The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 93: The Pig Farm

What do you mean, Lord Magnissimus' pig farm? What pig farm?

Now I was picturing a farm where the wild boar demon raised pigs to awaken so he could set them loose on the barony in just one hundred years. Bad enough that Den and Floridiana had brought so many demons out of the Wilds without any plan for sending them back – but now said demons were plotting to turn this fief into a new Wilds?!

Bobo, however, showed no hint of anxiety over the future of her home. "The pig farm Lord Magnisssimus ssstarted after the battle! It's doing very well." (Yes. Yes. I was sure it was.) "Mossst farmers don't even raissse their own pigs anymore, they jussst buy from him. He sssaid sssomething about 'economy of ssscale'?" She tipped her head to a side, waiting for me to explain the phrase.

I wasn't Stripey. I didn't know what it meant either, except that it didn't sound good. We have to save Taila and Nailus. He's going to eat them!

Before I'd finished speaking, I'd taken off and was flying down the path, in the direction the children had gone. As expected, Bobo followed and kept pace easily.

"Don't worry, Rosssie," she said, which only made me worry more. "He really likes kids."

He liked kids – or he liked eating kids? Their flesh was tender and succulent, and I knew he was all about eating tender, succulent flesh. Oh boy, did I know that!

Why'd you have to let them run off?

At the sharpness in my voice, Bobo hastened to defend the egregious lack of discipline around here these days. "They love visssiting him. He sssays Taila reminds him of himssself when he was jussst a sssqueaker."

An uncontrollable menace to everyone around him?

I'll believe it when I see it.

"Uh huh, uh huh, you'll sssee."

In no time at all, we were turning off the main road and approaching a jumble of pigsties set right up against the Baron's woodland. (Huh, actually, had the woodlands receded since the last time I saw them?) A dozen humans and spirits, mostly rock macaques, were hard at work laying stones to build more pigsties. Squealing – mostly pigs', but also Taila's – rang out from the far side.

"He's gotten so biiiig! He's so biiiig now!"

"Heeee will get biiiiger still," came the demon's rumble.

I left Bobo to slither through the maze of walls and flew straight over them. There sat a mountainous wild boar, towering over a swarm of young pigs that rooted about in the muck. On an unfinished wall perched two children, swinging their legs and tossing food scraps down to the pigs.

Taila chucked an apple core at one of them. It squealed and chomped it down in two bites. "How big will he get?"

"Biiiig enough for your whole faaaamily to have lots of poooork this winter. You'll like thaaaat, won't you? Lots of haaaam and saaaausages and sticky-rice blood caaaakes?"

"Yeah!" cheered Nailus, grabbing an entire basket of bruised peaches and plums and upending it.

The pigs squealed and snorted and snapped at one another, inhaling the scraps. It reminded me an awful lot of feeding koi in the palace ponds. Were pigs supposed to be this aggressive, or was it the demon's influence?

I opened my beak to ask – and hastily shut it again. I didn't want Lord Magnissimus knowing that I was back, in a different body no less. Who knew what a demon would do with that knowledge?