After that, there was no reason to hide from the rest of the Jeks. Even if Nailus could have kept a secret, Taila certainly could not have, and Bobo would have given it away simply by trying her hardest not to. So, at the end of the afternoon, the four of us trooped back to Honeysuckle Croft – to find Mistress Jek waiting at the gate with her hands on her hips.

Ah, the memories. Riding on a loop of Bobo’s coils, I sighed in contentment.

“JEK NAILUS! JEK TAILA! WHERE IN THE NAME OF ALL THE STARS HAVE YOU BEEN?”

Yep, and there was the volume I remembered.

Mistress Jek scowled ferociously at Bobo, who shrank back. “WHERE DID THEY GET TO THIS TIME?”

Before Bobo could answer, Taila pattered up to her mother, twirled, and waved an arm at me. In the gesture, I could see echoes of the graceful dance motions I’d once drilled into her. “Mama, Mama, Mr. Turtle’s back!”

Mistress Jek only glanced at me before redirecting her glare to her daughter. “That is NOT a turtle, Taila. How many times do I need to tell you to STOP making things up?”

Uncowed, Taila clenched both fists. “I’m not making things up! Mr. Turtle is Mr. Sparrow now!”

Before she could get into even more trouble, I confirmed, Yes, it is I. I have returned.

Mistress Jek’s reaction was not exactly one of joyous welcome.

She gasped, grabbed Taila’s shoulders, and thrust the girl behind her. Then she reached out, seized Nailus’ arm, and was about to do the same with him when I protested, What? I’m not going to eat them! I thought we went through all that already!

Mistress Jek finished shoving her son behind her back and clenched her fists, the exact same way Taila had, ready for battle. Over what, I could not imagine.

Landing on Bobo’s head, I peered down into her eyes, but her upside-down face looked bewildered. I cocked my head to a side.

What’s going on? Is there a threat I’m not aware of?

“Yes, there’s a THREAT! ‘Those whom the gods love, die young.’ What does Heaven want with my family NOW?”

Ooooh, was that it? Mistress Jek thought that some god or goddess had decided to meddle in their lives again? I did agree with that saying, although I’d personally have amended it to: “Those whom the gods touch, die young.”

Or before their time, anyway. Grrr.

I waved my wings in a placating gesture. No, no, this is not an official visit. I just wanted to check up on everyone, see how all of you are doing.

Although Mistress Jek didn’t relax, she did let the children poke their heads out to watch our showdown. “Why? Why now? Why not earlier? D’you know – she cried her eyes out when those idiot monkeys said you got eaten!”

At the memory, Taila’s mouth started to open in a howl.

“But ssshe wasssn’t!” Bobo slithered forward hastily. “Taila! Lisssten to me! The Heavenly Messsenger was right. Rosssie jussst went back to Heaven!”

(Well, actually, all of them were right, but now didn’t seem to be the time to go into detail about my ignominious death and reincarnation. Plural.)

Folding her work-muscled arms across her aproned chest, Mistress Jek gave me a long, hard look. “So I ask you again: Why are you back now?”

Because it had taken me this many lives and this many deaths to make it back?

I was reassigned to the Kingdom of South Serica. This was my first opportunity to return.

That made it sound like I was carrying out another important mission on behalf of Heaven, one that had kept me too busy for personal social visits. It certainly sounded better than: “Because Lychee Grove is too far away and I kept dying on my way back. And then I tried to stay there and help people, but I made a giant mess and they threw me out so I ran away.”

Oh. That was right. I had run away, hadn’t I?

From Lodia and Katu, whom I’d promised to help. From my own plans to exploit, er, utilize Anthea’s connection to the Director of Reincarnation.

While I pondered my motives for coming home, Bobo told the Mistress Jek, “Ssshe has all sssorts of ex-sssiting ssstories about the sssouth! They build their houssses on ssstilts. Over the river! And they have whole orchards of thessse fruits that usssed to be sssent to the Emperor, ex-sssept they have ssso many, they jussst sssell them in the marketplace!”

“And they’ve got these animals that are covered all over in scales like pinecones!” Nailus added. “That hit each other with their tails!”

“Animals like…pinecones?” Mistress Jek blinked, failing to picture a pangolin. I couldn’t blame her. I wondered if Floridiana’s favorite book had a drawing, although it was probably all wrong anyway.

Out of nowhere, Taila declared, “I want to go to the south toooo!”

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“No!” Mistress Jek and I said in unison.

“You have school, young lady,” her mother continued. And, to both of her children: “Have you finished your homework?”

Downcast gazes and scuffing toes provided a definitive answer to that question.

“No supper until you finish. Now, Bobo. Have you put on the rice to boil?”

That was surely a rhetorical question, because she had to have seen already that the cottage was dark and the hearth cold.

“No, Missstress Jek. I’ll go do it right now!” Off Bobo slithered, around the corner to the woodpile.

Oh! Rice! Right! I’d been wanting to compare the rice here to that in Lychee Grove. I started to follow her, to sample the rice, but Mistress Jek put out a hand and blocked my flight path.

“Not so fast, Emissary.” (There’d been a time when she’d imbued that title with reverence. My reputation had really taken a beating while I was away, hadn’t it? It must have been the whole getting-eaten-by-a-demon thing. That hadn’t been the most impressive way to go.) “Where did you take the kids all afternoon?”

Where did I take the kids? It was more like where they had taken me!

Since her hand was still out, in what even she must have realized was a purely symbolic blockade, I landed on it. We toured Lord Magnissimus’ pig farm, and I taught them a geography lesson for their test tomorrow.

At that, Mistress Jek finally relaxed. She flung up her free arm. “The pig farm! Always the pig farm! As if they had any interest in helping with our pig back when we kept one!”

Keeping up a stream of complaints, she stomped back towards the cottage. But since she didn’t try to knock me off her hand, I figured we were all right.

Oh, and the rice in Lychee Grove was objectively higher quality, but I preferred the Claymouth variety anyway.

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

The next day, Floridiana sat alone in the schoolroom after class. She was struggling to make sense of her students’ geography tests.

The children who usually failed them had scrawled misshapen blobs to represent South Serica and invented names and locations for cities. That came as no surprise.

But what did shock her were the maps that Jek Nailus and Jek Taila had produced. They had both drawn very precise borders – omitting the entire western portion of the kingdom. And the only city they’d bothered to label was Lychee Grove. Plus, on the sides of their wax tablets, they’d sketched pinecones with eyes. Nailus had even drawn two of them beating each other with clubs that grew out of their bottoms.

She was so concerned that she’d kept their tablets to show their mother. As she rubbed her temples and wondered what in the name of the Hundred Stars was going on with those two children this time, heavy footsteps approached. A voice asked, “Flori. All of the students have paid their fees for the quarter, but I don’t see the Baron’s grant. Has he said anything to you?”

It was just the person she needed to see.

While Floridiana focused on the academic aspects of the school, Vanny handled the administrative side. Despite being functionally illiterate, she’d cobbled together her own notation system of official characters and invented symbols. Her idiosyncratic writing system would be an issue in the future, when they expanded the academy and hired more administrators, but for now it worked. They had their hands full with the “for now” anyway, a large part of which involved making sure that all the money arrived on time.

Floridiana rubbed her temples some more. “The Baron hasn’t said anything to me either. I’ll speak to Anasius tomorrow.”

The seneschal had better have a good reason for why the promised grant was two-and-a-half months late. It had better not be because he and the Baron were diverting educational funds to other purposes, either. Paving all the roads in the ever-expanding barony was well and good, but it didn’t have to happen at once, whereas the children needed to learn right now.

Speaking of learning….

“Actually, there’s something else I want to talk to you about.” Floridiana brought out the wax tablets and placed them on her desk, side by side. Then she carefully took A Mage’s Guide to Serica off the highest bookshelf – out of reach of even the tallest students – and opened it to the map of South Serica. She laid the book next to the tablets for comparison. “These are Nailus’ and Taila’s geography tests.”

Vanny looked between the tablets and the book. Her face clouded over.

Floridiana continued, “I am concerned that the maps they drew look almost identical to each other, but are so different from what I taught them. They sit in different groups too, so they couldn’t have cheated.” With a fingertip, she traced the western borders on the tests. “Look, they were supposed to memorize the locations of all the major cities, but they didn’t label a single one. The only place they marked was Lychee Grove, which isn’t even a city. It’s a town, at best. And what are these creatures – pinecone spirits?”

Vanny smacked herself on the forehead. “I am so, so sorry, Flori. I should have told you this morning, but there was so much to do, and it slipped my mind.” Floridiana was already getting a very bad feeling when her friend leaned across the desk and hissed, “She’s back.”

“She?” For a moment, Floridiana’s mind went blank. Then – “No! You can’t mean – !” And she lowered her voice to a whisper too. “Her?”

Vanny nodded and sat back, folding her arms across her chest. In a normal volume, she said, “And what do you know, she just happens to have been in South Serica, so she comes back with tons of stories about a place called ‘Lychee Grove.’ Those ‘pinecone spirits’ aren’t pinecones at all. They’re some bizarre animal they have down there.”

“Wait, wait, wait, go back to the beginning. She showed back up and you let her in?”

Hadn’t the taskforce fulfilled their mission? Hadn’t they killed Lord Silurus? Hadn’t they finally gotten rid of The Demon?

Vanny met her eyes. “D’you think I’m any happier about it? But she did avenge Maila, didn’t she? Couldn’t turn her away now, could I?”

“It was all of us who killed Lord Silurus and avenged Maila and made Black Sand Creek safe for everyone. Or, if you want to pick one person to credit, it was King Yulus.”

Vanny’s shrug showed that while she didn’t disagree with Floridiana’s logic, she still felt obligated to The Demon. Enough to let her back into the children’s lives and wreck all the lessons that Floridiana had spent so much time planning and drilling into their heads.

Her eyes fell on the pair of wax tablets. She threw up her arms. “South Serica! Of course it had to be South Serica! Why am I not surprised?!”

“Do you want to…come to dinner tonight? To hear her stories?”

Vanny’s voice was hesitant, and Floridiana knew why. She had to admit that settling down in the Claymouth Barony had worked wonders for both her standard of living and social status, but sometimes she still stood in the doorway of the schoolhouse and gazed down the road and ached to follow it beyond where the paving stones ended. Vanny knew that too, although they didn’t discuss it.

The mother in Vanny, Floridiana thought, worried that if the mage ever gave the matter serious thought, she might discard the life she’d built here and go back on the road. And then who would teach the children of the barony?

In light of that worry, the invitation to hear travel tales was a kind thought, completely undeserving of the roil of bitterness that it triggered. What right did The Demon have to map out Floridiana’s life for her, so smugly confident that she knew best – and to be correct? What right did The Demon have to then go off on her own adventures? In South Serica, where Floridiana had never been, no less!

Floridiana nearly turned down the invitation, but in the end, curiosity won out. “I’d love to come to dinner,” she said.