‘The Golden Calf’ by JM Landels

Saoira hoists the morning’s last two buckets with her yoke and carries them into the cool shade of the stone-walled creamery. It’s early in the day, but already the Garelan sun is making the air uncomfortably warm, even up here in the Rillonna highlands. She’d best hurry and get the ladies moving before it’s too hot to walk. With the morning’s milk capped and settling next to the ice room, she takes up her stick and pack, whistles to Isa, and the two of them begin to herd the half dozen cows and their calves up to the high pasture for the day.

It’s only an hour’s walk, but by the time they make it to the meadow, even the calves have stopped gambolling and are ready to rest in the shade of the whispering aspens while their mothers enthusiastically crop the sweet high-meadow grass.

Saoira sets down her pack in the tiny hut near the tree line, before she heads out behind it with a white-enamelled cup in hand. She scoops a cup of water from a snow-fed rillet that trickles between the trees on its way to the valley. Settling on the smooth grey stone overlooking the meadow, she sips icy water. The amenities here are even more primitive than at the creamery below, but she wishes she could stay here all summer, day and night, without the daily trek. She’d let the cows’ milk decrease so they only had to feed their calves, and all of them would have a life of ease.