“Me?” Lodia’s voice came out as a squeak.

If you didn’t know her, you’d have thought that she’d just been informed that, yes, indeed, she really was being summoned for her execution this time.

Anthea really wasn’t that scary. At all scary.

The servant inclined his head. “Yes, Miss Koh. If you would follow me, please?”

“But I don’t…. I can’t….”

Her father gave her a pat on the arm that did nothing to fix her horrified rictus. “Thou wilt do just fine.”

“Ssshe sssaid ssshe likes your embroidery, right?” Bobo reminded her. “I’ll bet ssshe wants to compliment you!”

If anything, Lodia’s expression grew even more petrified, so much so that Dusty pulled his nose out of his bowl to advise, “Just don’t slobber on her hair and you’ll be fine.”

As he dove back into his green mango salad, Floridiana shoved at his withers. “You do realize she’s not a horse, right? Humans don’t slobber.”

Dusty braced his hooves, ignored her, and kept grazing.

“Well,” said Rohanus, a humorous smile was playing on his lips, as if he were recalling a fond memory. “Not after they grow up, anyway.”

Naturally, none of this was doing a single gods-cursed thing to calm down the girl, and at this rate, she was going to botch her job interview with Anthea and ruin all my plans for her. Although I’d planned to perch here next to Bobo and congratulate myself on the firefly performances, the world never gave me time for myself. Sigh.

But duty (to my own karma total) called.

I fluttered up to Lodia’s shoulder, careful not to snag the fabric of her best gown. (After all, I was capable of controlling where my claws went, when I felt like it.) Don’t worry. I’ll be right here with you.

“Oh, but you…. And she…. Does she know…?” Lodia darted a glance at the servant, anxious about letting slip what I really was.

After that eavesdropping session with the sparrow and butterfly spirits, I could have assured her that whatever the Lychee Grove Earth Court higher-ups knew, their servants did. And indeed, the servant carefully blanked his face.

She knows. Don’t worry. Let’s not keep her waiting.

Somehow, Lodia managed to get out of her chair without knocking it over, stumble to the head table without tripping over her own slippers, and execute a reasonably steady bow before Anthea. I didn’t even have to flap my wings that many times to stay balanced on her shoulder.

“Little Lodia! Look at thee! All grown up! The last time I saw thee, thou wert this big!” Anthea repeated the gesture she’d made earlier, holding her hands about a foot apart to indicate Lodia’s size.

The girl, at least, seemed confident that the distance referred to the head-to-toe length of a human infant rather than the width of an adult human torso. In such a faint voice that it nearly vanished into the evening breeze, she murmured, “Thank you for remembering me, my lady.”

Speak up. She doesn’t bite, I whispered at the same time that Anthea brayed, “Speak up! I don’t bite!”

Most of the time, I added into Lodia’s ear, just for accuracy’s sake.

Accuracy, in this case, didn’t comfort her.

“Our mutual friend delivered a sample of thy work to me! A most exquisite mirror cover!” Anthea inspected Lodia from the dangling bits on her silver headdress to the toes of her embroidered slippers. “As it so happens, my Junior Wardrobe Mistress died of a fever last moon – ‘tis unfortunate, humans get sick so easily, you all need better constitutions! – and my Head Wardrobe Mistress is in dire need of an assistant.” She assessed Lodia’s outfit once more. “Yep, thou’lt do. Yep.” And she heaved such a smug sigh that you’d think she’d just singlehandedly retaken the Wilds.

Lodia throat worked, but nothing came out except for a choked, “Um….”

“Report here in the morning. Ancemus will tell thee where to go, right, Ancemus, old thing?” Raising her voice in a most undignified manner, the raccoon dog squawked right across the Lady of the Lychee Tree at the adviser.

Gnashing his teeth, Ancemus pretended he hadn’t heard her.

Idly, I wondered if he took human form just so he had teeth to gnash when Anthea was around. But no, he spent so much time as a human that it was probably just his preferred form.

Oh, wait. I was here as Lodia’s adviser, not as a sightseer.

The position of Junior Wardrobe Mistress was everything that I wanted for her, but she herself seemed so miserable that I started to get cold claws.

In a rush of feathers, I flew from her shoulder to Anthea’s, taking no care whatsoever where my talons went. Doesn’t she get a say in matters?

“Huh? Of course she does! But whyever would she turn it down?”

Because she might want to, oh, I don’t know, stay with her family? Her friends? In a stable place? The court doesn’t have a permanent base, does it? It’s like a troupe of traveling performers!

“Traveling performers! Pi– ” she started to snarl before catching herself. “What the heck art thou calling thyself these days anyway?”

I smirked. Pip.

She rolled her eyes. “Pip. How…common. Regardless, whoever would turn down such an unparalleled opportunity? A position at court as Junior Wardrobe Mistress to the Queen’s favorite? People would kill for it!”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Yeah. To escape it.

I was enjoying our back-and-forth, and Anthea’s smirk said that she was too, but Lodia didn’t know our history. The girl quaked.

Look, just ask her before you decide her entire future for her, why don’t you?

“Fine.” Anthea wiped the sulkiness off her face and replaced it with a saccharine smile. “Lodia, what say’st thou? Wouldst thou like to join my household as my Junior Wardrobe Mistress?”

“Umm….” Lodia was wringing her hands so hard that her knuckles turned white. “I…I should…maybe…I’d like….”

With a great deal more patience than I’d expected from the raccoon dog, Anthea waited for the girl to eke out a full sentence. After a moment, when none was forthcoming, she prompted, “Wouldst thou like to consult with thy family first?”

Lodia’s terrified glance flicked down the table towards her grandmother. Missa was chuckling at a joke that the Earl of Yellow Flame was telling, but she’d been monitoring our conversation. She dipped her chin in a minute nod, giving Lodia permission to decide for herself.

Perhaps not realizing how rude it was, Lodia turned her upper body away from Anthea to look back at her father. Rohanus gave her a warm smile and a nod too. Even though he couldn’t have heard the conversation, he seemed to have guessed its gist.

Finally, Lodia peeked at the queen and flinched when she met Jullia’s dark, cool eyes. The queen studied her for a moment, then deliberately broke their gaze and addressed a remark to the Lady of the Lychee Tree.

At last, Lodia mumbled something at the dishes on the table. She was so quiet that not even a pangolin spirit could have heard her.

Speak up, I urged. It’s okay to tell her that you don’t want to –

“Yes.”

With visible effort, Lodia met Anthea’s eyes for a full second before she dropped her gaze to the dishes again.

“Yes, my lady. I accept.”

----------------------------------------

The banquet held one last surprise for me.

After the servants cleared the tables, they returned with brushes, inksticks, inkstones, and stacks of – paper? Was it really paper? I hopped down from Lodia’s shoulder for a closer look.

It was! It was! South Serica had paper! It was even reasonably thin and smooth, like the kind scholars used to use for calligraphy and paintings!

But why had they cut it into odd, non-rectangular shapes – oh! Because these weren’t meant to be long scrolls for calligraphy or paintings. These were lanterns! Sky lanterns! And the brushes and the inksticks that the servants were grinding for us – they were for writing our wishes, which would fly up to Heaven on the lanterns!

I’d nearly forgotten this tradition.

It must have died out in East Serica, or at least in the Claymouth Barony, and I’d had precious little inclination to wish for things from Heaven in the past five hundred years.

To want, yes. To demand, yes. To wish for, no.

As the servants laid a folded-up lantern in front of Floridiana, Bobo, Dusty, and me, the mage rubbed the paper with a forefinger. “What is this material? It doesn’t feel like parchment, but it’s not cloth either – at least, no cloth that I’ve ever seen.”

“’Tis called rice paper,” Rohanus explained, “although that’s technically a misnomer. ‘Tis made from the bark of the paper mulberry tree.”

“Paper! You still have paper?! I thought the technology was lost after the fall of the Empire!”

Floridiana’s outburst struck all the South Sericans in earshot speechless. Some gaped openly. Others averted their gazes, mortified on behalf of the barbarian who’d never laid eyes on a single sheet of paper before.

At length, Rohanus said diplomatically, “Ah, well, I believe its use is not as widespread as it was during the Empire. ‘Tis costly to produce, so its use is restricted to official and religious purposes, such as this.”

“What is this? What are we doing?” Bobo put in.

Her tongue flicked out, tasting the air just above the surface of the paper. Lodia winced, perhaps worrying that it would wet and tear the lantern, and the motion drew her father’s attention.

“Lodia, wouldst thou like to explain this tradition to our guests?”

Squirming, she tried to escape. “You will do a better job, Father.”

Now that she had accepted Anthea’s job offer and declared herself ready to step into the wider world, however, he could no longer let her off so easily. “’Twill be good practice, Lodia. Thou wilt need to communicate with others at court.”

She looked as if she regretted that decision already.

Ever the schoolmistress, Floridiana prompted Lodia as she would a timid student, “What are these…devices called?”

“They’re called sky lanterns.”

When no further explanation followed, Floridiana prodded her some more. “Can you explain their purpose?”

“They’re for making wishes on. You write what you wish for on the sides. Then you open them up and light them, and they fly up to Heaven.”

Dusty snorted in surprise. “You set them on fire? Won’t they burn up before they get anywhere?” To demonstrate, he nosed at our lantern.

Don’t – I began, but it was too late. The fragile paper ripped.

While Floridiana glared at him and he pretended his nose had been nowhere near the lantern, Bobo tried to smooth it with her tail. “Uh-oh. Is that going to be a problem?”

A nearby servant was already hastening over with a spare lantern.

No, I answered.

“Yes, actually, but we’ll get a new one,” said Rohanus, giving up on his daughter to explain the sky lantern tradition himself. “After we write our wishes on the sides, we will open up the lanterns. They already have a wire frame built in, see? And we will put a bit of oil-soaked paper at the bottom, here, and light that on fire.”

“And that makes the lanterns fly?” Bobo asked, fascinated.

“Yes. You’ll see in just a moment. But first, you must write what you wish for on the sides of the lantern.”

As he bent back over his and Lodia’s lantern, Floridiana dipped the tip of her brush into the inkstone and held it poised over the paper. After a moment, she wrote with firm brushstrokes, Greater knowledge. Success. Prosperity. Fame for the academy. Good health for myself and my friends.

Following her example, Dusty picked up a brush in his mouth. A big drop of ink rolled down its tip and plopped onto the paper, spreading into a dark-grey blot. I seemed to be the only one who cared, though. “What should I wish for? Bobo, what are you wishing for?”

The bamboo viper had twisted the front half of her body practically into a knot so she could read Floridiana’s words. “Can we wisssh for anything? Is it okay to wisssh for anything at all?”

Rohanus finished writing down his own wishes (for good health for his loved ones and good fortune for Lychee Grove). “Yes, anything at all.”

Her eyes lit up. Squeezing her brush in her tail, tongue flicking in and out of her mouth with concentration, she laboriously wrote, I wish Stripey is doing well.

After a moment’s deliberation, she added, In his new life. After another long, pondering moment, she finished off with, I wish I will see him again.

“Okay! I’m all ssset!”

Together, she and Floridiana had already filled the space on two sides of the lantern, so after the ink dried, Floridiana turned it over. In uneven, childish characters, Dusty scrawled, Good health. Prosperity. Success. Respect.

His head swung around so one eye was staring straight at me.

I shrugged my wings. Respect, huh? Good luck getting anyone besides that herald to address him as “His Highness the Valiant Prince of the Victorious Whirlwind.”

“How about you?” Bobo whispered to me. “What do you wisssh for? I can write it for you.”

I didn’t even need to think about it.

Once everyone had written down their wishes and, in some cases, painted little pictures too, the servants cleared away the tables, opened the lanterns, and lit them. A solemn hush fell over the courtyard, broken only by the rustle of leaves. We stood around our lanterns, waiting for them to fill with hot air. Gradually, they started to bob, to lift off the paving stones, slowly and uncertainly at first, then more steadily. One – two – six – dozens of lanterns floated into the night sky, shining with a soft, golden light. Over the lake they rose, reflected in the dark mirror of its surface like stars.

All of a sudden, I wondered if Flicker and his colleagues were watching, high above us. Were these wishes real, in the same way that oaths were real? Did Heaven assign clerks to record them and file them away in the archives? If so, my wish might not have been the wisest thing to write down, even if it were in Bobo’s hand (mouth?) writing.

But it was too late now. It was done and flying up to Heaven, borne on wings of paper and ink – my one true wish.

I want to be a fox again.