But when I had my dream, I didn’t know that rule. So while the dream was hot, as hot as tears, I passed it on to my mother. I had cried and had to be woken up. It was Mother who had woken me. She had come into the yurt from the morning milking to empty the full pail, and the hand that stroked me was wet and cool and smelled of raw milk.

Still sobbing, I told her what I had just dreamed. But after she listened to my story, she announced it was a good dream. I wondered if she was really listening because while I was talking, she was busy straining the milk through a tuft of yak tail hairs into the big aluminum jug. “No, it was not!” I said fie cely and started sobbing again. Mother held her ground. What’s more, she said my interpretation of the dream was wrong, and talked instead of gold, silver, and silk, of celebrations and sweets. None of it made sense to me.

But I learned: Don’t tell your dream to anybody, tell it to a hole in the ground, and spit three times.

That’s what she explained when she turned back at the door. “Mind you, that’s only for a truly bad dream!” she warned.

Of course it was a bad dream. So I had to do what had to be done. But I had already shared it with somebody, with Mother. What now?

I thought about it as I crawled out from under the old, quilted coat that had once belonged to Father and was now my blanket. And I was still thinking it over as I set off into the new day.

A bright summer morning welcomed me with the smell of dew, sun, and animal pee. Just then the flock of sheep was noisily leaving the pen, while the lambs stayed tethered to the höne and formed a square, white patch. The women and girls were milking the yaks at the dshele. All around me squirts of milk were drumming into pails of resonating aspen wood; each sounded different, from a bright hiss to the dark gurgle of water bubbling up from an earth eye.

Our dog Arsylang was asleep next to the dung heap. He was breathing peacefully. Sunlight streamed onto his dark, downy fur and exploded into rays that glittered and danced on the ends of his hair. His ribs rose and fell almost imperceptibly. His limbs lay slightly curved and gathered in as if they had neither joints nor weight. I could see his body was calm, and everything was as it had been: good. But what about the dream?

I went over to Mother, who, squatting beside a cow, milked it so nimbly and vigorously that her shoulders rocked as if they were trembling. She had buried half her face in the cow’s thick, bushy belly fur and had closed her one, still-visible eye.