“See? This is Mr. Turtle! He’s my friend!” Taila’s muffled voice proclaimed as she fished in her pocket.

I shrank into the deepest corner and pulled my head and legs into my shell, hoping she’d get distracted by something else before she found me.

No such luck. Questing fingertips brushed my shell.

Well, there was no helping it. With a dart of my neck, I nipped the closest finger.

A shriek. The hand vanished. My world started bouncing up and down as Taila screamed, “He bit me! He bit me!”

Well, that seemed a little melodramatic. It was just a tiny, warning nip, to remind her that my existence was supposed to be a secret. I hadn’t drawn blood. I hadn’t even broken skin.

“Here, Taila, lemme see that finger.” The cat spirit sounded patient, as if he had plenty of experience dealing with small children and their tantrums.

Something jostled me, and I pictured Taila thrusting her not-at-all-injured hand at him.

There was a brief pause, and then the cat spirit crooned, “It’s just a lil’ boo-boo. Lemme lick it better.”

A rasping noise, followed by Taila’s giggle. “That tickles! Uncle Tasy, that tickles!”

“What’d I tell you? All better now!”

Just then, a new voice, shrill with panic, broke in. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Taila! Taila! Master Gravitas, what’s wrong with Taila?”

Ugh, I couldn’t see anything from inside this pocket! I started chewing a hole through the cloth.

“It’s all right, Mistress Khun,” soothed the cat spirit in the same tone he’d used on the four-year-old. “Taila had a lil’ boo-boo, but it’s all better now, ain’t it?”

Apparently she agreed, because I was bounced around some more, and then she was announcing, “Auntie Jo! I had a boo-boo here, an’ it hurt a lot, an’ Uncle Tasy licked it, an’ now it don’t hurt anymore!”

Oof, okay, that grammar needed fixing. Maybe I could work out a system in which I poked her or kicked her every time she messed up.

Throughout all this, I’d kept chewing on the fabric, and at last I broke the last thread. Through my new peephole, I saw a blur of stained, brown cloth that could only be Mistress Josy’s skirt.

After ascertaining that Taila’s finger wasn’t in danger of swelling up and killing her with blood poisoning, the woman relaxed and stepped back far enough for me to glimpse more of her. It was that sweet potato vendor. And wait! The brown cloth I’d seen wasn’t her skirt at all: It was her apron! Stars and demons, had the woman never heard of laundry? And she sold food for a living? Seriously, who’d eat anything she prepared?

At times like this, I yearned for Cassius’ palace and its horde of impeccably clean chefs, sous-chefs, food tasters, footmen, and serving women.

Plonking her hands on her hips, Mistress Khun shouted in a very good imitation of Mistress Jek, “JEK TAILA! What’re you doin’ here on yer lonesome? Does yer ma know you ran off?”

None of Cassius’ servants had talked like this either.

“Ummmmm….” In my field of vision, Taila’s shirts shifted, and the toe of her shoe started digging a hole into the dirt.

Well, on the bright side, the girl wasn’t a liar. That made her easier to handle. Marginally.

“JEK TAILA! Don’t you DARE tell me you sneaked out and came all the way into town!”

At that, Taila started to wail. “But I didn’t sneak out! Mr. Turtle said I could! Mr. Turtle! Mr. Turtle! Tell Auntie Jo!” She plunged her hand back into my pocket.

Seriously, could the girl not take a hint?! This time, I didn’t try to hide. I stretched out my neck and nipped her finger again, harder since she was clearly a slow learner.

A scream, as loud as a dying goat demon, punctuated the wailing.

I was getting a migraine, and I didn’t even know turtles could get migraines. Pulling my head into my shell – not that it blocked the noise one bit – I cursed Master and Mistress Jek for having Taila, Aurelia for continuing to care about her ex-daughter, Flicker for enabling Aurelia’s obsession, Lord Silurus for not eating Mistress Jek while she was pregnant, the Goddess of Life for granting my request to let me keep my mind when I reincarnated, and Lady Fate for recruiting me to end Cassius’ dynasty and hence setting off the whole chain of events that led to me being here, in this pocket belonging to a screaming, tantrum-ing child, right here and right now. I hate screaming, tantrum-ing children.

Seriously, could the day get any worse?

And that, of course, was when we got swarmed by a clowder of cats.

Jumping off rooftops and streaming out of alleys, they streaked across Main Street, tripping people and donkeys and turning the throng of peasants into a shouting snarl. Out of the tangle strolled a grey tabby with broken stripes, which started rubbing its head against Taila’s legs.

Oh boy. The creature better not have fleas.

My world jolted again as Taila flung herself to the ground and wrapped both arms around the cat, howling something that might have been “star” as she wept into its fur – or tried to.

The cat, being a cat, meowed and squirmed and, when that wasn’t enough to convince the girl to let go, kicked off her chest with its back legs, twisted midair, and bounded off. The other cats backed up a few steps and regarded her with sharp eyes and twitching tails, poised to flee.

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“Noooooo, Staaaaaar! Come baaaaaaack!”

Well, it was good to see that I wasn’t the only living creature she treated like a toy.

A different tabby, with thick whorls of dark grey, bright yellow eyes, and a white chest, skirted around Taila and padded up to the sweet potato vendor. “Meow-stress Josy, whatcha doin’?” He twined around her legs and flopped down between her clunky shoes. “D’you have any food for meow-e?”

In the blink of an eye, Master Gravitas leaped over his worktable, landed in a crouch between the sweet potato vendor and the rest of the cats, and swatted the tabby.

He shot behind the clay oven. The other cats’ milling moved back by about a foot.

Master Gravitas growled and hissed in Cat, then commanded, “Stop buggin’ people, all of you. You’ll get fed when it’s time an’ not a second sooner.”

“Oooooo-kaaaay.”

“Fiiiine, Master Gravitas.”

“Meow!”

Not acting particularly chastened, the cats, both normal and awakened, loped into the nearest alley and melded with the shadows.

But now Taila clomped forward to tug on the sweet potato vendor’s filthy apron. “Auntie, Auntie, I wanna red-bean sticky rice dumpling!”

“A red-bean sticky rice dumpling? This time of year?” The woman sounded startled.

“Uh huh. Uh huh. Mr. Turtle said I could. ‘Cuz I was good.”

“Mr. Turtle?” The woman cast an inquiring glance at Master Gravitas, who just shrugged. Squatting so she was at eye level with Taila, she explained in that sickly sweet, singsong-y voice that people who are not me or Mistress Jek use on small children, “Sticky rice dumplings are for summer, Taila. For the Dragon Boat Festival. ‘Member the Dragon Boat Festival? When we go to the river and watch the boat race?”

“Uh huh. Uh huh.”

“So we don’t have any right now. ‘Cuz it’s winter. But if yer a good girl, I’m sure yer ma will give you a biiiiiiiig one for the Dragon Boat Festival.”

“Uh huh, uh – ” Taila started to agree, before it registered that she wasn’t going to get the promised dessert right now. “Noooooo! I want it nooooooow! Mr. Turtle said I could! Mr. Turtle! Mr. Turtle!”

Apparently, the sweet potato vendor was also hitting the end of her patience. “Taila – ” she began in a warning tone, before a burning smell filled the air.

With a curse that shouldn’t be used in front of children (or anyone, really), she sprang to her feet and scuttled back to her oven, where she hauled out a string of sweet potatoes. Her cursing doubled in volume when she saw how black and crispy the skins were, and flowed without a break from expletives to furious accusations such as, “That no-good sister-in-law o’ mine, lettin’ her kids run wild, ruinin’ honest, hardworkin’ people’s work.”

By now, many of the peasants who’d been tripped by the cats had clumped up to watch what passed for street entertainment in the Claymouth Barony. Naturally, they all had their own opinions on Mistress Jek’s, Mistress Khun’s, and one another’s parenting skills, all of which they proclaimed loudly and definitively and, depending on your relationship to the parent in question, completely offensively. Some of the arguments got pretty heated.

I started wracking my brains for an exit, but Master Gravitas beat me to it. Throwing back his head, he let out a loud “Meoooooow!”

At once, cats raced towards his workshop from all directions. A fluffy black one even jumped out of a large bowl on a shelf. All told, a good dozen cat spirits and normal cats assembled in front of him.

“Take Taila home right now,” he ordered, then meowed the same instructions (I assumed) in Cat.

“How ‘bout some treats first?” bargained the whorled tabby who had hustled the sweet potato vendor for food earlier.

A lithe black cat with a skinny tail hissed, stuck out a paw, and smacked him while Master Gravitas glared at him.

“Done,” a third grey tabby with a white face promised Master Gravitas. (Seriously, did cats around here only come in shades of grey?) “C’mon,” he called to the other cats. “Y’all know what to do.”

And apparently they did, because they surrounded Taila and started rubbing their heads against the backs of her legs and standing up on their hind legs to push her away from the workshop and sweet potato stall.

It was none too soon.

When we were one shop away, a brawl broke out behind us. Apparently people get pretty passionate in the defense of their or their relatives’ parenting skills.

Well, if any humans got hurt here, it was not my fault – and even if it were, it was not my problem. Aurelia had promised to see to that.

Above the din, Master Gravitas’ voice roared, “Pepper, get back here! Now!”

At the sound of its name, the fluffy black cat twitched its ears – and then kept ambling along as if it hadn’t heard a thing.

“I’m not jokin’, Pepper. I said NOW!” He added a long string of yowls.

The white-faced tabby that seemed to be head babysitter walked across Pepper’s path to block it, but it still refused to turn back. So the same fierce black cat started rumbling a low growl, stalked up to Pepper, hissed, and swatted the side of its head. Only then did Pepper finally slink off.

As the rest of the cats herded Taila out of town, she whined, “Why can’t Pepper come? I want Pepper to come. Liliiiiiiiiiiii, whyyyyyyy….”

Licking her hand, the white-faced tabby explained, “Pepper can’t come out when it’s cold, ‘member? She’ll get sick.”

“But I wanna play with Peppeeeeeeeer.”

“Well, sucks t’ be you,” muttered the whorled tabby, who apparently got grumpy when he was hungry.

“Oy, shut it, Tip,” ordered the black cat. “’Less you want a smack upside yer head too.”

Looking injured, Tip removed himself to Taila’s other side. “C’mon, Bell! I was just sayin’….”

Ignoring them, Lili went on in a practiced way, as if he had to give this explanation all the time – or maybe just every time he saw Taila in the winter. “Pepper’s Master Gravitas’ only baby, ’member? Should I tell you the story again? Once upon a time, there was a family of cats who lived behind the carpenter’s workshop. There was a papa cat and a mama cat and a whoooooole litter of kittens. You like kittens, don’t you, Taila?”

“Uh huh! Uh huh!” agreed Taila. She sounded engrossed in the tale.

“The carpenter fed the cat family. The papa cat was big and grey, so he named him Gravitas. Now, Master Gravitas had lived a looooooong, loooooooong time, so he had already awakened and turned into cat spirit.”

“Like yoooou!” squealed Taila. “An’ Bell, an’ Tip, an’ Targee….”

“Yes,” agreed Lili, cutting off the recital. “Like us. But his wife and babies were still young, so they were still normal cats. One winter, it was very, very cold. It snowed a whole bunch, and all of them got sick. They had runny noses – you know what runny noses are like, right? And they sneezed a bunch. The carpenter let them sleep in his workshop so it would be warmer. Master Gravitas and Pepper got better, but his wife and the other kittens didn’t.” Here Lili paused, as if their loss were too painful for words.

I couldn’t see why. Feral cats died all the time – like all living creatures. Where would we be if everybody lived long enough to awaken?

“An’ then? An’ then?” pestered Taila, who had no more patience than I did.

“And then…the carpenter was very nice. He took Master Gravitas as an apprentice. When he died, he left the shop to him. And that’s why Master Gravitas is our carpenter, and why he and Pepper still live above the workshop, and why Pepper can’t come out when it’s cold.”

“When will Pepper turn into a spirit? I wanna talk to Pepper!”

“Don’t worry, it’s not long now. Mebe fifty more years?”

“Nooooooooo! I wanna talk to Pepper noooooooooooow!”

“But you can talk to Pepper now, ‘member? You tell us what you want to say, and then we tell her, and then she tells us what to say back. And when she turns into a spirit, she’ll have lots and lots to say to you.”

“Oh, will she ever,” muttered Tip.

Bell shoved her head under Taila’s hand for petting. “So you be a good girl and listen to yer ma and pa and not go off on yer lonesome. And you’ll live fifty years and be around when Pepper turns into a spirit.”

I held my breath, waiting for Taila to claim that I’d given her permission to leave Honeysuckle Croft and accompanied her into town, but she didn’t. She must have been too busy dreaming about the day Pepper awakened and the two could converse directly.

It would never happen. I planned to have her trained and educated and working far away from Black Sand Creek long before then.