Zan looked down at the goat. The animal tipped its head as if in question. She flinched when she met its gaze. Curved horns, flicking tail, coarse black coat stretched over compact hindquarters and neck: the goat was too familiar. Too much a reminder of those other goats, the ones whose insatiable appetites for chaparral and scrub oak were supposed to have saved the hills behind her home from burning. The goat in front of her lowered its head, jaw still working at whatever it had last nibbled from the garden. The other goats—this was as close as Zan could allow herself to remembering everything, every loss—had been grazing what should have been a firebreak before flames swept up the arroyo, outrunning them before they even knew to bolt.
“That nanny’s been nothing but trouble ever since we weaned her kid from her. First one. Sometimes the moms get this way.” The girl bent over to push the goat’s head back out toward the fields.
A feeling, so faint she might have imagined it, hummed at Zan’s breastbone.
“I can take her off your hands,” she said.
The girl tipped her head, just like the goat had.
“Well, how much are you paying?”
“How much is she worth?”
The girl laughed. “Fair enough.” She looked down at the animal, measuring with her eyes. “Let’s say, forty bucks? I don’t think I could get another farm to pay even that much for her.”
“Your parents won’t mind you’re basically giving their goat away?” Zan held out two crinkled twenties, suspecting even that was too low a price.
The girl shrugged. “We’ve got other goats,” she said. “And it’s just Dad now.”
Zan made a sound of sympathy.
“This nice lady’s gonna take you, goat,” the girl said to the animal, and scratched the swirl of hair between its eyes. Zan did the same. Beyond the occasional handshake or brush of fingers exchanging money, it had been weeks since she’d felt another living thing’s touch.
The goat butted against Zan’s hand. She smiled.
*
On the mail boat, Zan was surprised at the goat’s steadiness through the pitch and swell. She’d startled more than the animal had at the captain’s bullhorn announcement when they’d pulled from the mainland. She kept her hand on the goat’s head as if it was the one who needed comfort. The bell she had strung to its collar jingled with each wave.
Zan let the sea rhythm rock into her legs. Gulls shrieked above. Her eyes rested on the cliffs beyond her fellow passengers, where late sun warmed tumbled rocks to gold. Stockades of fir trees guarded every island the boat leapt past. It was only when Zan relaxed her gaze that she saw the wink of windows between boughs, catching light. She tried to open herself, to drink in details of the place—glittering sea, the mail boat’s bridal train of froth, salted wind. It was utterly different from arid peaks and the sharp desert air of home. A place where flames licked closer each year with the earth’s rising heat, swallowing houses built ever thicker on the hillsides. Could a city gray with ash, where only fireplaces charred away from their former rooms remained, be a home? Zan pulled herself away from the question and faced the island humped before the boat’s prow.