The Goat Man
Never in my eternity had I been defied like this. And never in my life had I felt so close to erupting from a mere touch.
Despite that, the woman had fire in her blood, which I didn’t want to extinguish. No, I wanted to see it erupt and watch it wreck everything. And the fact that I respected her unnerved me more than her attitude.
My wretched servant, who was staring at me with a mug of wine in his hands, annoyed me more than the day I saved his death.
“What?” I roared, the furniture rattling on the ground.
His body floated to me, the wine sloshing on my pristine rug, making me groan inside.
“Master, if you start treating her as a human rather than a dog, she will be more compliant,” he advised, and I felt like chucking the mug in his head.
I grunted. He was right, and I hated it. Although I never saw her as a dog, but more as a thorn in my chest.
And still, I did not want her to be compliant. Somewhere between the Girls’ Fair and yesterday morning, I wanted her to fight me, to challenge me. Because each time she did that, I wanted to get to know myself more.
Since she arrived in my cave, the air shifted. The need to protect her that day from the Elk was unknown to me. It tasted sweet and bitter at the same time. My mind tried to trick itself that I resented her just so she could finish the contract.
But my throbbing pulse knew better.
“Leave, boy,” I demanded, thoughts circling in my head.
He stood there, waiting for something from me.
“What else do you need?” I asked, gritting my teeth.
“It might be helpful to say please from time to time. Let’s exercise!” His eyes widened; their shine lost in death.
“Please, leave me be!” I shouted, showing him the hallway.
“It is a good start, master! You might want to work on the tone, though. You know the old saying, you can catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than a gallon of vinegar.” He smiled, a corner of his mouth trembling.
The ghost might have sensed my foul mood, because he dashed through the wall of rocks.
I would sleep on that eventful day, before choosing which path to take with the woman.
“In two minutes, come to the library, human!” I demanded, my voice hard.
She was helping the ghost wash their dishes in two large basins. The woman looked at me, her nostrils flaring and continued to do her task.
“Please,” I added, tilting my head.
The human watched my servant, who nodded. She sighed and strutted past me.
“Good morning, master!” greeted the ghost, winking at me.
I groaned and went after her.
The walk to the library seemed to be longer than usual. It was surely the heat from the cave, and that my head was stuck in my skull and not the woman who swayed her hips before me.
Upon reaching my bookshelves, she grazed her fingers on one of them. She peered at one of my oldest tomes. The urge to tell her to take her wet fingers off my books nagged at me, but I kept quiet.
“That tome is from Medieval Times. Something about monks and their deities.”
I materialised a chair and sat on it. She looked at me, then at my chair. I sighed, bringing one for her too, with additional pillows.
The woman took a seat, crossing her legs as she held the book with great care. “Deities as in God?” she asked, her fingers skimming the pages.
“Sure,” I said, watching her naked feet bouncing in the air. “Aren’t you cold?”
She looked at me, her eyebrows almost touching her dark hairline. “No, you brought plenty of wood to keep me warm.”
I nodded, satisfied that her needs were met. I required her to be healthy for her baptism.
“Not like home,” she added, her tone turning gloomy.
“What do you mean? You had wood for fire,” I retorted. I remembered one scene the Mirror showed me in the past of her and her father carrying arms full of wood inside their house.
“True, although in the summer it is not needed. Our house is built with a structure of reed bundles and then a layer of dirt mixed with reed. This way, the houses are cool in the summer, and the warmth is kept in the winter.”
“Curious,” I mused, touching the chin of my skull with my left hoof.
“Yes, we did not cook in the summer in the house. My father built for my mum a summer kitchen, a small room outside, next to the stables.”
“I had seen it,” I replied, eyeing her hands.
She kept her words to herself.
I searched with my mind for another tome which would be helpful for her, at least to understand the process of baptism. This book was given to me by one of the Order’s members a long time ago.
Thinking about my own baptism, there was no way I would be there to witness hers.
The ancient book flew from one of the bookshelves, floating in front of her.
“This book is about the ceremony. You should find useful information in it.”
She took it in her hands, leaving the other one on the floor. As I did not like messes, I placed the discarded one back with the help of my mind.
The girl flipped through the pages, a small frown between her midnight eyebrows. “I do not understand this language.”
“It is Latin. Your language comes from Latin,” I snapped, my arms thrown in the air.
“Please, speak nicely to me, or I am leaving!”
I swallowed. “I apologise.”
A small smile crept on her lips as she still flipped through the book. I was torn between letting her escape and taking her smile off her lips with mine. Clearing my throat, I watched my old tomes.
She kept her calm, but her cheeks became rosy. “Yes, our language comes from Latin, but it also has roots in the Dacian language, which I do not know either. And it also gained some Slavic influence,” she pondered, her eyes on mine.
I scoffed, falling to my knees, taking the book from her hands with my mind. I was trying to find the exact passage that was of interest to her. It should have been around the middle of the book.
“I thought the Goat Man did not kneel in front of anyone.”
My mind was immersed in the turn of the pages, the ancient smell reaching my nose, and I did not register her words. I raised my eyes to her.
Luckily, my hood kept everything hidden.
Her chest and neck became crimson, a vein pulsing through her skin. Her chin trembled, and her lips were parted, minty breath replacing the scent of the books.
If I did not know any better, I would have liked to touch those lips.
“Chapter fifty.” I cleared my throat, images of blood and gore replacing the one of her lips.
She shook her head, the colour of her neck travelling to her face. “What?” she breathed, her fingers grabbing the book tightly.
“In chapter fifty, you will find the procedure for the baptism.”
Quickly, she flicked the pages until the mentioned chapter, her fingers gripping the book too tightly.
I took my former place on the chair, disregarding any abnormal thoughts of a human between my arms. I translated to her every word, as I knew them from memory.
I read the tomes multiple times in all these years I’ve been the Goat Man.
“But this is outrageous!” she exclaimed, her nose between the pages. She stood up and started to pace back and forth.
I shrugged, already used to the ritual.
“You translated that all of you must be there. Who are all of you?”
“Yes, all of them would be there. We are an Order. We rip souls all around the world. Each of us has this type of mirror, which you already saw in my chamber.” She nodded, watching me carefully.
My legs shook, not used to someone having this much scrutiny over my words.
“That is the Souls’ Mirror. In it, we see which soul we must collect. ”
“You mentioned that that’s how you saw my father before…”
Coming back to reason, I interrupted her. “Yes. And you, your sister and your mother. All of you had pure souls, but only you in the end dared to come up to me.”
Without her, I wouldn’t have had a purpose to pursue.
The woman uncrossed her legs, drawing my attention, her porcelain skin glistening in the flames of the candles.
“You can be quite pleasant,” she murmured, watching me from under her eyelashes – long, lush, dark eyelashes.
I cleaned an invisible lint from my cloak, feeling my neck and cheeks getting warmer. “The next thing you have to know is that it will be painful.”
“How painful?”
“Very,” I stated flatly. “Depending on your choice, there will be fur breaking through your skin. In the end, it will result in pain.” I scrunched my nose, bits from my baptism coming to mind.
I locked them back in their cage and focused on the woman in front of me.
“How did you become the Goat Man?” she inquired again, her head leaning towards me.
I could have told her the story if I had remembered it. I only knew of the first souls I took or the first time I met my master. And, how my family died.
But the moment I chose to be the Goat Man eluded me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, fixing a spot behind her with my eyes.
“Liar. It is fine if you do not want to share it with me.”
I let it at that.
She kept looking at the book, murmuring to herself that God would be with her through her pain.
Each fur thread would break one’s skin as the skull was placed on the head, blood dripping in the pool, completing the ceremony.
When she left, I didn’t notice.
My mind was still trying to conjure the moment I said yes to being the Goat Man. A lot of things were lost to me, and I always blamed the centuries I carried on my back.
But someday, I would remember it, and I would tell her my whole story.
That evening, I awoke from my slumber with sweat on my body.
I didn’t remember having nightmares; it must be from the heat of the stove.
I threw all the blankets aside and got up.
A loud thump hit the walls of the cave. Wincing, I grabbed my cloak and left my chamber. No one besides me was left in the cave.
Walking out, the fresh air hit me with a gush. I placed the hood over my head, concealing my true nature.
Around the cave, the ghost and the woman were loading up a wheelbarrow. I had no idea we had one of those. The ghost tried to make the logs of wood float from the place where they had been cut. I tsked, reminding myself that I need him, despite him being a nuisance.
“What are you doing?” My voice thundered through the forest, splitting and glueing back the trees.
Both stopped and turned to me. The ghost’s eyes started to rotate in his head. But the woman was astonishing.
Her skin was red from the effort; her hair was tied into a bun at the nape of her neck, and her eyes were fixed again on my feet. Each time she saw a glimpse of my human form, she was left speechless. Just as in that moment.
“Stop gawking,” I ordered, feeling my skin getting warmer. “Please,” I gritted.
The woman blinked multiple times and then turned to the ghost. Her chest heaved as if in pain. The effort must have exhausted her.
Sighing, I raised my hand and placed each remaining log neatly on the wheelbarrow and sent it into the cave. Her eyes tracked the movement with her mouth open.
“Couldn’t you do that from the beginning?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Of course.”
The woman stomped to me with her eyes burning. The top of her head reached my chin, so she left me to stare at it. Once she realised that she was shorter than me, her eyes plunged up as though they were two icy spears.
“So, you left us to work ourselves until our hands fell off?”
“The ghost’s hands wouldn’t have fallen off,” I mumbled, because under her scrutiny, I couldn’t think straight. It was as if I were bewitched.
“Andrei works more than any of us. He cannot sleep, he cannot eat, and he cannot catch a break! In addition, you treat him worse than dirt?”
I couldn’t look her in the eyes. She would see the true me. Instead, I kept my gaze forward at the splinters left behind from their work. Swallowing, I felt her eyes on my neck. It burned.
“The truth leaves you speechless?” she asked, her voice rising higher.
She waited a few beats, and then she retreated into the cave, leaving me and the ghost to stare after her.
I hated when humans and ghosts were right.
“Master…”
“She has her reason,” I said, halting the movements of the ghost. “Her words speak the truth in many ways.”
Frowning, I took my horse and left the cave’s area. The night would be my companion after the lash of the woman’s words.