The Laugh of the Snow-White Goat — Part One

 Abu Rashid wasn't a man who believed in much of anything he couldn't hold in his own two hands. Old women's talk of spirits living up in the mountains, tales about voices in the night — none of it meant a thing to him. What mattered was the land getting worked, the herd getting fed, and the sun coming up the next morning on the same safe, ordinary day as always.

A Stranger at the Market

Then came market day, the one folks in the village looked forward to every week, and Abu Rashid noticed a stranger standing off at the far edge of the stalls, apart from the other sellers. In front of him stood a single white goat — white as fresh snow, whiter than any goat Abu Rashid had ever laid eyes on.

He asked the price. It was so low he figured there had to be something wrong with the animal.

"Something the matter with her?" Abu Rashid asked.

The stranger smiled, a smile Abu Rashid didn't understand the meaning of until much later. "Not a thing wrong with her. Only — you milk her yourself, and you never, not once, let her sleep outside the pen."

Abu Rashid laughed off the strange condition, paid the man, and led the goat home, proud of the bargain he'd struck.

The Blessing in the Pen

That first week, the goat gave more milk than ten goats put together. Word got around fast, and soon the whole village was asking Abu Rashid where he'd found such a blessing.

But Umm Rashid didn't share her husband's joy.

On the third night, she woke to a strange sound coming from the pen. It wasn't bleating. It was closer to... a laugh, low and stifled, held back behind closed teeth. She crept outside and found the goat standing dead-still in the middle of the pen, its eyes fixed on the window of the children's room.

She told her husband about it in the morning.

"You were half-asleep, probably dreaming," he said, patting her shoulder. "That goat's our good fortune, woman. Don't go doubting her over some dream."

The Sound in the Night

But the dream came back. And every time Umm Rashid knelt down to milk her, she felt those pale yellow eyes tracking her every move, like the animal knew exactly what was running through her mind.

"She's laughing at me," she told her husband one evening, her voice shaking. "Every time I get close with the pail, I hear it — this little sound, like she's mocking me."

Abu Rashid wouldn't hear it. "Goats don't laugh, woman. That's old wives' foolishness."

The Boy and the Goat

The weeks went on. Little Rashid, the eldest of the children, took to spending long hours out by the pen, playing with the goat, talking to her like she was his best friend. Umm Rashid noticed her boy growing pale, his eyes sinking in, his sleep turning restless and thin.

One day she asked him, "What is it you do with that goat all this time?"

Rashid looked back at her with eyes gone flat and empty, and answered in a voice far too calm for a child: "She tells me stories, Mama. Sweet stories, about places I've never seen."

What Stood on Two Legs

That night, Umm Rashid didn't sleep at all. She sat by her window watching the pen. And as midnight crept closer, she saw something that turned the blood in her veins to ice.

The goat was standing up on its hind legs.

Its body had begun to stretch, twisting in a way no living thing should twist, and the shadow it threw against the wall wasn't the shadow of a goat at all — it was something taller, thinner, something with fingers where hooves should be.

Umm Rashid screamed, and the whole house came awake. But by the time they'd lit the lantern and run outside, there was nothing there but the goat, calm as ever, chewing its cud like nothing in the world had happened.

"You've lost your mind, woman!" Abu Rashid shouted, in front of the neighbors who'd come running at the screaming. "You're ruining our good name with your foolish tales!"

Burning with shame and anger, he ordered his wife to keep quiet and never go near that pen again after dark.

The Empty Room

That very night, once the house had gone still and everyone was asleep, Umm Rashid heard the laugh again.

But this time it wasn't coming from the pen.

It was coming from the children's room.

She ran to the door and shoved it open with a trembling hand —

and found the room empty.

No Rashid. No little sister. No baby.

Just an open window, a cold wind slipping through it, and there on the windowsill — a small hoofprint, pressed clean into the dust, as if something had stood there only a moment before, watching, before it slipped away into the dark of the night, carrying off every soul she'd ever loved.

They never found the children that night. And the goat was never seen again after it.

But the villagers, when they pass by Abu Rashid's abandoned pen on quiet evenings, still swear they can hear it.

A soft laugh... echoing between the cracked and crumbling walls.

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To be continued in Part Two: how the villagers finally traced where the snow-white goat had taken the children — and what they found waiting for them there.

Translated and freely adapted from old Bedouin and rural Saudi Arabian folk tales.