TRANSHUMANCE (1)
By:
January 15, 2026
We are thrilled to serialize Transhumance, a post-apocalyptic novella by HILOBROW friend and contributor Charlie Mitchell.
TRANSHUMANCE: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10.
“At least you won’t smell like goat shit til next Wesacc,” Virgil pokes at his small and glum friend. Little Dog kicks at a pine cone, looking everywhere but at his tall and collected friend.
The two hold that space for a moment. Bells clink in a soothing hubbub. Bleats steam out above the herd. Frozen dew crunches with every step amid the staging grounds. The able bodied Kindred prepare. Provisions double checked; gear inventoried; a caring eye set on the sheep and goats, and a wary one vigilant on the treeline. An initiated gaggle of adolescents shiver equally from cold and anticipation. Their hands are swatted away from over-fidgeting straps and buckles.
“Little Dog, aweh, big man,” Virgul nudges again. The smaller friend rocks back and forth on his heels. His eyes glaze over on one of the billy goats; the ungulate meets his stare with grinning kiltered blankness.
“Who knows brother, maybe just one more year and you might be freezing your tits off like we’ll be.”
Little Dog turns to take Virgil’s eye. “Bullshit! Baba said the same thing last spring. Everyone says the same thing every spring.”
“Well somebody has to listen to Baba drone, somebody’s gotta shovel the sh— ouch ah ah, okay okay, too far. I’m sorry big man, I couldn’t help it.”
“Fuck you!” Little Dog hisses, below adult earshot. “What am I even supposed to do?” he whines. He cranes around to see if Baba was watching from the farewell party of Kindred. Seems to be having last words with the Bodhisattva.
“Anyone fun is doing Transhumance, just the babies get left behind. Just me and sniveling kids or adults who have just me to boss around — oh I hate stitching. And when River’s in charge of lessons. Or what if marauders come while you’re gone? It’s not just boredom and bad chores y’know, but real danger out there.” Little Dog summons all the words he can, but stands like a boy complaining and little else.
Virgil laughs and jerks his hand as if masturbating. “Then good thing brave Little Dog will be there to hold things down. You’ve had plenty of springs to figure something out, squealer. No one’s gonna come while we’re gone — promise. Just don’t monkey in the wilds alone,” he frowns.
“Hungry things come out in spring. You know it. And be easy on River, she adores you, and does her b—”
The Bodhisattva’s horn cuts Virgil off. The horn sounds a pall of a passed eon and it settles around the Kindred, permeating this highland valley. Little Dog was never surprised by its ability to still everyone, even animals. It always spoke to something primordial that he found impossible to put into words. The closest Little Dog has heard was an elk bugle in the dawn hour before the sun had risen to burn the fog off the valley floor. It was tears knocking from behind eyeballs, blood surging stronger in his arms, a focus like the first snowmelt stream surging down his spine.
Virgil catches Little Dog dazed and squeezes the enraptured friend tight, and before he grasps it all Virgil is absorbed into the departure. When the horn ends and the call dissipates, the Transhumance — led by the Bodhisattva, with Virgil and the other teens, the chaperone Kindred, then the two hundred-head herd of sheep, their dogs — wordlessly begin the two-moon trek.
Hands clap down on Little Dog’s shoulders. He cranes up and there is Baba; beaming as ever. Warm hands and starlight in the eyes. Little Dog, Baba, and about a dozen Kindred remaining home watch the Transhumance mount the ridge out of the valley.
Now that the snow drifts began to flee fir shade with spring, the corridor west to the grazing valleys in the southern Saltese Uplands are finally free from winter’s maw. The sheep were scrawny under their shag and wool, sure, but it wasn’t all about regaining summer fat. The Transhumance is a rite of passage; grounds to plant oneself in circumstances outside of the Heart Cave. In a word, as Baba put it, to put oneself in the world, sans self. Little Dog knows best that not everything can be lectured. It still has its dangers — sometimes Kindred didn’t come back.
The last cloak and backpack, dawdling bellchime, vanish around the butte overlooking the valley. They leave a trail pummeled out of frost into sallow grass — a snake scaled out of their memory, Little Dog thought. Soon to be either daubed over by another snow or swallowed altogether with the melt. Kindred began rousing, blinking from some trance and walking back to the Heart Cave.
“Come on, Little Dog,” Baba squeezes his shoulders again. He realizes that they were the last to linger here on the valley floor.
“There’s plenty to do back home, and a full day ahead of us.”
The pair start the ponderous way back down the other end of the valley. Little Dog lets Baba’s long legs carry him ahead a ways. Something still festers in his craw, but he has long since learned to keep it in unless he wants a browbeating of unsolicited wisdom. His eyes move over Baba, the trail, the stones and creaking pines. Baba’s broad back and shoulders; simian gait fluid around clawing pine branches. Monumental but somehow part and whole of the world. He turns; leathery face flushed, breath curling out from his dark depth of beard.
“Will you walk beside me? I don’t like it when you hang back.”
To be continued…
Complete story to be published at HILOBROW later in 2026.
MORE ORIGINAL FICTION & POETRY AT HILOBROW: James Parker’s COCKY THE FOX | Karinne Keithley Syers’ LINDA, LINDA, LINDA | Matthew Battles’ THE SOVEREIGNTIES OF INVENTION stories | James Parker’s KALEVALA bastardizations | Annalee Newitz’s “THE GREAT OXYGEN RACE” | Charlie Mitchell’s “SENTINELS” | Josh Glenn’s “VALIDATION SESSION” | & more.