After the excitement of watching the old woman drag her grandson home died down, I discovered that my tummy was rumbling. I was hungry again. In fact, only now did I realize that I’d forgotten to eat all day, and I was feeling a little wobbly on my claws.
Food. Food food food. Where could I get food? I scanned the marketplace.
Aha! There was a stall selling raw light-brown rice. Some sort of animal spirit took orders and counted coins, while his assistant scooped out measures of rice from big baskets and wrapped them in lotus leaves. Both were in human form, with long faces and thick, brown tails. The rice merchant wore an embroidered jacket over his tunic and trousers; the assistant wore only a plain brown tunic and trousers. Their tunics were shorter than those in the Claymouth Barony, but I supposed that was unsurprising given everything else that was different here.
Maybe I could sneak in and grab some rice? It was worth a try, anyway.
I glided down, angling to come in behind the two spirits. I timed my arrival perfectly, landing on the edge of a basket right as the merchant squinted down at a handful of coppers, and the assistant turned his back to wrap up a measure of rice. I gobbled a mouthful of rice and ducked below the rim of the basket. Using my claws to cling to the side, I peeked out to track the spirits’ movements.
That was when I got a good look at their tails. They were covered in large, overlapping scales that stuck out like those on pinecones. Pangolins! These were pangolin spirits!
I’d never met a pangolin before, awakened or not. I’d only ever heard of them from recalled nobles, who described them as bizarre, ant- and termite-eating creatures with pointy heads and club-like tails that curled up into balls when threatened. Pangolins were supposed to have poor vision too, which might explain why these two hadn’t caught me yet –
The merchant’s human-shaped ears twitched. His head whipped around, and his nostrils flared. “Boy! Kill that sparrow!”
Curses. I guess they compensated with their other senses.
“Yessir, Uncle!” The assistant lunged for me.
In a flurry, I took flight, and he just missed, his fingertips brushing my tail. As I shot up into the sky, he lost his balance, waved his tail to try to regain it, knocked over a stack of lotus leaves, and crashed headlong into the basket. His weight overturned it, and rice grains flooded across the packed earth.
“Clumsy knave!” shouted the merchant, leaping to his feet. He beat his nephew’s back with his tail, berating him the whole time, while the younger man curled up and used his own tail to cover his head.
Naturally, a crowd of spectators swarmed the stall, some to cheer the merchant on, some to soothe him, some to help sweep up the spilled rice, some to pocket fistfuls. Thank goodness the merchant and his assistant were spirits, not humans, or I’d have earned a hefty dose of negative karma on my first day out of the nest!
Unfortunately, after all this commotion, I was still hungry and no closer to figuring out where I was. Plus night had fallen, and now I was tired too. I had two choices: find a place in town to sleep, or keep flying north for as long as my wings could support me.
I opted for the former. I still didn’t know what predators to avoid, and at least these city-dwellers ignored me unless I was trying to steal their rice. Coming across a shrub in someone’s garden, I crept into it and perched on a twig.
For the first time in ages, I was all alone.
If I were in the Claymouth Barony, I’d be meeting Bobo at her bamboo stand right about now. Together, we’d head down the dirt path to Caltrop Pond while she babbled about the dancing. When we came around the final bend, Stripey would be standing on our meeting rock, waiting for us. (No. He wouldn’t be. Not ever again.) We’d all dive into the water and swim down past the trailing stems of the caltrop plants. Music and light would be spilling out of Den’s water court, and laughter and drunken good cheer. We’d enter the audience chamber, where Den would be dancing on his throne, the one with that silly caltrop-nut-shaped back. He’d snatch our offerings of alcohol and chug them before shouting, “This is good stuff!” whether it was or not. (Usually not.) Then we’d melt into the press of bodies and dance and dance until he yelled for us to go outside, and then we’d dance across the fields and laugh at the farmers until the sun began to glimmer over the horizon, and finally we would get into our sets for the elegant, intricate Dawn Dance and the absolutely ridiculous Chicken Dance.
My beak opened, and a little chirping laugh came out. I was a bird now. My body shape was even better suited for the Chicken Dance. If only I were there.
But, on a second thought, Den had held fewer parties since his return from the Jade Mountains. The little dragon king had actually grown serious about his duties. So maybe dancing wasn’t what I’d be doing if I were in the Claymouth Barony right now.
Although, maybe he just hadn’t had the time or energy to host parties when we were fighting against a deadline to kill Lord Silurus. Now that the demon was dead, had Den reverted to his hard-partying ways? Or was he helping Floridiana run the school and hence still too tired to party all night?
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And Bobo! Stripey and I had left her alone. How was she doing without her two best friends? Did she still grieve for us? Had she found steady work, or was she still cobbling together odd jobs? Was she again in danger of getting evicted on the next Settling Day?
I wished I knew. I wished I were there to see for myself. I wished I were there to fix it. Never had Honeysuckle Croft felt so far.
In an unfamiliar shrub in an unknown city, I tucked my head under my wing and fell asleep.
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My gloom evaporated with the morning dew. The next morning, I was up with the sun and back on a roof overlooking the marketplace by the time the vendors finished setting up their stalls. Frustratingly, they were all locals who sold to other locals who all knew where they lived and felt no need to state it for an eavesdropping sparrow. I was hopping from tile to tile, getting hungrier and hungrier and angrier and angrier, when a human man in a fancy, embroidered, green-and-gold silk jacket walked down the street. Two women in green-and-gold gowns and two guards in green-and-gold uniforms accompanied him.
Interesting.
“The Lady’s Under Steward!” cried the owner of the nearest stall. She hurried out from behind her vats of soy milk to bow deeply. “Some soy milk to start your morning, sir?”
Her greeting and offer of free food were echoed by the other vendors, and this “Under Steward” swaggered through the marketplace, graciously accepting his complimentary breakfast foods. At last, he arrived at one of the lychee stands I’d seen the day before. The young woman who worked there had already laid out a selection of different types.
He looked down his nose at them. “Good dawning, Miss Acina.”
With a bow, she replied, “Good dawning, milord. As requested, here are the samples from my family’s farm. We are honored by Her Ladyship’s patronage.”
“Yes, yes, very good. What do you have for me today?”
“This is the Fragrant Osmanthus, which hath the aroma of osmanthus blossoms.”
Using both hands and bowing again, she proffered a small basket that contained three pinkish fruits. The Under Steward didn’t take it from her himself, of course. Instead, one of the women with him stepped forward and accepted it, and the other selected a lychee and peeled it for him. Clear juice welled up and dripped off her fingertips, splattering the ground. My tummy rumbled.
The Under Steward put the glistening, translucent fruit into his mouth and chewed with a thoughtful expression. At the end, he delicately spat a glossy brown pit into his hand and dropped it into a small waste basket that Miss Acina held out.
“Indeed, it hath a cool, refreshing sweetness,” he pronounced, which I’d thought all lychees were supposed to have.
Miss Acina offered him a basket of bright red fruits next. “This is the Sticky-Rice Cake. Its pit is so small that sometimes it’s barely there. The flesh is juicy and as sweet as honey.”
The Under Steward and his maids repeated the process with those, and then with a red-and-green variety called the Jade Pocketbook. Finally, with extra reverence, Miss Acina presented him with lychees that were mostly light green, with a rosy area around the stem. Ah, these looked like the ones I remembered!
“And this is the Enchantress’ Smile. It is larger than the rest, with crisp, jade-white flesh that carries a gentle sweetness.” She leaned closer, as if to whisper a secret, but her voice still carried around the marketplace. “This is the kind that Lychee Grove used to send to the City of Dawn Song, to the Imperial Court. It is said that the emperor’s favorite court lady adored them, and that he would give them to her just to see her smile.”
At the mention of Cassius’ capital, I twitched. So these were the lychees that had come north by express riders! I’d never realized that they had a name besides “lychees” before. “Enchantress’ Smile.” I liked it, even if they’d whitewashed the story and transformed me from the Prime Minister into a court ornament. Humph.
If I ever took over South Serica, I’d rename these lychees “Piri’s Smile.” That had a nicer ring to it.
And “Lychee Grove” must be this city. I had a name, at last.
Wiping his hand on a handkerchief that one of the maids offered him, the Under Steward pronounced, “Very good. Send samples of the Enchantress’ Smile, Fragrant Osmanthus, and Sticky-Rice Cake to the Lady. She will determine which variety to offer to the Queen. Good day, Miss Acina.”
She prepared a basket and bowed low, and then he led his servants back up the street.
I flew after them. This Lady of Lychee Grove had to discuss politics and geography with her advisers – at least, she did if she wanted to prevent her neighbors from attacking her. Which they would if they could, given how wealthy this fief was.
With any luck, her scholars would keep maps.
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I expected the Lady to rule from a castle like Baron Claymouth’s, but instead the Under Steward returned to a massive garden surrounded by a white wall. He entered through a side door. As for me, I flew over the main gate, which bore a sign that read: “Lychee Grove Earth Court.”
An earth court. That meant the Lady was a land-dwelling spirit – a powerful and wealthy one, to judge by the size of this garden. Its layout reminded me of the ones in Cassius’ capital, with lakes and arched bridges and covered galleries and full-moon doorways set in white walls. Pink lotuses bloomed in the ponds, while willow trees trailed their branches into the jade-green water. The garden extended for as far as I could see, with no hint of a mansion in sight.
Increasingly curious about this “Lady,” I kept following the Under Steward. Eventually, he entered a plain wooden pavilion, where he reported to an older man who wore an even fancier embroidered jacket. (I spied on them through a window with a white ceramic lattice of leaves and sprays of lychee fruit. The people of Lychee Grove really did love their lychees.)
More servants in green and gold arranged the fruit on a lacquered tray, and the Steward himself carried it still deeper into the garden. Ah, here were people knew the proper, formal way of doing things!
But what kind of spirit ruled here?
I got my answer soon enough, when we came to an ancient lychee tree at the heart of the garden. A graceful pavilion with windows overlooking the lotuses nestled up against it. Inside, in a carved rosewood chair, reclined a spirit in a human woman form. Pale green and pink silk robes and filmy silver scarves fluttered about her in a constant breeze.
I knew what she was even before the Steward knelt, bowed his head, and raised the tray with both hands.
“My Lady of the Lychee Tree, these are fruits you wished to see.”