Black Flame

by Gerelchimeg Blackcrane

  A steely look flashed across the dried-up wells of the old herdsman’s eyes, and a strength seemed to rise up in him, the likes of which he hadn’t felt since the day he managed to break in a beautiful foal many years before. He clasped at the collarbone he had broken after being thrown from the horse.

  “The snowstorm thirty years ago wasn’t as bad as this, and we lost many horses that night. They were frightened, and the head horse ran straight into the lake. I only just managed to stop the rest of my herd before they went crazy, too. I lost the fewest! And this is my souvenir,” the old man said, raising his right hand, which was missing two fingers. “Who knows how many men were buried by the snow trying to save their horses. When the weather cleared the next day, we began finding them. They had taken off their clothes and died as if they were warming themselves by a fire. They froze to death like that,” he mumbled, his toothless mouth twisting as he relived days gone by. “Why did they all die like that, as if they were crouching by the fire? All these years, I’ve wondered. Can you tell me why?” He looked up expectantly at the young herdsmen, but they were exhausted and had already drifted off to sleep.

  So what happened that night? Countless sheep were swallowed up by the snow, as were many oxen, with only their black horns poking up through the drifts. Herds of horses huddled together, having no other shelter. When the storm finally let up, they were still there, standing in exactly the same spot, but life had left them during the coldest, darkest hours of the night. They continued standing there until spring, when they eventually thawed and fell to the ground.

  It had been many years since the grasslands had seen a storm like this.

  Kelsang started digging frantically into the slope, his back to the wind. He was like a mother fox trying to build a new burrow for her young. He nudged the three children into the hole, looked around to get his bearings and then ran out into the howling wind and snow.

  He had to find the lost child.

  Try as he might, Kelsang couldn’t find the path. The traces of their footprints had been buried by fresh snow, and he had only his instincts to guide him. But despite the swirling flakes, he didn’t lose his way.

  By the grace of the creator of all living things, his coat this winter was thicker than ever before, as if somehow in anticipation of the storm. The biting cold wasn’t painful, but the wind did make it hard for him to breathe. He pushed ahead with each step, fighting against the soft snow, his nose pressed close to it as it was whipped up by the wind. Where was the scent of that child? In this weather it would be impossible to pick up.

  Kelsang walked and walked. He felt like he was covering twice the distance he had done with the children. But he wouldn’t stop until he found a whiff of the boy’s scent frozen on the snow. He would cover hundreds of square yards if necessary.

  All of a sudden, he felt something underfoot, despite the icy clumps frozen to his paws. Crazed, he ran in circles, scrapping at the deep drifts until he uncovered the rounded shape of a child crouched in the snow with his hands over his face.

  He was still alive.

  He had tripped and fallen. By the time he had managed to scramble to his feet, his friends had disappeared into the white-gray of the snowstorm. His shouts had been broken into fragments by the wind, only to fall around him. Dropping to the ground, the child had covered his face, curled himself into a ball and drifted into a confused sleep. If Kelsang hadn’t found him when he did, he likely would have been buried more deeply, never to wake up again.

  The boy remained huddled in a ball, even after Kelsang dug him out. Kelsang tugged at the mittens covering his face and licked his cheeks with his hot tongue. It took another ten minutes before the boy could get to his feet and begin to follow Kelsang. He didn’t know where the dog was taking him, or where his friends were, but at least he was no longer on his own.

  Kelsang found his way back to the other children without any problems, and within half an hour, he had dug them out of the burrow. They were huddled inside like startled quails and were soon covered by a fresh blanket of snow. Kelsang gently brushed the new snow away and then began digging another hideout where he stored all four of them. He then lay down at the entrance, blocking the galloping snow.

  He had done the right thing. Had he taken the other three children to look for the missing boy, they would have collapsed, one by one, from exhaustion, and Kelsang would have been helpless. They would have all perished — there could be no doubt about it. No one had taught him to dig a hole on a slope facing away from the wind and to hide children inside, nor did experience tell him to do so. He had never been in a storm like this before, not even on the Tibetan plateau. It was all instinct. Instinct told him how to act in the face of nature’s cruelty.

  It had been a tiring few hours. Once the children settled, Kelsang, too, collapsed with exhaustion, tucking his nose into his belly and drifting off to sleep. A long, disturbing dream followed. He was a puppy chasing his mother’s shadow. In fact, as far as he could remember, his mother had only ever been a shadow, whose warmth he had never felt since. Then he was tied up, and all he could think about was trying to bite the man with the dark cheeks. His laugh scraped across Kelsang’s eardrums like shards of glass being shaken in a bottle. But nothing was more frightening than the vision of Han Ma walking away, leaving him because he had lost the four little children. Kelsang was running after him, but no matter how hard or fast he ran, there was an insurmountable distance between them. He gave up, crying out in despair, and watched Han Ma disappear over the horizon.

  Kelsang woke with a yelp, like a little puppy. He jumped to his feet and shook the snow from his fur. It was dark. With horror, he realized that his dream was becoming a reality — the four children were nowhere to be seen. He barked in alarm and bucked until he bumped against something solid beneath the snow. A fresh snowfall had covered the four children while he had been sleeping, that was all. After brushing the snow away, he carefully pulled them apart and began licking their cold faces until they wriggled awake and opened their eyes.

  The wind had yet to abate, but Kelsang pulled at the children’s clothes, urging them to stand up. After a few attempts, he gave up in disappointment. They no longer had any energy, and he understood that there was no way he could make them go on. He didn’t know what to do. Instinct was telling him to stay and keep watch over them and to just keep barking. This was what he had done out on the grasslands when one of the sheep was injured and unable to move. This was how he got his master’s attention.

  He lowered his larynx and started to bark, but the sound didn’t travel far, and before long he began to doubt this strategy. Whatever happened, he couldn’t leave these children. He kept circling them, stopping every now and again to look out into the distance.

  “Go find Mr. Han Ma. Find Mr. Han Ma, dog,” one of the children said, shivering.

  This was a clever child. If he had told Kelsang to find one of the herdsmen, he wouldn’t have recognized the name. But to Kelsang, the sound of “Han Ma” was the most important one on earth. He stared at the children huddled together.

  “Go find our teacher. Find Mr. Han Ma. Go!” The child pointed to where Kelsang kept looking, thinking it must be the direction of the school.

  Kelsang understood, and now he had to make a difficult choice. He knew he would be going against Han Ma’s strictest instructions. He was to take the children back to their camp and was certainly not to leave them. It’s extremely difficult for a dog to make this kind of decision. But it seemed impossible to carry out his task now anyway, and perhaps it would be better to find Han Ma, who could then tell him what to do.

  Kelsang brushed the snow off the children one last time and then ran out into the night. He kept sinking into the deep snow as he ran, although his paws never touched the solid ground beneath. All he could do was leap like a deer, which turned out to be incredibly tiring.

  No road. No tracks. Kelsang kept
stopping to try to figure out the way.

  One and a half hours later, the herdsmen and Han Ma were in the school discussing what to do next when Han Ma heard Kelsang’s bark. It wasn’t particularly loud, but it was getting closer, the sound somehow fighting its way through the heavy wind and snow. The herdsmen were exhausted after riding around half the night in search of the children, but the sound energized them, and they crowded into the doorway looking out into the darkness.

  Covered in snow, Kelsang crashed through them and ran straight to Han Ma, barking himself hoarse. He had hardly ever barked like this, but before his master could reach out to touch him, he turned and ran to the door. He stopped and looked back at Han Ma.

  “What are we waiting for? He wants to take us to the children!” the old man shouted, pulling on his fur hat. His grandson was among them.

  And so they mounted their horses and went out into the depths of the storm under the leadership of the black mastiff.

  The four children drifted off to sleep, tucked up under heavy animal skins in the warmth of the yurt. They would have to wait until tomorrow to tell their classmates about their frightening ordeal. None of the herdsmen felt like sleeping, and instead they pottered around in the yurt all night. The older ones recalled the last snowstorm —the cows frozen like lumps of stone, the felt as brittle as paper, and the black stallion who was born that night and had gone on to win first prize at the Naadam Fair.

  They drank until their cheeks were flushed, and then the old man suggested they go out to take a look at the miraculous dog. By the time they shuffled outside, the snow had almost stopped, and only the tiniest flakes were falling from the dawn sky.

  Despite being covered by a thick layer of snow and ice, Kelsang seemed impervious to the cold. But when he saw Han Ma, he jumped to his feet and shook himself off.

  Such a magnificent dog, such beautiful long black fur shining a metallic blue in the dawn light. He was as sturdy as a bear, a full thirty-five inches tall, his legs as thick as tree trunks. He had a carefree look in his eyes as he sauntered toward Han Ma.

  The herdsmen couldn’t help but click their tongues in admiration.

  Han Ma stroked Kelsang’s head, just as he had done many times before, and then crouched down and put his arms around the mastiff’s neck.

  “Such a magical dog!” the old man gasped, lifting his glass of rice wine as if about to make a toast and then pouring it over Kelsang.

  He started singing an old Mongolian folk song in honor of the handsome horse who had won first prize at Naadam Fair, and the other herdsmen joined in, one by one.

  It was a bleak but powerful tune, and it cut through the silver snow of the day’s first light and echoed across the grasslands.

  Afterword

  THE VAST EXPANSE of the Hulun Buir grasslands.

  If you ever have a chance to go there, walk deep into the grasslands. Just as you draw close to the camp that has been in the distance for some time, you’ll be greeted by a crowd of large shepherd dogs barking loudly. Among these fierce dogs, you’ll find a few whose barks are like thunder, whose tails are thick and curly, whose fur is so black it shines like a crow’s wings.

  Inside the yurts, the old herdsmen will tell you that among the dogs lying outside, the black ones are descended from a purebred Tibetan mastiff. A magnificent mastiff that once lived on these grasslands.

  And, of course, if you go to the school in town, you’ll be able to see the enormous black dog for yourself.

  About the Publisher

  Groundwood Books, established in 1978, is dedicated to the production of children’s books for all ages, including fiction, picture books and non-fiction. We publish in Canada, the United States and Latin America. Our books aim to be of the highest possible quality in both language and illustration. Our primary focus has been on works by Canadians, though we sometimes also buy outstanding books from other countries.

  Many of our books tell the stories of people whose voices are not always heard in this age of global publishing by media conglomerates. Books by the First Peoples of this hemisphere have always been a special interest, as have those of others who through circumstance have been marginalized and whose contribution to our society is not always visible. Since 1998 we have been publishing works by people of Latin American origin living in the Americas both in English and in Spanish under our Libros Tigrillo imprint.

  We believe that by reflecting intensely individual experiences, our books are of universal interest. The fact that our authors are published around the world attests to this and to their quality. Even more important, our books are read and loved by children all over the globe.