-Ellen-
Departure the following day went without incident, thank heavens. I was worried about Babe; he seemed melancholy after our altercation with David Andrews, but he was likely just reflecting our mood. We were on the road home when Shigeto raised the subject again.
"Do you think there's anything to his claim?" He asked. "David Andrews, that is. That something happened to his fence."
I looked over at Shigeto. "He was just looking for a story."
"Yeah, but still. Babe hasn't been the same since your spell."
"Babe seems fine."
"Better than fine. At least by some measures. But you know that he's changed, Ellen. It was a big spell. Something happened. Something deep."
I swore under my breath.
"I heard that," said Shigeto. "You're going to offer some propitiation to Hecate when we get home."
He gave me a grin to show he was teasing. Even so, he wasn't wrong. "I don't know. Maybe there's something to what he says. But if it is related to Babe, it should fade when we get him home. I'm sure it's just something transitory. And really, do you want to get involved with him? Even if he is on the up and up, the Inquisition's got to be keeping an eye on him with those articles. Especially with the tone he's taken."
"So you read the second one?"
"Yeah, I found it shocking, honestly."
Shigeto gave a laugh, "Thus speaks the witch."
I flushed. "You know what I mean. I mean, this Louise Beacon woman has actually opened a shop!"
"Soon we'll be old news. Quaint practitioners from the old days." He gave me another smile.
I took his hand in mine. "Just a couple of old hippies."
He laughed. "Does that mean that we can start running about naked on the farm?" He snickered like a teenaged boy.
I snorted, fighting a smile. "No. Absolutely not, young man. You'll get frostbite on your junk, and then I'll have to put you to pasture."
"Fair point," he laughed, "and such a waste of an exceptional stud."
I snorted, but gave his thigh a squeeze. He wasn't wrong.
That got me a bit of a fond leer, but he continued. "So about Babe…"
I slumped in my seat and kicked my feet up onto the dash. This earned me a dirty look from Shigeto. He was inordinately fond of the farm vehicles. It was an illness, I swear. I pulled up my scarf till it mostly covered my eyes.
Shigeto glared at me, "Pfft, this was your spell. I ain't taking no responsibility. I got enough troubles trying to keep up with cleaning up after you and your muddy tracks." He reached over and gave my feet an ineffectual shove.
I kicked back at him and he made a show of pretending to swerve the truck.
"Don't goof around," I said. "he's still back there. All we need is the damn bull complaining about your driving and insisting he take over."
Shigeto snorted, "Oh for Christ's sake Ellen, don't be ridiculous. He's far too young to drive."
I groaned at the joke, then laughed.
We drove a while in silence. I leaned my head on his shoulder. There were some advantages to these older trucks with bench seats.
"We could sell him to Simmons?" he suggested.
That pulled a snort out of me.
Another pause in the conversation.
We watched the road shift from suburbia to countryside.
He shook his head, "I don't know sweets. The only thing I know for sure is that I won't be looking at those old Far Side comics about cows the same way anymore." He put an arm around my shoulders, "But he's still our Babe. Whatever we did to him, he's still our Babe."
____________________________
"Where was he?" I asked as soon as Shigeto walked in from the field followed by a sullenly plodding Babe. I was standing in the middle of the driveway, car keys still in hand. I'd just gotten back from cruising the roads around our farm, hoping that he hadn't gone too far afield. I'd done the perimeter, while Shigeto had done his best to follow Babe's tracks.
"He was just through the North Gate, the one that backs onto Simmons' fields."
I smacked my forehead. "Of course. The gate where he used to get access to the fields that we had leased to him. Wasn't it locked?"
Shigeto looked at me. I waited. Given our arguments over the last several days, I thought he was going to protest that 'of course it was locked'. He did not. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out an old, thoroughly corroded padlock. It was open. You could see where the flakes of rust had fallen away, see the crust of corrosion where the shaft had lifted from the body. "Not just this, either. The chain had somehow unwrapped itself off the gate and latch-post. I re-wrapped it, of course, and hopefully Simmons won't notice the missing lock, but I'd best get a new one. I tried to close this one again, but it's completely frozen."
The implications of Babe's newly manifested abilities made my emotions surge. It terrified me to think about what could have happened if Simmons had discovered Babe on his property.
I reached out to him with my aura, trying to get some sense of his motivations, but a psychic wall slammed down. He looked at me accusingly and gave an irritable huff through his nostrils that briefly clouded the chill November air.
I looked at Shigeto, my eyes wide. "He shut me out."
"What?" began Shigeto.
But before we could say anything more, Babe moved towards the barn, his posture and plodding steps reminding me of nothing so much as a sullen teenager.
As he approached the door, it swung open of its own accord and slammed shut behind him. Shigeto and I both swore under our breath.
"Well, now we know," he said after a moment.
"It just seems to be doors," I said. "I've seen no evidence that he can move anything else by act of will. Just doors and gates."
"So what now?" he asked.
"We have to figure out what's going on in that big bullish head of his."