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.

Acting as if she hadn’t just run into an evil miasma, Taila plopped down next to the hearth and dropped me into the reeds. I sank all the way past the filthy top layer into – the spilled food and ale, old vomit, stale urine, and pig and chicken manure that had collected underneath. I did throw up then.

Aurelia owed me big time, I thought. Big, big time.

The whole mess kept shifting around underfoot, but I grimly fought my way up and stuck my head back out of the reeds. Taila had dropped me near the fire, over which Mistress Jek had already put a battered black cauldron, probably to boil rice to death. Along one wall, frayed baskets bulged with root vegetables and wizened wild apples. I didn’t see anything that either was or could hold fresh or preserved meat, which was perplexing since there were farm animals right there.

Meanwhile, humming tunelessly, Taila was crawling around under the single crude table in the cottage. She re-emerged with two acorn cups and a splintery disk that one of her brothers must have whittled for her. Then she sat down cross-legged, flashing her bare legs again.

I winced. The Jeks really didn’t do much to teach their daughter proper etiquette, did they? I knew they had to grow crops and do other sorts of farming stuff and didn’t have as much time for social niceties as aristocrats, but still!

Setting one acorn cup in front of me, Taila sing-songed, “Here’s a cup for yooou, Mr. Turtle. Here’s a cup for meeee. And here’s a plate of mooncakes fit for a queeeen….”

She put the wooden disk between us and mimed serving something from it. Midway through, she popped up and leaned over the fire to peer into the pot.

No! I screamed before I realized it.

“Eeeek!” she shrieked, losing her balance and toppling towards the flames.

My heart stopped – but she tottered and caught herself and dropped into a squat to gawk at me.

“Didja talk? Are you a talking turtle?” she demanded.

Curses. What should I do now? I’d been planning to pretend to be a normal turtle that just happened to hang out in her yard all the time. But before I had to answer, Mistress Jek came sprinting into the cottage.

“Taila! Taila! Are you all right – ” Her panicked voice cut off when she saw her daughter right next to the open fire. Fear manifested as anger. “Taila! How many times do I have to tell you not to get close to the fire!”

Over the girl’s babbling about “Mr. Turtle” and “He talks!” Mistress Jek hauled her daughter away from the hearth (nearly crushing me in the process), gave her a hard spanking, and then shoved the wailing girl outdoors.

I crept after them, making sure to stay out of sight.

“You stay RIGHT HERE. Yer in time-out,” Mistress Jek snapped, stabbing one stubby finger at a spot next to the door. “Do NOT go anywhere until I say you can leave.”

Gods, what a violent mother! Was this how people taught children these days? I was pretty sure no one had ever raised a hand to Cassius’ children, no matter how insufferable they were.

Maybe someone should have.

After Mistress Jek had stormed back to whatever chore she’d been breaking her back over, and Taila had sobbed herself into silence and buried her head in her arms and knees, I lumbered up to inspect her for bruises. Aurelia and the Accountants shouldn’t hold maternal discipline against me, right?

I didn’t see any marks on her skin. Good.

Lifting her head so one eye peeked over a forearm, Taila studied me right back. “Mr. Turtle?” she asked hopefully. “Didja come back?”

I didn’t know if I were a male or female turtle, not that it made any difference, so I just bobbed my head.

“Yer a spirit,” she pronounced, sitting up straight. “Nailus told me aaaaall about spirits. They talk and they live foreeeeeever.”

Well, that was one way of describing spirits. And even though I wasn’t one, it was a useful misunderstanding. I bobbed my head again.

Her face lit up. “Say somethin’! Why aren’cha talking, Mr. Turtle?”

Eh, it couldn’t hurt, I supposed. Hello, Jek Taila, I said gravely.

“You talked!” she squealed. “You talked you talked you talked!”

Well, yes. I didn’t see what the big deal was. By her definition, a spirit should talk.

“Say somethin’ else!”

Wow, what a ill-mannered child. Cassia Quarta hadn’t been nearly this bad. I was not a toy. And Taila needed to learn proper respect for spirits, which would have the extra benefit of preventing her from venturing too close to Lord Silurus’s lair this life. Yes. She needed a good lesson. Mouth shut, I cocked my head all the way to a side and fixed my eyes on hers.

“Say somethin’ say somethin’ say somethin’ NOW!”

She was well on her way to a temper tantrum now. Where was her mother? Why wasn’t Mistress Jek coming back to control her offspring?

“You hafta say somethin’, Mr. Turtle!”

No, no, I really didn’t. I got pushed around all the time – by Lady Fate, by the Jade Emperor, by Flicker, Glitter, Cassius, even Taila’s ex-mother. I refused to submit to a scrawny four-year-old brat too. Turning my back on her, I struck out across the yard for the vegetable patch.

“Noooooooooo! Nooooooo! Come back! Come back right now, Mr. Turtle!” When she ran out of novel commands, they morphed into incoherent howling.

Gods, now I understood why Mistress Jek wasn’t coming back. I wouldn’t either, if it weren’t for my oath to Aurelia. The goddess owed me big time. She owed me big, huge, gigantic, colossal time. And I had every intention of collecting.

Huddling under a spoon cabbage, I pulled my head and legs into my shell and tried to block out the screaming.

Into this wonderful, heartwarming scene minced a bright green snake. From the way its path twisted and curved, it seemed to be trying its hardest to stay out of the sunlight. At the sight of Taila, it stopped, as if it were debating whether to run away right now. I empathized completely.

Its spine stiffened, and it moved forward with determination. “Good mornin’, Miss Taila,” it said, its voice nearly drowned out by the tantrum.

Oh wonderful, it was that drunken bamboo viper spirit from last night. Unsurprisingly, she was nursing a horrendous hangover.

I had no idea how Taila heard the greeting, but her screaming morphed into a wail of “Bobo! Bobo Bobo Bobo!”

The viper hissed a sigh and pressed the tip of her tail to her head. “What’s the matter, Taila?” she asked in a soothing tone.

“Mr. Turtle’s bein’ meeeeeeean!” Acting like a miniature version of her mother, the brat scrambled to her feet and stabbed a finger in my direction.

I backed away between the spoon cabbages, but it was too late. Bobo had already spotted me. Well, at least oracle-shell turtles all looked the same and the viper had drunk enough to kill a human last night.

“Wait…. Rosssie?” she exclaimed, shocked. “Is that you?”

Ah, curses. I should have gotten her drunker. Dropping to the ground, I feigned sleep. Someone who regularly attended all-night parties should be able to understand that.

She didn’t take the hint. Scales rustled as Bobo slithered over and examined my shell pattern. “It is you! Rosssie!”

She sounded thrilled. Well, that made one of us. Good for her.

“Hey, Rosssie? What are you – oh. Oops. She’s sssleeping.” She backed away, marginally more quietly.

Forgetting about her mother’s injunction to stay in time-out, Taila scrambled over. “Bobo, why d’you keep callin’ him Rosie? His name’s Mr. Turtle.”

“It is?” asked the viper’s puzzled voice. “But I met her last night and she sssaid her name is Rosssie.”

It was Mistress Jek, of all people, who saved me. “BOBO!” she bellowed from around the corner. “YER LATE!”

Bobo winced and pressed her tail to her head again. “I’m sssorry, Mistress Jek!” she called back. “I’ll be right there! Taila,” she urged, “I have to go help your mama. Be a good girl and don’t get into trouble. You can tell me more about the turtle later.”

“O-kaaay.” Pouting, Taila threw herself back down in the dirt, pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and propped her chin on her kneecaps. Then she stared at me, waiting for me to “wake up.”

Oh boy. It was going to be a long day. I really wasn’t cut out for babysitting. I couldn’t wait for the next party in Caltrop Pond.