said that if you kill a rooster prior to an execution and it doesn’t bleed, things will not go well that day. I made a second cut, and this time it worked: purplish blood gushed from the wound, like the stream a young boy makes when he gets up after a good night’s sleep. Splash splash, meow meow. More blood spurted than the bowl could take, and some of it spilled over the side. “There, Dieh,” I said as I tossed the limp bird to the ground, “that does it.” With a broad smile, he waved me over and told me to get down on my knees. Then he plunged both hands into the blood, almost as if he expected them to drink it up. Dieh’s hands come equipped with mouths, I was thinking, and can drink blood. He smiled.
“Close your eyes, son,” he said.
I closed them, as he said. I am an obedient child. Wrapping my arms around his legs, I banged my forehead into his knees and sputtered: Meow meow . . . “Dieh Dieh Dieh Dieh . . .”
Dieh clasped my head between his knees.
“Raise your head, son,” he said.
So I did, and I was looking into his impressive face. I am an obedient child. Before I had a dieh, I obeyed my wife, but after that I obeyed my dieh. That thought reminded me of my wife, whom I hadn’t seen for a day and a half. Where had she gotten to? Meow meow . . . Dieh rubbed his blood-soaked hands all over my face, sending a stench much worse than pig’s blood into my nostrils. I hated the idea of having my face smeared with rooster blood, but Dieh had the final word on that. If I didn’t obey him, he’d send me into the yamen to be paddled, five ten fifteen twenty swats from a big wooden paddle that would leave me with a bloody behind. Meow meow. Dieh plunged his hands back into the bowl and smeared more blood over my face. Including my ears. Whether he meant to or not, he got some of it in my eyes, and—ouch!—that stung, meow meow. It also blurred my vision, veiling everything in a red haze. With a mew mew I complained, “Dieh, Dieh, you’re blinding me.” I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and mewed loudly. Everything got brighter the more I rubbed, until the light itself was blinding. Oh, no, that’s bad, meow meow, the magical tiger whisker was working again, meow meow, no more Dieh, in front of me now was a panther. It was standing on its hind legs and dipping its front paws in the blood bowl, staining them red with pearls of blood dripping from the black fur, making it look like the paws were injured. He reached up and smeared blood all over the coarse fur of his face, turning it red as a cockscomb. I was well aware that Dieh’s true form was a panther, so that was nothing to make a fuss over. But I didn’t want the power of that tiger whisker to last and last—just a little while would be plenty. But its power this time wouldn’t fade away, meow meow, and what would it take for things to return to normal? No matter how upset I was, there was nothing I could do about it. I was torn between worries and happiness. Worries over my strange inability to see human beings, happiness over the knowledge that no one but me had the ability to see people’s true forms. I took a look around, taking in all of Yuan’s government troops and the German soldiers standing guard over the parade ground—long-tailed wolves, dogs with hairless tails, plus a few raccoons and other animals. There was even one that looked like a cross between a wolf and a dog; its uniform identified it as a junior officer. It was probably the offspring of a wolf-dog mating. I gave it a name: lobo-dog. It was sneakier than a wolf and meaner than a dog; anything it bit was doomed, meow meow.
After using up all the blood in the bowl on his face and front paws, my panther dieh focused his bright black eyes on me and treated me to a barely perceptible smile, lips parted just enough to show his yellow teeth. Even though the change in his appearance was enormous, the expressions and mannerisms were unmistakably Dieh’s. I returned his smile,