The Cats of Tanglewood Forest

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Holes

  in the Sky

  I told you not to go talk to her,” Davy said as he and John walked Lillian along the dappled trail to the edge of the rez. The sun was high and the air crisp, making it a perfect day for hiking.

  Lillian carried a blanket roll on her back, plus a canteen and a small shoulder bag with some food that Mrs. Creek had packed for her: apples and cheese, a couple of fresh fry breads. The boys walked on either side, plying her with questions, while lanky rez dogs ranged ahead under the canopy of the trees. Lillian had tried to satisfy the boys’ curiosity as best she could with a shortened version of her story.

  John nodded. “I’ll admit that’s one crazy dream of yours, but I don’t see how it could be real. And all because of that you’re going off to get eaten by a bear.”

  “I’m not going to be eaten by a bear,” Lillian said, feigning a courage that she didn’t feel.

  “Seems like it to me,” Davy said, “which makes me wonder why Aunt Nancy’s sending you to them. I used to think she had a soft spot for you and your aunt.”

  “It’s not really Aunt Nancy’s doing,” Lillian told them. “The spirits told her I should go.”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Anyway, they’re supposed to be some kind of bear people. Not bears for real. They wouldn’t just up and eat me.”

  “Well,” John said, “I guess we never told you the story about how stars are the holes left in the sky from when the spiders dropped down.”

  “I guess you never did.”

  John stopped in his tracks and dropped down to the ground, sitting cross-legged in the grass. Davy followed suit. Lillian hesitated, then sat down in front of them. The dogs came back and sprawled in a loose circle around them.

  “This happened a long time ago,” John said, “back when the bears lived more like bears than like people. That might seem a strange way to put it, but back then there weren’t many humans, so the animal people mostly just walked around in their animal skins. Anyway, they were going about their business when along comes this little girl.

  “The bears didn’t know what to make of her, so they put her in the bottom of a natural well out in front of their caves while they figured out what to do. It was a deep, deep well, dark down there at the bottom where the little girl was stuck, with smooth sides going all the way up so she couldn’t climb out. But she could see a little circle way up that she knew was the sky, and she could hear the bear people talking. When they finally decided that they might as well just eat her, she knew she was in real trouble.”

  “What did she do?” Lillian had to ask.

  John smiled. “Well, what the bears didn’t know was that the little girl was the daughter of the great spider spirit. When Old Man Night finally rolled his big black blanket across the sky, she called out to all the little spider spirits that make their homes in the dark, dark wool of Old Man Night’s blanket. Answering her call, they dropped down from the sky in the thousands, and every place they dropped from, there was a little hole left behind that we still see in the night skies to this day.

  “But that night they wove their webs and made a ladder so that the little girl could climb out of the well, and they wrapped all the sleeping bears in their webs so that they couldn’t move. They couldn’t even breathe.

  “Then the little girl ate them, one by one.”

  “She ate them all?” Lillian asked.

  John nodded.

  “Oh, she was mad, mad, and she would’ve eaten every one, except for a couple had been off hunting and spent the night in a cave. Imagine coming home to that.”

  He looked around carefully, as though he was afraid of being overheard, then leaned in closer to Lillian.

  “I’ve heard tell,” he said in a soft voice, “that Aunt Nancy was that same little girl, and she’s still mad at those bears.”

  Lillian’s eyes opened wide. “Really?”

  “Did you ever see all those spiderwebs up in the rafters of her cabin?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Then she caught the flicker of a smile in the corner of John’s mouth.

  “Oh, you!” she cried, and punched him in the shoulder.

  John and Davy fell back on the grass, laughing. The dogs jumped up and ran around in circles, barking.

  “I still don’t see what any of that’s got to do with me,” Lillian said when things had calmed down.

  Davy’s eyebrows rose. “You mean besides being a little girl walking up to a cave full of bears and asking them for their advice?”

  “You can try and scare me,” Lillian told him, “but Aunt Nancy was mostly pretty nice to me. She’s stern and kind of spooky, but she’s not really mean.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” John said with a grin. “Especially the stern and spooky part.”

  Lillian ignored his tease. “Talking to these bear people’s the only thing anyone’s said might help me,” she said. “And when was the last time you heard about a bear going after somebody unless they got between a mother and her cubs? It’s not like the bears in these hills are all fierce the way grizzlies are supposed to be.”

  “Maybe so,” Davy said, “but I still wouldn’t be doing it.”

  They hiked on for a while, kicking up fallen pine needles as they followed the trail through a section of sprucy-pine forest. Cantankerous squirrels scolded them from the safety of tree boughs, but the three paid them no mind.

  Once Lillian thought she caught a glimpse of Big Orange watching them from the top of a ridge, but John said it was just a fox, adding, “He’s lucky the dogs didn’t catch wind of him.”

  After a while they came out from under the woods into a wide meadow that stretched to the far tree line in waves of golden-brown grass and purple asters. A crow croaked from the trees behind them before it sailed over the meadow. Lillian watched it vanish into the tops of the tall sprucy-pine.

  When they reached the far side of the meadow the boys stopped. The dogs came back, pushing muzzles against their legs as if to ask, What’s the holdup?

  “This is as far as we can go,” Davy said.

  “We’d come all the way,” John said, “but when Aunt Nancy lays down the law, you do what she says or she’ll tan your hide.”

  “That’s all right,” Lillian told them. “Thanks for taking me this far.”

  John nodded. “Keep going north till you come to a rocky ridge, then follow it down to the creek below. If you stay near the creek, it’ll take you back up into the hills again. You’ll see caves under a big overhang, and I guess that’s as good a place as any to start looking for bears.”

  “It’ll probably take you most of the day to get there,” Davy added, “so you’ll maybe want to hole up somewhere before the sun sets. If you’re going to meet a bear, I expect it’ll be more comfortable in the morning than at night.”

  “I expect it will,” Lillian said with a tremor in her voice.

  She thanked them again, then set off before she lost her nerve completely. When she looked back a little later, the boys and dogs were gone. In their place was a row of cats, sitting on deadfalls and stumps and the ground, watching her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Hunter

  At any other time Lillian would have been delighted to be exploring a new stretch of woods. But today she was aimed right smack up against something that she felt was maybe too big for her. Bear people. The very idea made her tummy flutter, but she couldn’t help feeling a little excited at the same time, never mind John’s stupid story.

  She followed a deer trail through the autumn woods, admiring the colorful foliage and thinking about having crafted grapevine-and-leaf wreaths with Aunt last fall. She hoped that the bear people would be able to set things right.

  It felt good to have a sense of purpose. It had been a long stretch of whenever since she’d felt she was doing more than just getting through a day. Maybe she ought to have gone to see Aunt Nancy a lot sooner.

  The land ro
se slowly toward to the ridge that John had told her to look for. Oak and beech gave way to sprucy-pine. Under their tall spreading boughs there was less undergrowth, and her lone footsteps crunched noisily on the carpet of needles. Mushrooms sprouted from deadfalls, alone and in clusters: red and white, bright yellow, mustard yellow. The bare granite bones of the land pushed up out of the ground in ever-larger formations.

  It was only when she reached the top of the ridge that she realized she was being followed.

  At first she thought it was one of the Creek boys, planning to play another trick on her. Davy or John, or maybe both of them. She kept turning casually, hoping to catch them at their game, but they were good at hiding. Then she thought it was the cats again, except they never bothered to hide from her. When she finally did catch a glimpse of her pursuer, it was a flash of russet fur darting behind a stone outcrop.

  She stopped in her tracks, staring at the place where the fox had disappeared. A memory popped into her mind, and for a moment she couldn’t remember if it was a real memory or if it had come from the strange dream she’d had the day Aunt died. But then she had to laugh at herself.

  T. H. Reynolds, the talking fox? Of course he was from her dream. But it was confusing the way the idea of impossible things kept tumbling into the real world. Once upon a time she would have been delighted with the idea of talking foxes or bear people, but she wasn’t the little girl chasing fairies in the meadow anymore. And never mind what Aunt Nancy had told her, she suspected that the bear people would just be some hermit clan living deep in the hills. Strange, to be sure, but quite human.

  She set off again, following the ridge, picking her way around the stone outcrops and tree roots. And while it made little sense, she kept catching glimpses of the red fox sneaking along behind her. She knew that sometimes wild critters just got curious. And sometimes they were sick. Rabies could make even a squirrel do things it would never do otherwise—like follow a girl much bigger than itself.

  Whyever this fox was following her, it was creepy. And she was fed up with it.

  Picking up a good-sized stick, she held it in a tight grip and glared at the last place she’d seen the fox dart out of sight.

  “All right, Mr. Fox,” she called out to it. “Or maybe you really are T. H. Reynolds. I don’t know and I don’t care. But you need to either stop following me or step out where I can see you.”

  She wasn’t actually expecting a response, so when a voice spoke to her from the branches of the tree above her, she thought her heart would stop.

  “Hey, little missy. Think you could keep it down?”

  She felt as though she’d fallen back into her dream again, where creatures kept talking to her from trees. Looking up, she half expected to see the fox sitting up there on a branch—or at least Jack Crow.

  The foliage was thick, and at first she didn’t see anyone. Then a shadow shifted, moving into a shaft of light, and she saw that there was a man up in the tree. He had a long face with a raggedy beard and a wrinkled brown hat pushing down on top of a mass of straggly hair. His rangy frame was tucked into a crook between a couple of big branches and the trunk. A rifle lay across his knees.

  “What are you doing up there?” Lillian asked, too surprised to be scared.

  “Well, I was hunting until you came traipsing down the ridge making enough noise for a whole herd of little girls. Any game for a mile around is going to have been scared away.”

  “I wasn’t making that much noise.”

  “Oh, no? You walk like you weigh ten times your size. And then there was all that shouting. Somebody should have told you before this that a fox isn’t going to be tracking some little girl, and he sure enough isn’t going to answer your questions.”

  Lillian flushed. All the fancies that the Creeks had put in her head washed away and she felt like a fool.

  “I know that,” she said.

  “Do you now.”

  Lillian gave him a determined nod and changed the subject.

  “What are you hunting?”

  “I’ve got my sights set on a big panther. I’ve seen him a time or two and decided to see if I can track him down. That pelt of his’ll fetch a handsome price.”

  Maybe it was all dreams and fancies, but Lillian couldn’t help thinking about the things Jack Crow had told her.

  “Do you mean the Father of Cats?” she almost whispered.

  The man shrugged. “Well, now, he sure looks big and old enough to have been around since the beginning of time. But this isn’t some parlor-story fairy-tale cat. It’s just an any-old-day panther that keeps coming around my farm, looking to get at the calves.”

  “You’ve really seen him?”

  “I catch me a glimpse, time to time, but I never can get me a shot. He’s smart, that cat. Been around awhile—you can tell. But I can be patient.”

  “Where’s your farm?” Lillian asked, wondering if he might know about the bear people.

  He jerked his chin to the west, rather than north.

  “Over yonder,” he said. “A couple of miles as the crow flies.” He chuckled. “Takes me a little longer to make the trip.”

  “Do you ever see any bear around here?”

  He shook his head. “I know there’s some higher up in the hills, but they don’t much come down my way—leastwise, I don’t see any sign. Doesn’t really surprise me since there’s nothing for them. I don’t have an orchard or beehives or even a berry patch.”

  Lillian couldn’t think of a way to ask about bear people without feeling more ridiculous.

  “Well,” she said, “I’ve still got a-ways to go, so I guess I’ll be seeing you.”

  “You never did say why you’re up this far into the hills.”

  Lillian gave him a bright smile. “Talking to foxes,” she said.

  “Ha, ha. But seriously, you’re awful young to be out on your own, this deep in the hills. Where do you live?”

  Nowhere, Lillian thought. She didn’t have a home anymore. At least not until she figured out how to save Aunt’s farm. But that wasn’t anything she was about to tell a stranger.

  “Back there a-ways,” she said, pointing.

  Then she waved a hand and set off at a jaunty pace that wasn’t anything like she felt.

  “You be dang careful!” the hunter called after her.

  She waved again but didn’t look back.

  Lillian expected the hunter to come down from his perch to follow after her, which would make him yet one more person who felt he should get to decide what she was supposed to do with her life. But she didn’t hear any ruckus. When she finally did hear something behind her a few minutes later, a quick glance showed her the plume of a fox’s tail disappearing behind a bush.

  “Fine,” she said. “Go ahead and skulk along behind me. See if I care.”

  She looked up in the tree she was passing under, half expecting someone to be sitting up there. Another hunter. Maybe some fairy-tale creature. Somebody with something to say that she didn’t particularly want to hear.

  But the branches were empty, which made perfect sense. Hunters were busy with their own lives, and her life wasn’t a fairy tale. It was a sad mess and there wasn’t anything magical about it. There wasn’t anything magical anywhere at all.

  Yes, Aunt Nancy was fairly spooky, but really. Bear people?

  She stopped and sat down on the long trunk of a fallen tree, ready to retrace her steps. Except that wouldn’t help, either. The Welches and school were waiting for her back there.

  And going ahead would—what?

  Well, it might get her eaten by a bear. Or a panther…

  She sighed and looked back the way she’d come.

  “What do you think, Mr. Fox?” she called to the empty woods. “Do you have any advice for me?”

  Of course there was no reply.

  Lillian went on despite her reservations. The game trail she followed through the sprucy-pine wound its way in between tree trunks and stone outcrops softened with moss. S
he walked along the back of the ridge for miles, weariness starting to set in just when the ground started to rise again.

  Hunger pangs reminded her that she’d skipped breakfast, and she was grateful that there was food in her pack. She stopped by a jumble of rock to have some cheese and fry bread, washing it down with water. When she was rested enough to continue, she stood up and left a small portion of cheese on the stone where she’d been sitting.

  “That’s for you, Mr. Fox,” she said.

  She hadn’t seen him for a while so she wasn’t even sure he was still on her trail.

  Curiosity got the better of her, and thirty feet or so from where she’d left the cheese she ducked behind a big mossy stone, then slowly rose until she could peer over the top. She stayed as still as ever she had and, sure enough, a few minutes later the fox stepped into sight on dainty feet, his plume of a tail lifting behind him. He sniffed at the food, then snapped it up in one bite. His head came up and he looked around until his gaze found hers. She ducked down. When she looked back a moment later, he was gone.

  The trail wound up the mountain until it finally opened into a small meadow. The afternoon was slipping away and she remembered Davy’s advice about finding a place to spend the night.

  She crossed the meadow and the trail began its descent once more. The incline was steep and she had to hold on to saplings as she went down. As twilight finally crept over the forest she came to a small creek. A tall pine had recently fallen, forming a bridge across the water. She drank from the creek and filled her canteen, then crossed over. She walked the length of the pine until it grew too narrow.

  Follow the creek, John had told her. Well, she’d do that tomorrow.

  Hopping down, she made herself a nest under the pine boughs. She rolled out her blanket and lay down. She thought about the fox and the hunter and the bears she might or might not meet tomorrow. Finally the long day caught up with her, and she fell fast asleep.