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?

“Oh hey! A sparrow!” Nailus pointed up at me. “Hey Tail’, got your slingshot?”

Before I could backwing, Taila was whipping a small slingshot out of her pocket, fitting a pebble into it, and taking aim. Demons take the Jade Emperor, what had happened to child discipline around here?!

Luckily for all of us, that was when Bobo finally made it around the corner. I hadn’t told her not to reveal my identity, but she must have learned some discretion since the last time I saw her, because she didn’t wail, “No! Ssstop! That’s Rosssie!”

No, what she wailed instead was: “No! Ssstop! That’s – our friend!”

It was better than the alternative, even if the plural invited questions.

Startled, Taila jerked and released the slingshot. Off shot the pebble. At Lord Magnissimus, who grunted and leaned sideways. The pebble struck his right shoulder, bounced off, and splatted into the mud by his hoof. He looked down at the pathetic pebble. Then he looked up at Taila.

I screeched a high-pitched, agonized, wordless scream. No! No no no! This couldn’t be happening! I couldn’t have gone to all that effort to get rid of Lord Silurus so he couldn’t eat Taila, only to watch her get eaten by a different demon right before my eyes!

Before I knew what was happening, my wings gave a mighty flap and folded in tight against my body, and I was diving at the wild boar’s head at top speed. I was going to peck his eyes out!

Nailus shouted. Taila yelled. And Bobo begged, “Ssstop! Ssstop ssstop ssstop!”

Lord Magnissimus squinted, watching me get closer. Just before I could drive my beak into his eyeball, he moved. Foul-smelling jaws snapped shut around me. I shrieked and pecked and clawed at the inside of his mouth, all in vain. Outside, muffled voices were shouting.

All of a sudden, the jaws opened and spat, and I was sailing through the air in a glob of spit. A green coil looped at me and broke my fall. A black mountain blocked out the sky.

“Whiiiich friend is thiiiis?” rumbled the wild boar.

Lying soggily in Bobo’s lap, I moaned. That had been way too close a call. That had been way too much like getting eaten by Lord Silurus. Twice, no less. When there was absolutely no positive karma to be won in feeding demons. The opposite, in fact.

A no-longer-quite-so-round human face poked in between me and the wild boar. The tip of a braid tickled my chest. “Bobo! You never told me you had a sparrow friend! Hi, Mr. Sparrow!”

And there it was.

I really had come home.

In the end, I did tell them who I was. There didn’t seem to be any point in hiding it, not when Bobo would let it slip eventually anyway. So I told them, and I won myself the predictable ecstatic “Mr. Turtle!” and the equally predictable experience of getting grabbed and squeezed.

It was Nailus who came to my rescue, warning his little sister, “Not so tight, Tail’. You’ll crush her wings.”

“Oops!” Her fingers loosened so quickly that she nearly dropped me.

I staggered to my claws on the stone wall. My feathers were a lost cause, but I settled them as best I could. Greetings, Jek Taila. Have you been a good girl lately?

“Uh huh!” She bobbed her head up and down in a blatant lie, given everything that Bobo had told me and that I had seen with my own two eyes just now. “I’ve been the best girl-child. Uncle Maggy said so!”

“Uncle Maggy”? I cocked my head at the wild boar demon, who didn’t recoil from the nickname.

In all the excitement, some of the pigs had decided to make a break for the woods. Lord Magnissimus rose to all four hooves, like a mountain pushing up into the sky, and released a deafening, high-pitched cry. The pigs froze. Then they raced back, huffing terrified uhk-uhks.

Satisfied, Lord Magnissimus sank back onto his haunches. “She has indeeeed been the best girl-chiiiild,” he confirmed.

Not to be outdone, Nailus thrust out his chest. “And I’m the best boy-child!”

“Yeeees. These are the beeeest children in the baroooony.”

Let the Heavens fall now. I had just met a demon who liked small children. For their own sake, not for eating. And not just any small children, but these two small children. Specifically, this “girl-child.”

I tried and failed to puff up my saliva-wet feathers. Well, this has been a lovely reunion. So wonderful to see you’re settling into the barony well, but we really must be going. These two have a test tomorrow. Geography, wasn’t it, Bobo?

“Oh, oh, yes! Come on, kids. You promisssed to ssstudy.”

“Noooo,” protested Taila, “we’re still feeding the piiiigs!”

Nailus added, “We didn’t promise to study now. We promised to ace the test tomorrow! There’s still lots of time! Right, Uncle Maggy?”

When all of us looked at the wild boar, he inclined his massive, shaggy head. “Indeeeed. Theeeere is still much tiiiime left in the day. What I am cuuuurious about right now is why you have retuuuurned. As a spaaaarrow, no less.”

Yeah, I knew that was going to be an issue. And in all the chaos, I still hadn’t found time to concoct a cover story.

My mission this time is not one that I can discuss. (That sounded good. It was even true – because I had none.)

One moment, the wild boar was sitting in the muck. The next, he was looming over me. How could a mountain move so fast?

“Iiiif it has anything to do with theeeese children, you very much caaaan discuss it with meeee.” His dark brown eyes shifted towards turquoise, and the breath that flowed out of his jaws felt icier than it had been when I was inside his mouth.

It was just my luck that Taila had picked up such an overbearing protector – wait. It was good luck that she had picked up such an overbearing protector. As long as he weren’t waiting for her to grow bigger so he could eat her himself, which I had to admit seemed increasingly unlikely, he could keep her safe from anyone and anything.

Flapping my wings to keep him from blowing me away, I met his eyes. My mission has nothing to do with these children. Or this barony, as a matter of fact. This time, I have been tasked – by myself – with guiding a different young human to success.

“Ooh! Which human? Where? What are they like?” Bobo asked, excited for some reason I could not comprehend.

Well, it wasn’t like any of them would ever meet the Kohs. A young woman in South Serica. She is – Now that it came to it, I wasn’t sure how to describe Lodia. Nice. She’s very nice.

Taila and Nailus both looked bored, although not as bored as Lord Magnissimus. Bobo, however, cheered, “That’s wonderful!”

Wonderful? Better than trying to work with a complete jerk, I supposed. Although in that case, I would simply leave. This was a self-assigned task, after all, not one for which I’d sworn an oath.

“Where in Sssouth Ssserica? What’s Sssouth Ssserica like? Oh! Oh! Maybe you can tell them about it! To help with their tessst!” Bobo waved her tail at the children. “Why don’t you draw a map of Sssouth Ssserica?” she suggested to them.

They emitted groans like dying piglets, but Lord Magnissimus grunted at the swarm of pigs, and they wandered off, clearing the yard. At a single look from him, the children found twigs and drew a wobbly outline that looked nothing like the kingdom as shown on Flicker’s or the Lady of the Lychee Tree’s maps.

Wait, that part shouldn’t stick out. I flew to the left side of the drawing and hovered above the mud.

“It shouldn’t?” Nailus scowled at the western border.

“It does too!” Taila insisted.

It does not, I retorted, and then could have pecked myself for getting into such infantile argument. The map you studied is outdated. You’re drawing the kingdom as if it extends all the way to the coast. It doesn’t.

“It does too!” Taila was indignant that her memorization had gone to waste. “Teacher Flori said they pro-duce ko-ko-nuts. They’re, like, hairy brown handballs. You can eat and drink them. She showed us a picture!”

Maybe it used to. But now the kingdom stops here.

I flew in a line to demonstrate, cutting off the western third. Hmm, if the kingdom really had lost a third of its territory to the Wilds, no wonder the queen was determined to win it back.

Or maybe the coconuts were just that tasty.

“Ssso where were you?” Bobo broke in. “What was it like?”

I flew to the interior of the map. I was here. In a city called Lychee Grove. It produces lychees –

“What’s a lee-chee?” Taila demanded.

It’s a fruit. It grows on trees. It’s very good. It has a thin, reddish skin, and translucent white flesh that has the most amazing, crisp, refreshing sweetness….

And that was how I found myself giving a geography lecture on my first day back. In retrospect, I supposed it shouldn’t have surprised me.