That was seven winters ago. Now when I close my eyes, I hear the creak of his saddle. Now when I drink airag , it tastes of iron and forgotten vows. My dogs growl at nothing. My eldest daughter woke up last week, and her eyes were his eyes — just for a breath.
I drew my bow. The arrow passed through him and split a boulder three miles behind. He smiled. His teeth were horse teeth. “You see me now,” he said. “So I see you forever.”
(Mongol heleer — spirit of the telling) i saw the devil mongol heleer
Listen. Not the wind that whines through the larch. Not the wolf that drags the newborn lamb. I saw the devil.
He came from the north, where the permafrost dreams. His horse had no shadow. His coat was the hide of a hundred stillborn foals, stitched with sinew of dead shamans. When he breathed, the khiimori — the soul-horse flag on every ger — tore from its pole and flew backward into the sun’s black eye. That was seven winters ago
I saw the devil. Mongol heleer — bi chotgoryg harav. Let no one else look into that emptiness. Would you like a version partially written in actual Mongolian script or phonetic Mongolian (Cyrillic) alongside the English, or a translation of this piece into Mongolian?
I was counting my herd by the Khalkh River. The sky turned the color of curdled mare’s milk. He said nothing. But inside my skull, his voice crawled like a centipede: “Give me your youngest son’s shadow. Give me your wife’s dream. Give me the name your mother whispered to the Earth Mother when you were born.” My dogs growl at nothing
So I ride east at midnight. I will find the shaman with nine knots in her belt. I will ask her to cut the devil’s thread from my ribs. But deep in my bones, I know: On the steppe, once you have seen him, you are no longer a man. You are a witness. And the devil — the chotgor — never forgets a witness.