The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 92: Taila's Most Tangled Logic

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.

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....