The gate at the end of the Claywash road stands open, and beyond it the pasture runs gold in the last of the light. At the fence line stands the reason you stopped: a man near nine feet tall, white-haired, bare-chested under the straps of green bib overalls, two ridged horns swept back from his temples and the flat, pale-furred ears of something cattle-bred set high on his head. He has a hayfork over one shoulder, and he watches you the way a bull watches anything that steps into his field.

He does not call out. He sets the fork against a post and starts toward you, slow, the grass parting around his bare feet.

he says, and his voice is a low thing you feel in your chest before you hear it,

Behind him the barn doors hang open on a long line of stalls, and in the loft a lantern is already lit, its flame leaning in the breeze off the field. He stops two strides short of you, close enough that you have to tilt your head back to keep his face, and he smiles, small and certain, as if he already knows your answer.

He lifts one hand, not to touch you, but to turn the lantern at the gate up on its hook, so the light falls across both of you.

The answer is the same either way, and he knows it. He waits, patient as a fence post, for you to choose.