Traveling with two spirits and a mage, I made much better time going south than I had flying north on my own. It was much more relaxing too, as I could ride on either Bobo’s head or the wagon seat next to Floridiana, while the baby horse spirit clip-clopped along.

And by “baby horse spirit,” I meant a glorious, golden stallion with lacquer-black legs who strutted like an emperor’s warhorse. It was a far cry from the scrawny, broken-down nag I’d seen in Yulus’ vision during my life as Mooncloud.

Hey, spirit, what’s your name? I made the mistake of asking him our first day on the road. In my defense, I was bored.

The horse tossed his mane and swished his tail, nearly sweeping the hairs into my and Floridiana’s eyes.

“Careful there,” she warned, as if she were lecturing an unruly student. “What did we talk about, Dusty?”

His tail stilled, but he informed her stiffly, “My name is no longer Dusty, mage. When I awakened, I was granted the awareness of my true identity as The Valiant Prince of the Victorious Whirlwind.”

“It’s an awesssome name!” agreed Bobo, who was slithering along next to the wagon.

The valiant prince of the victorious – whirlwind?

So…Dusty, I muttered, loud enough for Floridiana to hear, which was more than loud enough for the two spirits to hear.

“My name is not Dusty. I will not answer to that moniker. You will call me by my proper name, as befitting a true spirit.”

If that level of reverence were what he expected from life as spirit, he was about to get crushed by a mountain’s worth of disappointment. No one called me Flos Piri, not even the clerks up in Heaven. If I could resign myself to “Rosie” and “Mr. Turtle,” he could cursed well answer to “Dusty.”

At my unimpressed silence, he added, in the tones of one granting a nigh-unbearable concession, “In a pinch, if time is of the essence, you may also address me as ‘Your Highness’.”

Yeah, sure.

Maybe I didn’t sound sarcastic enough, because Floridiana’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

Yep. Just as soon as I take over Heaven.

Dusty seemed to be pondering the timeline there, but Floridiana got the point. She snorted, and Bobo raised her head so her eyes were level with mine and giggled, “Promissse you will! Promissse you will! I want to sssee that!”

I chirped a chuckle, puffed out my chest, and spread both wings. It’s a promise. On the day that I take over Heaven, I will address Dusty as “His Highness the Valiant Prince of the Victorious Whirlwind.”

Bobo’s laughter was contagious.

Days and then weeks passed as we made our way south. The landscape turned exuberant green, a shift that was highlighted by Floridiana’s exclamations and frequent scrabbling for her journal so she could jot down notes and sketch plants and animals and even foods that she’d never seen before.

Is it really that exciting? I asked one time we stopped for lunch in a village square.

Floridiana had ordered a bowl of something that looked like irregular lavender and pale-orange chunks drowned in water. Rather than eating it like a normal person, though, she was alternating between sampling mouthfuls and scrawling down observations on the flavor and texture.

“Yes! I’ve never seen anything like it in the north! I’ll bet the purple ones are made from ‘taro.’ I’ve only ever read about ‘taro’ before!”

Ta-roh?

I’d never heard of it. Maybe it wasn’t a food people ate in Lychee Grove. Or maybe the Kohs just didn’t like it.

The Kohs. Lodia. Her hunched, timid figure flashed through my mind. How was I going to get close to her again after her grandmother had forbidden it?

“Taro is a root vegetable with pale purple flesh,” Floridiana explained without looking up from her notebook. Typically, she hadn’t noticed that my thoughts had long since moved on from the topic of food. “I believe that the orange balls are made from sweet potato. And the soup part is definitely ginger water sweetened with…hmm, it’s not honey, it’s – sugar! It has to be sugar! Sugar is so cheap here that even street vendors use it! I can’t believe it!”

I could. Mostly because I didn’t care enough to think about it.

Leaving the mage to her excitement, I went to find Bobo. The bamboo viper was coiled up on the edge of a pond, watching a pair of water birds paddle about. One of them was a drab, mottled, greyish-brown creature, but the other was resplendent: purple and teal and orange and black and white markings all on one body.

“Is it a duck?” Bobo was marveling to herself. “No, it can’t be a duck. But the bill! It mussst be a duck. But it can’t be….” When she heard the flapping of my wings, she stuck out a loop of her coils for me to land on without taking her eyes off the water bird. “Rosssie, is that a duck? Is that what ducks look like in the sssouth?”

This was my first time seeing a bird like that too. Unawakened, no less. This wasn’t some vain spirit who’d decided to adorn itself.

It appears to be an aquatic bird, at least.

“I think it’s a duck. The bill – it looks sssort of like…like Ssstripey’s.” Bobo’s voice got tinier and tinier until his name drifted away on the breeze.

I rubbed the crown of my head against her side to comfort her. Yes. It does, doesn’t it?

Together, we watched the pair of probably-ducks glide across the pond. Stripey and his bandits had never been so placid. They’d been in constant motion – bantering, laughing, eating, drinking, dancing, attacking travelers, mocking the baron’s knights. Crash landing in the Jeks’ yard. Saving Taila’s life.

Saving mine.

Where was he now? I wondered. What was he now? Had he reincarnated as a duck again? A duck like this one? Could this be Stripey? Unless Flicker took pity on me, we would never know.

“Do you think Ssstripey is okay? He has to be okay, right?” Bobo tore her large, round eyes away from the pond to gaze pleadingly at me.

I’m sure he is, I said, putting more confidence into it than I felt. Maybe he’s even a really flashy fellow like that one.

That got a sniffly laugh from Bobo. “He’d hate that. He’d sssay that you can’t ambusssh people when they can sssee you coming a mile away.”

I cocked my head to a side. Was that actually something Stripey would say? Or just something we thought he might say, based on our fading memories of how he used to speak? I tried to imagine the whistling duck standing next to us, tried to picture what he’d say.

I couldn’t.

Well, Bobo had known him for so much longer than I had. I’d take her word for it.

Let’s get Floridiana to draw the duck, I suggested. Then when we find Stripey again, we can show him the picture.

“Yeah! That’s a good idea! Let’s!”

Floridiana, naturally, was ecstatic over discovering a new type of duck. Humming to herself, she sat on the grass and sketched, jotting down the colors and drawing little arrows to point to different patches on the body. As I watched, I thought that it was a shame she didn’t have colored inks. Maybe we could get her some in Lychee Grove. It was such a prosperous city that surely someone had to sell colored inks there.

And I even knew whom to ask for stationery recommendations.

“Halt! Who goeth there? State thy name and business!”

Half a night’s wagon ride from the city of Lychee Grove, our luck ran out. Our journey, which had gone so smoothly up until that point, was interrupted by a band of armed humans and spirits. Dusty whinnied and tried to rear, and while Floridiana was hauling on the reins to stop him from striking them with his hooves, I squinted at the guards. They were all sporting green tunics and badges engraved with a sprig of round fruits. Since when had the Lady of the Lychee Tree posted night patrols?

The wagon lurched and jolted as the battle between Floridiana and Dusty continued.

Metallic sounds rang out, and I found myself staring down a good dozen pointy tips. Half the guards were aiming crossbows loaded with multiple bolts at us. More than one bolt on one crossbow just seemed excessive.

“Wait! Wait! Don’t shoot!” Floridiana was yelling. “Dusty, curse it all, calm down!”

“Halt, or we shoot!” shouted the guard who seemed to be their leader. He raised a scaly club – oh, that was his tail. He was a pangolin.

Very slowly, I hopped backwards on the seat until I could drop into the wagon bed. Unnoticed on the side, Bobo’s long form was sliding into the undergrowth.

“Dusty! Cut it out! Are you a spirit or a mindless beast? Get a hold of yourself before you get us all killed!”

At last, Dusty stopped lunging at the guards, although he stamped his hooves and snorted furiously. Breathing hard, Floridiana spanked his back with the reins before she looked back at the pangolin leader.

“Sir, I apologize for my companion’s poor behavior,” she said, switching to an unctuous tone. “He is newly awakened and does not yet understand the ways of civilized people.”

Appeals to the spirit’s paternal nature, however, proved unsuccessful. “State thy name and business…mage.”

He must have spotted the seal that hung from Floridiana’s belt.

“Of course, sir! I am but a simple traveling mage. Word of the glories of the city of Lychee Grove have traveled far and wide, reaching even my humble ears, and I wished to witness them for myself.”

“What carriest thou in thy wagon?”

After spending time back at Honeysuckle Croft, I’d forgotten how jarring the speech in Lychee Grove sounded. Floridiana’s eyes, on the other hand, lit up.

“Merely supplies for the road, sir. Would you like to take a look?”

I couldn’t see what happened next, but heavy, booted footsteps approached. A human guard jumped into the wagon bed and began to ransack Floridiana’s trunk.

With his poor human night vision, he missed me and nearly trampled me. I screeched.

“What’s this?”

A meaty, hairy hand reached for me. I shot between his fingers and streaked into the nearest tree. More crossbows swung up to follow me. Now that I had a better view of the guards, something felt off about them. What was it…?

Floridiana was spinning a desperate tale about how she had rescued a sparrow fledgling that had fallen out of its nest and handfed it and raised it so now it followed her everywhere. The pangolin leader scowled but didn’t order his guards to shoot me, so her storytelling was probably working.

What was off about the guards anyway? Leaning over the branch, I cocked my head and scrutinized them. They were dressed unmistakably as guards, with metal badges that glinted on the leather armor over their green tunics – the badges! The lychee sprigs etched on them. They were too crude. I’d seen the coins minted in Lychee Grove; I knew what the craftsmen there were capable of. And the green of the tunics. It wasn’t the bright, leaf-green hue that I’d seen on the Lychee Grove Earth Court retainers. It was duller, darker.

Whoever these people were, they didn’t answer to the Lady of the Lychee Tree.

All of a sudden, the pangolin leader’s hand flashed out. He wrenched the seal off Floridiana’s belt and dropped it into his pocket. “Come. We will escort thee to the city.”

Floridiana yelped and stretched out her own hand before she thought better of it. She dipped her head in a convincingly grateful nod. “I appreciate it, sir.”

Under the watchful eyes of the not-guards, the wagon wheels creaked and began to rotate. Floridiana sat straight as a spear, while Dusty placed each hoof with care.

Now what should I do? Should I fly down and warn them that these weren’t real Lychee Grove guards? But what difference would that make? It wasn’t like Floridiana and Dusty could win in a fight, especially if she couldn’t use magic.

“Ssshould we go down? It looks like everything’s okay now, doesssn’t it?”

At the whisper in my ear, I jumped. Bobo had appeared next to me, wrapped round and round the branch, dangling upside down and following the motion of the wagon with her head.

No, something’s wrong. Those aren’t real guards.

“They’re not? Who are they?”

I don’t know.

“Are they bandits?” She sounded almost hopeful.

I doubted it, not with that gear, but even if they were bandits, they weren’t the nice kind like Stripey’s duck demons. (Although travelers robbed by the ducks probably didn’t think they were nice….)

I don’t know. Don’t you think they’re too well equipped for bandits?

“Oh no! We have to sssave them!”

Yes…but for now, let’s follow them. Don’t let the pangolins hear you.

Keeping a safe distance, we tailed them, letting the sounds of the nighttime forest cover the rustling of her scales and my feathers. Several minutes later, a yellow glow lit the trees, and we found ourselves on the edge of a camp.

A camp full of humans and spirits who were wearing leather armor and tunics trimmed in reddish-purple. Stars and demons, if these were bandits, then they were the most organized bandits I’d seen!

No. They weren’t bandits. They were soldiers.

Dusty neighed in alarm, and Floridiana protested, “What’s going on? This isn’t the city. Where have you brought us? What are you going to do to us?”

The pangolin leader made a hand signal, and a dozen soldiers surrounded the wagon.

“Stay here and be quiet,” he ordered. “We can’t have you warning the Lady of the Lychee Tree.”