"Hey! Long time no sssee! I didn't know you were coming tonight!"
"Yeah, well, you know, work. Finally got some time off."
When I got back to Caltrop Pond for a long, relaxing, well-earned soak, I found a pair of spirits chattering away on one of the rocks. The first was a bamboo viper, a type of blindingly bright green snake that lived in – what else? – bamboo forests. The second was a whistling duck.
"Work, huh...?" asked the bamboo viper in a meaningful tone.
The whistling duck flipped his wings in a shrug. "You know how it is. Travelers need robbin'."
"Uh huh...." The bamboo viper pointed her tail at a glass bottle next to his webbed feet. "Watcha bring tonight?"
At the question, the duck demon puffed up his chest and spread his wings. "This, my friend, is a delicacy the likes of which you've never tasted! The finest apple brandy, imported at great expense and risk to life and limb from North Serica!" Then he folded his wings and settled back down. "At least, that's what the merchant we got it from claimed. He might have been trying to convince us not to kill him, though. Anyway, how about you? What'd you bring?"
The bamboo viper, I now noticed, also had a bottle looped inside her coils. "Ah, this? Just ale from Mistress Shay's latest batch. She always gives me sssome as thanks for eating her rat problem."
"Ah." The duck demon was clearly unimpressed by Mistress Shay's brewing skills. "Well, His Majesty will like that."
She rolled her eyes. "His Majesty likes anything alcohol."
With a chuckle, the duck demon bowed and swept out a wing dramatically. "Then we shouldn't keep him waiting, should we? After you, milady."
Clutching their alcoholic offerings, the two dove into the water.
Curious, I lumbered onto the rock and stuck my head over the edge, peering after them. Sure enough, the bottom of the pond blazed with light, turning the caltrop rosettes as translucent as good jade. A flourish of notes from a flute startled me, nearly making me lose my balance. A recorder joined in, then a lute, and then a whole orchestra of instruments I couldn't identify. Together, they soared up and up and up in a crescendo until, right at the peak, a drum boomed and cut them all off.
Silence, for the space of one breath.
Then the music crashed back to the accompaniment of drunken cheers, and the melody was drowned out by a pounding beat that vibrated through my shell and made me itch to dance. Jumping into the water, I swam straight to the water court entrance. Here the drums were deafening, and the whole tunnel was lit by blinding rushlights. Shouts and laughter poured out of the audience chamber, which was packed with bobbing, swaying, dancing spirits.
I ached to join them. I loved dancing. And I hadn't attended a party, let alone a good party, in centuries. It wouldn't be wise...but judging from the smell, every guest had brought alcohol. I'd give them another ten minutes, just to play it safe. Then they'd all be too drunk to tell whether one partyer were a spirit or a really weird turtle.
Ten minutes. I could wait ten minutes.
While I swam in circles to kill time, I thought back to other parties I'd attended – and one in particular.
New Year's Eve in the palace in the City of Dawn Song, nearly five hundred years ago.
YOU ARE READING
The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox
FantasyAfter Piri the nine-tailed fox follows an order from Heaven to destroy a dynasty, she finds herself on trial in Heaven for that very act. Executed by the gods for the "crime," she is cast into the cycle of reincarnation, starting at the very bottom...
