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The little masked things with the striped tails were called tanuki, and they were nocturnal.
In principle they were nocturnal, old man Liu had told him. In practice they were as opportunistic as any living creature, and in a village like Paw’don with its laden trees right outside the walls some of them were bound to turn up any time of day they pleased, bold as anything, scavenging windfalls and worms in the orchard or unattended noodles and fish in the village with equal entitlement.
But they were nocturnal, and Shine was forever an early riser, and so for a misty predawn hour or so they shared a quiet overlap.
He sat on one of the tile-capped walls that bounded Paw’don from its orchard. Behind and above him rose the village; before and below him the confusion of pale petals was luminous in the early gloaming. Beyond that, barely visible in the dark across the foam of blossoms, was the gleaming black pane of the sea, the rocks and reefs shadows against the sky.
The wind had changed in the night.
Shine picked up another of the white buns he’d bought yesterday evening. They were steamed rather than baked, their surfaces gently sticky, the dough soft and dense and finely-textured. He pulled this one apart – the meat filling in it was also dense and a little sticky, sweet in a way you didn't expect meat to be, but good – and tossed a piece down to his expectant audience at the foot of the wall.
The tanuki swarmed, growling and tussling. “Be nice,” Shine warned them. “There's plenty.” He tossed another piece down and the furred fray flowed smoothly into two distinct heaps as half of the group went for this new morsel.
The sky was lightening slowly, the night diluting like watercolor. Shine tossed the last few pieces of the bun down to the tanuki and reached for another. “Wind’s changed,” he informed them, and tore the new bun apart to distribute. “Been southerly a while. Bad business. Wouldn't like this coast to lee.”
One of the more enterprising animals had found its way onto the wall. It scampered from his blind side but Shine heard the little scratch of claws on tile and glanced over. “That's some brass on you, lad,” he observed, and set a scrap of bread down beside himself. The tanuki darted forward to snatch the gift away and then retreated to eat it at an aloof distance.
Shine resumed tossing pieces to the attentive mob below. “Changed in the night,” he told them. “Veered northwesterly.”
If any of the tanuki had thoughts on the wind direction, they did not share them. They scrabbled at the foot of the wall for more bits of dough, and Shine obliged them.
The one on the wall with him had finished its piece and was skulking back, so Shine set a second bit down for it.
All around the dome of the watercolor sky, color had begun to glimmer at the horizon, a fine, fiery seam. Shine ate a piece of bun himself and watched the distant seabound rocks take shape out of shadow.
Feeding the tanuki was undoubtedly a bad idea. He liked them, though, with their shrewd little masked faces and black-bead eyes, their striped foxtails, their quarrelsome company. It wasn't like they weren't going to come around begging and thieving anyway.
He was down to the last bun, so he tore smaller pieces now and tossed them judiciously in an effort to see that everyone had gotten some. A quillrat — porcupine, Liu had called them — came shambling over to investigate and one of the tanuki charged at it, squalling like a gull.
“Tch,” said Shine. “No way to treat a guest.” He tossed a piece of bun toward the porcupine, but that only caused the entire mob of tanuki to turn and swarm at it. The porcupine waddled hastily away to watch from a doleful distance.
“Bloody lot of pirates,” Shine reproached the unrepentant tanuki.
The sky was stained with red now all around its hem, the streaky mare’s-tail clouds in the southeastern sky tinted amber by slow-rising sunlight.
He felt a small, clawed pressure on his thigh and looked down at the tanuki who’d joined him on the wall, and who was now standing with a paw on his leg. It gazed frankly up at him.
“Northwesterly’s a good wind,” Shine told it, and offered a small piece of bun out carefully. “A fine day and a weather shore.” The tanuki snapped the bun from his fingers and shuffled back a step to eat it.
Light broke over the orchard in a russet slide from the east as the sun crested the horizon and the whole sky blushed. In the distance, gulls rose clamorously from a shoal in the shallows, a swift glitter in the colored sky.
Well beyond them was another pale flash. This one held steady, white wings spread against the dawn. Shine shaded his eye with a hand.
He knew the set of those topsails.
The Lady Blanche broke like sunrise from behind a black pillar of stone, hull up on the gleaming sea, her white sails blooming. Moments after she slid into view, there was a second flash of white as the Tidewitch rounded the rock not two cable lengths from her stern, as neat a piece of sailing as there was. The Swift would be running not far behind.
“What did I tell you?” Shine asked the tanuki, and got to his feet.