Well, what do you know? The Dragon King of Caltrop Pond really followed through once you prodded (and bit and kicked) him enough. Just two days after I found him snoring in his bedchamber, woke him up, and extracted his promise to wring fish out of the Black Sand Creek Water Court, the first shipment arrived at Honeysuckle Croft.
One minute I was nudging Taila’s hand, trying to get her to stand up and walk around before her muscles atrophied. The next, a flock of whistling ducks was flapping down from the sky. Under their bellies dangled lumpy green bundles.
I’d seen this packaging style in better times, back when Mistress Jek still went shopping in town. The stall owners would wrap purchases in fresh lotus leaves and tie them with dried grasses: a creative solution to the lack of paper and expense of twine.
In the duck demons’ lead was Stripey, who landed in the middle of the yard, threw out his chest, and announced, “Ta-da! One delivery of fresh catfish and water spinach, coming right up!”
To the accompaniment of quacked instructions and rustling feathers, the duck demons started sliding the dried grass loops from their backs and arranging the bundles on the ground.
But there was no shriek of “Mr. Duck!” from Taila. She stayed slumped against the wall, staring in their general direction without registering anything.
I nudged her palm again. Hey, Taila, want to see what the ducks are up to? Let’s go see what the ducks are up to!
No reaction. I looked around for help, but apart from the duck demons, it was just the two of us in the yard. With pitifully little work for Bobo these days, Mistress Jek had furloughed the bamboo viper until late spring.
Look, Taila, they brought food! Isn’t that exciting? C’mon, let’s go see what they brought!
Still no reaction, but Mistress Jek did shuffle around the corner. She’d gone to the back to check on the woodpile. Restocking it hadn’t been a regular chore since the Jeks ran out of food and hence the need for cooking fires.
When she saw what looked like a horde of bandits unloading their ill-gotten loot on her front step, her eyes, dull-lidded from hunger, widened. She had, after all, refused to provide them safe haven.
“What’s going on?” she asked, mustering the energy for a question, if not a proper bellow.
In answer, Stripey waddled to the longest bundle, undid the grass, and flipped open the lotus leaves to display – a catfish.
I trotted over for a closer inspection. I was something of a catfish expert, if I did say so myself. And indeed, Yulus and Nagi – or their chefs, more likely – had selected a beautiful, plump specimen. They’d even cleaned it to spare Mistress Jek the hassle.
“A catfish?” she breathed. She collapsed to her knees. “You brought us food?” Tears welled up in her eyes.
“Not just a catfish,” Stripey declared, puffing up even more.
At his signal, the duck demons opened the other bundles to reveal a second fat catfish, bunches of water spinach for soup, three onions, a knob of ginger, and a head of garlic. No green onion to complete the classic mix of seasonings, I noted, but that didn’t surprise me. So early in the year, probably only Heavenly chefs had access to green onion.
“Food for a full meal, compliments of the Dragon Kings of Black Sand Creek and Caltrop Pond. Careful with that one,” Stripey warned, pointing a wingtip at the last lotus-leaf bundle. “That’s rice. From us. We didn’t have a good container for it.”
“I don’t know what to say,” whispered Mistress Jek. She stared at the ingredients as if blinking would make them vanish. Tears dripped off her cheeks and dotted the lotus leaves. “I don’t know what to say!”
“No need to say anything.” Awkwardly, Stripey patted her shoulder with his wing. “Just cook it and have a good meal. We’ll bring more tomorrow.”
“I – I – yes. Thank you. Thank you!”
Sobbing women might fall within the bandits’ purview, but grateful sobbing women manifestly did not.
The duck demons shuffled their webbed feet and rustled their wings and bobbed their heads and, when the tears didn’t seem like they’d end any time soon, beat a strategic retreat.
I grinned after their fleeing tails, then poked Mistress Jek’s arm with my nose. Come on. Go cook the fish before it spoils.
She sniffled and dragged her runny nose across her sleeve, making me wince. “You did this, didn’t you, emissary? You and the goddess. You saved us! You saved our lives!” And she flung herself to the ground in front of me.
Huh. It had been ages since anyone had prostrated themselves before me out of gratitude.
Come to think of it, whenever anyone in Cassius’ court prostrated themselves in front of me, it had been out of shameless flattery or sheer terror. Genuine gratitude – now, that was novel.
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Mistress Jek was still gasping out broken, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”s. Her intensity made me uncomfortable. It wasn’t like I’d gotten her the contents of the palace storerooms or anything. This was just two common catfish, some vegetables that grew in the wild, and a handful of seasonings. In fact, this probably wasn’t even enough fish to feed the whole family, especially not with three growing boys.
Go cook the fish before it goes bad, I repeated.
Then, without waiting for her to rise, I wandered off towards the bamboo stand. Bobo would want to know about the food delivery and the potential return of her job.
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That evening, the Jeks savored the most luxurious meal they’d had in, well, possibly ever. Mistress Jek fried one catfish and steamed the other whole, sprinkled with ginger slices for flavor. She ladled out water spinach soup for everyone and, once they’d finished it, reused the bowls for hot, fluffy rice.
The serving platter was a cutting board, the bowls were wood instead of porcelain, and the chopsticks were bamboo instead of ivory, but when I saw the joy on the Jeks’ faces, it was easy to forget that this wasn’t a palace banquet.
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“So? What’d you think? How’d I do?”
At the party that night, the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond called me to his throne and peppered me with questions about how the Jeks had received the food. It was definitely on the indiscreet side – but not too far, considering how loud the music was and how drunk his guests were.
They were ecstatic, I reported, and he preened. I’ve never seen anyone enjoy a meal more. How’d you get the duck demons involved anyway?
“The duck demons?” The dragon blinked in puzzlement. “The bandits got involved? Oh no! They didn’t try to steal the shipment, did they?”
No, no, no, the opposite, I reassured him. They helped. They were the ones who transported it from Black Sand Creek. Threw in some of their own stores of rice too.
“They did??? Wow. I – just, wow!”
One of the rice paddy snakes from his Dawn Dance set suggested, “Maybe Prime Minister Nagi arranged it.”
Another chimed in, “Yeah, the ducks are always robbing the pearl farm. I’ll bet she summoned them and offered them an amnesty if they’d run errands for her.”
That was clever. The Black Sand Creek Water Court couldn’t defend itself against duck demon depredations anyway, so an amnesty cost Nagi nothing. In fact, if the bandits were busy playing courier, then they had less time for stealing freshwater pearl mussels.
Or robbing travelers, for that matter.
Look at me, setting in motion a chain of events that allowed the Jeks and Taila to go on living; the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond to experience the satisfaction of performing meaningful work; the Dragon King of Black Sand Creek to atone for turning a blind eye while Lord Silurus ate humans in his river; the duck demons not only to earn positive karma but to get less negative karma; and merchants to reach their destinations with all their wares, which had to benefit the barony’s economy as a whole!
Back in Cassius’ court, his pet would-be philosophers used to debate the statement, “The strength of a nation derives from the home.” I’d never paid much attention to their arguments, but now I thought that I’d provided a very good illustration of that saying. Just look at how the effects of stabilizing one household were rippling across the entire barony!
The Dragon King of Caltrop Pond was even less inclined towards philosophy than I, but he saw the wisdom of our actions when I explained it. He also promised to convey it to the Black Sand Creek Water Court if Nagi ever showed signs of halting the food deliveries.
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And now we had one final potential problem to deal with: the trouble that would arise if Baron Claymouth found out that not only the leader of the local bandits, but also the lords of two separate neighboring fiefs, had taken exception to his treatment of his own people and intervened. When you thought about it, it did reflect poorly on his governance skills.
Can you be more discreet when you deliver the food? I asked Stripey on the fourth morning, when the flock flapped down with their lotus-leaf packages.
(I had also noticed one lone duck splitting off and flying in the direction of the marketplace. I had my suspicions that Stripey was siphoning off part of the food to sell for Bobo’s rent money, but as long as the Jeks got enough to eat, I wasn’t commenting on it. Yet.)
You’re being too blatant. What if the Baron finds out and punishes the Jeks again?
Stripey dismissed my concern at once. “Nah, he’s used to seeing us fly around the barony carrying…things.”
Yeah, but now you’re no longer “flying around” the barony. You’re making a very specific flight from Black Sand Creek to Honeysuckle Croft, and you’re going to be doing it every morning for the foreseeable future.
The duck demon cocked his head. “How do you expect us to get from Black Sand Creek to here if we don’t fly? We’re not exactly built for running, you know.”
Not true, strictly speaking. I’d seen ducks run fast enough when they had sufficient motivation, i.e. a hungry fox on their heels.
Walking would be fine too. It’s not like the fish is going to spoil in the time that it takes you to walk, what, half a mile?
I could have recommended that they vary their flight patterns to throw off spies, land somewhere not too far from Honeysuckle Croft, and waddle the last segment. But the longer I dragged out their deliveries, the less time I gave them for criminal activities, and the better the karmic situation for all of us. It was altruistic of me, really, looking out for the duck demons’ future reincarnations with such diligence.
“You want us to walk all the way from Black Sand Creek…and do what with the packages? Strap them to our backs?” The question wasn’t all sarcastic: Stripey was considering the same issue of Baron Claymouth finding out and interfering.
It was nice to be on the same page, even if it were for somewhat different reasons.
“A line of ducks waddling between Black Sand Creek and here with packages strapped to our backs every morning is also pretty obvious.”
It’s still a lot more discreet than flying over everybody’s heads, I retorted, irked by his logic.
Stripey shuffled from foot to foot while he thought. In the end, he conceded, “We can mix it up. Test different flight patterns, try a combo of flying and walking. I’ll talk to Anasius too.”
Anasius? I remembered that prissy seneschal and how angry he’d been at the Jeks for making basic housing improvements and at Taila for writing basic sentences. Will he listen to you? He seems like one of those…rules-sticklers.
I spat the last word. I hated rules-sticklers. There was no one harder to work with than an inflexible rules-stickler.
Stripey wheezed with laughter before he caught himself. “Oh, he is, he is. But he’s my nephew.” He shrugged his wings, as if to say, “He’ll listen to his elder, and that’s that.”
I caught myself shrugging back. The more I interacted with the duck, the more my manners slipped.
Well, fine. I’ll leave that end of things to you.
“Yep, you can trust me.”
And the funny thing was that I actually did.