The Weasel's Boon

After White Dew the sorghum fields fog at night, and the fog carries a rank, foxy stink—the weasel's mating, and its becoming. Wang Er's house is the last of the clay huts at Willow Crossing; behind it stands an old locust, and at its foot a half-collapsed brick niche holding a bowl of stale rice and a red string—the rule his father left: the yellow-skinned one is a household immortal; keep it fed, and do not provoke it.

Wang Er's father died young, clutching his son's hand: "Er-wa, the Immortal Huang has been kept three generations. You needn't keep him, but don't curse him. One curse and he remembers three." Wang Er nodded then and forgot it by the next breath. He was a powder-keg of a man; two bowls of sweet-potato liquor and he feared nothing, would even spit at a clay Buddha.

That autumn was dry; the sorghum shrivelled, and Xiuzhi, his wife, was heavy with child and too sick to leave the kang. Times were hard, and Wang Er drank his worries down with braised offal. On the thirteenth of the ninth month, the moon half-eaten by cloud, he took an empty flask to town for more, and passing the old locust heard a thin, childlike voice from the hollow: "Elder brother, a light, if you please—tell me, what do I look like?"

Liquor lent the coward courage. He raised the lantern and nearly sat down. On the locust root crouched a thing of yellow fur, upright on hind legs, forepaws folded at its chest, a face seven parts human and three parts rat, eyes two green fires. It had come to ask its seal—Wang Er's mother had told him: a weasel at this stage must find a living soul to name it; called a "god" it sheds the beast's skin, called a "man" it may stand; but answered with a curse, decades of cultivation scatter, and what scatters remembers a grudge.

Wang Er should have spoken a lucky word. But the liquor rose and with it the memory of shrivelled grain and a wife retching on the kang, and a wicked heat climbed his spine. He grinned: "Thought it was something—only a chicken-thief! Beast is beast; ten thousand years and still a yellow weasel!"

The green fires in those eyes went out, like a lamp in wind. The thing said nothing, dropped its paws, settled back into the niche without touching the red string, and slipped into the mist. Wang Er thought he'd won, laughed, kicked the niche, and went for his liquor.

For three days nothing stirred. Then on the fourth night the well water turned bitter, floating a film like oil, smelling of weasel. Old Huang the house dog, who used to doze by the locust, now skirted it wide, tail tight; once Wang Er dragged him to the root and he broke free, yelped, and bolted onto the roof for three days. Widow Zhao came calling, saw the empty niche, and warned him; Wang Er sneered "immortal, nothing," and at the word a ball of yellow fur dropped from the beam at his feet, sobering him halfway.

By the seventh night the trouble came. Xiuzhi sickened further; the physician felt her pulse and frowned: "The child's well enough, but the pulse… it's as if something were hanging her, kept from touching ground." Wang Er shrugged it off. By month's end three of his hens died in one night—not torn, but frightened stiff, feathers stood on end, claws dug into the earth, eyes open.

In the tenth month Xiuzhi labored and bore a son, Suozhu. The child did not cry, only squeaked like a mouse. The midwife said all was well, but Wang Er held him and saw single eyelids, bright black eyes that watched not like a baby's but like something weighing and reckoning. Worse, Suozhu never wailed but often at midnight chittered on the kang, thin and high, exactly the voice Wang Er heard under the locust.

Wang Er grew afraid. He knelt at the empty niche, the rice green with mold. On his mother's death-day he dreamed her at the kang's edge, face dark: "Er-wa, your mouth has no latch. You cursed the immortal apart; its scattered power, one last breath, has wrapped itself around the child. The seal you spoke, the child repays."

Come spring Suozhu turned a hundred days old. Wang Er rose at night to feed the beasts and heard a noise in the hall; he lifted the lantern—under the altar crouched a small yellow thing, upright, forepaws folded, looking up with two green fires. It spoke in a child's voice: "Dad, tell me, what do I look like?"

The lantern clattered to the floor, flame licking the altar leg. Wang Er dared neither answer nor curse, only heard his own teeth chatter. After that night Suozhu learned to laugh, baring two small pointed teeth.

The Midnight Record: a word spoken in contempt is a seal that cannot be unspoken. Name it a beast and it becomes your household beast for generations; the cultivation you cursed apart must be repaid by someone. At Willow Crossing they say the Wang boy at seven still loves to crouch by the locust root at night, green eyes on the passers-by, asking them one by one: "Tell me, what do I look like?"