The foal glistens redly in the light, his coat still slicked with afterbirth, which the weakened mare has yet to lick off. Father chooses to save the mare over her second baby, though the mare’s survival is still in doubt. There isn’t much time. The mare must regain her strength quickly before we move for the season. If she dies, the remaining foal is like my brother and me. Motherless.

  Through Mun’s eyes I relive the moment of my father’s choice. How Aav takes a small blade and carefully slides it inside the mare, keeping the cutting edge toward his hand. Then slowly, piece by piece, he begins to cut the unborn baby apart, removing it from the mare’s body before passing each part to Mun. It is the only thing to do. The foal is breached. There is no place on earth beyond the reach of death. Not in a mountain cave, in the ocean or sky. Mun taking the pieces and laying them on the floor, a bloody jigsaw puzzle, reassembling the animal instead of just tossing the pieces in a pile. When our father sees this, he shakes his head but remains silent, his arms and torso soaked in blood.

  His Energy Giving Strength to Others

  After declaring our grandfather released, Bazar now sleeps out in the third ger that we use for storage. Mun and I are left alone to sleep with the body. This is the first night Bazar does not sit with the corpse and burn candles and small herbs in a bowl, intoning words we cannot understand. Now that the consciousness is gone from the flesh, there is no need for such acts. Bazar asks our father for a felt blanket, and uses it to wrap Övöö up tight.

  I cannot sleep. My mind is full of images of my grandfather. The idea that he is now nothing more than a pile of meat is discomfiting. There is no pain like the burden of attachment. I get up and walk over to where he lies. I lay my head on his chest. It is hard as stone. Eventually I fall asleep.

  In the morning, Father and Bazar heft the body up onto the back of a horse. Our father eyes us as we mount our own horses, but Bazar nods and we are allowed to come.

  I think of all the things our grandfather teaches us, about the cycles of nature and the way the spirit navigates the world, but most of all about Chinggis Khaan and the world the great Khaan inhabits, the world he creates in his own image.

  After an hour on the grasslands, we ride down into a shallow valley. The grass here is short, stunted, not the tall lush grasses that grow closer to sources of water. The sky is gray, the wind icy. Aav and Bazar lay the body on the ground. Then Bazar pulls a plastic bag filled with raw meat left over from yesterday’s dinner from his deel. He sprinkles the meat with herbs, and sets it directly on the ground beside the body of our grandfather. My father takes a seat behind him. We sit behind our father.

  How long do we sit? Days? Weeks? Years? Minutes?

  I see the first one circling on the thermals. The way it funnels down out of the sky, as if reeling us in. After it lands, I watch it study Bazar, the man and the bird as if silently communicating. Something in the way they face each other makes me think this is not their first meeting. Then Bazar speaks in the unknown language that sounds older than the world. The animal lumbers over to where the raw meat sits beside my grandfather. It scoops the meat up in its beak and throws back its head.

  Bazar opens the strangely shaped fur bag he carries with him at all times. He pulls out a small hatchet and a hammer. The hatchet is silver and looks ancient, pieces of turquoise and coral embedded in the handle. He turns toward our father and presents it to him.

  Aav takes a deep breath and accepts the hatchet. Somehow I know what is going to happen, but when it happens, I am still surprised. Perhaps this is the first time such a thing ever happens in the land of the eternal blue sky. Father approaches the body of his father and unwraps the blanket. Övöö lies stiff and gray and naked. Bazar points to a spot and motions for what needs to be done. Aav lifts Övöö’s head. The blade winks in the sun as he works to remove the skin of Övöö’s scalp. There is a ripping sound not dissimilar to when we flay the skin from a slaughtered sheep. Eventually it comes away in his hand. There is hardly any blood. Later, what blood there is is black and thick, unflowing.

  It’s done, he says.

  He hands the hatchet to Bazar and sits back down. And so together we watch as this stranger proceeds to butcher the corpse of our grandfather, the skill evident in Bazar’s cuts until our grandfather is just meat, his bones then pounded into a coarse powder that is sprinkled on the offering. Overhead the sky filling with vultures, the great ashy creatures massing, a vast storm. When he finishes preparing the body, Bazar begins to toss chunks of flesh up into the air at the feathered horde, the birds tornadoing in a frenzy.

  I do not close my eyes. I watch the whole thing as does my brother. Soon Övöö is gone. Later, Bazar tells us this is what Buddhists in Tibet call a sky burial. Though this act is not practiced in Mongolia, my twin and I are not shocked. We are accustomed to the many faces of nature, the cycles of birth and death. Rather there is only a fierce beauty as the dead are allowed swift passage back into the elements and the natural world from which we come. Years from now in Tibet, Chinese tourists begin to flock to watch such proceedings, to gawk at the sight of human flesh. But isn’t human burial the more barbarous ritual? The act of preserving the flesh, dressing it up in its best clothes, embalming the organs, then burying the dead in the earth for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Perhaps this way of leaving the world might catch on here in the land of the eternal blue sky. Maybe someday Mun might lift the knife and make the first ceremonial cut on our father’s body. Maybe then it is my job to disassemble the corpse and feed it to the beasts of the air so that for a while at least our father may live on in them, his energy giving strength to others and then in turn these beings one day giving strength to countless others in a perfect circle that has no end.

  Which of These Items Belongs to You?

  Our father makes up his mind. We are to winter in the city. The government is predicting that a once-in-a-century zud is coming, the grasslands locked in ice. He tells us this the night Övöö is lifted into the sky, the flesh that is my grandfather set free to the four cardinal directions. At the news, my brother begins to cry, this child who does not shed a tear when the baby horse needs to be cut out of its mother’s belly piece by bloody piece. My twin’s tears are surprising as I am the one who takes after our gentle inward-facing grandfather, though it is true I do not feel Övöö’s deep-seated love of the open grasslands like my brother does.

  Bazar says he is leaving us in the morning. Out of respect, my father no longer looks him in the eye. After the skill he manifests as he dismembers Övöö, it is obvious who he is. With his knowledge of death and the bardo, he must be a monk, someone with a deep understanding of the old traditions, perhaps someone who spends time in Tibet. As my father is speaking, Bazar unties his strangely shaped bag for the second time and pulls out a series of small sacks. From one, he tips a set of anklebones on the floor. From another, he pulls out a silver pipe. From the last bag, he pulls out a small prayer book, the book wrapped in silk and no bigger than the palm of his hand.

  Mun stops crying. Within my own chest I feel something dawning inside me.

  These many decades there are so many unrecognized tulku, says Bazar. All this time there isn’t anyone here to find them, he adds. I think of the way our grandfather would grow quiet anytime someone mentions the destruction of the monasteries by the communists. Centuries of tradition driven out into the killing snow. Our grandfather is born sometime in the decade after 1924, the year the Soviet Union helps bring the Mongolian People’s Republic into being. How on the cusp of the great world war, the Stalinist marshal Choibalsan takes power and ushers in an era of purges, by the late 1930s killing upward of thirty-five thousand Mongolians and eradicating Buddhism from the nation. In the span of only a few years, more than five percent of the population is killed.

  My brother and I are born almost seventy years later, in 1992, just as the country is putting communism to bed. Today everything is possible. Just one year before we are born, His Holiness the Dalai Lama announces the existence of His Eminence, the 9th Incarnation of the Jetsun Dampa, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism here in Mongolia. The Jetsun Dampa is born in 1932 but stays hidden, living secretly outside of Mongolia until the fall of the Soviet Union. Though almost seventy years of age, the Jetsun Dampa finally returns to our country in 1999, just as Buddhism is starting to flourish once again under the eternal blue sky.

  Bazar smiles at us and beckons us closer. We approach the articles he lays out. My child, he says. Come find yourself. I realize he is not talking to me. The birthmark on the back of my twin’s neck as if on fire.

  Mun approaches the objects. There is an attentiveness in his eyes. I can feel every thought he is feeling, smell every smell. He picks up the anklebones and rattles them in his palm. He picks up the pipe and puts it between his lips as if he smokes a pipe every day of his life. He picks up the book and unties it. The writing on the parchment looks like the work of insects, delicate yet steely. Mun smiles and wraps the book back up.

  Which of these items belongs to you, asks Bazar.

  Mun looks at him. All of them, he says.

  In the morning Bazar wraps his deel tight about his shoulders. Our father bows so deeply I think he may never stand back up. When a cloud obscures the sun, the light is diffused. The stranger touches his forehead to Mun’s forehead and whispers something in his ear.

  Later that night, I hear Bazar’s words still rattling around in Mun’s mind. It is written in the stars that I might find you in a house where one being is dying and another is being torn apart at birth.

  Listen without distraction: we are eight years old the day we are found.

  Our Eyes Have Vision to the Seventh Power

  The Constant Arising of Uncertainty Is the Only Aspect of Life of Which We Can Be Certain

  We are driving three days from Khövsgöl Nuur to the town of Olan Boyd in Bayan-Olgii aimag to meet the second candidate, a young eagle hunter. I am still unsure as to why the One for Whom the Sky Never Darkens would be reborn in a different faith. The hunters of the western Altai are mostly Kazakh, a people with more in common culturally with Kazakhstan just over the border and through Siberia than with Mongolia where most people are Buddhist. Though I am confused by this fact, I do not put my doubts into words.

  My reservations do not stop my brother from voicing his own thoughts. He sits behind the wheel, eyes locked on the empty landscape. Even after meeting Belek and the night of fire, he remains conflicted. First the Reindeer People, now Muslims, he says. What gives?

  Uncle smiles. If it is opaque to me, how can I explain it, he says, quoting Je Tsongkhapa, the fourteenth-century Buddhist saint. It is apparent that Uncle himself considers the same thing, but ultimately he is untroubled by not knowing. This is the very art of living in uncertainty. In some ways, the constant arising of uncertainty is the only aspect of life of which we can be certain. My twin, however, remains skeptical.

  Our drive to the westernmost part of the country continues without incident. Mun credits our good luck to the old woman of the Reindeer People. How the morning of our departure, she circles the car three times sun-wise, her headdress of feathers casting colorful shadows on the windshield. With each circuit she turns and spits the ceremonial aashkul on the hood of the car, aashkul made from water or vodka in which one steeps an object of magic.

  I watch the landscape roll past, time like sparks knocked off a piece of flint. We are leaving the places where the Siberian larch thrives, this tree that can grow for a thousand years. Soon the moon sits on the edge of the sky like the pit of some dark fruit. Then it is time to stop and rest. It is now one full week that we are on the road. Each day the mystery quickening as we search. Each night I find myself making camp as if in a dream. Tomorrow we should arrive in the mountains. Tonight I feel my eyes grow heavy, my milk tea long cold. Perhaps tonight I may find the words to finish my letter addressed to the Rinpoche back at Yatuu Gol. Maybe soon I am to know what the universe wants of me.

  In the firelight Mun lies on his side, his head propped up on his elbow. The bruise on his face is gone, just a memory of what the body is capable of, a woundable thing. How come, he says, pointing at Little Bat’s disfigured feet. This is how my twin operates. No segue, no run-up. He simply looks at Little Bat, this monk with his baby face, his ruined voice, his strength beyond anything quantifiable, of whom it is not too much to say that only the earth can stop him.

  The big man starts to speak. His voice like blood-soaked sand. A star streaks across the sky. What I am always learning in my twenty-three years on earth: there is suffering. And sometimes at the end of it all a door opens. A hand appears on the surface of the water, reaches down to pull you up.

  Go Inside the Door in the Mountain

  This is what I know, rasps Little Bat. In the firelight his eyes gleam like precious stones. I am born in Amdo Province, he says. His Holiness is born in the same province in 1935. It is a land much like your Khentii, the birthplace of Chinggis Khaan. Hills and valleys, green everywhere. Do you know we are also the descendants of the Khaans? Many of the first settlers in Amdo are Mongols. Our lifestyles are similar—nomadic, summers in the mountains with our animals, the yak predominant, winters down in the valleys. But I have no memory of true nomadic life. All this is before. The Chinese invade Tibet in 1950. I myself am born in 1970. The Chinese force the nomads to settle, to become farmers. And so my grandfather builds a small house, the woodsmoke blackening the interior over time.

  I don’t know what is lost through the years. When my parents can afford the fees, we go to school. I am the fourth of five children. School is expensive. An uneducated population is easier to control. At the start of the day they raise and lower the Chinese flag. We are forced to learn Chinese. I go to school less and less. My brothers and sister, my neighbors, we go less and less. I don’t know things should be different.

  As kids, one of our favorite things to do is to climb a small nearby mountain up to the very top and play in an old cave where a holy man once lives. It is long abandoned. The cave has a wooden door wedged in the entrance, the thing rotten in places. A red bucket of dirt sits beside the door, a few weeds poking out of the soil. Inside the cave it is always dark, but as children we play there, pretending it is our house and that we are adults. Sometimes I pretend I am a holy man.

  One night when I am seven years old, I see a light shining on the mountain. It’s late fall. I get up to go to the bathroom in the place we use outside. The moon is up. I have no shoes on. I can see a glow coming from the mountainside as if a small fire is burning. There is nothing else to say. I go to it. It’s like a dream. In a dream, there is never any question of whether or not you perform some act. You just do it. So I go. I am barefoot. The night air is cold but somehow I am not cold. When I get near the top, I see the wooden door. It looks new, the wood fresh and without rot. There are prayer flags flapping among the rocks. A small tree is growing in the red bucket by the entryway. One white blossom blooming in its branches.

  The door is cracked open. There is a soft glow coming from inside. Light pours around the doorframe. I put my foot in the crack. I don’t use my hands. I want it to seem as if the wind blows it open, like it is not an act performed by me. The door swings open and I wait for something to happen, for someone to yell at me to go away. There is only silence. I stick my head in. Then I go inside the door in the mountain.

  Most times when I play there with my siblings, the cave is empty, but now there are a few chests, some blankets, cooking utensils, a bucket filled with water, the cave transformed as if all this time somebody is living there. And everywhere small candles burn solidly, their flames unwavering, even with the door open. They never seem to give off smoke. They never burn out.

  I walk around and look at everything. I run my finger along a musical instrument which appears to be a human bone decorated with coral. In one corner there’s a small altar, on it a silver bowl filled with fresh water. I dip my finger in. When I pull it out, my finger feels warm and tingly. I feel the warmth begin to travel up my arm. I know it is moving toward my heart. I’m not scared. I wait to let what may happen happen. When it reaches my heart, a contentment comes over me that never leaves even until this very day. I walk over to one of the chests and open a hidden drawer in the side of it. Somehow I know exactly where the drawer is and how to open it. Most people wouldn’t notice there is a drawer. But I know.

  Inside the drawer are a handful of drawings, sketches of landscapes, one of a very beautiful woman, her hair plaited like a horse’s mane. And at the bottom of the drawer I find a second secret compartment. A kind of false bottom. I lift the cover and there it is.

  I study the photograph a long time, says Little Bat. The image is faded and cracked, but it holds me. I look at it until it is burned in my heart, until I know every detail of it. If I put it back in the false bottom and close the drawer, my life would be different.

  Little Bat stops talking. I look at Mun, but my twin is somewhere far away. I don’t have any idea where this story is going. The fire hisses and pops. I feel my own toes begin to throb.

  Lord Buddha, Grant Us Safe Passage

  In the morning it seems like a dream, says Little Bat. As if the night before is an underwater world, a place where candles never waver and the moonlight hides you if you ask it to. Daylight I wake back in bed with my brothers. Our mother and sister already with the fire going, the three simple rooms we live in starting to warm. The only strange thing is that the bottoms of my feet are dirty, as if in the night I walk to the ends of the earth and back.