The three collies on the hill farm started quarrelling every night at ten past three. The shepherd had lived among dogs long enough to distinguish boredom, warning, pursuit, and spite, and this was professional disagreement. He eventually pulled on his coat and followed the racket to the top field, where all three dogs were working something hidden inside a bank of fog.
The old bitch crawled left. The young dog circled wide on the right. The middle one kept snapping corrections at both while the grass beyond the gate bent under dozens of invisible feet. By morning the flock contained one extra ewe, pale-faced and perfectly dry despite the rain. Another appeared the next day, then another, and none carried an ear tag or reacted properly when handled. The collies spent daylight hours exhausted, watching the newcomers with the flat suspicion of workers who knew management had misunderstood the job.
The shepherd marked the strange sheep with red paint.
By dawn, the marks had moved.
One appeared on a ewe he had owned for seven years. Another turned up on the barn cat. The third was on the shepherd’s own wrist.
That was when he understood the dogs were not bringing sheep through the fog. They were sorting things.
Every night, the mist blurred the boundary between neighboring versions of the farm, and the collies drove whatever crossed back toward the reality where it belonged. His interference had confused the flock. Each extra animal displaced something native, and the red marks showed which lives had been assigned incorrectly.
On the ninth night, he went to the gate without a torch. The three dogs waited in silence while fog rolled over the hill from both directions. Inside it he saw farms layered over one another: different fences, different barns, different versions of himself standing at different gates.
The old bitch crept around to his left.
He did not move.
The young dog closed from the right.
Only then did he notice that all the other shepherds in the fog were watching him with the same alarm.
The middle collie gave one sharp bark.
The dogs had finished deciding which one belonged here.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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