Free Fox and Phoenix by Beth Bernobich

rude comment. Every once in a while, I passed a clump of miserable goats. Once a shape-changer galloped past, making my heart jump into my throat. Luckily, watch-demons didn’t live outside cities, and the bigger monsters kept to their tunnels and caverns. In the wild parts of the mountains, though, I expected to come across stranger, more dangerous creatures. Maybe even a wild ghost dragon.
    Right now, all I cared about was the mud and rain. Rain dripped into my eyes. Rain trickled between my collar and hat, running down my back. It rained so much my special wet-proof clothes gave up and soaked up the water, making my pack ten times heavier. And every step was like a battle, as I yanked one foot free of the mud and staggered sideways, regained my footing, then struggled to work the other foot free.
    Squelch. Squoosh. Splat.
    Danzu would love all this mud, I thought sourly, as I slithered down a particularly steep section. It was my tenth day on the road. Stupid Goat Boy. Stupid . . .
    Thinking of Danzu, dry and comfortable in Lóng City, I stomped extra hard. My foot hit a slick patch and sent me sliding all the way down the slope to the two-foot-deep puddle at the bottom.
    Splat.
    I spat out a mouthful of mud and yelled curses at the gods, the sky, Danzu, the ghost dragon king, anyone and anything else I could think of.
    Are you done? Chen said calmly.
    No, I said, and yelled some more, until my throat went hoarse.
    Eventually, I ran out of curses. I picked myself up and wiped my face.
    Mud coated my boots and trousers and hair. Mud had ground itself underneath my fingernails, and I was sure there was mud inside my ears.
    â€œI hate mud,” I muttered.
    Then, because you can’t curse the gods without them hearing you, lightning flashed across the steel-gray sky, the earth rumbled, and a mother of all storms broke loose. I nearly drowned in that first minute. Rain sluiced over my face and washed all the mud away from my clothes and skin. Wet-proofing didn’t matter to this storm. Deep inside, very faint, I could hear Chen’s chuckling.
    I rubbed the water from my eyes and trudged on.
    Three hours later I reached a small, flea-ridden inn, tucked between the trail and a rocky cliff. The innkeeper took one look at me, streaming water all over his floor, and charged me double for the privilege of standing out of the rain. “Storms are very bad this year,” he said, helpfully, as he hurried me through the common room, into a closet-size backroom, where a grinning serving girl tried to help me out of my clothes.
    â€œStop it,” I growled. “I can undress myself.”
    Still grinning, the girl left me alone to bathe and change my clothes. Soon after that, I had a hot meal and felt more like a real human being again. It’s temporary, I thought. Surely it can’t make a difference if I spend just a day here.
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    BY THE AFTERNOON of the third day, I’d stopped asking when the storm would blow past. Never , I thought, as I stared at the blank shuttered window. Bits of ice and hail ticked against the wooden slats.
    Inside, two dried-out women and a younger man spent their hours tossing spirit-bones and betting on the outcome. Two other men who looked like ex-caravan guards drank mugs of steaming hot beer and fed bits of bread and meat to the hairy dogs at their feet. A handful of others wandered restlessly between the common room, the stable, and the stuffy loft upstairs where we all slept. We were all bored, even the dogs. The radio had died two days ago. A vid-silk-screen stretched across one corner of the common room, but it was an old model, and it only played static movies, and the flux here ran in spits and spurts, making the vids even harder to watch.
    Once the rain lets up, we go, I thought.
    It won’t let up for another month, Chen grumbled. Then it snows.
    We go anyway. The storm’s almost past. Besides I can’t stand it here—
    The inn’s