I moved my mouth close to her ear and whispered: “Mother!” The eye opened. “What if you have already told somebody?”

Mother didn’t immediately catch what I meant. She had to think. Then she said firmly: “Don’t ever tell anybody about your dream. Not anybody!”

I got scared and left. I thought more about it and decided it was not yet too late to run out into the steppe and get rid of the dream. Somehow it seemed better than leaving the matter all wrong.

I walked a fair way from the ail. Then I turned to face the mouth of the river valley and spoke, enunciating each word as clearly as I could: IN MY DREAM, MY ARSYLANG HAS BEEN POISONED. HE CANNOT WALK OR STAND. HE STAGGERS, FALLS OVER, AND FOAMS AT THE MOUTH. HIS LIMBS ARE STIFF, HIS FUR STANDS ON END, HE IS DYING. OH-OH-OH!

Just then the dogs raced off, barking noisily, to chase a horseman who was speeding at some distance past the ail. When he noticed the dogs coming closer, the horseman slowed from a gallop to a trot and then slowed even further until he rode at a calm walk. The dogs reached him, raced around him in circles, and barked at him. But they soon calmed down, and eventually they lost interest in the placid horseman and turned back.

Under the morning sun, which was still low in the sky, I dallied and played with my long, thin shadow, trying to catch up with it, but never getting lucky. No matter how quickly I skipped, the shadow leapt along and always got away. Then the dogs returned. With their tails curled high above their backs, they walked lazily, yawned, and licked their mouths with their long, dangling pink tongues.

But not so Arsylang. He never curled his tail, nor did he lift it much, but carried it slanting downward, with its tip only slightly curved outward. And his ears rose straight up; pointy like a foal’s and close to each other, they looked like a pair of scissors. He was ambling as usual, his neck reaching forward, with the collected poise of a predator.

Arsylang was a foundling dog. When he was still a pup, Father had brought him from far away. At the time the pup came to us, I already had my first teeth. But the young dog grew fast and had long been considered grown up, while I was still a child.

Nobody who came to visit us ignored Arsylang. Everybody acknowledged him with at least a general comment: “Oi, that’s a dangerous dog.” To which the reply was always the same, regardless of who was helping the guest off his saddle or lifting him back up again: “He only looks that way.”

Arsylang was not dangerous and had never bitten anybody. But people never stopped fearing him. Usually, their remarks would lead to a longer conversation about the dog.