Pepper had a head start on him. What-the-Dickens struggled to keep from losing sight of her. He could summon no extra breath for screeching out questions.

Still, he managed to look and see how Pepper could move so fast. She used her wings in a cunning way. First she flapped furiously to activate liftoff and reach her desired elevation. Then she settled the ball of her leading foot upon the ankle of the following foot, so that the knee of the forward leg broke the air. This gave her the look of an old-fashioned hood ornament on a car, or a figurehead on a sailing ship.

What-the-Dickens tried to imitate the form. Ha! With his clodhopper feet like lima beans, he flattened and slowed his progress rather than speeding it up. Still, it was good to experiment. He tried kneeling in the air, resting his feet against his little bum. He improved a little.

He paid so much attention to his athletic form that he didn’t think to mark his progress above the landscape. He was largely unaware of the gentle swells of hill, the nubble of shadowy forest, and the raked lines of plowed fields. Nor of the buildup of traffic on the roads as the sun came close to breaking over the horizon.

Pepper angled her wings for a descent, and she changed the stance of her legs. She made a sudden drop toward a stand of scrub grass and overgrown junk trees choking a patch of land encircled by a highway cloverleaf ramp. The orphan skibberee followed her lead and did the same.

He had to work not to close his eyes while plummeting through the fringed flats of green leaves. Leveling, he saw beneath him a neatly sawed-off tree trunk. Lightning bugs of some sort, trained for the job no doubt, stood all around the edge of the trunk in parallel lines, beaconing the travelers safely in.

Pepper landed in the center, gracefully enough. Then What-the-Dickens smacked her off balance as he thudded into her. “Whoops,” he said. “That’s twice in one day. Sorry.”

Several dozen wingless skibbereen came rushing forward to link arms and make a living guardrail, saving Pepper from plunging off the edge of the tree trunk like a fighter pilot overshooting on the deck of an aircraft carrier. But they laughed as they did it, without particular affection.

“Look who’s back,” they chortled. “She’s a stitch, she is. And look what the cat dragged in. He’s a bit of a rube, ain’t he? Your basic bran muffin without a full portion of raisins.”

“Mind your manners,” said Pepper, “or I’ll clock you.” She shucked off the shoulder bag holding the tooth and she began to swing it around. The welcoming committee backed off a little.

“Oooh, spitfire mama,” they said. They all seemed to say the same words more or less at the same time — they were like a second-grade class reciting a familiar poem: some too fast, some slow, but more or less on the same line. “Pepper’s here, Pepper’s here, someone kick her in the rear.” Then one began to call, and the others to echo, “Stump mistress! Stump mistress! We have a foreign body!”

An older skibberee, rather fuller in the waistline than the rest of them, rushed forward. What-the-Dickens straightened up and grinned at her. She was shaped more like a mouse than a grasshopper. “Lord love a duck,” she wheezed, “what you got for Old Flossie then?”

“A mandibular central incisor from a human, name of Claire Dahl. A visitor to these parts,” reported Pepper.

“I mean the skibberee flotsam,” said Old Flossie.

“I thought you’d know,” said Pepper. “Didn’t you send him to slow me down and complicate my exam?”

“Did not,” said Old Flossie. “He’s a spy.”

“He’s not a spy,” said Pepper. “He’s too stupid to be a spy.”

“That’s right,” said What-the-Dickens helpfully. “I wouldn’t even know what I was spying to find out.”

“Hmmm.” The older skibberee cast a sideways glance at the tooth Pepper was unpacking from her satchel. “Oooh, that’s a lovely specimen, that is. But Pepper, my chickadee, you’re late.”

Pepper shrugged as if she didn’t care, but Old Flossie puckered her brow. “Now don’t get above your station, young lady. None of this modern snippety-uppity stuff with me — I won’t have it. You know the rules. You’re to be in before sunrise with your cargo. You’re a few moments late. Aren’t you still on probation pending your license review? I think you are.”

“I told you. I was detained,” said Pepper. “I got waylaid by this bozo.”

There was a gasp. “You didn’t take him along on your campaign and … and … collaborate with him, whoever he is?” Old Flossie frowned harder. “That’s entirely forbidden. This could cost you merit marks, missy.”

“Of course I didn’t take him along. You think I’m a fool?”

Old Flossie glowered as if the jury was still out on that question, but made a motion with her finger: Go on.

“He intercepted me as I was about to start. He delayed me. He seems harmless, though he don’t know the rules. I couldn’t just abandon him there. Leave him behind to be discovered. Skibbereen are never seen, and so on? All that nursery school training? So I had no choice but to bring him back with me. That’s why I’m late. Frankly, I figured I’d get some extra credit for handling the situation well.” She seemed both peeved and a little worried.

“I am afraid Doctor Ill will not look kindly on any of this,” said Old Flossie, sniffng. She poked at the tooth with a blackened fingernail. What-the-Dickens thought, Did Pepper bring this as a present? Old Flossie doesn’t seem too grateful. Or impressed.

“Hmm,” said the stump mistress, frowning. “Some tartar buildup. Well, we’ll clean it up and see what happens. Come on, you thingy. You don’t fool me. Where’s your colony? What’s your name? Out with it.”

“What-the-Dickens,” he said. “Are you my mother?”

“Now isn’t that the stupidest old thing to say,” she groused. “Do I look like anyone’s mother?”

“I wouldn’t know. I never met a skibberee mother before.”

“Well, you haven’t now, either,” she said. “Where do you hail from, Dickens?”

“I was born a couple of days ago.”

“Not of our stock. Where’s your tribe gotten to, and why are you apart from them? Banished? Abandoned? Or did you stop to do your business and no one noticed when you got left behind?”

The other skibbereen on the stump laughed so hard they began to glow red and blow gummy clots out of their noses.

“I don’t know. I don’t really understand how creatures get born, or what a tribe means. Or even what I am, if it comes right down to it. Or what you are.”

“Me? Old Flossie? I’m a professional shrew.” She laughed in a manner not altogether kindly, but not menacingly, either. “You’re in luck, though; tonight’s the monthly Duty Pageant, and that’s an earful and an eyeful, and it’ll stuff you with civic pride. Just mark my words.” She sniffed. “Is that tuna on your breath?”

“It’s tuna on my wings, I think.”

“You need a good bath. I’ll show you where. Let’s go.”

What-the-Dickens glanced at his new associate. Pepper seemed somewhat unsure of herself.

“Come with me,” he said to her.

“No, she can’t,” interrupted Old Flossie. “She has to get this tooth down to Central Supply so it can be registered on the manifest. Don’t detain her. She hasn’t got the best record among the training Agents. As for you, you’ll be needing an interview with Doctor Ill. But let’s get you a bath so you’re presentable. Look smart, now; here’s the doorway.”

When the stump mistress led What-the-Dickens past them, the other skibbereen fell back as if afraid of toxic contagion. He turned to look at Pepper, but she was being hustled away by a crowd of chattering skibbereen. They blathered, “You could’ve been killed! He might’ve done you in! You’re lucky to be alive! That’s some tooth you snatched!”

The plump old skibberee shifted aside a pumpkin-colored fungus that grew on the edge of the stump. Behind the growth appeared a round hole. Old Flossie could barely squeeze in, but squeeze in she did, at last, descending a staircase into the interior of the tree trunk.

What-the-Dickens looked back one more time. Pepper had paused on the other edge of the stump, resisting the surge of the crowd escorting her away. What-the-Dickens raised his eyebrows: Should I?

She shrugged back at him: What do I care? But she must care about something, for she looked more than a little worried. She finally made a motion to him — Go, go! — and, not feeling sure he was glad to be home, if this was home, he went home.