Wool
by Marilou McGuire
The Man lived in the middle of Nowhere. It was a field of infinite expanse, made of sandy dirt and little shrubs, all of which were a sickly mustard-yellow. The field always remained oddly lit, yet the sky always remained dark, starless, and silent. The Man did not know how, why, or when he arrived here. That didn’t matter to him.
He was content in his little house, made of splintery logs, and wiry rope; it was just as old as him. He was at peace with the fact that there might be no true horizon beyond the distant, black fade. He was okay with not understanding how he, or his house came to be. He was okay with never truly knowing. The only thing that mattered to The Man, was whether it was Time or not.
Every day, the only hand on the only little clock he had, would reach the only symbol, only once. The symbol, where the twelve should be, was instead the word “Time.” It was written in withering gold leaf, succumbing to itself. Then, he would check the farthest to the left of his house that he could see. There would always be a sheep, trotting towards his house to be sheared.
Time passed with the sheep that came from Elsewhere. The Man would shear them of their troublesome coats, and they’d give him their wool to make a new sweater. He would not wear these sweaters, of course—too prickly, or too warm, or too thin, or grass-stained—generally unfit to be worn. He only wore the one he first found himself in. The sweaters he made helped him remember how long he’d been around, though. So he kept them anyway.
While there were many sweaters that weren’t too bad, most had oddities in them that made them very unpleasant to even touch, let alone wear. Such strange issues within their weave, that none but the sheep the wool had come from could have borne it. He was only 10,950 sweaters old when he made the first of the problem sweaters.
***
It was Time, and The Man stepped outside. A sheep was approaching his home, so he grabbed his shears and a yard waste bag. He sat down on an upside-down bucket, and waved to her.
“GoodMorning!”
“Is it?”
“I think so. What can I do for you today?”
The Ewe raised her head, which had been drooping. She looked him dead in the eyes, and then gestured quickly at her coat with her head.
“You can cut off this mess,” she snapped. “It doesn’t keep me warm at all anymore. Not even the slightest bit, and I’m sick of it.”
The Man noticed she breathed clouds of steam when she spoke. He didn’t feel cold, though.
“Very well, then. The whole thing? I thought wool was meant to keep you cozy,” he said, beginning with the wool on the top of her head.
She huffed, as if she’d been asked that same question a million times before.
“Oh, well not for me, apparently. I’ve the most rotten luck of any sheep; makes sense that mine’d do the opposite of what it’s meant to,” she complained. “And that is, sir, why I need you to cut it all off. Every last lock of it.”
“That’s my job, miss!”
And so the shearing began. The Man tried to keep up his normal demeanour, perky and friendly, but The Ewe was making it awfully hard. She was very snippy, and she had an icy attitude that made it hard to engage in any conversation. Maybe he would have become silent after a while, if he had felt that the source of her poor mood was himself.
He kept on cutting through mats in the wool, and bits of dirt that were caked-in. He could tell the shearing was causing her a great deal of pain. Necessary pain, in order to fix what must be fixed, but pain nonetheless.
“If it’s too much of a bother miss, I can try and— ”
“Nevermind. Let it be done.”
And so, he continued.
He came to the clumps on her shoulders and mid-back. They were far, far larger than any of the knots he’d cut out previously. They were tightly-knit, and very stuck, close to The Ewe’s skin.
Poor sheep, The Man thought to himself. He did not say it aloud, for he knew he’d probably get some sharp-tongued retort.
He began to snip very carefully and precisely at the base of the first clump. To his surprise, the whole thing tumbled to the ground after what was only a few cuts. What he found inside of it, though, was far more baffling; shards of broken glass.
The Man, still in his momentary state of shock, stared down at the nest of fragments. They were all the clear glass of a whiskey bottle. The skin where the clump had been was red and inflamed. He looked at The Ewe’s face for any signs that she was sharing in his confusion. There was nothing of the sort, from what he could tell. In fact, he thought he saw a flicker of relief in her eyes.
In the next clump, dying embers of coal, still emanating prickly heat.
In another, a whole kit’s worth of sewing needles.
At least two metres of knotted barbed wire.
And in the last, rusty nails.
Once The Man had cut off all five, his surprise at the various items was more diluted. The questions still remained, of course. How would such things find their way into a sheep’s wool like this? They were far too neatly arranged into different areas for it to all be from one awful occurrence. All five had their own clump where they appeared to be stored, rather than tangled in.
He noticed how The Ewe’s eyes were no longer as bitter as they were when she’d first arrived. Perhaps it is safer to ask now? he wondered.
“If you don’t mind, miss,” he started cautiously, “can you tell me how your coat came to be like this?”
The Ewe turned her head to look at him. He half-expected the bitterness to return, but it did not. Instead, she looked far softer. Less stressed, less agitated, less upset.
“My bad memories, sir. That’s where I used to hide them.”
“Pardon?”
“I used to try and keep them in my wool, so I wouldn’t have to see them in my head all the time. For a good while it worked, even. I hadn’t thought of any of it. One day, though… they found a new way to hurt me.” She looked at her freshly-sheared self. Her skin was an angry pink, blotchy and scarred.
“That’s terrible…” The Man’s sympathetic statement trailed off, as he started to wonder what would become of The Ewe now. She was staring at the rightmost horizon, opposite of whence she came.
“Quite. However, I do have hope! I knew that I’d need help to let go, and I’ve finally gotten some. Now, I can grow a new pelt,” she said. Her voice and eyes both had a positivity in them; a positivity that The Man could feel in himself. All the little pains he caused her, in order to rid her of the bigger ones, helped. For that, The Man felt happy.
After the The Ewe had left, The Man spun her wool into yarn, and began to knit his next sweater. He sat in the chair, in front of the clock. The knitting needles clicked together rhythmically with the clock’s hand. Nowhere was calm. It, too, was resting until it was Time again.
This sweater that The Man had made, was his 10,951st. It was ugly. The threads of yarn were thinner in some places, and thicker in others. Bits of glass jutted out from the sides, and the coals made dark smears here and there. The wool itself was off-colour from all the mud. But it was still a sweater. One that would remind him of the 10,951st rotation of his clock’s hand. So he kept it anyway.
***
Time, as it does, continued to pass. The Man gathered more and more sweaters to add to the cavernous wardrobe in the back of his little home. The closet defied what should be possible, with its wooden walls, and ceiling far higher and longer than those in his house. There were so many sweaters kept in it, but still enough room for billions more.
The 6,279th sweater, the 10,952nd sweater, the 18,319th sweater; all were hung further and further back. The journey to the end of the sweaters became longer to walk, though it was easier for him to remember the newer ones. The ones at the front of the wardrobe—he could hardly remember the sheep from whom they came.
He passed many more problem sweaters, with their unappealing appearances. They made him feel off when he looked at them, even if he couldn’t think of why. Others he passed, which were not problem sweaters, made him feel good. But they also would not always be clear enough in the dark to remind him of the reason.
In the absent light of the infinity of the wardrobe, the rows upon rows of sweaters at his sides were nothing but faint suggestions. Ghosts of sheep that had come and gone, each doomed to obscurity. The good, the bad, the neutral; all was numbed in the comfort of the dark.
That didn’t matter to him. The only thing that had mattered to The Man was whether Time had come again or not.
One day, though, something happened to The Man with the coming of another sheep.
***
It was Time, and The Man stepped outside. A sheep was approaching his home, so he grabbed his shears and a yard waste bag. He sat down on an upside-down bucket, and waved to them.
“Good morning!”
“Morning?” The Sheep asked, sounding rather unsure.
“Time, morning, forenoon, whichever you’d like to call it. What can I do for you?”
The Sheep walked over. They seemed to know where they were, but they also seemed confused as to why.
“Well, I suppose you can do for me what you’d do for everyone else,” they replied, “whatever that may be.”
“I shear sheep,” The Man explained patiently.
“Oh!” They looked at their coat, and then at their hooves, and then back at their coat. “That’s what I might be, isn’t it?”
“Looks it! Would you like to be sheared as well?” The Man asked.
The Sheep went to stand just before him, so that he could start his work. The Man took that as a “yes,” and began to snip away.
As he cut the wool, he began to notice things about this sheep that stood out to him. Their coat was plain white, and quite unremarkable. Of course, there’d been sheep with a simple coat that had come to him before. Many sheep that could be likened to this one. However, The Man could not figure out what was so odd about this sheep’s wool.
“I’ve lost,” The Sheep stated, before The Man could think to ask anything.
“You’ve what?”
“I’ve lost all of it. I remember nothing. I must have known something, once. But now I’ve lost everything.”
The Man felt the same feeling of plainness again; something like the darkness of his wardrobe, but disorienting. It washed over him like a pang of pain. He tried to get back to work, but then forgot what it was he had been doing. He held the shears in his hand, and The Sheep’s wool was right in front of him. He should have known what to do. He’d been doing it for so many sheep before.
“I don’t remember if forgetting who I was is a good thing, or a bad thing. Perhaps it doesn’t matter one way or the other. I wonder about it. I wonder if I was the one who made me forget,” The Sheep murmured, then paused.
The Man sat back, wondering what exactly was stopping him from continuing.
He noticed that The Sheep was turning their head slowly to look at him. They looked at him in the eyes.
“But I suppose, sir, that it doesn’t matter to me.”
***
Slowly, The Man changed. Time changed. Nowhere changed.
Sometimes he thought he could hear sheep, though he saw none.
He felt something adjust within himself, but he did not know what. Perhaps what he thought was new had been there all along, or the other way around.
His clock’s hand would reach for Time twice in a row, sometimes. Maybe it could not find the golden symbol, either.
The white of The Sheep’s wool was all he could see. He could not make a sweater from it, and the loose pelt had begun to crawl like a parasite to his chair. It clogged itself in his throat, and stuffed itself in his ears, and made itself his new eyes. He could do nothing but accept it. Everything he could have once sensed was muffled, and it meant nothing.
The Man stepped outside. He grabbed his shears and a yard waste bag. He sat down on an upside-down bucket. For what, though? What is there to do in the middle of Nowhere?
***
The cave was large. Its wooden ceiling was far up above, and he could not see the walls. There was a light, though. Shifting past 23,725.
He couldn’t feel anything, but he knew it hurt. It burnt him. It cut. It poked. It scraped. He could not remember what that was like. It was just heavy.
The light was walking away, just as he was walking towards it. It could not hear him yet. He could have then called out to it, but it was much too far ahead.
23,726.
23,730.
23,7…
23,700… something.
23,000… something.
It was dark. Silent. Starless. Had it not been for the faint glow, he wouldn’t be able to tell if his eyes were open or closed. The only way to go now, was the way he’d been going for all this time.
Past the soft, past the rough, past the painful numbers that kept him going straight-on. Nowhere to go but linear in Time, past everything he’d already seen, but couldn’t anymore.
Someday, maybe, he’d catch the light that called him to walk through the cave in the first place. The bright white of the one sheep he could not shear still beckoned him forwards.
He hoped it would wait up for him. Then he could remember. He’d find Nowhere again.