Black Flame (18 page)

The willow grove appeared up ahead. Kelsang knew that if he let the wolf run into the trees, it would be like trying to chase it through a maze. He was close enough to attack now, so he gathered his strength and leapt forward, just as he had done so many times before. He sank his teeth into the wolf's backside. A crisp cracking sound followed, and one of the wolf's delicate hind legs broke in two.

The wolf twisted around in pain and tried to bite back, but Kelsang had already cast himself to the side. The wolf's bite met the air, and the force of its attempt sent it careering off balance. Rather than aiming straight for the wolf's neck, Kelsang ran around in front of it to block its escape into the willows.

Having nowhere to go, and realizing that this was probably going to be its last chance, the wolf unleashed all of its aggression. Dragging its broken leg, it charged straight at Kelsang. It had beaten many a shepherd dog using this method. They would lose their balance in an attempt to dodge it, leaving their necks open to a counter attack.

But Kelsang stood firm, and the wolf went crashing into his shoulder. It was like smashing headfirst into rock, and as the wolf slipped, Kelsang bit one of its front legs.

The wolf spun to a standstill, howling. There was barely any fight left in it. This time Kelsang went straight for its throat. As he bit into it, he discovered just how much smaller the wolves were here than on the plateau. Perhaps it was because these grasslands were far richer in food. Only the cruelest environments can produce truly strong animals.

The wolf was dead. Kelsang picked it up in his mouth as if it were a kitten and slowly jogged back to the camp, placing it at Han Ma's feet. Then he lay down.

Without a word, the old man threw his knife to Han Ma.

“He's not of this world,” he said, giving a thumbs up.

The herders whistled as they threw their sickles over their shoulders and made for the grasslands, leaving Han Ma and Kelsang behind in the camp.

Kelsang was all anyone talked about for the rest of that sultry afternoon.

Once the school term started, Kelsang began to feel lonely. The local children were used to shepherd dogs and didn't give him a second glance. He was no longer special the way he had been at the School for Deaf and Blind Children. Furthermore, Han Ma was busy — the students were his primary focus. But Kelsang didn't think about all this too much. As long as he could be with Han Ma, that was enough for him.

Every morning, when Han Ma came out of his room carrying a bucket, Kelsang would be waiting for him, and together they would walk to the well to fetch water. While Han Ma was teaching, Kelsang would roam the schoolyard on his own. The local town dogs weren't like the dogs out on the grasslands. After only a couple of encounters, they concluded that Kelsang was not to be messed with and were careful to keep their distance.

When he was particularly bored, Kelsang would venture out into the grasslands on his own, but he always avoided camps for fear of encountering any more shepherd dogs. He would run on the soft, spongy grass, chasing small animals such as hares, field rats and larks. Then he would choose a patch of high ground and sleep, surrounded by the sweet fragrance of grass toasting in the sun. It would be dusk before he awoke, and by that time the smoke was rising from the chimneys in town. The children were already on their way home from school, scattering in all directions like small birds.

When he heard Han Ma calling his name, Kelsang would freeze for a moment before galloping off in the direction of the school, across the grass painted gold by the setting sun. Nothing in the world was more important than Han Ma's call. It was everything to him.

Kelsang repeated this routine every day.

But winter was arriving on the grasslands. The rain had been plentiful that summer, the grass lush, and the rodents — especially the rats and rabbits — had multiplied almost beyond control. If all these rodents were to make it to adulthood, it would spell disaster for the ecosystem. They would munch their way through the grass and turn it into a barren wasteland. But the food chain works hard to keep its delicate balance. These rodents' predators also experienced a population explosion that summer. The sky was crowded with eagles, and the dirt roads were peppered with the corpses of weasels, crushed by vehicles traveling at night.

The Hulun Buir grasslands is one of the few places in China that still has wolves, and where they exist they are the kings of the food chain. Lush grass and ample prey worked wonders for the wolves, too. The wolf that had been harassing the old man's camp and eventually lost its life in Kelsang's jaws was probably just a warning of what was to come.

But there was one blessing in having so much food around for the wolves — they rarely attacked the sheep. The herdsmen consequently dropped their guard, and it was only when two young men from the city had a disastrous encounter with these animals that people realized just how many more wolves there were that year.

The young men's motorbike had broken down at the worst possible time, just as it was getting dark. But the two office workers, who were sick of wearing suits and were looking for some fun, didn't see it like that. As far as they were concerned, it would get light again soon. Someone was bound to come along who could give them a ride back toward home. And their bag of mushrooms, of course — they had been mushroom picking.

They had sleeping bags and a tent, and should be more than up to fending off the autumnal night, or at least so they thought. But as night fell, their face-off with the wolves began. Before long, a deep wail came floating through the darkness, getting progressively higher in pitch.

The two men huddled in their tent, screaming and banging together whatever they could find like crazed sports fans. But the phosphorescent dots of light slowly crept closer. The only thing that could stop them was fire.

They set alight their sleeping bags, tent, bags, hats, clothes, even the gas left in the motorbike tank in an attempt to keep the wolves at bay.

As the sun began to rise, three trucks carrying milk to Qili drove past, and the drivers spotted two naked, singed men running across the grasslands. The wolves had given up the fight and had slunk away.

From that day on, Han Ma refused to let the four children who lived out on the grasslands go home on their own. He started walking the mile and a half with them himself, but after a week, Kelsang took over. Every day, when school was let out, Kelsang would lead the children out the gates and across the grasslands to their camp before returning home on his own. It was like going back to his shepherding days. He was taking his four little sheep from one pen to another. He knew this job, and he was good at it.

The herders already knew all about this large black dog and his performance at the old man's camp. The story had gone through the usual process of exaggeration, and by the time it reached them, Kelsang had bitten the wolf in half in one snap. They didn't doubt it for a moment after seeing him and always gave him bones and bits of cheese to gnaw on.

That winter was exceptionally cold. But it was Kelsang's fourth winter, and he wasn't bothered by the seasonal freeze. His internal body clock made its usual adjustments, and he quickly shed his summer coat in favor of his denser winter outfit. It was so thick that from a distance you could mistake him for a bear. As the temperature began to drop, Kelsang sensed that this winter was by no means going to be kinder than the long ones up on the plateau.

One early morning in November, as Kelsang emerged from his nest tucked under Han Ma's window, he saw that the grasslands were covered by a thick blanket of snow. The red ball of the morning sun looked as if it had been frozen to the horizon, unwilling to tear itself away from the silvery line across the landscape. The pure turquoise sky was completely still. It was as if the entire earth had frozen solid.

The herdsmen had already rounded up their horses to go out to pasture, but the horses didn't look as if they had entirely woken up. They trudged out into the fresh snow, their heads hanging as they walked toward the large well on the west side of town. Their white breath appeared almost solid in the cold air, and seemed to hang suspended, swallowing the horses up in a fog of their own breath.

Kelsang nuzzled into the snow and sneezed. It had been so long since his nose had been this irritated by the cold, but he was happy and went bounding off into the white meadow. He ran up to the newest camp on the outskirts of town. Two shepherd dogs watched as he ran toward them before he turned suddenly and galloped off in another direction, leaving them behind.

All of a sudden, Kelsang heard something. He stopped dead and listened. Then, retracing his tracks, he bounded back toward town.

Kelsang arrived just in time. Han Ma was opening the door when Kelsang careered into the yard. He only managed to take one step outside before Kelsang had flown around behind him, placed his front paws on his lower back and pushed him into the snow.

What followed could only be called a battle of wills as Han Ma hurled a freshly packed snowball at Kelsang, striking him on the nose and sending snow flying in every direction. Surprised and angry, Kelsang barked and pounced on Han Ma, dodging two more snowballs. Using all his might, he pressed Han Ma to the ground, a heavy paw against his chest, and within a flash, Han Ma's throat — shaking with laughter — was nestled in Kelsang's jaws.

Han Ma clung to Kelsang's neck.

The herdsmen, dressed in thick Mongolian robes and dragging their herding sticks behind them, rode toward the pair. They could only shake their heads at the sight of the dog and teacher rolling around in the snow. They were just like children. How could a teacher play around like this, wearing only a woolen sweater in the Mongolian winter?

Of course, they knew how popular Han Ma was with the children. Even though he had arrived just three months before, the children were already starting to worry about what they would do when the school year came to an end.

This was only the first snow of winter. That year's terrible snowstorm came one afternoon at the end of December. Not even the most experienced of the old herdsmen had felt the change in the weather that day. There was nothing unusual in the sky. In fact, it was clear and bright, with the occasional eagle spreading its wings, floating on the warm air currents. Everything was tranquil, and it was fairly warm for a winter's day.

Many of the herders had driven their flocks out to faraway pastures in pursuit of sunny mountain slopes, where the wind whipped the tiniest snowflakes and the sheep could kick away the snow to find the grass beneath. But under this deceptively peaceful surface, disaster was waiting, and it was all the more frightening because of how suddenly it came.

That morning Kelsang felt something stir deep within him, a sign that something was about to happen. It was a completely different feeling from the one he had had out on the road near the guesthouse. It had none of the pressing urgency. The other shepherd dogs should have felt it, too, but they were already too domesticated. Kelsang was probably more closely related to their wild ancestors than they were themselves.

The other shepherd dogs only felt a bit fatigued that day, but as soon as their masters called, they jumped up and followed them out into the depths of the snow-covered pastures. No one wanted to pass on such a fine day. At the very least, it would be unwise to allow the flock to eat up the stock of hay so early in the winter. Something about the cold weather seemed to leave the sheep permanently unsatisfied.

That morning Kelsang didn't play his game with Han Ma, even though it had become somewhat of a routine. Han Ma hadn't noticed that anything was different. He had been busy all morning tending to the school's furnace. The dried cow dung had been soaked by the melting snow the previous afternoon, and now he couldn't get it to light. Eventually, he gave up and doused it with kerosene. The first children would be arriving soon, and he needed to get the heat going so that the classrooms would be toasty warm before lessons started. The weather was getting colder. Yang Yan had been kind enough to send a supply of cream against frostbite, and Han Ma had already passed it on to some of his pupils.

Even the slightest change in atmospheric pressure was enough to make Kelsang uncomfortable, but he didn't understand where this scary feeling was coming from. He had no way of finding out, either, no way of knowing where or when the disaster would begin. He was steadfast about one thing, though. No matter what, he wouldn't leave Han Ma today. He lay outside the classroom, the sound of his master's sonorous voice and those of the children reading out load floating through the wooden door. These sounds made him feel safe.

After the lunch bell, Kelsang went into the classroom and lay down at Han Ma's feet. The children finished their bowls of steaming meat congee, which had been cooking on the stove, and now they surrounded Han Ma. He had brought out his photo album and was opening up a whole new world to them. This had recently become an absolutely necessary post-lunch ritual.

A few bones were dropped onto the floor for Kelsang. Lying in the warm classroom at Han Ma's feet, he began to feel more satisfied. He drifted off to sleep, and his unease seemed to melt away in the warmth of slumber. It was already past two when he was awakened by Han Ma's calls. There was only one lesson in the afternoon during the winter because it grew dark so early. The four children who lived out on the grasslands were already waiting in the doorway, dressed in their fur-lined robes, fur hats and felt boots like tightly wrapped rice dumplings.

Suddenly an uneasiness grabbed hold of Kelsang again. It was time for him to go to work, to take the four children back to their homes. He paced around Han Ma slowly, unwilling to leave the classroom. He trusted this feeling. Experience told him to trust it. It wouldn't be wise to leave Han Ma right now, but he knew that protecting these children was what made his master happy. They were Han Ma's flock, and it was up to him to make sure that they didn't get lost in a snowstorm or attacked by a wolf.