As the wintry days passed, Honeysuckle Croft and its inhabitants started to edge towards presentability. And by presentable, I mean that they no longer bedded down with the livestock, ate with one boot propped on the bench, or butchered the Serican language quite so often. I hadn’t succeeded in getting them off the floor and into proper beds yet, but that was mostly because they lacked the supplies, the carpentry skills, and the money required to hire someone with aforementioned supplies and carpentry skills.

Still, overall, things were looking up for all of us – the Jeks because they no longer slouched along with their eyes on the ground, and me because just look at how much I was improving these humans’ lives! Think of all the karma I was earning! Reincarnee of the Decade, here I come!

As the New Year approached, I was feeling optimistic.

And not just because of my career in home improvement, but also because the Kitchen God was due to leave Earth on the twenty-third of the Bitter Moon, return to the Bureau of Reincarnation for a week, and make sure Cassius wasn’t trying to wrest power away from him. No matter how incompetent a bureau head the absentee Kitchen God was, I guaranteed that Cassius would be worse. He held a deep and personal grudge against me. As for the Kitchen God, well, I doubted that he was even aware of my existence. He was too busy flitting from kitchen to kitchen across the length and breadth of Serica, spying on families for his end-of-the-year report to Heaven and scrounging for offerings (a.k.a. bribes) from his worshippers. The zeal with which he tackled that portion of his responsibilities suggested that he wouldn’t have much power in Heaven otherwise.

Always good to have a supervisor who doesn’t bother to supervise you.

So anyway, I was in a good mood when that cat spirit carpenter, Master Gravitas, dropped by for a visit one morning. It wasn’t too long after dawn, so I was still dragging my exhausted, danced-out self across the fields from Caltrop Pond when I heard Taila’s squeal of delight.

“Uncle Tasy! Uncle Tasy!”

The cat’s voice drifted to me on the wind. “Hullo, Taila. Mornin’, Master Jek, Mistress Jek. Ailus, Cailus, Nailus.”

“Master Gravitas!” exclaimed Mistress Jek in the second-most respectful tone I’d heard from her. (First place went to the one she reserved for me and Flicker.) “What a pleasure to see you!”

At the polite phrasing, I nodded to myself in congratulations. Just look at what a good teacher I was!

Her next sentence partially spoiled the effect, though. “What brings you here so early in the mornin’?”

Ugh, sigh. I rolled my eyes. She was still dropping her “ing”s. We’d have to work on it more.

The cat, however, didn’t register her faux pas. In even worse Serican, he said, “I was hopin’ t’catch both o’ you afore Master Jek goes out t’check on the fields.”

“Oh, fer real?” asked Master Jek, who didn’t learn nearly as fast as his wife.

At the same time, Mistress Jek inquired, “What about?” Then, recalling her manners, she invited, “Won’t you come in, please? Have you eaten yet? You should have breakfast with us. Rice porridge and pickled greens. Ailus! Go get Master Gravitas an egg! Master Gravitas, how d’you like your eggs cooked?”

“Oh no no no, no need, I ate before comin’. I’ll just have some tea.”

Their voices moved indoors as I finally plodded to the edge of the yard. Circling around it, I found an angle that let me see through the doorway and make out their vague shapes inside the dark cottage. Then I hid in a clump of dead grasses so neither Master Gravitas nor Taila would catch sight of me. No amount of berating or biting had ever taught her not to introduce her turtle friend to everyone she met.

Wooden spoons clunked dully against wooden bowls as the Jeks and their guest ate their breakfast porridge. Over his protestations, Mistress Jek had forced a bowl on Master Gravitas and even topped it with a pocketbook egg. Taila was staring at it, googly-eyed.

“I heard from Mistress Shay that you built a chicken coop and a pigsty,” Master Gravitas was saying. “I was hopin’ to have a look-see.”

The elder Jeks exchanged nervous glances.

“Oh, haha, those!” Mistress Jek sounded too flustered to not be guilty of something. “They’re not very good…we just sorta threw them together…they’re really not worth seeing…. I’m sorry you came all the way out here for that!”

As for Master Jek, he raised his bowl to his mouth and slurped his porridge to hide his face. On the opposite bench, the boys were elbowing one another and peeking sidelong at their little sister.

Aww, curses. None of them possessed the slightest talent for dissembling. I needed to teach them how to act too.

“Oh, no, no,” Master Gravitas assured them, “the coop’s really interestin’! I got a bit o’ a look from the road, and the design’s different from what I’ve seen ‘round these parts. Actually, I din’t think people still built coops ‘round here.”

“Oh, haha, well, it’s because it’s not really a design, we just sorta made it up as we went….”

At that, Taila managed to drag her eyes away from the half-eaten egg long enough to meet the cat spirit’s gaze and announce in an earnest voice, “It’s because Mr. Turtle – ”

“Eggs!” broke in Mistress Jek desperately. “Why don’t we all have an egg to celebrate Master Gravitas visitin’? Go pick out an egg for yourselves, kids!”

Forgetting everything but their stomachs, the boys cheered and dove off the benches to hunt for the perfect egg. Taila stumbled after them, whining, “Heeeey! No fair! Wait for meeeeeee!”

I feared for the coop.

Although, come to think of it, it might not be a tragedy if the wretched thing collapsed before the carpenter got a good look. It had never occurred to me that chicken coops might have their region-dependent architectural styles. It was a box for hens to lay eggs in, for crying out loud! How many possible designs could there be?!

Apparently, too many.

If Mistress Jek had hoped to distract the kids from blurting out the family secret, she’d succeeded. If she’d hoped to prevent Master Gravitas from scrutinizing the design of the coop, however, she’d failed. Miserably.

“I’ll just go with the young’uns and help ‘em pick,” he said, rising from the bench and padding after the children.

As his tail swished around the doorframe, Master Jek hissed at his wife, “Whatcha go and say that for? You were practically beggin’ him to go look at it!”

She threw up her hands. “I freaked out, okay? It’s not like you were helpin’ any!”

“Well, what d’we do now?”

“You’re askin’ me?”

And they both scrambled after Master Gravitas. By the time they caught up, the children were fighting over who got first pick of the eggs, while the carpenter ambled around the coop, examining it from all angles. The tip of his tail twitched with curiosity as he ran his hands over the joins. Putting one palm on a corner, he pressed experimentally. The coop wobbled but held.

“That’s a good design,” he pronounced, and I smirked to myself.

Of course it was a good design. I’d come up with it, hadn’t I? I, of all people, knew my way around a chicken coop.

Master Gravitas started to stroll towards Master and Mistress Jek, but right at that moment, Cailus shouted in triumph and dashed right in front of him into the coop. The cat spirit made a near-vertical leap over the boy’s head to avoid crashing into him, landed lightly, and kept walking as if nothing had happened. “A little old-fashioned,” he remarked, “but good and solid.”

I grumbled a little to myself. Old-fashioned indeed! What was I – somebody’s creaky old spinster great-aunt?

“Gladja think so,” said Master Jek, not hiding his relief.

“You’re too kind,” Mistress Jek added, remembering what I’d taught them about good manners.

There were thrashing sounds off to the side, from the members of the Jek family who didn’t remember my lessons. Ailus and Nailus had teamed up to haul Cailus out of the coop by the legs. He slithered out on his belly, hands cupped protectively around an egg.

Mistress Jek opened her mouth to bellow at them, then gritted her teeth instead.

“How’dja come up with the design?” asked Master Gravitas, pretending not to notice the civil war raging next to him. “It reminds me a bit o’ how they build coops in the northwest.”

I froze. Of course it reminded him of chicken coops in the northwest. That was where I’d come from, long, long ago.

You might expect animals and humans to awaken with the same frequency everywhere on Earth, but that wasn’t the case. No one knew why, either. The Imperial Mages had had theories, of course, but since they ran the gamut from semi-probable to improbable to wildly improbable to obviously impossible, I’d ignored them. Apart from throwing funding at them when they groveled nicely enough.

Anyway, most spirits awakened in a few specific areas. The Jade Mountains along the northern coast were one, and the Snowy Mountains that ran down the western coast and roughly east-west through the middle of Serica were another. Since the mountains were also where demon kings and human bandits liked to hide out, and since newly awakened spirits didn’t have the best grasp of, shall we say, socially acceptable standards of behavior, we called those areas the Wilds. I’d awakened in the northwestern corner of Serica, more or less where the two mountain ranges met. After serving as a demon king’s courier and spy for a while, I’d decided to explore the settlements down on the plains.

Which was where I’d discovered chickens.

And chicken coops.

And chicken coop designs that were apparently specific to the region and a dead giveaway for my true identity –

Breathe, Piri. No one’s going to connect a weird turtle with a nine-tailed fox from five hundred years ago. No one except for Aurelia and Flicker know you’re here – and if Heaven finds out, the star goddess and the clerk will be in a lot more trouble than the soul they reincarnated.

It would be okay. Sucking in a deep breath, I forced myself to stop hyperventilating.

Meanwhile, Master and Mistress Jek weren’t handling Master Gravitas’ prying any better than I was.

“Oh, really?” asked Master Jek unconvincingly. “The northwest? That’s really interestin’!”

“Mmhmm,” agreed Master Gravitas. “You see the shape of the doorway? They do that in the northwest to keep foxes out.”

“Foxes?” asked Mistress Jek with genuine blankness. “Are foxes a problem for chickens?”

Wait – was the reason that I hadn’t seen any foxes around here that there literally weren’t any foxes around here? At all? But there should be! We lived everywhere!

“Mmhmm,” replied the cat. “Foxes steal chicken eggs and eat chickens. Not ‘round here, o’ course. The lords and ladies hunted ’em out. For fun, y’know, ‘cuz foxes are smart critters? But last time I was in the northwest, they still had a fox problem. Dem’d things come outta the Wilds.”

A shiver of rage went through me. How dare anyone hunt my brothers and sisters for “fun”!

Almost at once, the shiver of rage transformed into a cold shudder. Fox hunting had not been an aristocratic pastime back in the Empire. I mean, why would you do it? Why would you kill innocent creatures – okay, sometimes not-so-innocent creatures – for sport? What was the point? If you weren’t a demon, I meant? Had this part of Serica had also turned into the Wilds?

But no, that wasn’t the impression I’d gotten, and I’d spent enough lives in the vicinity of Black Sand Creek to tell. So that meant that sometime after the fall of the Empire, Sericans had begun to eliminate the fox population by casting it as fun and games.

Why foxes in particular? We had our rivalry with the raccoon dog spirits, of course, but also with the wolf spirits, who scorned the deer and serow spirits, who competed with the black bear and cloud leopard spirits, and so on. But no one group had ever considered eradicating another. Not seriously, anyway.

It couldn’t be my fault that Sericans hated foxes so much, could it?

No, no, of course not.

No one would be so dumb as to blame all foxes for one nine-tailed fox demon’s actions. That would be like wiping out all humans because Cassius had existed.

Modern-day Sericans were just weird. They wore weird clothing, lived in weird homes, spoke in weird ways, and had weird pastimes.

Well, I’d just have to fix that. One family at a time.

I turned my attention back to my current group of work-in-progress, modern-day Sericans in time to hear Master Gravitas praise them, “You did a good job here. The coop should hold. Lemme know if you wanna build anything else. I’m always happy to help out.”

After some pleasantries about the weather and the upcoming New Year festivities, and some praise for Mistress Jek’s cooking, Master Gravitas bade the family farewell and padded back down Persimmon Tree Lane.

I lumbered out of hiding to start Taila’s lessons, giving the chicken coop a wide berth.