Black Flame by Gerelchimeg Blackcrane

years.
    Kelsang’s coat no longer had its beautiful gloss, partly because of the constant rain and sleet of early autumn, but his body was also preparing for winter. His fur stuck out rudely at every angle, as if he’d been draped in a felt rug. From a distance, he looked twice his usual size, and anyone seeing him for the first time was convinced he was a bear.
    Kelsang’s only relief was to run around his pole. The earth around it was stamped with paw marks. Sometimes he would sit in front of the pole and look out at the bleak narrow town and the people walking around it. He barked at every car that stopped at the Sichuan restaurant down below. He didn’t know why, but any new stimulus made his body tremble with excitement. Sometimes he even closed his eyes and leapt forward, tugging at his chains. The desire to chew and swallow everything he saw burned in his young chest.
    Truck drivers would stop to fill up on spicy Sichuan food after their long, difficult day on the road. Once they’d scraped their plates clean, they would climb up the hill, belching bitter chili burps, to get a closer look at the monster who had barked at them as they drove into the parking lot. This quickly became part of the experience of eating at the bustling restaurant.
    No one came close, but they all stood admiring Kelsang from afar, gazing in fascination at his blood-smeared mouth. Many of the truck drivers wanted to buy Kelsang, but the man with the dark cheeks was asking too high a price, and deal after deal failed. The men would drive off in different directions, but Kelsang’s new owner wasn’t worried. He knew there would be more people with whom he could bargain. He was in no rush. He simply couldn’t let this fine mastiff go for anything less than the sum he was asking.
    Even on the windiest, snowiest nights out on the Tibetan plateau, Kelsang could always find shelter behind the yurt in among the fleeces, but here he had nothing. Still, he was remarkably resilient in the violent snowstorms. The damp and cold only made him stronger and more determined. Early one morning, the people in the building woke to find three feet of snow blocking the door. They had no choice but to send one of the young waiters through a window to dig them out. To his amazement, the dog on the hill was running around in the dazzling white like a ball of fire, stirring up a cloud of snow around him.
    Mastiffs are not naturally inclined to enjoy human company, yet Kelsang still found life on the slope lonely. His resentment drove him to bite anything he could, but there was nothing to satisfy his desire to attack. Any remaining sheep bones had long since been crunched to powder.
    The man who fed Kelsang was becoming more frightened of him every day. Before the legs of mutton he threw even hit the ground, Kelsang jumped up and chomped them in two. His gnawing sounded like a hurricane as he quickly reduced the legs to tiny pieces, not so much from hunger as from his desire to feel his teeth tearing through flesh. When the man caught sight of Kelsang’s bone-speckled muzzle and his sleepless amber eyes flickering in the jungle of his fur, he took a few steps back. Who knew what the dog was thinking.
    Kelsang had lost hope of ever leaving this place, and besides, he was beginning to get used to it. He had been confined for so long that he had come to believe that the iron chains and leather collar, which had rubbed away revealing the metal cable underneath, were a natural part of his body.
    Every night, when the moonlight shone down into the valley and all was quiet, Kelsang, no longer able to control the desire that had been welling up in him, would point his nose at the yellow sphere in the sky and howl with all his strength. Once he started, he would continue in broken gasps all through the night.
    And so it was that Kelsang fell into the world of mastiff trading. From the moment he was taken from his home, he entered a world that