“Don’t stop halfway through, I’ve told you that’s no good. But I don’t need any more, a handful is plenty.”

“No, Enej! What a waste to pee on the ground. I’d rather you have it. You must rinse your eyes carefully.”

Grandma let me talk her into holding out her cupped hand a second time. Then she said: “That’s enough. Let it all go.”

I had nothing left anyway. It was fun. And it felt good to know that I was doing something useful for Grandma.

One day Grandma’s teeth had grown old as well. And when they could get no older, they began to fall out. She pulled the last ones herself. She had to wrench them quite a bit. It was better, more comfortable this way, she said.

Grandma’s teeth were different from ours, they were yellowed and worn at the tops but very long and strong at the roots, and seemed to be made of stone. Arsylang would not eat them. No matter how often I wrapped them in wether tail fat, he always let the tooth drop while he flattened and relished the slice of fat on his tongue before swallowing. Never before had he rejected any teeth that had been thrown to him wrapped in fat. Both Sister and Brother had lost tooth after tooth, all of which had been wrapped in a thin slice of fat and thrown to Arsylang, always with the chanted plea: “Take the old tooth, give a new one back!”

Sister and Brother actually did get all their teeth back. And I wanted desperately for Arsylang to take at least Grandma’s last teeth and replace them with new ones. But he wasn’t willing, and so it happened that Grandma never did get new teeth.

So I had to help her chew as well. Whenever I thought of it, I chewed pieces of dried curd cheese and filled Grandma’s wooden bowl with them. And each time she would praise me: “The curd’s been chewed so well again, so smooth and juicy!”

I had various dreams for the future. The most important one was a yurt of my own. I wanted to live in it with Grandma. And grazing around the yurt would be a large flock we would own together. That I would also need a wife, and have children with her, had not yet crossed my mind. Grandma was to be with me, next to me, for me—why would I need a wife?

Yet something made itself felt that made me think, or rather worry. And sure enough, one day Grandma said the time had come for her to go home.

“But you are home, Grandma!” I called out in surprise.

She smiled and thought about it. Then she said: “I have to go. Everybody has to, at some point. There is no other way.” And after a pause she added: “But I will come back.”

“When?”

“When you’re as big as your father is now.”