meow meow. He swaggered over to the purplish-red chair; his tail made his pants stand up in back. He sat down and narrowed his eyes, looking perfectly serene. I surveyed the area around us, yawned, mewed once, and sat on a board next to him, within view of the slanting shadow of the Ascension Platform on the ground. As I stroked Dieh’s tail, he stuck out his rough tongue and began licking the hair on my head. Mew, I wheezed just before falling asleep.
I was awakened by raucous noise, meow meow, a mixture of horns and trumpets and gongs and Western drums, and all of it punctuated by the low rumble of cannon fire. I saw that the shadow cast by the Ascension Platform was much shorter than before and that blinding lights were making their way onto the parade ground from the street. At some point the green tarpaulins covering the cannons on the edge of the parade ground had been removed to reveal the weapons’ blue steel. Four wolfhounds behind each of the cannons were in motion, and even though they were quite a ways away, the hair on their bodies did not escape my sharp eyes. The barrels of the cannons were like turtles’ necks, recoiling back into their shells each time a shell was spat out, followed by puffs of white smoke. The wolfhounds moved like puppets behind the cannons, comical little figures. My eyes began to sting badly, and it only took a moment’s thought to realize that I was sweating. I wiped my face with my sleeve; it came away red. That was nothing to worry about, but the scene in front of me had changed again. My dieh no longer wore the face of a panther, but his body was still that of a panther, and his pants rose up behind him because of the tail. Then the heads of the soldiers standing guard were once again human, sitting atop wolfhounds’ bodies. It was a comforting sight, and it made me feel better, knowing I was still living in the world of humans. And yet the look on Dieh’s face puzzled me, since it didn’t look especially human. But he was still my dieh, and when he licked my head, I moaned with pleasure, mew~~
A palanquin covered in blue wool was part of the contingent emerging onto the parade ground, preceded by wild animals with human heads, all carrying banners and gongs and umbrellas and fans. The chair was carried by horses with human heads and humans with horse heads, plus a few humans with cow heads. A thoroughbred horse trailed the palanquin, a bizarre wolf-headed human in the saddle, and I knew that was the German Plenipotentiary from Qingdao, Clemens von Ketteler. I’d heard that my gongdieh had shot the man’s first horse out from under him with a shotgun, so the one he was riding now he’d probably taken from one of his subordinates. More horses preceded a prison van that held a pair of cages. I thought the sandalwood death was reserved for my gongdieh alone. Why two cages? A long procession spread out behind the prison van, flanked by crowds of local residents. What I actually saw was a sea of hairy skulls, but I knew they were local residents. I was secretly thinking of someone, someone I tried to spot among all those dark heads. Do I need to say who that person was? No. I was searching for my wife. I hadn’t seen her since my dieh had sent her racing fearfully out of the house yesterday morning. I had no idea if she’d eaten or drunk anything, and though she was a white snake, she was a good white snake, like Bai Suzhen, the heroine of The Legend of the White Snake. She was Bai Suzhen, and I was her lover, Xu Xian. But who was the Green Snake Demon and who was the sorcerer Fa Hai? Of course. Yuan Shikai was Fa Hai. My eyes lit up. I see her, I see her! She’s standing with a bunch of women! Her flat white head is raised, her purple tongue flicks in and out, she’s slithering this way. Meow meow, I felt like crying out, but my dieh’s panther eyes were fixed on me.
“Son,” he said, “stop looking around!”
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7
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After three bursts of cannon fire, the official in charge of the execution announced loudly to Yuan Shikai and von Ketteler, who had taken seats in the center