butcher, but home to the village. Aaron had decided in the haystack that he would never part with Zlateh.
Aaron’s family and their neighbors had searched for the boy and the goat but had found no trace of them during the storm. They feared they were lost. Aaron’s mother and sisters cried for him; his father remained silent and gloomy. Suddenly one of the neighbors came running to their house with the news that Aaron and Zlateh were coming up the road.
There was great joy in the family. Aaron told them how he had found the stack of hay and how Zlateh had fed him with her milk. Aaron’s sisters kissed and hugged Zlateh and gave her a special treat of chopped carrots and potato peels, which Zlateh gobbled up hungrily.
Nobody ever again thought of selling Zlateh, and now that the cold weather had finally set in, the villagers needed the services of Reuven the furrier once more. When Hanukkah came, Aaron’s mother was able to fry pancakes every evening, and Zlateh got her portion, too. Even though Zlateh had her own pen, she often came to the kitchen, knocking on the door with her horns to indicate that she was ready to visit, and she was always admitted. In the evening Aaron, Miriam, and Anna played dreidel. Zlateh sat near the stove watching the children and flickering of the Hanukkah candles.
Once in a while Aaron would ask her, “Zlateh, do you remember the three days we spent together?”
And Zlateh would scratch her neck with a horn, shake her white bearded head, and come out with a single sound which expressed all her thoughts, and all her love.
A dreidel is a four-sided top. A top is a children’s toy that spins on the ground or a surface. The dreidel game is often played during Hanukkah as part of the celebration.