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Synopsis

In the highly anticipated follow-up to the breakout offbeat hit Three Bags Full, an enterprising flock of sheep must get to the bottom of just who - or what - is leaving a trail of grisly destruction in its wake.

With one solved mystery under their wooly belts, the time has come for the sheep of Glennkill to explore Europe. Together with their new shepherdess, Rebecca, they move into their winter quarters in the shadow of a French chateau. But their new home is far from idyllic. A number of sheep from a previous flock have disappeared, and deer are dying unnatural deaths in the forest. The strange goats from the neighboring pasture have a theory: a werewolf. Could that be real, or just a fantasy?

When a human falls victim, it becomes clear that even fantasies can be fatal. And the last thing the sheep want is to lose another shepherd. With the help of the goats next door, they follow the werewolf's trail in a desperate attempt to save both themselves and Rebecca with sheep logic, courage, and woolpower.

This clever, tense mystery features the ultimate amateur sleuths as they ponder curious human motives, attempt to change their fortunes by eating tarot cards, and borrow a harebrained scheme from a not-so-secret spy in an attempt to thwart the beast that's been stalking them.

Excerpt

Chapter 1

The Silence of the Lambs

"And then what?" asked the winter lamb.

"Then the mother ewes brought them to safety, away from the man with the little dog. And they found a... a..." Cloud, the woolliest sheep in the flock, was at a loss.

"A haystack!" Cordelia suggested. Cordelia was a very idealistic sheep indeed.

"Yes, a haystack!" said Cloud. "And the mother ewes ate while the lambs rolled in the hay—and fell silent!"

The sheep bleated enthusiastically. The repeated telling of the story of The Silence of the Lambs had resulted in a few changes, and it had gained a little something each time.

Rebecca the shepherdess had read the book to them in the autumn when the leaves were already yellow, but the sun was still round and ripe and robust. The sheep could no longer say why the book had given them the creeps back then, during those first cold silvery autumn nights. Only Mopple the Whale, the fat memory sheep, still remembered that hardly any lambs, and precious little hay, had featured in the book that Rebecca had read to them on the sun-warm steps of the shepherd's caravan.

The wind drove wisps of snow between their legs, the bare branches at the bottom of the meadow fence shivered and the story was over.

"Was it a big haystack?" asked Heather, who was still young and didn't like it when stories ended.

"Very big!" said Cloud confidently. "As big as... as big as..."

She looked around for something big. Heather? No. Heather wasn't particularly big for a sheep. Mopple the Whale was bigger. And fatter. Bigger than all of the sheep was the shepherd's caravan standing in the middle of their meadow, even bigger than that was the hay barn and biggest of all was the old oak growing on the edge of the forest that had shed countless crunchy, bitter brown leaves in the autumn. It had been a devil of a job grazing around all of those leaves.

Flanking their meadow was the orchard to the right, and the goats' meadow to the left. Behind the two meadows was the forest, strange and susurrant and far too close; in front of them the yard with stables and dwellings, smoking chimneys and humans making a racket; and right next to them, close and grey and solid as a pumpkin, the chateau. The slight incline up to the forest gave the sheep an excellent view of it.

"As big as the chateau!" said Cloud triumphantly.

The sheep marvelled at the size of the chateau. It had a pointy tower and lots of windows and blocked the sun far too early each evening. A haystack would have made a welcome change.

Something made a bang. The sheep gave a start.

Then they craned their necks curiously.

Something had been chucked out of the window of the shepherd's caravan. Again!

The flock launched into action. Quite a few Things had been chucked out of the shepherd's caravan just recently and sometimes they turned out to be interesting. A pan of only slightly burnt porridge for instance, a houseplant, a newspaper. The houseplant had made them feel bloated. Mopple was the only one who had enjoyed the taste of the newspaper.

Today wasn't a bad day: in front of them in the snow lay a woolly jumper. Rebecca's woolly jumper. The woolly jumper. The sheep liked this jumper more than all the others. It was the only item of clothing they understood. Beautiful and sheep-coloured, thick and fleecy—and it smelled. Not just vaguely of sheep like most woolly jumpers, but of certain sheep. Of a flock who had lived by the sea, grazed on salty herbs, trodden sandy ground, breathed well-travelled winds. If you sniffed very carefully, you could even make out individual sheep. There was an experienced, milky mother ewe, a resinous ram and the scraggy shaggy sheep from the edge of the flock. There were dandelion and sun and seagulls calling in the wind.

The sheep drank in the jumper's woolly aroma and sighed. For their old meadow in Ireland, for the vastness and the grey thrum of the sea, for the cliffs and the beach and the gulls, and even the wind. It was quite obvious by now: the wind was supposed to travel—sheep were supposed to stay at home.

The door of the shepherd's caravan opened and Rebecca the shepherdess stomped angrily down the steps, her lips pursed. She retrieved the jumper from the snow, bringing their pleasure in the comforting aroma to an abrupt halt.

"That's it!" she muttered, frowning dangerously and brushing snow crystals off the knitted wool. "That's it! I'm chucking her out! This time I really am going to chuck her out!"

The sheep knew better than that. All sorts of Things were chucked out of the caravan, but not her. She barely moved at all, but when she did, she was surprisingly quick. The sheep doubted she would even fit through the window of the shepherd's caravan.

Rebecca seemed doubtful too. She looked down at the jumper and sighed deeply.

A familiar face appeared in the milky glass of the caravan window, strangely soft-edged and wide, staring disapprovingly down at Rebecca and the sheep. Rebecca didn't look up. The sheep stared back, fascinated. Then the face had disappeared again and the caravan door opened. But nobody came out.

"From now on, that stinking thing stays out of the house!" came a moan from the caravan.

Rebecca took a deep breath.

"It's not a house, Mum," she said in a perilously quiet voice. "And it's definitely not your house. It's a caravan. My caravan. And the jumper doesn't stink. It smells of sheep! That's normal when it gets wet. Sheep smell like sheep when they get wet as well! Sheep always smell like sheep!"

"Exactly!" Maude bleated.

"Exactly!" the other sheep bleated. Maude had the best nose in the whole flock. She was well-versed in smells.

An icy silence drifted out of the shepherd's caravan.

"And they don't stink!" Rebecca hissed. "The only things that stink around here are your..."

She broke off, sighing again.

"Little bottles!" Heather bleated.

"And the goats!" Maude added for the sake of completeness.

The sheep could sense the silence in the caravan condensing into a little dark cloud. And the cloud was thinking.

"Who cares?" Mum shrieked. "I don't care if they smell of sheep! They can spend all the livelong day standing around smelling of sheep out there! But not in here. Sheep have no business being in here!" Her voice softened. "Really, Becky, all I'm asking for is some basic hygiene!"

Hygiene didn't sound like a bad thing. A bit like fresh, green, gleaming grass.

"Hygiene!" the sheep bleated approvingly. All apart from Othello, the new jet-black lead ram. Othello had spent his younger years in a zoo, where he'd seen—and above all smelled—a few hygienas from a distance and knew that they were nothing to get excited about. Not in the slightest.

Rebecca lowered her hands, and a jumper sleeve that she'd only just lovingly cleaned landed back in the snow again. She looked lost, a bit like a young ram who didn't know whether to run away or attack.

"Attack!" Ramesses bleated. Ramesses was a young ram himself, and usually plumped for running away.

Rebecca lowered her head, crumpled the jumper to her chest and puffed herself up. She wasn't particularly big. But she could make herself very big when she wanted to.

"This is my caravan. And they're my sheep. And this is my jumper. And nobody here needs your permission to smell of sheep. And I don't need your advice. Dad left me all of this because he trusted me, and d'you know what? I'm not making a bad job of it!"

The sheep could sense something in the caravan changing. The cloud expanded, getting clearer and wetter. Then it started to rain.

"Your faaather!" Heather whispered into Lane's ear.

"Your faaaaather!" came a groan from the caravan.

"Great. Well done, Rebecca!" muttered Rebecca.

The shepherd's caravan sighed deeply, then Mum appeared in the door. It didn't look like she was just standing there. It looked like she was stuck to the doorframe like a rather elegant slug, neat and brown and gleaming. Water was running out of her eyes, blurring her face.

The sheep looked at her, unsettled.

By now the sheep were convinced that Mum had brought the rain, in her ocean-blue handbag perhaps, or maybe in her little shiny metal case, possibly even in the pockets of her immaculate coat. The rain had been her ally when she had knocked on the door of the shepherd's caravan—the rain and homemade sloe gin.

Rebecca had opened the door, and Mum's words had begun to patter down: longing, daughter, what sort of backwater was this, from now on I'm only flying first-class, daughter, worried, only for the holidays, you look thin, and I brought you some sloe gin.

Rebecca's arms had drooped.

"Mum!"

It hadn't exactly sounded welcoming, but Mum and the rain had stayed all the same. It hadn't rained at all before that, not for the entire autumn—at most a thundery shower that made the frogs in the chateau moat croak with delight. That was it.

From then on there was nothing but rain. It dripped in the hay barn. The ground was muddy and slippery, especially down at the feed trough. The concentrated feed tasted damp. The little stream on their meadow was now a brown torrent, and Mopple the Whale had fallen in while hunting down a riverbank herb.

"Panta rhei," said the goats at the fence.

First it rained. Then it snowed. Then the sloe gin was chucked out of the window. It wasn't particularly slow. Some other Things followed. Some of the banished items were fetched back into the caravan by Rebecca, some by Mum and some by nobody, and Mopple ate the newspaper and that night he dreamed about a human with a fox's head.

It was all connected somehow—but the sheep didn't know how.

Copyright © 2010 by Leonie Swann

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