The Cats of Tanglewood Forest

  “I don’t see anything,” Lillian said around a mouthful of biscuit. “What are you looking at?”

  “Possibilities. All the things that could happen, depending on the choices we make.”

  Her gaze lifted to capture Lillian’s.

  “Things didn’t turn out so happily for you, did they?” the possum woman said.

  Lillian shook her head. “Can you fix it?”

  “By fix it, do you mean return things to when you were still a kitten asking for my help?”

  “Please.”

  “Of course I can.”

  Lillian waited eagerly, but the old woman merely set the loom aside and picked up her tea once more.

  “Um,” Lillian finally began.

  “I’ll be needing some kind of payment,” Old Mother Possum said.

  Stupid, stupid, Lillian thought. She was so stupid. Of course the possum witch would want some kind of payment.

  “I don’t have anything,” she said. “Last time…”

  Old Mother Possum’s eyebrows rose.

  “Last time?” she prompted when Lillian didn’t go on.

  “Last time you didn’t ask for anything.”

  “Goodness. I must have been feeling generous that night.”

  But then Lillian remembered the tincture bottle at the bottom of her food pouch. Pulling it out, she gave it to the possum witch.

  “I have this,” she said.

  Old Mother Possum smiled as she held the bottle up to the light.

  “This will make a nice addition to my tree,” she said, “but it’s such a small thing to trade for a big magic. Do you have anything else?”

  “Maybe I could do something for you in trade?” Lillian tried.

  The possum witch nodded. “Now, that’s a fine idea. Why don’t you tell me your story?”

  “My story?”

  “A story a body’s never heard before can be just as good as coin. Better, if it’s a good one.”

  “But didn’t your loom tell you everything that happened?” Lillian asked.

  “Stories are meant to be told,” Old Mother Possum responded, settling herself in her chair.

  “I’m in kind of a hurry.”

  Old Mother Possum smiled. “There’s no rush, dear. Whether I return you at this moment or in an hour, you’ll still go back to the exact same point in time. It’s just the way it works.”

  Lillian fidgeted impatiently in her chair and turned her teacup around and around on its saucer. “But Aunt—”

  “Will still be there. You’ll still be a kitten. Everything will be the way it was. So we have time for your story.”

  “It’s not very interesting.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, big chunks of it aren’t.”

  “So tell me the parts that are,” Old Mother Possum said. “Unless you have something else to trade?”

  “Well, the worst part,” Lillian began, “was when I got back to the farm and found Aunt lying in the corn patch….”

  Lillian had almost finished a second mug of tea before she came to the end of her story. She’d skimmed over some parts, and she hadn’t said why T.H. had stayed behind both times she’d come to Black Pine Hollow.

  “So he’s out there in the marsh right now?” Old Mother Possum asked when Lillian was finished.

  Lillian nodded slowly.

  “Now, I’ve never known a shy fox. Nor one to pass up the chance for a free meal.”

  “Oh, he’s just… um… you know…”

  “In fact, I do. He thinks I’m mad at him for eating my husband.”

  “You knew all along? And you’re not mad?”

  “Why would I be? William was already dead. It’s the natural order of things, whether we go back into the earth or fill somebody’s stomach.”

  “How did you know?”

  Old Mother Possum smiled. “You do remember I’m a witch, don’t you? What you and your friend might have asked was, how could I not know?”

  “I suppose. Well, T.H. will be happy to hear that.”

  That made the possum woman laugh.

  “Oh, he won’t believe you,” she said. “He’ll just think it’s some trick to get him to drop his guard so that I can catch him in a spell.”

  “Why would he think that?”

  “Because it’s how a fox’s mind works. He’s always sly himself, so naturally he expects the same of others.”

  “I wouldn’t play a trick on him.”

  “And maybe he even believes it,” Old Mother Possum said, then she stood up. “Well, this has been very nice, but it’s time you went back and the world gets itself all rearranged once more.”

  “Will—will it hurt?”

  “Did it hurt the last time?”

  “No.”

  “Then why should this be any different?” the possum witch asked.

  Before Lillian could reply, Old Mother Possum snapped her fingers—

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Girl

  Who Was a

  Kitten Again

  And everything changed again.

  One moment she was a girl, sitting in a chair by a fire, the next she was a kitten, standing outside in the marsh with the tall dead pine rearing up above her. The only thing that didn’t change was that Old Mother Possum was present in both places. But whereas a moment ago Lillian had looked down at the woman from her taller height, now she was looking up because she was a kitten again.

  “Is—is everything back to normal?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing ever changed here,” the possum witch told her. “I just let you have a look-see at one of the other paths that run alongside this world of ours. Other possibilities, if you will.”

  Lillian looked at her, confusion plain in her kitten eyes.

  “My bottles catch and hold the winds,” Old Mother Possum explained. “Not just from this world, but from all worlds—ones that were, ones that might could be. I wanted you to see that small choices can have large consequences. So I had the bottles sing a song that opened a portal to one of those other possibilities. You ran through that portal thinking of yourself as a little girl, so that was the shape you wore on that particular journey. But as I say, it was merely one of many possibilities.”

  “Do you mean it wasn’t real? That I was still a kitten here the whole time I thought I was a girl again?”

  The possum witch nodded. “Nothing changed here while you were gone. The only place something might have been changed for you is in here.” She laid a palm on her chest. “In your heart. In how you see the world.”

  “So it was… some kind of lesson?”

  She supposed she had learned a thing or two. She now knew something about looking after a farm, and standing up for herself, and how true friends will stand by you, and the senselessness of holding on to old quarrels. She’d even learned that sometimes a thing was just going to happen—like if one person weren’t bitten by a snake, then maybe somebody else would be.

  Old Mother Possum shrugged. “What’s important to remember is that one thing leads to another. Trouble is, it’s hard to see ahead sometimes, so I gave you a chance to do just that.”

  “You didn’t turn back time?”

  “I know it’s hard to understand, but there are possibilities and consequences with every choice you make. For now, just think of it like a dream, where a lot of things happened, but you were only asleep for a moment.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not God, kitten. I can’t turn back time.”

  “Is there really a whole cottage inside that dead tree?” Lillian asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know how it can be, but I think there is.”

  Old Mother Possum tapped a bottle tied to a nearby branch. It clinked against another.

  “There is magic,” she said.

  Lillian nodded. “But you don’t have enough magic to change me back into a girl?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “And
if I do find someone to help me… does that mean the dream I had about Aunt dying and everything… will that come true?”

  “That was another road from the one you’re on now, kitten. Nobody can tell where this one will take you.”

  Lillian nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “I won’t forget what you’ve shown me.”

  “Don’t make a promise you can’t keep,” the possum witch said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Folks in your situation… Well, let’s just say it doesn’t tend to stick. The farther away you get from marvels, the harder it is to remember them. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times before.”

  Lillian shook her head. “I could never forget all of this. I don’t want to forget any of it.”

  “That’s as may be, but I will still give you the gift of memory, so that one day you will remember it all again. I can’t say when it will happen, but happen it will.”

  Lillian didn’t bother to argue. She knew how impossible it would be to forget.

  Old Mother Possum bent down and gave her a pat.

  “Run along now,” she said. “And be careful. A kitten can seem a tasty snack to a hungry predator.”

  “I’ll be careful. But I won’t give up trying to find a way to change back.”

  The old woman nodded. “I understand. But consider—it might seem like a terrible thing to be trapped in a kitten’s body, but there are worse fates.”

  Then she stepped back into the tree and was gone.

  Lillian stared at the bottle tree for a long moment. Old Mother Possum was right about that. She’d already seen one of those worse fates.

  She made her way back to where she’d left T.H., being careful not to set the bottles clinking against one another. Her paws got wet and mud-caked again, but she didn’t care. She was trapped as a kitten, but she didn’t care about that, either. Aunt was alive. That was all that mattered.

  As she came to the tree line, T.H. rose up from the ferns where he’d been lying, startling her.

  “So she wasn’t able to help?” he asked.

  “What do you mean? She changed everything back.”

  “Back to what? You still look like a kitten to me.”

  “But—”

  Except then Lillian realized that, so far as T.H. was concerned, the kitten she was again had simply wandered down to the pine, had a conversation with the possum witch, and then come back. He knew nothing of the months she’d spent as a girl, mourning the loss of Aunt, the journey to LaOursville, their escape, or anything.

  “I know it seems like not much happened,” she said, “but the little while you’ve been waiting here has been months for me, and for you, too.”

  “Ha, ha.”

  “No, it’s true.”

  “How can it be true?” he asked.

  So as they walked away from Black Pine Hollow, the kitten following the trail the fox took so that she didn’t fall into the water, Lillian told him all the things that had happened from when she found herself back in the body of the little girl again.

  “That’s impossible,” he said when she was done.

  “I was a girl, and now I’m a kitten,” Lillian said. “I can talk to animals and birds. I was supposed to die from the snakebite but I didn’t. That should all be impossible, too.”

  “If any of that happened.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I don’t know what to think. The only reason your story makes any sense is that you don’t act like the same little kitten I met earlier tonight. Sometime between your seeing the witch and coming back, you’ve changed. You seem older. You don’t even talk exactly the same.”

  “I learned some important things, but I’m still Lillian the girl, even though I’m a cat, too.”

  The fox shrugged. “I don’t understand how you can be both a girl and a cat.”

  “Here,” Lillian said, stopping at a pool of water. “Look at this.”

  T.H. looked over her shoulder to see the reflection of a redheaded girl where there should have been one of a calico kitten.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he said.

  “Now do you believe me?”

  “I have to, don’t I? But I’m still pretty sure people can’t just wander back and forth in time. What if you met your parents and convinced them not to marry? Then you wouldn’t be born. And if that’s the case, how could you go back and convince them not to marry? You see what I mean? Just thinking about it makes my head hurt.”

  “I didn’t really go back in time. It was just, sort of, a dream.”

  “And I was in it.”

  Lillian nodded. “You were. You’ve been a good friend to me all along.”

  “And you returned that favor by telling the possum witch I ate her husband?”

  “Of course not. She already knew.”

  “How could she know?”

  “She’s a witch,” she said.

  He gave a slow nod. “That, at least, makes sense—so much as anything can on a night like this.”

  They crossed the stream, hopping from one stone to another. Lillian managed not to slip this time. She paused on the last rock to dip one paw after another into the water to rinse off the mud.

  “What will you do now?” T.H. asked.

  “Go back to the farm. What else can I do?”

  “But you said that your aunt doesn’t recognize you.”

  “I know. But at least she’s alive. And I’ll still try to find a way to become a girl again.”

  “Well, barnyards and foxes don’t mix well,” T.H. said. “People get the wrong impression when we come by for a visit.”

  “Like how you might get into the chicken coop?”

  He shrugged. “Everyone gets a little peckish.”

  “Then it’s probably a good idea that you don’t come. Aunt wouldn’t like it, and I don’t think the chickens would, either.” She paused a moment, then added, “Does that mean I won’t see you again?”

  “Come into the woods and call for me. If I’m near enough to hear you, I’ll come.”

  “I’ll bring you a snack,” Lillian told him.

  “You don’t have to, though I wouldn’t say no.”

  Lillian laughed. “Thanks for being my friend, T.H. I think your mama named you well.”

  The fox slipped away, a chuckle lingering in the air behind him.

  Lillian lifted a paw and studied it in the moonlight. She’d liked having fingers again, but being a kitten was a small price to pay to make things right.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Lost

  Lillian came upon Aunt still out in the fields with a lantern, calling her name. She ran through the long grass, calling out, but her cries were only meows. The lantern paused on its journey through the meadow. Aunt turned in her direction.

  “Oh, kitten,” she said, “I only wish my Lillian were as easy to find as you. Where is that girl?”

  “I’m here, I’m here! Right in front of you.”

  Aunt bent down and gave her a pat. “I’m so worried about her. She’s a good girl. The only thing that would keep her away from home is if something bad has happened to her. Oh, I’m at my wit’s end. She could be lying out there in the woods somewhere with a broken leg, and how would we find her?”

  “Don’t feel bad. I’m not lost. I’m right here.”

  But of course Aunt couldn’t understand her meowing. She should have asked the possum witch if she had a magic potion like the one she’d stolen from Mother Manan, except this potion would let animals talk to humans. She so wanted to tell Aunt that she didn’t have to worry.

  Aunt straightened up and peered into the darkness.

  “Lillian!” she cried, her voice breaking. “Can you hear me?”

  Lillian didn’t bother responding. She just followed in Aunt’s wake as Aunt slowly made her way down the hill. When Aunt reached the creek, she took the path to the Welches’ farm, and Lillian trotted along behind her. The hounds began to bark as they approached the farm a while later
, and Lillian gave a nervous cry. She remembered the warning Jack Crow had given her what seemed like ages ago. The dogs might be her friends when she was a girl, but when she was a kitten they’d just see her as a snack.

  Aunt scooped Lillian up and continued toward the farmhouse with the dogs sniffing curiously around her. The kitchen door opened before she could reach the back porch, and Earl stood silhouetted by the light behind him.

  “Fran?” he said. “What have you got there?”

  “It’s just a kitten. I’m looking for Lillian. Have you seen her today?”

  He shook his head. “It’s late for her to be out.”

  “Don’t I know it. Something’s happened to her. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “Let me get a coat,” he said, “and we’ll help you look. Harlene,” he called back into the house, “we’ve got us a situation here.”

  But even with the three of them scouring the woods, they couldn’t find Lillian, because she wasn’t lost. They tramped through the woods, their lanterns bobbing in the dark. They called her name, stopping to listen for the faintest response. Finally Harlene and Earl joined Aunt under a large beech tree.

  “First thing at dawn,” Earl said, “I’ll take the wagon into town and we’ll get a search party up here.”

  Aunt nodded. “Thank you. I think I’ll just keep looking awhile longer.”

  Harlene put her hand on Aunt’s arm. “What you need to do is get some rest so that you can help in the search tomorrow.”

  “Maybe you could talk to those Creek boys in the morning,” Earl added.

  “Good thinking,” Aunt said. “They know these woods, and they all like Lillian. They’ll help.”

  “ ’Course they will,” Earl said, “but I was thinking they might be able to track her. Those boys read sign like Preacher Bartholomew can read his Bible.”

  “But meantime,” Harlene said, “you should get some rest.”

  “I don’t know that I could sleep,” Aunt said.

  “I’ll go back with you,” Harlene told her. “Maybe she’s at the house right now, wondering where you’ve got to.”

  “We can hope,” Aunt said.