The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 30: Babysitting

While my turtle flesh was rehydrating, I thought long and hard about how to approach Mission Keep Taila Alive Enough to Satisfy Aurelia. The exact wording of my oath had been "I will do what I can to protect the human child Jek Taila," and Aurelia had defined "protecting" as keeping her from drowning, getting eaten by demons, or otherwise dying. With any luck, Taila wouldn't encounter incidents so life-threatening that a turtle couldn't avert them.

Anyway, if it proved too much for me, I'd just find a way to make her move away from Black Sand Creek. Or, in the last extremity, jump into the Jeks' stewpot and argue to Aurelia that I'd sacrificed myself to feed her daughter.

Yes, I liked my plan.

Satisfied, I pushed through the torn caltrop rosettes and clambered onto land. Time to go meet my little karma source!

"Ooooh! A tuuuuuurtle! Hi, Mr. Turtle!"

A fleshy blob, broken by one ginormous brown eye, filled my vision. The eye was sideways.

I was crouched under the spoon cabbages in the pathetic little vegetable patch, but the leaves were too withered to provide real cover. Taila had spotted my shell as soon as she followed her mother out of the cottage. She'd spun away from Mistress Jek and dashed over, leaving two more crushed spoon cabbages in her wake.

"Taila! Do not step on the vegetables!" came the roar, but Mistress Jek had been too busy to haul away her errant daughter.

Squatting so her tunic had hitched all the way up to her thighs and I could see her bare, dirty legs, Taila had turned her head ninety degrees and hunched over to peer at me. After a very long, very careful inspection, she'd drawn her conclusions about what I was. A natural philosopher in the making, our Taila.

"Mr. Turtle! Come play with me!"

Two filthy hands shot out, closing around my shell before I could back away, and then I was soaring up through the air to dangle over the cabbages. I found myself eye-to-eye with the peasant child who had once been a princess. I was too close to see her full face, but dirt caked a streak of rice porridge across one cheek that no one had wiped off. That, more than anything, repulsed me in a way I couldn't explain.

Recoiling, I waved my legs and snapped my jaws in what I thought was a clear "Put me down!" signal.

Taila, naturally, didn't take the hint. "Mr. Turtle!" she cried. The reek of her unbrushed, rotting teeth struck my nostrils, making me gag. "Are you hungry? Let's have a tea party!"

Ah, a play-pretend tea party. Sure. Why not? If Taila were sitting in the dirt serving me fake tea and fake food, at least she wasn't falling and hitting her head or burning down the cottage around herself. Also, it would get me away from her breath.

I bobbed my head.

"O-kay!" she cried.

Cassia Quarta had enjoyed pretending to cook too, I recalled. One time she'd "hosted" me when she was supposed to be memorizing the names of her illustrious forebears, so to encourage her, I'd ordered the servants to bring out the state banquet china and handed her the crown jewels to use as "pastries." When Cassius heard about it from an indignant Aurelia, he'd laughed.

Ah, good times.

Clutching me in one hand, this incarnation of Cassia Quarta charged into the cottage. The stench hit me so hard I nearly threw up. Honeysuckle Croft only had a narrow door and a tiny window for ventilation, so soot darkened the walls and ceiling and, oh gods, it smelled like manure. Must be the pig. And the chickens. I hadn't noticed the chickens last night, but one was clucking and laying an egg in a corner. And on top of that whole scene, smoke pressed down like an old comforter you'd use to smother an unwanted infant. Thanks to Taila's short stature, we were below the worst of it, but my throat and lungs started to ache at once. I gagged and coughed and gagged again. Being swung around sideways wasn't helping either.