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“I as You have been sleeping on bedrolls soft as clouds lined in silk and feasting on fatted deer But outside Palace grounds, deer are clever and hard to catch, and bedrolls are too heavy to carry There are other ways of living, and on the whole, they make for better women A pity your mother never slept on a cave floor with leaves for blankets—I hope she enjoys her prize By , all the cocks in the capital will have dropped dead, dead as gold and daughters unwanted”

I gawked, unable to i could have led chickens behind her But before I could ask, she was trundling away

I kept pace, though not easily She was surprisingly fleet for her age, and I began to understand how she could travel fro, ere deep into the forest, where baer, I could sht ht had beco beach which was softer underfoot than sweet cakes, Majo spoke again Her voice was no longer rough and scabbed, but high and sharp, unsurprisingly like the bark of a fox calling to her kits

“Well, here we are”

“Where is it we’resea, and the breakers foa into the water like a skeletal finger

Majo rolled her eyes “A fox must be clever and self-sufficient Put your educated ht you here; my part is finished I am not a book; you cannot look up the answer in ht of her house I stood there on the sand, nonplussed, trying not to look like a simpleton She rolled her eyes “You see the pier? It’s the only da under it, h for you like your addle-brained mother?”

Majo released the cart straps froed inside the hutch for aon it, she pulled a rice ball fro towards the pier and urgingas if switch-whipped I would

certainly not be shown as a spoiled brat in Majo’s presence I ran off after the rickety pier, tiny shards of seashell spraying up behindheels

It stunk under the rotting slats Algae andin wet clutches; old crab nets tangled in rusted-out claed—few of those nets and buckets were e here which could be an errand worthy of Majo’s attention, andseagull But she was not wrong, I was sure; she could not be—and indeed, behind a well-chewed pillar, a dark shape scuttled by I trudged towards it, y sand, and soon I was knee-deep in the brine sea, splashing forward in the ht after a quick black shape

“Wait!” I cried, and toits sleek head back over its shoulder

It was a large and well-fed otter It rolled over in the waist-deep water and floated casually on its back, showing a wet golden belly against the rest of its slick, dark brown fur Its face see Its whiskers were ale abalone with several bits of shell chipped off—the otter struggled with it, glancing up at me from behind its stubborn prize

“What?” it said, and its voice rasped like dry kelp dragging over sand

I didn’t at all knohat to say I was sopping wet and cold, and sli bandages in all that muck The pier water rippled aroundto recite a poem she has not even tried to memorize

“Majo sent h I conversed with otters every day “I guess I h it’s very dirty and I think a great s have died down here”

“No doubt,” said the otter, finally popping the shell open and ripping a thick piece of abalone flesh fro shell “And each ood while on the tough ain “Well, if Majo sent you, I suppose we’ll have to ly, skinny little fox, won’t we? No worse than ht me any shrimp or clams or such as tribute, I’ll just notch it down as owed”