Black Flame Read online

  As a man with a long ponytail approached the tall skinny man to chat, Kelsang felt the chains around his neck suddenly go slack. They had been weighing on him ever since he left the grasslands. His master, Tenzin, had originally also fastened a chain around his middle for extra security, but it had worked loose in the jolting jeep, and the tall skinny man had obviously been too scared to refasten it.

  His leather collar had fallen away. He had been wearing the collar for a year now, and all of his pulling and tugging over the past few days had taken their toll. The weakest part of it had snapped. Kelsang had grown used to having something weighing around his neck. In fact, he had come to see it as a natural part of his body. He felt uncomfortable without it, and in his confusion could only lean down to sniff the decaying collar now lying on the ground.

  Someone called out in surprise, which shook Kelsang into action. He may have been from the depths of the northern grasslands, but he was used to having humans instruct him what to do. A shepherd dog doesn’t need to think too much for himself. He just follows his master, tends the sheep out in the pasture, and as night falls, guards them in the camp. But now all decisions were up to him, and this one was important.

  He stepped forward cautiously. Nothing happened. The chains didn’t follow, nor did the clanking sound that had been his constant musical accompaniment. He took another step. No one said anything. No one knew what to do.

  Kelsang made a decision — he had to get out of there — and he started jogging steadily toward the exit. Flustered, the tall skinny man called after him, but when Kelsang looked back, he fell silent. Everyone, including the other mastiffs, watched as he swaggered out of the market. Who would dare stop a mastiff straight from the grasslands?

  Without thinking he set off for home.

  But he was still in the middle of bustling Lhasa. Driven by instinct, he wound his way through the intricate pattern of alleyways until he could no longer see the large market and its imposing gate.

  All over the city, small speckled mongrels were hanging around temples waiting for handouts. They never went hungry, and if they were bored, they simply scuttled into corners to make more little dogs. Their lives were so different from Kelsang’s. He had purpose and only one goal, and that was to return to the grasslands.

  He continued to make his way through the dark narrow alleys. Every now and then, frightened shouts greeted him, making him jump. People had reason to be scared. Kelsang didn’t look like a dog. In fact, in no way did he seem like man’s best friend. He was too big, too ferocious. Even though he slowed down whenever he encountered a pedestrian and ran past with his body close to the alley wall, his wild, aggressive look still terrified them. They would squeeze themselves up against the opposite wall, or else run away screaming as if they had seen a ghost.

  This was terrifying for Kelsang, too. He approached a crowded street where people were selling dried meat and tsampa barley flour. The smells he had grown up with were everywhere, especially that of roasting flour. He unconsciously stopped in his tracks as he looked at a stall stacked high with dried meat, but he was greeted with looks of shock and terror. The people here had probably never seen a Tibetan mastiff wandering the streets. They had no idea where he was from and pointed at him.

  Kelsang turned into a small alley paved in stone. It seemed to wind on forever, but he just kept running.

  Someone started running behind him.

  The man must have realized Kelsang’s value — such a fine Tibetan mastiff without a master! Even though he himself might admit that trying to catch a mastiff was a dangerous undertaking, when faced with the opportunity to make easy money — and a lot of it — there is always someone stupid enough to try. The market for other dogs had fallen in recent years, but not for Tibetan mastiffs. These dogs were brave enough to take on wild animals, and a purebred was worth thousands.

  Being chased down a narrow alley would be enough to scare any animal. Kelsang didn’t know what was waiting for him up ahead, but he knew that whoever was chasing him was trying to make a grab for his tail. He ran as fast as he could. He hadn’t even put this much energy into chasing that last wolf on the grasslands a few days before.

  As he approached the end of the alley, Kelsang slipped through an open door. It was the only way he could get rid of his pursuer. He entered a small courtyard and quickly found a dark recess to crawl into. He looked around at the high walls, the many different flowers, the lack of people.

  His pursuer stopped dead at the courtyard door, then turned and stomped away. As far as he knew, the mastiff had found his way home.

  Badly shaken, Kelsang did a lap of the courtyard and found a nice corner to lie down in. It was clean and quiet here. The cobbles had been worn to a shine by the passage of time, revealing beautiful veins like a rainbow in the stone. There was also a granite planter with flowers Kelsang had never seen before, and pots full of plants skirted the walls.

  The quiet of the courtyard gave Kelsang a temporary feeling of safety, and he relaxed and dozed off. He got up only once during his long sleep to move out of the heat of the blazing sun and take refuge under a small tree, where he lay down and slept again. This was the first time he had felt safe enough to sleep properly since leaving the camp. The courtyard made him feel warm. He didn’t want to leave, to go out again into streets full of strangers. Of course, he still longed for his camp on the grasslands, but he had no idea how he could get there without encountering all those curious people.

  Kelsang awoke in the afternoon. But even while sleeping, he had been aware of everything going on around him. The door to the red building kept creaking, but that was only the tiniest of sounds that his sensitive ears had to strain to make out. It came at regular intervals, and because it had been there ever since Kelsang first entered the courtyard, he thought the door made this sound by itself. But when he awoke, he realized that this sound must belong to the courtyard’s master. Kelsang lay on the last bit of warm ground and waited for this new master to appear, trying to guess what he might look like based on his experiences of Lhasa so far.

  He waited restlessly for what felt like ages. Eventually, he was distracted by the golden red of the Potala Palace and its brilliant gold roof. Out on the grasslands, he was always looking at nature’s wonders, but this was the first time he had laid eyes on one made by man. He gazed at it in awe. The sun had left a smudge of red on the palace’s golden roof, making it look as if it were flushed from drinking. The cold, pale light of dusk made Kelsang think of the grasslands and the campsite crowded with sheep returning from pasture.

  Just then he heard the heavy, deliberate steps he had been waiting for, and his muscles tightened. Don’t move, he told himself, stay right where you are. After waiting for so long, Kelsang felt the urge to bite something. He clenched his jaws shut in an attempt to control the anxiety that was threatening to overwhelm him.

  An old man with a reddish-brown Tibetan robe draped over his shoulders opened the door and shuffled into the courtyard. He was carrying a watering can covered with flowers. He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the sun’s last rays, even though the light had started to fade. Imagine how dark it must have been inside.

  Kelsang had to fight his natural caution toward strangers, and breathing lightly, fixed on what he could only assume to be a weapon in the man’s hands.

  The man was very old, so old he had probably forgotten his own age. His face was crisscrossed with ravines, resembling layers of rock cracked and beaten by years of sun and wind. Only his eyes revealed any sign of life. He pulled a Tibetan blanket behind him as he watered the plants that had wilted in the fierce plateau sun. After he finished, he put the can down on the ground and sat on the reclining chair in the center of the courtyard, bringing him face to face with Kelsang.

  Kelsang growled in that low, indignant way he had perfected. But he certainly wasn’t interested in attacking this old man and would leave the m
oment he shooed him away. Kelsang’s anger was born purely from despair. In a moment, he would have to face those strangers out on the street again.

  But the old man looked at Kelsang as though he were merely a leaf that had blown into the courtyard. His gaze didn’t linger longer than a moment. Then he lay back on his recliner.

  The old man was silent and still. After glancing briefly at the dog, his shriveled eyes settled on the view of the Potala Palace over the top of the courtyard. He rested like this every day after painting his tanka scrolls, waiting for night to fall. Sometimes he would stay until the sky was full of stars.

  Kelsang didn’t know what to do. This man was different from the other people he had met that day. He didn’t seem to care that there was a strange dog in his courtyard. In fact, he acted as if Kelsang had always been there, just like the flowers and plants. Perhaps Kelsang’s nerves were playing tricks on him. Perhaps he had been living there for a long time. Dogs are easily affected by human emotions. Kelsang’s muscles began to relax, but he didn’t take his eyes off the painter. The old man didn’t move. Indeed, he was as still as a stone wrapped in a blanket.

  Everything in the courtyard was still.

  Evening set in, and the old man’s chair creaked as he sat up. Kelsang once again grew anxious, but the man just picked up his watering can and drifted back indoors. After a while, the door opened again, and he emerged carrying a bowl. He shuffled toward Kelsang and put it down in front of him before going back inside.

  It was tsampa barley flour mixed with salty butter tea.

  After Kelsang had finished, he looked up and saw a light shining from the second floor. As the courtyard door was open, he decided to take a walk. It was like being back on the grasslands. It was late, and there was no one about, so he stepped out of his alley into the next street. He walked even farther, crossing different alleys, and slowly approached Barkhor Street, which lay in the shadow of the Potala Palace.

  Visible in the light of the summer moon were pilgrims who had come thousands of miles to prostrate themselves on the gray stones at this holy site. A sound like the patter of falling rain accompanied the methodical rise and fall of their bodies as their leather aprons slapped against the stones, which had been rubbed to a high gloss.

  Kelsang was happy in the darkness. Temptation called to him, and he began to run, gliding like a spirit through dark recesses beyond the reach of moonlight. Even those most sensitive to their surroundings felt only the passing of a shadow as he ran by. A day of proper rest and a hearty bowl of food had restored his energy. All he wanted was to run through the narrow alleys and empty streets.

  Kelsang suddenly slowed. The wind carried the smell of a pilgrim up ahead. As soon as the smell hit his nose, it awoke the memory of the distant grasslands in him once again. He stood in a corner inaccessible to the moon’s rays and watched.

  The pilgrim was moving along Barkhor Street with particular devotion, his hands pressed together in prayer, lifting his head and then laying himself flat upon the ground before standing up, taking a step and repeating the movements all over again. He was wrapped in a sheepskin robe that had become black and shiny with wear. His whole body gleamed in the moonlight like a rounded piece of stone.

  To Kelsang, this man was the grasslands, and he could no longer control himself. He approached slowly and drew near before the man saw him. But the man’s call was completely different from Master’s, with a strange edge to it that cooled Kelsang’s burning heart. He looked at the man’s face covered in beads of sweat, and ignoring his calls, retreated into the dark.

  Kelsang spent the entire night running around, blinded by his disappointment. People walking the streets only caught a glimpse of a gigantic black shadow flashing past before he disappeared around a corner.

  “Must be seeing things,” some of them mumbled to themselves.

  Just as day was about to break, a hot, energetic Kelsang slipped into an alley behind the temple. He discovered it was a dead end and turned around. He should probably go back to the courtyard, he thought. The running had put him into a kind of trance, which tricked him into feeling soft grass beneath his paws.

  A smudge of downy shadows had gathered at the entrance to the alley. The dawn light catching on their silhouettes made them sparkle like a glacier. The grass beneath Kelsang’s feet instantly turned back to stone, bringing him out of his trance. He came to a stop, his breathing light, his rib cage rising and falling rhythmically.

  A rabble of twenty dogs blocked his way up ahead, their eyes shining like wolves in the night. Kelsang was used to living on his own in the grasslands. He had never been around so many dogs of different shapes and colors, nor was he interested in them. The sky was growing light, he was losing his cover, and all he wanted to do was return to the painter’s courtyard.

  But just as Kelsang was about to charge through them onto the main street, the dogs began to bark, creating a terrifying cacophony. They may not have been strong, but their barking reverberated around the alley like a tidal wave.

  Encouraged by their own din, they swarmed toward the hapless intruder. They were no longer the charming, gentle-looking dogs who lay around the temples in the daytime. They jostled together like a cluster of hairy spiders baring sharp teeth. There were so many of them, they had to run in two or three rows to fit into the narrow lane. Yet despite their crazed barking and dripping saliva, they didn’t charge at him. It simply wasn’t a suitable location to launch such an attack.

  Kelsang was amazed — the tallest among them only came up to his chest. Could they really be making this earth-shattering sound? What surprised him even more was that the three strongest dogs at the front didn’t understand even the basics of how to protect themselves. He could see at least five vulnerable spots, and yet they continued to thrust their faces forward, seemingly oblivious to the danger they were in. Kelsang was sure he could bite through the front leg of their leader, a blond lionesque dog.

  A feeling of superiority washed over him as he watched the mindless barking mutts. He knew if any of them were to face a wolf out on the grasslands, they would be killed in a single chomp. These dogs were all bark and no bite, and they bored him.

  Tilting his shoulder downward, he walked into the blond dog at the front as he prepared to leave the alley. The dog made no move to counterattack and screeched in pain.

  But Kelsang was being careless, and a black-and-white dog, perhaps itself descended from a Tibetan mastiff, suddenly appeared at his side and tore into his shoulder. Kelsang’s muscles tightened and turned as hard as stone, but he felt nothing beneath his long fur.

  Even so, he roared with anger like a lion disturbed during his feed. The other dog realized what a formidable opponent he was before it had even spat out the mouthful of fur. Kelsang was clearly no ordinary neighborhood dog.

  Kelsang easily knocked the black-and-white dog back into place. He barely had to make an effort as he sank his teeth into its neck, breaking it with just two sharp shakes. He tossed the floppy dog aside, the blood reminding him of his nights killing wolves. His desire to fight was like a wild fire spreading through his veins. Fear made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and from deep in his throat he let out a bloodthirsty roar.

  The city dogs had never seen a massacre like this before. They usually only had to gang up on an intruding dog and knock it around a bit. They were scared senseless. A small bitch approached the dead dog and whimpered sorrowfully, while the others stood rooted to the spot, unsure what to do. One of them howled and turned away.

  Then the dogs fled in every direction, like a river flooding over broken banks, leaving the blood-soaked corpse behind. Kelsang had once again demonstrated the undeniable superiority of his breed.

  The sounds of early risers opening their front doors began to fill the alleyway. Kelsang licked the drying blood from the corner of his mouth and left. When he got back to the courtyard, the doo
r was still open, and all was quiet inside. He snuck in and lay down in his corner.

  A young girl entered the courtyard that afternoon, when the sun was at its strongest. Kelsang had heard her turn into the alley and pricked up his ears, wondering if she was going to come in.

  He had already begun to think of the courtyard as his own. It was still unfamiliar in some ways, but his instincts were telling him to protect it — the instincts that had been given to him by his ancestors. He had been away from the camp for so long that the courtyard had become its replacement. Kelsang imagined that he had always guarded this camp. He had no interest in the actual campsite or the sheep on it. He was driven by instinct — that was all — and this courtyard was the painter’s camp.

  Kelsang watched as a pair of leather shoes stepped across the threshold before jumping to his feet. He took up his position by the door and growled. He wasn’t going to let the girl come in.

  A scream as sharp as broken glass. The girl jumped back down the steps and ran out into the alleyway.

  Even though he had successfully prevented her from coming in, Kelsang waited with some trepidation for the painter to appear. He barked, his eyes fixed on the door of the two-story red house. Had he done the right thing? He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t know what to do next. If he had been on the grasslands, his master, Tenzin, would have come out of the yurt and tied him up to the wooden post.

  The sound of a door opening. The old man stood in the doorway holding a paintbrush. It had taken great effort to tear his attention away from the colorful painting he had been working on. He seemed confused. Perhaps he was trying to remember if Kelsang was in fact his dog.

  “Granddad, get rid of it!” The girl in the alley had also caught sight of the old man.

  The painter’s lips twitched. “It’s okay.”

  Having expected this moment, the hair on the back of Kelsang’s neck settled down, and he stalked back to his corner. Even though the old man’s face was as expressionless as stone, Kelsang sensed that he had done the right thing. Feeling happy with himself, he lay down, but his fiery red eyes were still fixed on the young girl leaning through the courtyard door.