As with all good moods, it didn't last.
I had my schoolhouse and eager students (or, to be more precise, eager parents of future students), yes, but no schoolteacher and hence no school fees.
Also, in my opinion, Stripey was over-zealous about reminding me at every taskforce meeting of the ever-increasing amount we owed the duck demons. I got the point already: After a while, compound interest added up. I didn't need a weekly personal-finance lesson.
And Bobo wasn't helping either. "It's the beginning of the Dragon Moon already. It's almossst time for the Meeting of the Dragon Hossst. Where are Den and Floridiana? Why aren't they back yet?" she kept fretting. "Den'll be late. He can't be late!"
He'll be back in time, I assured her. I'm sure they'll be back any day now. Maybe even later today!
But her anxiety was infectious. As the days rushed towards summer, I found myself glancing at Persimmon Tree Lane over and over, hoping to catch a glimpse of a dragon and a mage approaching Honeysuckle Croft. In fact, sometimes I hoped so hard that I saw figures in the shadows and the dust that weren't there at all.
Hallucinations. Now I was hallucinating. What was Bobo doing to me? And where in the world were Den and Floridiana?!
Meanwhile, in the Jade Mountain Wilds:
Plink. Plink. Plink.
A handful of acorns glanced off Den's scales. He barely felt them. He flung his arms wide, opened his jaws as far as they would go, and bellowed, "WINDS! TO ME!"
At once, crisp mountain breezes gushed out of every nook and cranny along the Fog River. They whirled and roared around him, demanding to know who his enemies were so they could destroy them.
"GO!"
Swinging his hands forward, Den shoved. The winds slammed into a pair of rock macaque demons, knocking them out of their aspen. Down they tumbled, right onto the pottery crocks hidden beneath the dwarf bamboo.
The crocks shattered, releasing photinia blossom smoke. The winds swirled it across the mountainside. All the rock macaque demons in range began to clutch at their throats and claw at their nostrils. One by one, they dropped out of the trees, landing on and breaking more crocks that released even more smoke. Choking, gasping gurgles filled the forest.
The yellowish smoke enveloped Den himself. He felt it slide along his scales, groping for openings to seep through to pollute his body, but the vermillion seal stamp on his snout glowed and burned it away.
He pumped a fist in the air. "Yeah! All right!"
"It worked!" yelled Floridiana.
With a stamp on her nose to protect her from the smoke too, she ran around the protective perimeter she had laid down with her stamps, checking that none of them had gotten scuffed out or damaged in the fight. It wouldn't do to have that wild boar demon eat all the rock macaques. She and Den had plans for them.
"All good!" she called triumphantly, and Den threw back his head.
"CHAAAAARGE!"
Ah, that felt good!
Side by side, he and Floridiana bounded up the mountainside, rushing for the ledge where a large rock macaque demon was jumping up and down in fury.
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...
