Kindle Notes & Highlights
tenements, past ordinary lives, a lone boy crossed a border that is, usually, impassable—not even imaginable. At first he didn’t notice.
Romochka stood up on his hind legs and danced, his mouth open. This whispering water, falling on the snow, seemed to him something he remembered from dreams.
they were strangers and that he should never talk to them. Both his mothers now had told him the same thing.
These all knew each other and knew who was from a strong or a weak clan, and whether they should stand with deference or ritual aggression. The pet dogs and the clan dogs were the only semi-permanent residents. The others came and went.
From then on they had fresh water and he was inordinately proud whenever he saw them drink. He changed the water when it began to taste funny, found a new bucket when the old one cracked, and kicked it over and glared at them all when he was annoyed with them.
When he was with the dogs he had no reason to fear bomzhi but they worried him, unsettled him. He thought about them a lot, mulling over what he saw them do. Territory and paths clearly mattered to them, but other than obvious zones around fires and houses, he couldn’t see the boundaries, and this made him fear them a little. Sometimes they seemed to him just like sick dogs or lone strays. You couldn’t predict when they would be dangerous. Some of them didn’t know how to behave, either with him or with each other. They fought and yowled, ripped and tore each other over food and scraps of
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