The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

“No! No! Jullie! Noooooooo!” screamed Anthea.

She kicked at Dusty’s sides, not to spur him into a gallop to rescue the queen – but because she was throwing a tantrum. For obvious reasons, that shocked him so much that he reared up. As she began to slide off his rump, she screeched, lunged forward, and clutched his mane, yanking out strands.

Eyes rolling in their sockets, Dusty whinnied and lashed out uselessly with his front hooves. “Make her stop! Make her stop!”

Anthea landed on the ground with a thump, silks splayed out around her, and began to bawl. The bear spirits who were carrying Katu’s platform nearly trampled her before they teetered to a halt, and then a wave of worshippers stopping abruptly and getting bumped by those behind them spread down the street. The singing petered out, and its place, confused questions and complaints rose.

This was bad. If we lost momentum here, our procession wouldn’t sweep into the throne room with full gravitas, and if we didn’t sweep into the throne room with full gravitas, we’d never bowl over Jullia enough for her to obey me.

Get up, Anthea. We’re not there yet. I flew from one side of her head to the other, fanning her face with my wings in an attempt to calm her.

“It’s all ooooooooover!” she wailed. “It’s just like the City of Dawn Soooooooong!”

This is not the City of Dawn Song, and it is not over. It hasn’t even begun! I’m just getting started here.

“The mob – the riots – the dynasty – ”

Anthea. Pull yourself together. Look at me. I hovered right in front of her nose, so close that she went cross-eyed focusing on me. The discomfort, at least, distracted her from her sobbing. Did Lady Fate send me to end Jullia’s dynasty? Answer me!

She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. Sigh, over five hundred years old, and as much of a baby as ever. Still, I strove to hang on to my own temper.

Then, if Lady Fate didn’t send me to end Jullia’s dynasty, is it going to end?

A jerky head motion that could have been either a nod or a shake. I interpreted it as the latter, since that was the desired response.

So if it’s not going to end, what are you bawling over? Pick yourself up, pull yourself together, and let’s go see how she’s doing. I’m sure she’s looking for her pet raccoon dog.

That last part got a rise out of her, as I’d known it would. Anthea jumped to her feet, pointy ears sprouting out of her hair. “I am not her pet!”

There, there, you just keep telling yourself that.

As she hauled herself back onto Dusty’s back, I flew up high enough for Katu to see me and gave him an exaggeratedly reassuring nod. The High Priest had been teetering on the platform, torn between maintaining a dignified stance and getting down on all fours to peer over the edge so he could see what gods-cursed crisis was going on down here. At my signal, he raised his arms to Heaven, and the flock of butterflies soared up as if released from his sleeves. Their wings sparkled in the sunlight, and a chorus of oooh’s rose up after them.

“Friends!” Katu proclaimed. “Be not afraid! For we do the Kitchen God’s will! The Divine Intercessor will protect us!”

Floridiana seized the nearest priests and propelled them forward. “Off you go! Sing!”

“Praise to the mighty Kitchen God?” they sang, making it sound more like a question than an assertion, but they did start shuffling forward again. That made space for the bears to advance, and the horde of the ex-rioters slowly transformed into a procession of worshippers again. More voices picked up the song, these sounding more certain. “Praise to the Kitchen God.”

As we drew near the palace walls, I got a better view of the struggle between the guards and the rioters. Above the main gate’s tiled roof, a group of bedraggled hawk spirits dove at a pair of pheasants who wore palace badges around their necks.

Another strangled squeak escaped Anthea, and I glanced over in time to see her freeze, eyes locked on the birds.

With a sigh, I plastered myself over her nose and covered her eyes with my wings. If you’re going to panic, don’t look.

“Um, Pip?” came Lodia’s shaky voice. Something white entered my field of vision. “I have this – if it helps…?”

She proffered a cotton handkerchief embroidered with a lotus.

Yes, that’s a good idea. Let’s coordinate this. I’ll fly off, and you blindfold her, on a count of three. One, two –

“That will not be necessary.” Anthea shook me off. Steel had entered her voice, and her mouth was set into a flat, stubborn line. “I’m all right now. Let’s do this.”

If you’re sure you won’t panic again….

“I will not. Let’s go.”

“Uh.” Floridiana spoke up, gaping at the fight that raged above and on top of and in the shadow of the wall before us. “How are we ‘going’ through…that?”

Even as we watched, a human rioter lost her footing and toppled off the top of the wall, screaming as she fell. The scream cut off a few seconds later, and from the way the spirits around me winced, it must have been accompanied by a gruesome splat.

“We can sssing louder!” Bobo suggested. “Maybe they’ll be like everybody elssse and ssstart sssinging along with us!”

I cocked my head, examining the mob in front of us. Somehow I didn’t think they would be so amenable, and from the others’ silence, they agreed.

“What will we do?” Dusty whickered.

Everyone was all staring at me, even Anthea, waiting for me to come up with the solution. Well! As well they should. I puffed up my chest to make myself as big and authoritative as I could and announced, We keep marching with full confidence and at full volume. Onward!

“Sssounds good!”

Bobo started to slither faster, but Floridiana put out a hand to block the snake. “That’s it? That’s the plan?”

Yes. That is, indeed, the plan.

“Why in the name of the Jade Emperor – I mean, the Kitchen God – is that going to work?!”

Because they’ll be shocked, stop to look, see there are a lot more of us than there are of them, and not attack.

“Uh….”

Unexpectedly, it was Lodia who backed me up. “I think – I think – it’ll work,” she offered, then nearly collapsed under all the stares that landed on her. “Um…I mean, I think – it makes sense…. We just – we just have to get them to stop, right? Long enough to think? Like everyone else.” She made a tiny pointing gesture at the people behind us with one finger, as if terrified someone might bite it off. “And – like Pip said – there are a lot more of us, so they should stop…and then they’ll think…and then….”

Bobo bumped Lodia’s arm with her head. “Yeah! Jussst like you sssaid! It’s gonna work!”

After a moment, Floridiana raised her eyes Heaveward and heaved a sigh. “How do I let her drag me into these situations? Very well then. Let’s try it your way.”

I stabbed a wing at the palace wall. Forward, march! Full confidence and full volume!

We charged straight into the screaming mob, singing at the tops of our lungs. On the edges of the procession, a howling human punched one of my pangolins. She roared, swung her tail around, and walloped him in the face.

I flew up to Katu and bobbed up and down in front of him. Don’t let them get distracted! Tell them to keep going!

A blur of motion out of the corner of my eye. A hawk rioter closed his wings and plummeted at me. I shrieked and dove, and behind me, the butterflies swirled up in a cloud of glittering wings to intercept him.

“Friends!” Katu’s voice shouted overhead. “Let nothing distract you from our purpose! We go to the throne room! We go to save the Queen!”

The butterflies drove off the hawk and settled down on Katu’s head, shoulders, and arms.

The pangolin stopped clubbing the human who’d attacked her. She brandished her tail at nearby rioters, who wisely backed up a couple steps, and took up the song again.

And we kept going.

In the throne room:

“Your Majesty! We can’t hold them any longer! Please, you have to evacuate!”

Jullia’s fingers tightened on the armrests of her throne, but she kept her chin up and her voice cool as she answered the Household Guard Captain. “No. We will not be chased from our palace by a mob. Let them come seek an audience, if they dare.”

Her cousin, who would have been happy to have evacuated an hour ago, interjected, “Your Majesty, surely it is unnecessary for the Queen of South Serica to lower herself to address a mob!” He had to raise his voice into a shout by the end, so she could hear him over the screaming and shouting and thudding outside.

“Nonsense!” her uncle roared back. “Flee if you want, you spineless demon-lover, but Jullia is made of sterner stuff! Just like her father! Would he have turned tail and run? No! Stay and face them, Jullia! Show them why you’re Queen!”

Jullia’s cousin clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, but before he could return the barb, the Guard Captain barked, “What’s that noise? Go! Scout!”

Noise? Jullia hadn’t heard anything, but the Guard Captain was a rhinoceros spirit, and she trusted his judgment.

In no time, the leopard cat scout slunk back into the throne room, ears pulled back flat against her skull. “It’s a parade,” she spat.

“A parade? Explain,” snapped Jullia’s uncle before the Guard Captain could.

“The High Priest of Lady Anthea’s Temple to the Kitchen God has led a procession of…people onto the palace grounds, Your Grace. Their goal appears to be the throne room. Their singing is what we are hearing.”

“Their – singing?” Jullia couldn’t help it: The question just burst out of her. “What, pray tell, is there to sing about?”

The leopard cat bowed her head. “It appears to be a children’s song, Your Majesty, that they have modified to praise the Kitchen God. They are literally singing, ‘Praise to the Kitchen God’ over and over.”

It was too much for Jullia. She exploded into laughter, doubling over right there on her throne, in front of all her courtiers. “A children’s song! They’re singing a children’s song! Praising the Kitchen God! While marching through a mob!”

“Your Majesty! Should we stop them?” asked the Guard Captain.

“No! No. This is too – !”

She couldn’t say “funny.” They’d think she’d cracked. She reined in her laughter, blanked her face, and spoke in her usual cool voice.

“No. They have come for a purpose. It would be too cruel to deny them the chance to speak it. We shall hear what they have to say. Let them in.”

Outside the throne room:

As we advanced across the courtyard, scuffles kept breaking out on the fringes of the procession, but obedient to Katu’s command, the worshippers fought only long enough to throw rioters off their backs and then moved on.

“PRAISE TO THE MIGHTY KITCHEN GOD! PRAISE TO THE KITCHEN GOD!!!”

The further we went, the hoarser and more off-key the singing got, but it correspondingly increased in volume, as if the worshippers thought that bellowing the words might shield us from the violence around us.

Past the chaos in the courtyard, royal guards tried to stop us from entering the palace proper, but they backed away when Anthea cut them down (not literally) with a ferocious glare. And so, praising the Kitchen God at the tops of our lungs, we charged into the throne room to save Jullia’s crown.

It was quite the dramatic entrance, if I did say so myself.