossed him a scrap. “There you go, boy.”

  Jep was more than a pet. He was a herding dog. When Tom had to move the cattle Jep did a good deal of the work. He’d brought him in as a free-to-a-good-home puppy and trained him well so he could be a replacement for Red, who had gotten on in years and died last spring to be buried in the backyard with the other dogs he’d loved. Tom’s life had been filled with so much death lately, a series of blows that were almost too many to absorb.

  He called to Paige. “You and Alice have fun today?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sometimes getting more out of her than one-word answers was like running in the sand. Other times he couldn’t get a clear answer out of her at all.

  “What’d y’all get into?”

  “Huh?”

  “What was y’all doin?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothin? Well, that don’t sound like much fun. When I was your age I always liked to have fun. And while I ain’t got much energy for it these days I still appreciate it when it comes my way.”

  He failed to get a laugh out of her. She kept trying to fit a piece into the puzzle that didn’t seem to want to go anywhere.

  “We just played,” she said, still looking at the puzzle. “You know.”

  He liked that the girls played in the woods. It was good for them, and not enough kids did that these days. He’d seen on the news that a couple of parents had gotten in trouble with the law just for letting their kids walk to and from the park alone. The law said it was neglect. Tom didn’t know what to make of that. It seemed like madness.

  “Dinner’s just about ready, darlin. How bout you come in and set the table. Feed Jep too.”

  Paige got up and went into the kitchen. By the time the food was ready the table was set, Jep was chomping kibble, and Paige had poured herself a glass of milk and gotten Tom a seltzer from the fridge. It’s what he drank these days in place of beer. When they started eating he tried again to get a conversation going.

  “How was school today?”

  “Good.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  She shrugged, and he put his fork down.

  “Somethin wrong, darlin?”

  “No.” Her eyes stayed on the food she was playing with but not eating.

  “If there is, you know you can talk to me, dontcha?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a silent moment.

  “You know, I was thinkin about gifts today, what with Christmas comin and all. Anythin you’re hopin Santa will bring ya?”

  Her voice was low. “There’s no Santa Claus. That’s kids’ stuff.”

  “Well, I know. Figure I was just bein cute there. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.”

  He was happy to see her take a spoonful of peas.

  “So? Anythin special you want? You gotta help your old granddad out. He’s not so good at guessin.”

  Another shrug. “I’m not sure. I’ll think about it.”

  He almost began to tell her some of the things her mother had enjoyed at her age but decided against it. Something told him it was better not to bring up her parents right now. Their absence this year was bound to make Christmas hard on her. It was hard on Tom too. Being depressed during the holidays was common, but not for a ten-year-old. It went against nature—just like losing both your parents before you’d even entered junior high.

  Paige slipped some food under the table. It was against the rules, but Tom let it slide because he liked seeing her form any kind of bond with the dog. Sometimes she seemed isolated even from the animals. She helped him around the ranch and took good care of the chickens, but she never seemed excited to be around them the way most kids were.

  She glanced up at him and smiled. It was a little forced, but he appreciated it anyway. He smiled back at her and noticed that she looked past him now, over his shoulder and out the front window. He turned and looked, seeing that it was snowing again. Fat flakes whizzed past the glass like summer moths, adding to yesterday’s two feet of snow that still hadn’t melted.

  “How bout a new sled?” he asked. “That old plastic one is fallin apart. Maybe you could use one of the old fashion steel and wood ones. They’re sturdier.”

  “Okay.”

  She seemed to perk up at the idea and he made a mental note.

  “Any other games ya like?”

  She thought for a moment. “Mom and I used to play the game of hands. Do you know that one?”

  He did. He’d forgotten all about it, but it came flashing back into his mind, the nostalgia warm and rust-colored.

  “Know it?” he said. “I invented it.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure, didn’t your mama tell ya that?”

  “I can’t remember. She taught it to me when I was little. I can’t remember ever not knowing it.”

  It was a simple game really. He’d played it with his kids, especially when they were out somewhere and getting restless. It had started with Scott, who loved the game so much that he helped create new signs for it. The original line-up of signs was easy to understand. Tom would take one of his kids’ hands and would pump or shake them, or he would use one to three fingers and put them in their palm. Each of these was a code, like a form of sign language. Of course, this wasn’t actual sign language—Tom had just made the signals up—but it worked as a private language all the same. One pump of the hand meant the number one, and so on up to ten. One finger in the palm meant yes, two meant no, three meant maybe. There were also signs for add, subtract and multiply. He would use these to play little math games with them, and sometimes a quiet form of Twenty Questions. As Scott grew older he added signs for colors, animals, and elements. Dawn loved the game as well, and while Tom’s wife knew about it she never learned the codes or tried to wedge herself into the special, secret little game her husband shared with their children.

  It touched him to know Dawn had passed the game down to Paige.

  He took his granddaughter’s hand and pumped it with two plus two.

  Her hand answered four and they both smiled. He upped the challenge, giving her six times five, and she gave him thirty by giving him ten pumps, a multiply signal, and then three more pumps. She took a turn then, giving him yellow plus blue. He gave her green and was surprised at how many of the codes he still remembered. It came back to him like a dream suddenly recalled during a morning shower.