On Holy Island in the ruins of the old monastery, the Cheviot Goats browsed on the springtime sea lavender, milk thistle, and associated branchlets and beetles, when Lucy, eyes forward, knocked her front knee against a jut of limestone.

She chewed thoughtfully and felt the creep of an idea form under her stubby horns. She cocked her head and studied the crumbly rock up close, still chewing, then cast her gaze to the south where there were many crumbly rocks all in a line. In some spots they were stacked up to knee, head, or even horn-tip height. In other places there were stacks stretching all the way to the sky so that you had to walk around them to see to the other side.

These rocks are different from the little gray rocks and the big boulders that the kids play on, she thought to herself. They stack up so nicely and are all the same as each other. And they don’t fall over - even in the wind.

She walked down the line of rock, but sped up to a trot after a patch of hares-foot clover nearly caused her ideas to slip away like a dream. The line of stone stopped moving south, but a bulky tall spot marked where the line changed direction and projected suddenly eastward. It moved in a way that a grazing goat never would; the turn was too angular and it made a sharp corner.

Lucy followed the rocks all the way east, then all the way north, and finally west. There was a small gap in the line that confounded her briefly, but she decided to ignore it. Oddly, she found herself back where she started. She could tell because all of the browse was flattened and chewed up.

Her idea spiderwebbed into a series of suspicions, but the milk thistle had made her sleepy and the sun was low in the sky. The rest of the flock was mustering together, so she did the same.

She saw Wilfred, who she thought was a very handsome billy, off on his own. He had a long glossy black and white coat, a long silky beard, and horns that were well polished from frequent sparring.

“Hey Lucy,” he said casually, “I saw you walking around in a circle today in the Browsing Field.”

        “Hi Wilfred. It wasn’t a circle, exactly. A circle is all turning. I walked in four straights, with only four turns.”

        “I guess so.”

“Well I saw you jumping on and off the Sunrise Rocks this morning,” she said, worried he thought she was being daft, “You’re such a kid sometimes, Wilfred.”

He flapped his ears and bleated in good humor.

“You’re just jealous, Lucy, but if you want, you can come jump on the Sunrise Rocks with me tomorrow morning.”

        “Well, okay,” she said too quickly, “but only because someone needs to watch the kids, and Mabel needs a break. She’s been on her last nerve, so I think she just needs an entire day of browsing.”

        “If you say so,” he said with a wink.

        Lucy harrumphed and loped away to some of the other does to hide a pleased expression.

#

The Sunrise Rocks were five boulders of various sizes all in a clump. They were called the Sunrise Rocks because they cast long shadows when the sun climbed up past the eastern cliffs in the morning. It was fun to jump on the rocks, off the rocks, and especially fun to jump from one rock to another.

A few yearlings were gathered around to watch Wilfred jump off of the tallest rock. He did a spirited midair kick with his back hooves, and landed with balletic poise and a bow. The yearlings scrambled up the rocks to imitate his trick, shoving and headbutting each other in their race to the top.

“Hi Lucy. Did you see my jump?”

“Yes Wilfred, I did. You looked just like a yearling.”

“Would a yearling have such a long beard and horns?”

“No, I suppose not,” Lucy thought for a moment. “Wilfred?”

“Yes?”

“Have you noticed that the Sunrise Rocks, and the smooth gray rocks on the ground, are different from the rocks in the Browsing Field?”

“How so?”

        “Well, the rocks in the Browsing Field are all the same as each other,” she said cautiously, “and they stack up really high into the sky in some places.”

        “Yeah, I suppose…”

        “And they have flat sides,” she said hurriedly “and the sides are the same but in pairs. That’s why they stack up so well and don’t blow over.”

        “Some are smaller,” Wilfred argued.

        “No, I think they’re just broken. Like a chip out of a horn.” He winced sympathetically. There were no chips in his horns, but he could imagine it.

        “I told Mabel I’d watch the kids, but when it is midday and they are with their mothers, meet me in the Browsing Field and I’ll show you something else.”

#

        By midday Lucy was ravenous. No wonder Mabel has been so grouchy, she thought. Pleased to find that nettle that had popped up around one of the turns in the stone, she may have forgotten her wonderings completely if Wilfred hadn’t ambled up expectantly.

        She considered giving him a reprimanding headbutt when he helped himself to the nettle patch, but when he brushed up against her side with his long glossy coat she recalled the last rutting season and decided he could have some. He hadn’t given her any kids this spring, but he had a fruitful season and she hoped he would try again next time.

        “What did you want to show me?” Wilfred asked after swallowing some of the hairy leaves, “are these the stones you were telling me about?”

        “Yes. Do you see how they are all next to each other?”

        He looked at the stack of rocks the nettle patch was hugging, then to the east where the rocks stretched out in a line at about shoulder height, and then to the north where the rocks were sparse and low to the ground.

        “The Sunrise Rocks are next to each other, too,” he said slowly.

        “Yes, but all of these rocks are the same and they are all matched up end to end.”

He scuffed one of the rocks with a hoof and tried to concentrate on what Lucy was saying.

“I think there’s something else,” she said urgently, “look at the long and short sides of each rock. If they kept growing their lines would never cross.

“So what?” he said blithely, “if my horns kept growing forever, they would never cross.”

“That’s not true,” she said, “because if they kept growing in both directions, they would cross through your skull.”

        Wilfred frowned and flattened his ears with unease. This was not good talk.

        “Look at this.”Lucy led him over to a patch of dirt, absent any vegetation, and hoofed it until it was flat. Then she took the very tip of one toe and scraped two identical lines side by side. Wilfred looked at the lines and snorted.

        “So what?” he said again.

        “Keep looking!” She made two more lines, connecting the existing marks at the ends to create one line with four identical turns before meeting where it began.

“What does it look like to you?”

        “I don’t like this, Lucy. Let’s get back to the flock and have some clover.”

        “Wilfred, please.”

        “Fine. It looks like one of your rocks straight on.”

        “Exactly,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper, “and what’s worse than that? I think all of the rocks are lined up in the Browse Field to look like these markings.”

#

        Lucy dragged anyone in the flock who would follow to the nettle patch to see her rocks. She scraped the diagram into the dirt over and over again, and then would demonstrate that if you followed the rocks you would end right back at the nettle patch where you started.

        “This doesn’t prove anything,” Babette complained in front of a huddle of billies on the eighth day, “what if your rocks all lined up look like this?”

        She hoofed at the dirt like she was preparing a lie down spot and cleared Lucy’s diagram away. In its place she drew four lines of her own. Two of them were parallel, but of different lengths, so the shorter connecting lines sagged toward each other.

        “There,” she said, matter settled, “Four turns, and you could walk around these lines and you’d be at the nettle spot, but it does not look like your rocks.”

        She flicked her tail and puttered away with two black-and-white  kids hopping in tow.

#

Interest in the configuration of the rocks cooled after Babette’s rebuttal, but at the least it was now well accepted that Lucy’s Rocks were all the same as each other, but different from all other rocks that may or may not be the same as each other.

        That discovery came with some amount of esteem, since geology had not progressed amongst the goats in recent memory. The more inquisitive minded individuals could be spotted scraping lines in dirt and puzzling over them, and the well liked Flock Queen Beatrice graced Lucy with a deep nod one evening after browse.

        Despite Lucy’s advancement in the pecking order, Wilfred suddenly wanted nothing to do with her. After a few days of silent treatment had passed, she approached Ernest, a rotund gray-all-over billy that Wilfred was friendly with.

        “Hi Ernest,” she said.

        “Oh. Hi, Lucy.”

        “Do you know where Wilfred was today?”        

        He swished his tail and thought for a moment.

        “I saw Wilfred out by Shadow Copse. I think he needs some space right now.”

        “Space from me,” she said miserably.

        “Yes, but he’ll come ‘round. His mind is digesting right now. Goats like him don’t like thinking about serious things, but it’ll be rut season before you know it. He’ll forget all about it.”

        She kicked a round gray pebble and wished that she didn’t like thinking about serious things either.

#

        Charlie used to be the Top Buck, but had stepped down graciously once he reached old age. Now, a few seasons later, he had rotten old teeth and stiff joints that especially hurt when it was cold. His handsome black mane had turned into a dull gray halo framing a narrow face.

        Word of Lucy’s Rocks reached the very old goats last of all. Most of them dismissed it as business of the young, but Charlie’s mind was still sharp and he resolved himself to take a look.

        “Philistines,” he muttered to his snoozing companions, “Two hooves in the grave.”

        It was a sunny day, so the old goats had sheltered beneath the Shadow Copse birch trees. Charlie observed a billy in his prime that had been browsing up by the trees in recent days and hobbled toward him.

        “Hey! Kiddo!” Charlie hollered.

        Wilfred looked up, saw the old goat shambling his direction, and trotted over to spare him the rest of the journey.

        “Hi Charlie,” said Wilfred.

        “I need you to do this Old Goat a favor.”

#

        Charlie didn’t know Lucy from Jane, so Wilfred guided him, with frequent breaks, to where the shaggy gray doe was glumly chewing some Grass-of-Parnassus. She looked up and was taken aback by the strange pair, but she raised forward facing ears politely.

        “Hi Charlie,” she bleated. “Wilfred.”

        At that moment she realized she was mad at Wilfred for ignoring her over something so silly as rocks.

        “Good afternoon, young miss,” said Charlie. “Word has reached these old ears that you’ve caused quite a stir in the flock.”

        “Oh. Why yes, I suppose I have.”

        “Why don’t you show me these rocks of yours.”

        The last thing she wanted was to make a big deal over the damned rocks in front of Wilfred, but there was no getting around it. She cleared a patch nearby and scratched her diagram into the dirt.        

        “All of the rocks that are lined up in the Browse Field look like this. They are all the same, and no one can find a rock that looks like this anywhere else. The kids and yearlings have been looking all over the island.”

        Charlie regarded it seriously.

        “Tigele^[1],” he said after a moment.

        “What?” Lucy had never heard the word before.

        “Tigele is a mythical stone. Although, maybe not so mythical. My old nanny Sage was as mad as anything, but was interested in words and stories. She said there were Tigelan –that’s plural– stones with unique properties. But no one knew what the properties were, so the flock forgot all about them.”

        “Well what makes you think these are Tigelan?” asked Wilfred. “They can’t be mythical because there are so many of them right underhoof. You can’t browse for long before tripping over a stack of them.”        

        “Well, we know they are all the same as each other, but different from the other rocks,” said Lucy, “So Tigele is as good a name as any other.” She was sick of the flock calling them “Lucy’s Rocks.” She hadn’t made them after all.

        “Charlie, there’s something else,” said Lucy. Wilfred, knowing what was coming, flattened his ears and made a show of meandering away again.

        “I think that the Tigelan are all lined up in such a way that they look like one big Tigele–like my drawing.”

        Charlie clucked his tongue and thought about it.

“Babette doesn’t think so though,” she conceded, “she says that the rocks could be lined up with four straights and four turns and it could look like this-” she drew Babette’s diagram in the dirt next to her own - “not like a Tigele at all.”

“I suppose so,” Charlie pondered, “can you explain how they’re different?”

Maybe Charlie is as mad as his Nanny Sage, Lucy thought.

“Of course,” she said, “they look different.”

“These old eyes don’t see so well anymore, dear.”

Her nostrils flared and she exhaled, flapping her lips. She thought hard.

        “The sides are sagging toward each other,” she said, and she dug her toe into the dirt to extend the sides until they crossed.

        “How can you tell the Tigele’s sides don’t? If you extended them forever, you’d fall off the island.”

        “Well, I can just see it, Charlie.”

        “You can’t ‘just see’ how the straights in the Browse Field are all lined up. What else?”

        She trotted all around the diagram, snorting. She cocked her head and squinted and then lowered her head and took a sniff. It smelled like dirt and clay; it was a long shot anyway.

        Wilfred had wandered back and was peering at the drawings in spite of himself.

        “The turns are all the same,” he finally said sullenly, “Lucy’s rock has four turns and they are all the same. Babette’s has two big turns and two small turns.”

        She looked, and saw that he was right.

#

        The moody springtime sun slipped away behind a wall of dark clouds that delivered fine gray mist and the smell of petrichor. The flock crowded inside of a tent formed by a grove of willow trees and prepared to bed down early for the night.

        Lucy saw that Wilfred had gone and picked a fight with a couple of bucks for a swathe of bone dry dirt, lost, and was nursing a lump and his pride from outside of the canopy. Lucy felt a little sorry for him after he had helped her with the Tigele problem that afternoon, but she had not forgotten his cold shoulder.

        She went to sleep thinking about the problem of proving all the turns in the Browse Field, but was promptly awoken by an unfriendly nudge.        

        “Hello, Theodore,” Lucy said, after orienting herself to time and place.

        “Lucy.”

        Theodore was a brown and gray mottled billy who was a couple of rut-seasons her senior. He had short fur, and a beard that was thin and long. Bulky and strong and with long curly horns, he was long rumored to be the next Top Buck, but had not challenged as expected. If billies like Wilfred didn’t like to think about serious things, Theodore was not a billy like Wilfred at all.

        “I think you are right,” he said with no ceremony.

        “About what, Theodore?”

        “I think that someone lined up your rocks in the Browse Field to look like themselves.”

        “Well, that isn’t what I said, Theodore. I said that the rocks in Browse Field are lined up to look like themselves, not that they were lined up deliberately.”

        “You’re a fool,” he barked.

He turned to the side revealing the full wedge of his head. In silhouette, his horns became crescent moons. He over-opened his eye.

“What do you see, girl?”

She cringed away, but then she saw it.

Nestled like a pistil in the petals of his eyelids, the orb was the color of fallen birch leaves and was as glossy as a raindrop. Burned into the center was a dark pupil, large in the shade of the willow trees. Unmistakably, it was a Tigele - four straights and four equal turns.

#

The mist had turned to rain by morning and persisted for the next few days. Lucy felt uneasy since talking to Theodore and was not sure she cared one sniff about the configuration of the Tigelan anymore. Maybe Wilfred was right. Bad talk.

Theodore had not kept his idea to himself, however, and the flock was seized with interest that burned lightning hot. Bands of goats walked up and down the Tigele formations together, murmuring about lines and turns and eyes. Some would huddle around and scrape diagrams on the ground.

A breakthrough came when a kid drew a clumsy circle around a Tigele, completing the depiction of a goat’s eye. A crowd formed, and it wasn’t long before the symbol was gouged into every bare spot of dirt in Browse Field.

Theodore declared that Lucy’s Rocks finally had a name. Goats-Eye Rocks

Flock Queen Beatrice was a large and regal goat. She had impressively long and shaggy gray fur with a white band around her middle and a bloom of russet on her face. Her horns were long and grew straight up like tree trunks before tapering off to the sides.

Theodore had Beatrice’s ear, so when Lucy was