At that, Father jumped at me, but I fled, my fists raised, and continued to scream: “Have you turned old and deaf and blind? Or are you so evil that you would not deign to hear and help me in my time of need?!”

Father got a hold of me, but I continued to scream: “Yes, it was you! You let it all happen: that Brother and Sister were taken from me, that Grandma died, that the flock was lost, and that my dog is now dead!”

Father held me and tried to silence me: “Let it be, my dear, dear child! Let it be, I ask you, I beg you.”

But I would not hear of it: “I-ih-iiij, Gök-Deeri, what have I done wrong? What have I done to deserve this? Are you not ashamed to have done all this to a poor, weak child? I-ih-iiij, gögergen Gök-Deeri, i-ih-iiij!”

Then Mother was right in front of me. Her eyes wide with horror, she forced my arms down and said something I didn’t hear. “E-eh-eej, Gök-Deeri! Deaf one who did not hear me, now listen to how I shall punish you—” Mother had put her hand over my mouth, but the force used against me only pushed me to the edge. I became a savage beast, kicking and hitting, scratching and biting, until eventually I escaped Father’s grip. And then, waving my clenched fists, I pronounced judgment on Gök-Deeri, our blue sky: “From now on, I will no longer be your son. I will have nothing but contempt for you, i-ih-iiij, gögergen Gök—”

At that my head was dealt a blow and I lost my voice. It would have been easy to think the sky had struck me—my once powerful, now shabby Gök-Deeri—but I knew it was Father who had whacked me. Barely conscious, I sensed myself falling to the ground and tumbling down the stony slope. Then I felt hands on my neck and my face, and I noticed a face above me. It was blurry, but I recognized Mother by her calloused warm hands. She held my neck and stroked my cheeks. A little further up, outlined against the evening sky, I noticed another tall, blurry figure. I instantly picked up the fight again which, at that moment, seemed to me a fight I was neither allowed to quit nor to put off. I roughly pushed away Mother’s hands, got up, staggered toward the figure, and roared with all my strength: “I-ih-iiij, now that you have poisoned my dog, why don’t you kill me, too! Go right ahead and kill me, I am ready! Why should I continue to struggle on this earth, far from Brother and Sister, without Grandma, without my flock and without Arsylang, beneath a sky that is blind and deaf?!”