The children were, indeed, in the river.

Or, to be more precise, jumping up and down on a path of dry riverbed and waving at the fish in the water that towered on either side. Some of the fish waved back. Awkwardly.

“What in the names of all the gods?” Floridiana grumbled.

Dusty prodded her hair with his nose. “Don’t you mean ‘in the name of the Divine Intercessor?”

She shoved it away. “Piri’s not around. I can say whatever I please.”

For all her tartness, she did feel a slight twinge, although she squashed it as she approached the river. The parted waters reminded her of the first time she’d come here, when the farmers of the Claymouth Barony had hired her to bargain with the Dragon King of Black Sand Creek for rain. A dry strip of riverbed had appeared then too, leading straight from the riverbank to the gates of the Water Court. She’d acted as if she’d personally opened it, and the farmers had bought it.

She wondered what they thought of this current path. It didn’t pass anywhere near the Water Court. It sloped down from the shore, meandered along the center of the river, and curved back to the riverbank downstream. There, a familiar figure stood with her arms crossed while she waited for the children to finish their educational tour of the river.

Floridiana broke into a trot, then a jog, and finally, abandoning any attempts at dignity, an outright run. “Vanny! Vanny! I’m back!”

Jek Lom Vannia, her first friend and confidante in the Claymouth Barony, assistant at the school, and, not incidentally, mother to Taila and her brothers, spun around. “Flori!”

The two crashed into each other in a big bear hug, laughing and crying and interrupting each other with questions until Dusty whuffled at Vanny’s hair and asked, “Is the Water Court of Black Sand Creek running the school now?”

Vanny stepped back and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. It was clean, new cotton, Floridiana noted automatically. It was a definite improvement from the stained rags that the Jeks had once worn – but a jarringly far cry from the fine linen and embroidered silks she’d grown accustomed to seeing in Goldhill.

By the Kitchen God, Piri was rubbing off on her!

To distract herself from that thought, Floridiana repeated Dusty’s question. “Did King Yulus or Prime Minister Nagi take over the school in my absence?”

Her chest constricted, and she felt a sense of – she wasn’t sure what it was. Hope? Apprehension? …Hurt?

Because if they didn’t need her here….

“Nope,” Vanny replied in her blunt way, and Floridiana sighed. With relief that she and Dusty hadn’t wasted an arduous journey, of course. Then her friend added, “King Den did.”

“Den took over the school?”

Try as she might, Floridiana could not imagine her other friend and confidant playing headmaster. How would he even get the students to obey him? He was a dragon, true, and possessed control over water and weather that human mages would never attain, but he just wasn’t very imposing. Floridiana tried to picture the little dragon bellowing at a class of unruly children to “Settle down!” – and failed.

“Yup,” confirmed Vanny, but she then had to qualify it with, “Well, sort of. King Den has been kind enough to organize field trips for the students to see more of the world.”

“To see more of the world?” Floridiana parroted in disbelief. “Where has he been taking them?”

“Nowhere so far as that! He just wants them to see that there’s more than just their farms or the village shops. So last time, he talked to the Baron’s third daughter and convinced her to let Seneschal Anasius take the students on a tour of the castle.”

Anasius. The whistling duck spirit had been Stripey’s nephew, and was as prissy as the ex-bandit was, well, not. Floridiana’s first instinct was to rush up to the castle to tell Anasius that he didn’t need to grieve, his uncle was back.

Her second was that under no circumstances should she ever tell him about Flicker and Piri and the Kitchen God.

Unaware of her thoughts, Vanny continued to speak. “And this time, King Den talked to King Yulus and convinced him to open up his river so the students can see the fish and shrimp and oysters and stuff. It’s supposed to be a natural philosophy lesson.”

Her scowl said that she was very aware how well that was going.

Optimistically, Dusty said, “Well, they’re learning how fish and shrimp and oysters and stuff react when they get waved at?”

Vanny snorted. If she’d been a spirit, it would have blown him mane over tail.

About then, students began to emerge from the river, chattering about the carp guards and their helmets. At the sight of Floridiana, their voices petered out.

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At last, one of them squeaked, “Headmistress…?”

Another blurted out, “You’re not a ghost or a stiff, are you?”

A ghost or a stiff? Floridiana raised an eyebrow. “Can anyone tell me how to identify a ghost?”

A hand shot into the air: a little boy with messy hair and scuffed trouser knees. “I know! I know! Ghosts look like crazy people! Like, their hair is crazy and all! And their skin is weird grey, like mushrooms! Oh, oh, and they’re waaaaay light. And they can change shape until you spit on them, and then they’re stuck in that shape forever!”

“That is broadly correct, although do not go around spitting on people or animals just because you suspect they are ghosts. Now, what is a stiff?”

More students were emerging from the river by this point.

“It’s a corpse!” called out one of the newcomers with relish. “It’s a dead body. It’s all rotten and stinky and the flesh and hair are falling off the bones – ” In demonstration, he tugged on one of the girls’ pigtails.

She spun so fast that he had to duck a flying pigtail. “It is not a corpse. It is the skeleton of a corpse. The skeleton turns into a spirit. And it can take the form of a beautiful woman. And then it tricks dumb men and eats them.”

She snapped her teeth at the boy, who stuck out his tongue.

“Manners!” barked Vanny. “Your headmistress has just returned. Is this how you welcome her?”

“It’s Teacher Flori!” squealed another familiar voice.

The final stragglers were coming out of the river. These students wore braided crowns of eelgrass. One held a bouquet of more eelgrass, and one clutched a – a tiny spear, like one of the weapons that the shrimp guards of the Black Sand Creek Water Court carried.

Of course the student with the spear was Taila.

“Jek Taila!” snapped her mother. “Who did you get that spear from? Give it back at once!”

From whom did you get that spear? Floridiana corrected mentally, but she didn’t say it out loud. For one, she didn’t want to embarrass her friend in front of the children. For another, she didn’t want to undermine her assistant’s authority over the students. And for the all-important third – “Yes, Taila, where did you get that spear?” She held out a hand.

Pouting, Taila surrendered it. “I didn’t take it from nobody. I found it. It was stuck in a crack. Nobody wanted it.”

“From anybody. You didn’t take it from anybody,” Floridiana corrected as she examined the spear. Yes, it was definitely the same as the ones that King Yulus’ shrimp guards carried. “Be that as it may, this is a weapon, not a toy.”

She was tucking it into her belt when something crashed into her back, as hard as a wolf demon.

“Floridiana! You’re back!”

When she’d caught her breath again, she blinked at the pale yellow scales that filled her vision. They covered the underside of a long, scaly body that wrapped once around her waist, once more around her shoulders, and curved around behind her head. Three-clawed hands squeezed her arms in a big dragon hug.

“Den?”

“Yeah! It’s me! It’s so good to see you again!”

It is I, she mentally corrected, but again, she didn’t speak out loud. Although that was less to avoid embarrassing her friend or undermining what little authority he possessed over the students, and more because she didn’t have the breath to correct him out loud.

She tapped at his sides. “Can’t – breathe – ”

“Oops! Sorry!”

He released her so fast that she tottered, but he’d stayed coiled loosely around her and braced her until she caught her balance.

She reached out and petted his side, marveling at how much wider he had grown, how much larger and harder each individual scale had become. And yet, the pearl he wore under his chin, the symbol of his authority as the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond, was still the same seed pearl as before. It was comically tiny in comparison to the rest of him. She had to push aside the glossy, luxurious strands of his mane to find it.

“You can’t switch this for a bigger pearl?” she asked, checking the silk cord that it hung on. It was the same scarlet as before, with no sign of fraying from rubbing over the scales’ edges. It must have been freshly changed.

“Nope, not unless I get promoted to a larger pond. This is the pearl of the Dragon Kings of Caltrop Pond.”

Promoted. The word hit Floridiana. She’d never given much thought to the draconic hierarchy, but of course there had to be some kind of promotion path. And unless King Yulus got promoted at the same time and Heaven decided to give his spot to Den, her friend would be promoted away from Claymouth. Floridiana couldn’t imagine the barony without her friends. It was going to be strange enough visiting Honeysuckle Croft without Bobo puttering and slithering around the hearth. If Den moved away too….

As if reading her thoughts, the dragon flung out his hands and waved them. “Don’t worry! I’m not going anywhere! I like Caltrop Pond. I’m happy here. I don’t have to be this big! I can shrink myself to fit, see?”

And with a pop, the dragon king whose body was nearly as wide around as hers vanished.

From knee height, his voice called up, “Hi!”

Floridiana released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. It was one thing for her to travel herself, but another to come home to find that the place had changed and people were gone.

To come home.

Home.

When had she begun to think of Claymouth as home? Ever since her parents had sold her to the dancing troupe, she’d never stayed long enough in any place to call it home. But there it was: When she thought of Claymouth, she thought of the place where she belonged. She didn’t want to give up traveling entirely, but neither did she want to live her entire life on the road, not anymore. It was good to have somewhere to return to, to look forward to returning to, people she looked forward to seeing, who looked forward equally to seeing her and hearing her travel stories.

Kitchen God and all the gods in Heaven above, she hated it when Piri was right!

With a mental eye roll, she motioned for the students to gather around. No time like the present to take up her teaching duties, after all.

“All right. Now that you have finished observing the flora and fauna of Black Sand Creek, who wants to tell me what you learned?”

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

Up in Heaven:

Bink the golden snub-nosed monkey woke in darkness. That had been scary! He’d been grabbed by a giant bird, which had flown high into the sky with him. He’d chattered and scolded until it bit off his head. And now he was in this dark place. Who had shut him up in this dark place? Not the nice lady who loved him. Where was she?

He chattered angrily.

Except – he didn’t. What came out was a sequence of chimes, musical sounds that had never passed through any mortal vocal cords.

Oh.

Slowly, an older presence rose, overriding and absorbing the monkey’s memories and consciousness. The soul that had once been Marcius and the Star of Scholarly Song settled down in an archival box in the Bureau of Reincarnation to await his turn.