Finding Marigold

By Sibylla

Narration by Eleven Labs

The sky's color reminded her of old bruises. Purple faded to yellow at the edges, where clouds scudded past like torn cotton. Sarah counted her steps, each footfall marking time in the way her mother had taught her—one Mississippi, two Mississippi—until the numbers blurred together like watercolors left in the rain. The goat had been gone for three days now.

"It's just a goat," her father had said that morning, his coffee cup leaving rings on yesterday's newspaper. "We can get another one." But he didn't understand that Marigold wasn't just a goat. She was the color of autumn leaves and smelled like grass after rain, and she would press her warm head against Sarah's hip while she did her homework in the barn.

The search had taken her farther than she'd ever ventured alone: past Thompson's fallow field, where sunflowers had once grown tall as giants, and beyond the creek that divided the county like a crooked smile. The late September air carried hints of woodsmoke and decay, and Sarah pulled her red wool sweater closer. Her mother's voice echoed in her head: "Don't go past the creek, baby. That's where the old mines are."

But Marigold was out there somewhere, and Sarah had seen her mother sometimes look at empty chairs as if expecting them to be filled. She understood the importance of looking for lost things.

A crow watched her from a fence post, its head cocked at an angle that reminded her of her third-grade teacher considering a wrong answer. "Have you seen my goat?" she asked it, feeling foolish but desperate enough to try. The crow made a sound like rusty hinges and flew away, leaving her alone with the wind and the endless sky.

The ground changed beneath her feet as she walked, from packed dirt to loose shale that shifted and clicked with each step. Old timber frames stuck out of the hillside like broken ribs, and Sarah thought about the stories her grandmother used to tell about the mining days, when men went down into the earth and sometimes didn't come back up.

"Sarah Elizabeth Martinez!" The voice carried across the valley. She turned to see Mrs. Thompson standing in her yard, clutching a dish towel in her weathered hands. "Does your mama know where you are?"

Sarah considered lying, but Mrs. Thompson had known her since she was born, had helped deliver her on a night when the ambulance couldn't make it through the snow. "No, ma'am. But I'm looking for Marigold."

The old woman's face softened. She walked to the fence line, her rubber gardening boots leaving prints in the damp earth. "Come here, child. Tell me about it."

Sarah trudged back, the weight of three days' worry on her feet. Mrs. Thompson smelled like bread and lavender soap, and her kitchen was warm and yellow like a summer afternoon. She set a mug of hot chocolate in front of Sarah, topped with the tiny marshmallows she'd been buying, especially since Sarah was small enough to need help climbing into the kitchen chairs.

"Now then," Mrs. Thompson said, settling into the chair across from her. "Tell me about Marigold."

"She's been gone three days," Sarah said, wrapping her cold fingers around the mug. "Dad says she probably just wandered off, but she wouldn't. She always comes when I call her. Always."

Mrs. Thompson nodded, her eyes distant. "Sometimes things wander because they're looking for something. Like my Henry used to do, near the end. He'd get up in the middle of the night, put on his work boots, tell me he had to go check the corn." She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that held pain in its corners. "We hadn't had corn for twenty years by then."

"But Marigold isn't sick," Sarah protested. "She's just... lost."

"Maybe," Mrs. Thompson said. "But sometimes being lost isn't about where you are. It's about what you're looking for." She got up and went to a drawer, returning with a folded paper. "The Sullivan boys said they saw a goat up by their place yesterday. Drew me a map."

Sarah unfolded the paper with trembling fingers. The map was crude, drawn in blue ballpoint pen, but she recognized the landmarks—the lightning-struck oak, the abandoned Peterson place with its sagging roof, the stone wall that ran along the ridge like a forgotten sentence.

"That's two miles past the creek," she said quietly.

Mrs. Thompson's hand was warm on her shoulder. "Your mama's going to be worried sick."

"I know." Sarah traced the path with her finger. "But I have to find her."

"Then we better call your mama first. And you better take my thermos and some of these cookies. Getting lost takes it out of you, whether you're a girl or a goat."

The phone call was difficult. Her mother's voice crackled with static and worry, but in the end, she understood—she always did. "Be back before dark," she said. And Sarah? Sometimes, the things we lose find their way back on their own."

The path to the Sullivan place wound up into hills that seemed to hold their breath. As Sarah walked, the thermos bumped against her leg, and she thought about Marigold. She remembered how she used to stand on her hind legs to reach the highest leaves on the apple tree, how she would bleat softly in her sleep like she was talking to someone in her dreams.

The abandoned Peterson house loomed ahead, its windows dark, watching her pass. Sarah had heard stories about it at school—how old man Peterson had lost everything in the market crash, how he'd walked into the woods one winter morning and never walked out, how his wife had packed a single suitcase and taken the train west, leaving everything else to dust and memory.

A movement caught her eye—something pale against the darkness of the open doorway. Sarah's heart jumped, but it was only a piece of torn and dirty curtain dancing in the wind like a ghost trying to remember how to walk.

The Sullivan place was another mile up, past a stand of pine trees that whispered secrets to each other. Sarah stopped to rest, drinking from the thermos and eating one of Mrs. Thompson's cookies. They were oatmeal raisin, the kind her grandmother used to make, and the taste brought unexpected tears to her eyes.

A sound made her look up—a bleating, distant but distinct. Sarah was on her feet before she realized she'd moved, the thermos forgotten in the grass. "Marigold!"

She followed the sound up a narrow trail, her feet slipping on pine needles. The bleating came again, closer now, but different somehow. Younger, more frightened. Sarah rounded a bend and stopped short.

It wasn't Marigold.

A small kid, no more than a few months old, stood trembling in a clearing. Its coat was the color of storm clouds, and one of its legs was wrapped in what looked like an old dish towel. Behind it, half-hidden by brambles, was the entrance to what must have been one of the old mining tunnels.

"Hello, little one," Sarah said softly, approaching with her hand outstretched. The kid watched her with eyes like amber but didn't run. When she got closer, she saw that the dish towel was actually one of her mother's good napkins, the ones with the embroidered edges that only came out at Christmas.

The kid let her approach and run her hands over its quivering sides. It was thin, but someone had been feeding it—fresh hay stalks were scattered nearby, and a dented bowl of water was nearby.

"Marigold?" Sarah called, her voice echoing off the hillside. "Are you here?"

For a long moment, there was only silence. Then, from the darkness of the tunnel entrance, came a familiar bleat.

Sarah's legs went weak with relief. "Marigold, come here, girl. Come on."

But Marigold didn't come. She bleated again, insistent, almost scolding. Sarah took a step toward the tunnel, then another. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out her goat's form, standing guard over something she couldn't quite see.

"What is it, girl? What did you find?"

The kid followed close behind as Sarah entered the tunnel. The air was cool and damp, smelling of earth and time and something else—something warm and alive. As she got closer, she understood.

Two more kids, even smaller than the first, huddled against Marigold's side. One was pure white, the other dappled like sunlight through leaves. Both looked up at Sarah with their mother's eyes.

"Oh," Sarah said softly. "Oh, Marigold."

The goat pressed her head against Sarah's hip, just like she used to do during homework time, but there was something different in it now—not seeking comfort, but offering it. Sarah sank to her knees in the soft dirt, and Marigold's kids came to investigate her with their tiny hooves and curious noses.

"You weren't lost at all, were you?" Sarah whispered. "You were just becoming something else. Something more."

When they finally made their way home, Sarah, Marigold, and three wobbling kids, the light was starting to fade. They stopped at Mrs. Thompson's first to return the thermos and share the news. The old woman stood in her doorway, watching them pass, and Sarah thought she saw her wipe her eyes with her dish towel.

Her parents were waiting on the porch, worry dissolving into amazement as they watched the small parade approach. Her father got up to help her get the kids settled in the barn, shaking his head and smiling.

"Not just a goat after all," he said quietly.

Later, after the kids were bedded down in fresh hay and Marigold was back in her familiar stall, Sarah sat with her mother on the porch steps. The sky was the color of old pennies, and the first stars were beginning to appear.

"You know," her mother said, "when I was your age, I lost something too."

Sarah leaned against her mother's shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of her coconut shampoo. "What was it?"

"My grandmother's ring. I'd been told not to play with it, but of course I did. Took it out to the garden one day and it slipped right off my finger. I looked for weeks, dug up practically every flower bed we had."

"Did you ever find it?"

Her mother was quiet for a moment. "No. But the next spring, right where I'd been digging, the most beautiful iris grew. Purple and gold, like a sunset. And every year after that, it came back bigger and brighter." She kissed the top of Sarah's head. "Sometimes the things we lose make room for something new to grow."

Sarah thought about Marigold in the barn with her babies, about Mrs. Thompson's Henry checking phantom corn, about the Peterson house with its curtain reaching for something just out of grasp. She thought about loss and finding, about the way things change and grow and become something else, like the sky at sunset or leaves in autumn or little girls who go looking for lost goats and find something they didn't know they were searching for.

"Mom?" she said after a while.

"Hmm?"

"Can we plant some irises tomorrow?"

Her mother's laugh was soft in the gathering dark. "Yes, baby. We can plant some irises."

In the barn, Marigold bleated softly to her babies, and somewhere in the distance, a crow called out like it was sharing a secret with the night. Sarah closed her eyes and listened to the sound of things growing, changing, becoming what they were always meant to be.

The moon rose like a question mark above the hills, and in its light, the world was full of possibilities, each one as bright and fragile as hope, as sturdy as love, as real as a goat who wasn't lost at all, but simply finding her way to something new.

And in the morning, they would plant irises.

The End

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this original short story by Sibylla. Until next time, stay curious.

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