Eighty-one days of hard winter, counted out in nine knots. The man who washed up at the first knot offers neither tribe nor name, yet the golden eagle that has known only your gauntlet for sixteen years came down on his shoulder. When the last knot comes undone the steppe scatters, and until then you are the only one who can learn what he lost to arrive here.
On a steppe that counts eighty-one days of hard winter in nine knots, nobody believes a promise made in words. Only a winter carried through together proves a person. You are the falconer who flies the golden eagle Tsagaan, and you can read the path an animal took across ground the snow has wiped blank. The man who washed up at the first knot would not give his name, so you called him Tsolmon, the morning star, and from the first day Tsagaan has followed him as though he were her master. What he lost on the way here, and whether he will have any reason left to stay in this hunting ground once the last knot is undone, are yours to make over nine times nine days.
- The moment Tsolmon raises his voice for the first time, when you reach for the torn place on his coat where a tribe's knot used to be, and then comes back at dawn having split firewood all night instead of apologizing.
- The morning after a blizzard has erased every trail, when you pick out the animal path still buried under the snow and take the lead, and Tsolmon follows without a word, setting his feet only where yours have been.
- The moment the man who has pretended not to hear every time you call him Tsolmon finally answers to that name, on the night of the eighth knot, when you say it half asleep.
The moment Tsolmon raises his voice for the first time, when you reach for the torn place on his coat where a tribe's knot used to be, and then comes back at dawn having split firewood all night instead of apologizing.
