My name is Laifu — "Fortune-Come." Granny Wang's dog, by the gate of Gao Village.
When Granny found me my eyes hadn't opened yet. I was floating downriver in a bamboo basket, and in the basket with me lay half a scorched command-token, its writing blurred — only one half-character legible, something like the guan of Guanjiangkou. Granny can't read; she used the token as a pickle-press stone. Later I stole it back in my teeth and buried it under my kennel.
I can't explain why I had to bury it. It was mine. That's all I knew.
Life at Granny's is good. I mind the gate, chase the hens, walk her to market. The whole village praises me: that farm dog Laifu understands people.
Only a few small things suggest I may not be quite so… farm.
First: these ears. A village dog hears half a li; I hear three. The mill couple quarreling, the schoolchildren reciting, mice tipping grain under the field-ridges — it's deafening. It took me three years to learn not to listen; to droop my ears like an honest mutt and play dull.
Second: I dare not truly run. Once at market, a mad ox charged at Granny. The lunge I made frightened me more than the ox — that was not running. For that one instant, my paws were not touching the ground. Afterward the whole market searched for "the streak of yellow light." I lay at Granny's feet, pretending to sleep.
Third — and this is the one that matters: the black moon.
On the nights when that blackened moon runs darkest, a howl climbs up my throat on its own. It cannot be held down. All I can do is slip out of the village to the empty ridgeline and give it to the sky.
And here is the uncanny part: the moment my voice opens, every dog for villages around falls silent. Not from fright — I have seen it since: one by one they come out of their kennels, face the direction of my howl, and go down on their bellies, chins pressed flat to the earth, motionless. Like soldiers hearing an order.
Can a farm dog's howl put other dogs at attention?
And my howl always pours out toward the same direction. I don't know the roads. My throat knows them. The schoolmaster, out on a night walk, came upon me once; back home he leafed through the local gazetteer, and muttered something my three-li ears caught:
"That bearing… is Guanjiangkou."
Guanjiangkou. The same guan as the half-character on the scorched token beneath my kennel.
I began to dream. In the dream stands a temple above a river, its incense burning hot as noon. A tall figure in golden armor stands with his back to me, a hawk perched on his shoulder. He never turns. He only gives one whistle — and I understand it instantly, the way I understand my own heartbeat: fall in. In the dream I run to him with everything I have, but however I run, the riverbank stays the same length.
I wake with my claws full of scratched-up earth.
A few days ago the boy with the medicine basket came to the village. Crouching to scratch my head, he suddenly stopped, parted the fur at the back of my neck, and said to his monkey: look — a ring of fur here, different in color. Like the wear-mark of a collar worn for years.
But I have never worn a collar. Granny is poor; I've never even been tied with rope.
That ring came with me. Like the half token in the basket — a mark left on my body by whatever came before my birth.
The boy and his companions are heading west. I heard the monkey say the old post-road's relic scrolls name one of the stations: Guanjiangkou.
That night I went home and licked the back of Granny's hand for the length of a whole meal. She laughed and scolded: silly Laifu, what's gotten into you now.
Granny, I'm not silly. I just have to go and see —
see whose hand holds the other half of that token, and who it is that whistle in my dream keeps calling.
If it isn't calling me, I'll come home and mind your gate the rest of my days.
But if it is calling me —
then, Granny, what you raised was never only a farm dog.