It wasn’t until sparrow-brain was taking me over a lychee orchard that Piri-brain recognized the “Enchantress’ Smile” variety and wrested back control. I crash-landed on a branch, right above a cluster of fruit.

That had not gone well. That had not gone well at all. I had tried telling the truth for once, and look what happened. And people made such a big fuss over how “honesty is the best policy,” blah blah blah, too! I was never telling the truth again!

Pacing back and forth, with the lychees that had been named after me bobbing beneath my claws, I fought to calm myself. My plan to access the Kitchen God via Lodia and Anthea was over. It was as ripped and destroyed as the embroidery on Lodia’s mirror cover. So what did I want to do next?

Go home to Honeysuckle Croft.

The answer popped up as if it had been waiting at the back of my mind the whole time. And why shouldn’t it have been? Going home to Honeysuckle Croft was what I’d wanted to do from the start. It was Flicker who’d convinced me otherwise.

I stopped pacing. Why not try going home once more? I’d kept my promise to him. I’d given Lychee Grove a fair chance – it wasn’t my fault that Lychee Grove itself had so categorically rejected my efforts to improve it. And I’d learned my lesson from four previous failed attempts to fly home. This time, I would watch out for hungry hawks, farm cats, and farmgirls, and I wouldn’t cut straight through the Snowy Mountains either. No, this time I would head to the coast and then turn north. There had to be fishing villages and port towns where I could find food.

All right. I was decided. Checking the direction of the shadows, I took off from the branch and began to fly east.

Behind me, the Enchantress’ Smile lychees danced.

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In the Claymouth Barony:

Bobo sighed. Given that she was a snake, she could sigh very dramatically. Her thin, forked tongue darted out of her mouth and fluttered like a ribbon in high wind.

“Pleeeeeeease, Bobo? Please please please don’t tell Mama?”

Little Taila had both hands clasped before her chest. Wearing her most dimpled smile, she was projecting the most adorable innocence you could imagine. Next to her, Nailus imitated her pose. He might have pulled it off better if he hadn’t been streaked with pigsty gunk.

Bobo sighed again. She’d just done the wash yesterday too. And since the children only had one good tunic each for school, she knew what she’d be doing again this afternoon.

“You were sssuposssed to be ssstudying for your geography tessst. Both of you. You promisssed to ssstay here and ssstudy. Why did you sssneak out?”

She’d known it was a risk, trusting them to stay here while she rushed into town to buy a new wooden spatula, but the two had promised so earnestly not to set one foot past the fence post!

“But we didn’t sneak out!” Now Taila radiated injured outrage, while Nailus watched his little sister, trusting her to talk their way out of trouble. “Uncle Maggy came by to ask if we wanted to see how big his piglets got! Also, we never set one foot past the fence post.”

Another long, fluttering sigh. Bobo already knew she was in for more Taila-logic.

“We climbed over the fence onto Uncle Maggy’s back, and then he gave us a ride to his farm! So we never stepped past the fence post!”

Bobo closed her eyes. She had no idea how to answer that. Taila was right that the children hadn’t broken their literal promise. They hadn’t snuck out because a trusted grown-up had picked them up, and they hadn’t stepped past the fence post because they’d climbed over it….

“But you promisssed to ssstudy,” she said feebly. “Are you done ssstudying?”

“No, but Uncle Maggy said all we have to do is finish studying before the test starts. The test is tomorrow. So we have until tomorrow!”

Again, Taila was technically correct…but something still felt wrong about that logic. Bobo tried again. “But you have to sssleep tonight. And it will be too dark to ssstudy after the sssun goes down.”

“Don’t worry, Bobo!” Now that the battle was nearly won, Nailus spoke up. “It’s just geography. It’s easy. We’ll ace it. Just watch!”

“Uh huh, uh huh, we’ll ace it!” Taila nodded energetically. Then her voice turned wheedling again. “Sooooooo, if we ace it, you won’t tell Mama that we went to see Uncle Maggy’s pigs, right? Right? Riiiiiight???”

For the ten-thousandth time since this conversation began, Bobo wished that Rosie were here. Of course, you couldn’t expect an Emissary from Heaven to stay forever on a little farm in what had been a backwater barony (Bobo had overheard the children quizzing each other on Floridiana’s geography lessons, so she now had a sense of where her home fit into the Kingdom of East Serica). But she’d enjoyed Rosie’s company. They’d been friends. She missed her friend.

She missed both her friends.

For several months after Stripey’s…death, his absence had been an unbearable hole in Bobo’s life. She’d asked herself over and over what she could have done differently. What if she’d gone to fight too? What if she’d been there when Lord Silurus breached the surface?

Realistically, she knew that it wouldn’t have made any difference. She simply wasn’t powerful enough. She’d awakened only twenty-two years ago, a mere babe of a spirit. But still. But still.

Stripey had been the last thing she thought about every night before she fell asleep, and the first thing she thought of every morning when she woke up. It might have helped if Rosie had been around so they could share their grief, but the turtle had vanished after the battle.

Bobo was still uncertain what had happened to her. Dozens of rock macaques claimed that they’d watched Lord Silurus eat her, but the Heavenly Messenger had grumbled about “meeting her up there,” so the taskforce had interpreted it as Rosie escaping death and returning straight to Heaven. “I’m sure she has her ways,” Floridiana had told Den, but neither of them had explained what that meant to Bobo.

“Bobo, Bobo, you won’t tell Mama, riiiiiight?”

Taila’s whine broke through Bobo’s thoughts. She shook her head to clear it, and then shook it again in answer. “I won’t tell her if you ace your tessst.”

“Yippee!” Nailus shouted, flinging his arms into the air.

“You’re the best!” Taila flung hers around Bobo. “C’mon, Nailus, betcha I get there first!”

As the two tore off down the road, Bobo slithered after them, calling, “Wait! Come back! Where are you going? You’re sssuposssed to be ssstudying!”

“We’ll study later!”

And the two disappeared into the distance, leaving her sighing behind them. A sparrow landed on the fence post and cocked its head at her in commiseration.

“I know, I know,” Bobo told it. “They’re kids. They have lots of energy.”

She was about to go back to scrubbing the floor when the sparrow cocked its head the other way and spoke.

That is no excuse for letting them run wild.

The top half of Bobo’s body whirled. “Rosssie?!”

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Week after week, I watched the landscape beneath my wings grow more familiar. The leaves shrank; their shocking greens calmed down. The rice paddies stopped looking quite so exuberant. Even though sparrows weren’t songbirds, I found myself twittering happy, toneless chirps as I flew.

And then, one fine sunny day, all my efforts were rewarded. I came to Black Sand Creek.

It was the first time I’d gotten a bird’s-eye view of it. It wasn’t so wide after all, and it flowed lazily across the landscape. A rowboat moved in fits and starts along the bank, a human father and daughter checking their eel traps. Upriver, a group of human children and cat spirits dove whooping into the water.

Was one of them Taila? Or any of her brothers? Did I know the cats?

I dipped lower, and indeed, I recognized a cat spirit who sat on the bank, laying back her ears while a little boy splashed water drops all over her face and chest. It was Bell, that fierce, paw-happy black cat who smacked the other cats around. She opened her yellow eyes, curled her tail around her legs, and stared at one of the cats in the water.

Oh! It was Pepper! Master Gravitas’ mortal daughter! She was purring like a grindstone and batting at one of the human children.

But none of the human children were Jeks.

On I flew, over Persimmon Tree Lane. The dirt road looked a lot smoother than it used to. Someone had filled in the wheel ruts, so now carts wouldn’t get stuck in the mud quite as easily. Even the nameless little path to Honeysuckle Croft had been widened and straightened. And – oh hey! That was a new fence! With honeysuckle creepers winding up the posts! And someone had even carved a wooden sign that read “Honeysuckle Croft” to hang on the gate! On the far side of the vegetable garden – and it was definitely a garden now, no longer a patch – a human boy and a girl were arguing with a bright green snake.

Bobo!

Right when I reached the new fence, the children came tearing out of the yard, the wind from their passage buffeting me. Before they charged past, I caught a glimpse of familiar pigtails bouncing around unfamiliar features.

Taila? Was it Taila? But her face! It wasn’t so round anymore! And her height! She’d grown!

Also, she could not run so fast the last time I saw her!

Bobo came slithering up to the gate, wailing, “Wait! Come back! Where are you going? You’re sssuposssed to be ssstudying!”

Why did it not surprise me that the adults still could not contain Jek Taila?

Alighting on a fencepost, I tipped my head to a side and examined Bobo. Did she look any different? Was she a little longer? Plumper? Her scales gleamed more brightly in the afternoon sunshine.

She noticed me watching her and defended herself, “I know, I know. They’re kids. They have lots of energy.”

Yeah, about that.

I couldn’t purse my beak, but there was plenty of disapproval in my voice when I scolded, That is no excuse for letting them run wild.

Oh. Hmm. In all the times I’d pictured returning to Honeysuckle Croft and seeing everyone again, I had not imagined those as my first words to her.

That is to say, I mean –

But Bobo didn’t give me a chance to finish. “Rosssie?” she gasped. One second she was by the gate, the next, she was right up in my face, her eyes shining in that way I remembered so well. “Rosssie? Is that really you???”

I fluffed my feathers. Yes. It is I. I have returned.

Oh, hang on a moment. I hadn’t concocted a cover story for why the turtle Emissary from Heaven had been dispatched to Earth once more, as a sparrow, no less.

Bright green coils looped around me and yanked me off the fence for a squeeze. “Rosssie! Rosssie! It’s you! It’s you! It’s really you!”

Yes, it is – hey, can you – not so tight – !

“I knew you’d come back! I knew it, I knew it! They all sssaid there was no way Heaven would sssend you back here, but I told them not even the Jade Emperor could keep you away!”

There was, in fact, more truth to that statement than she’d ever know. I’d appreciate the irony more if I could breathe, though.

Wrenching one wing free, I whacked her side. Can’t breathe!

“Oh! Oops! Sssorry, sssorry!”

Her coils loosened so quickly that I fell six inches before she caught me again, more gently this time.

She lifted me to eye level, and I put out a wing and patted her on the head. It’s good to see you too. So tell me, how is everyone –

All of a sudden, I remembered the two children who’d gone tearing past a few minutes earlier.

Wait, wait, that can wait. Where did Taila run off to? We have to bring her back!

“Oh, no, don’t worry. I know where ssshe is. Ssshe always goes to the sssame place. Ssshe’s sssafe there.”

Oh, really? And where is this “safe place”?

“The pig farm.”

The…pig farm?

“Uh huh. Lord Magnissimus’ pig farm.”

What???