“This is what you get for letting every random spirit and talking animal into your parties. I used to tell my nephew, don’t be so trusting. Don’t believe everything everyone says. But did he listen? Of course not. And then he had to go and trust that heron spirit….”

As Ory’s lecture droned on and on, Den curled up tighter on his caltrop rosette bed. He had a headache. A bad headache. And, to dose injury with insult, it didn’t even come from a hangover after a night of glorious partying. No, it was the result of getting monologued at all evening every evening for the past two weeks by a megalomaniacal mage who couldn’t wait to go camping in the Wilds.

The Wilds! Nothing good ever came out of the Wilds! No one good ever went into it either. It was the preserve of demons and newly awakened animals who didn’t know better and demons and demons and more demons.

“Ory, I don’t think you’re helping,” mumbled Paddy. She’d tossed her coils haphazardly over her own caltrop rosette bed and was all ready to drop off to sleep, as soon as Ory stopped talking.

“Yeah,” seconded Sati, “it’s not like he can turn back time and kick Rosie out of that first party. He’s just gonna have to go through with it.”

“Urgh,” moaned Den. He pulled a leaf over his head and pressed it against his temples, but it didn’t help the throbbing.

A rustle of caltrop leaves. From overhead, Ory’s voice ordered, “Get some sleep. You’re gonna need it for tomorrow.”

“Urgh,” repeated Den, which about summed up his thoughts on his life.

Back on the road at last! Perched on the seat of a wagon, reins in hand, Floridiana reveled in the freedom of travel. Her duties fell away, one after another, with each successive hoofbeat.

Clip.

No more having to get up every morning at a set time so she would be ready to start teaching at a set time.

Clop.

No more wrangling overenergetic small children into sitting quietly and learning their reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic.

Clip.

No more grading quizzes and tests and wondering how her students could possibly get so many questions wrong.

Clop.

No more coming up with quizzes to reinforce lessons and tests to assess knowledge in the first place.

Clip.

No more wracking her brains over lesson plans that would keep the slowest learners from falling too far behind and the fastest learners from getting too bored.

Clop.

No more taskforce meetings.

Clip.

No more taskforce meetings.

Clop.

No more taskforce meetings!

Freedom!

Although, she had brought a fellow taskforce member with her.

Floridiana took her eyes off the bumpy dirt road just long enough to glance in the wagon bed. Wedged between a crock of pickled cabbage and a sack of rice was her fellow taskforce meeting escapee, the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond, a.k.a. King Densissimus Imber, a.k.a. Den. The dragon looked like he’d been up all night partying to celebrate this expedition. His head was pressed against the burlap sack, and every time the wagon jolted over a rock, he moaned.

“Your Majesty? Are you all right?”

“Yes….”

“How was the farewell party?”

The entire taskforce had been invited, but only Bobo, Stripey, and…The Demon (Floridiana still didn’t like thinking the name) had attended. Floridiana might have gone just to see what the Caltrop Pond Water Court was like, but there was no way she would have fit. Expending so much magic to shrink herself on the eve of a long journey would have been irresponsible.

Also, if she were being honest – which she could be, safe inside her own head – probably impossible. She was essentially self-taught, after all, apart from half a year of study under a mage named Domitilla who ran a shop in a town not unlike Claymouth. Floridiana wasn’t one of those fancy court mages who had fancy tutors as children and attended fancy academies to learn all the tricks of the trade. That was the main reason she’d jumped at this opportunity – if she couldn’t finesse her way to power, then she would brute-force her way there.

She couldn’t wait to see all those fancy court mages’ faces when a self-taught, ex-peasant, traveling mage achieved the greatest breakthrough since the Empire!

Buoyed by the thought, she called over her shoulder, “Your Majesty, how do you prefer to be addressed?”

He’d told the taskforce to call him Den, but now that Taila wasn’t around to enforce simple nicknames, perhaps he’d prefer his full name. It did sound a lot more dignified. Personally, Floridiana preferred it. But –

“Den’s fine,” came the groan.

“Are you sure? I’d be happy to call you by your true name.”

“No, Den’s good, really….”

Ah, well. Once she gained more power, she’d pick a fancier name for herself.

Flicking the reins, the traveling mage Floridiana who had once been the peasant girl Mae urged her horse ever northward.

Travel was the worst thing ever! Den had known that even before he left his wonderful, cozy, comfy pond with his soft bed and his regular meals, but every passing day confirmed it. The wagon that Floridiana had borrowed from the Jeks jounced him up and down and banged him against the crates, and the air was just so dry. The further north they went, the drier it got. His skin felt like it was shriveling up and stretching taut over his bones, and his scales were ready to peel off.

It had been okay while they were crossing the land of rice paddies, but now they were firmly in the wheat-producing Golden Plains of northern Serica. They’d have to rattle and bounce all the way across them to reach the Jade Mountain Wilds on the northern coast.

At least the plains were crisscrossed by rivers, and Floridiana did her best to follow them so he could sneak soaks when the dryness got too unbearable. (The soaks had to be sneaked because he absolutely could not let the local dragon kings know he was there.)

At last they reached Wild Goose Lake, just a day’s wagon ride from the foothills. It was, indeed, home to a great number of white knob geese that honked and stabbed their long necks aggressively when the wagon stopped on the shore. The geese on the water when Den and Floridiana first arrived were mortal. However, the ones who glided down from the sky and landed in a straight line between them and the lake definitely were not. Each spirit was six feet tall from the tops of their heads to the soles of their bright orange feet.

Den had never seen geese that big before and, frankly, had never had any desire to. He burrowed under the rice sack.

“Halt!” honked the burly gander in the middle. “Who goes there?”

“That’s hardly the most original challenge,” Floridiana sniffed to Den, but he didn’t care. When you were a six-foot goose spirit, your size made up for your lack of creativity.

Oh, wait, as the dragon king here, he should be the one dealing with the geese, right? Except what if they reported him to the Dragon King of Wild Goose Lake, and the Dragon King of Wild Goose Lake reported him to Heaven?

Before Den had to decide, Floridiana took control. Bowing low, she beseeched, “Good evening, spirit. I am but a humble traveling mage who begs leave to borrow a patch of land to make camp for the night. Might I have the honor of learning your name?”

The gander regarded her with scorn. “I am Commander Ancus Ferus of the Wild Goose Guards of the Dragon King of Wild Goose Lake.”

That sentence boggled Den’s mind. Because, in Imperial Serican, “ancus ferus” also meant “wild goose.”

“State your name and business, or be off with you,” ordered the wild goose commander, Commander Wild Goose.

Without a break in character, Floridiana replied, “My name is Floridiana, Honorable Commander. I am simply looking for work wherever I can find it. I thought that perhaps, this close to the Wilds, there might be something for me to do…?”

“No.” The gander’s answer was immediate. “Do you question the Wild Goose Guards’ ability to keep the peace?”

Floridiana ducked her head, acting appalled that she’d insulted the great commander by accident. “Oh no, of course not! Forgive me, Honorable Commander! I never meant to imply – ”

“I run a tight skein in the sky and a tight gaggle on the ground. There are no problems here.”

(Such a tight watch that none of the spirits seemed to have noticed Den hiding under a rice sack.)

“Yes, of course! Anyone with eyes can see that! It is so safe here…might I beg your permission to camp here for the night? I’m just a lone human woman, and I can’t imagine anywhere I would be safer….”

The gander threw out his feathery white chest. “Until dawn. No longer.”

“Yes, yes, of course! Thank you so, so much for your generosity!”

Clasping her hands in gratitude, Floridiana bowed and bowed until the Wild Goose Guards had taken off again and turned into a wedge of white specks in the sky. Then she spun. Den was expecting a torrent of curses and complaints about arrogant spirits, but her eyes were sparkling.

“Did you see how big they were?! Did you see that?”

Den warily poked his head out from under the sack. “Yes? But they’re spirits. They can get big.”

“I’ve never seen a goose spirit that big anywhere! Usually by the time goose spirits grow to that size, they can also transform into humans.”

“Maybe these can but didn’t.”

All dragon kings could. They just would rather not.

“No, no, no! Practically all animal spirits take human – or at least human-ish – form when they’re dealing with humans. It’s much more impressive.”

Unless you were a dragon, of course. But then again, dragons were special.

Den thought about the regular animal spirits he knew who were capable of transforming into humans. A good number preferred to stay in animal form, most notably Stripey, who often ridiculed his nephew Anasius for forgetting how to be a duck. But when Den pointed that out, Floridiana dismissed it.

“Your area is just weird. Everywhere else I’ve gone, animal spirits prefer human form. Don’t you see? This means that the spirits here are growing a lot faster than they should! This means that you don’t even have to be in the Wilds to gain power faster! Living close to it is enough!”

“But if they’re growing bigger faster, shouldn’t they also be growing, uh, the ability to turn into humans faster?” pointed out Den.

He didn’t actually care, and normally he wouldn’t have bothered to argue, but that comment about his home being “weird” irked him.

His objection stumped Floridiana, but only for a moment. “Maybe those two abilities grow at different rates. Ooh, I wish they were friendlier so I could ask!”

Den barely heard the last part. Because a sudden, horrible thought was running through his head: Oh no oh no oh no, if I grow too big, I won’t fit in Caltrop Pond anymore!

It was funny, wasn’t it, in a not-at-all funny way? To the extent that he thought about his domain, it was to compare it unfavorably with Yulus’ grand Black Sand Creek Water Court, the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea’s magnificent crystal palace, or Heaven’s unfathomable, crushing opulence.

But the thought that he might not be able to go home again, ever, made his chest and entire underside constrict. Not be able to dance on the caltrop rosettes that carpeted the surface of his pond and dive between their trailing stems? Not be able to carouse in his audience-chamber-turned-dance-floor with his friends and his guests (who were also by definition his friends) to the rollicking tunes of the Green Frog’s musicians? Not be able to drowse in his bedchamber with his best friends arrayed around him, chatting and chatting until they dropped off to sleep?

It hurt. It hurt.

Tiny it might be, shabby it might be, but Caltrop Pond was home.

He wanted to go home. He wanted to go home so badly.

But as he stared up at the night sky, he remembered that if he gained enough power, he would also be able to change his size at will. He could shrink himself to fit back in Caltrop Pond.

It would be all right, he soothed himself, since Ory, Sati, and Paddy weren’t there to do it. He could go home. He would go home.

With the wild geese flying their patrols across the moon, Den drifted off to sleep.