The Cats of Tanglewood Forest

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Mother

  Manan

  When Lillian woke it was morning. She looked up through the pine boughs and smiled to hear the bird chorus. The scent of pine and the forest loam upon which she lay filled her nose, and for a long moment she was able to forget why she was out here in the forest.

  Stretching lazily, she slipped out from under the fallen pine, pulling her gear after her. There was still plenty of water in her canteen, and the creek was only a hop, a skip, and a jump away, but her food sack was woefully lighter than it had been when Mrs. Creek had given it to her. She rolled up her blanket and tied it with her carrying strap. It was only when she turned around that she discovered she was no longer alone.

  A few feet away from where she’d slept under the boughs of the fallen pine was the biggest man she’d ever seen.

  At first glance she thought he was pretty much as wide as he was tall, but then she realized he was crouched down. Standing up he’d be bigger still—seven, maybe eight feet tall, towering over her like the sprucy-pine and oak. His beard and hair were a reddish-brown tangle that bushed up around his face like a cluster of thornbushes around an apple tree. He was dressed in a collection of furs and linen scraps, all sewn together in a haphazard fashion.

  She couldn’t tell how old he was, only that he wasn’t as old as Aunt had been, nor as young as she was. He was somewhere in the long distance in between. She couldn’t tell his mood, either. His dark brown eyes studied her without blinking, and she found herself unable to breathe until he finally spoke.

  “There’s something unnatural about you, little girl,” he said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to reverberate in her chest. “Who are you and what are you hiding?”

  “I—my name’s Lillian.”

  “Hmm.”

  “And I don’t know what you mean.”

  He gave a slow nod. “People say that when they have something to hide.”

  “Well, that wouldn’t be me.”

  “What are you doing in my hills?”

  “Your…” Lillian began, but her voice trailed off as she finally realized who this must be. “I’m looking for the bear people.”

  “And why would you be doing a thing like that?”

  “Aunt Nancy told me I should. She’s—”

  Something darkened in the man’s eyes. “We know who she is. What does she want from us?”

  “So you are one of the bear people?”

  “Patience, little girl. I’m asking the questions here. Tell me, why did Nancy Creek send you here?”

  Lillian wanted to crawl back under the pine and curl up into a ball. Anything to get away from the bear man’s hostile gaze and cross tone.

  “She—she said you might be able to interpret my dream.”

  “Did she now.”

  It didn’t sound like a question, but Lillian nodded in response all the same.

  The bear man studied her again. When he finally stood, he seemed to rise up forever. Lillian thought he might be even more than eight feet tall.

  “You’re coming with me,” he said. “We’ll see what Mother Manan has to say about this story of yours. But I can tell you this much: Your being a spy for Nancy Creek won’t stand in your favor.”

  “I’m not a spy,” Lillian said. “She scares me a little, too.”

  He snorted. “What makes you think she scares me?”

  “Nothing. I just find her scary, so I figure everybody does.”

  Lillian was afraid of the bear man as well, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. She probably didn’t have to. All he had to do was look at how her knees were knocking against each other.

  “You know,” she said, “if your mother’s not going to help me, maybe I should go home and not waste everybody’s time.”

  He smiled but his eyes narrowed.

  “No,” he said, “you’ll be coming with me. The question is, will you walk or will I have to carry you under my arm?”

  It wasn’t a long hike to where the bear people lived, but it seemed long to Lillian as she tramped along beside the enormous man. He hadn’t come right out and threatened her, but his attitude filled her with dread. Was she his walking dinner?

  She kept sneaking glances at him. It was like walking beside a giant, except he had a softer step than she did. Maybe the hunter she’d met yesterday was right. She did walk like a whole crowd of little girls.

  Finally they came through a narrow cleft in the rocks and Lillian stopped dead in surprise. A small valley opened up before them, and there was the home of the bear people. Their houses were two and three stories high, built of logs and cedar-shingled, and set right up against the rock face of the mountain as though they had grown out of the stone. Adding a touch of whimsy were long, multicolored ribbons that hung from the corners of the roofs, fluttering like a stutter of rainbows in the breeze.

  The huge man turned to look back at her. “Don’t dawdle.”

  “It’s just… This is so pretty.”

  “It’s only LaOursville. Where we live.”

  Lillian felt somewhat heartened by the scene. Surely people who decorated their homes in such a whimsical fashion would never be prone to boiling up little girls for supper. Perhaps she really was on the verge of finding the answer to her problem.

  The path down into the valley took them through more forest, which opened into thickets of berry bushes, then past an orchard twice the size of Aunt’s.

  A cornfield to the right and gardens to the left both had the bedraggled look of having recently been harvested. A creek came down from the mountains and ran close to the fields before it traveled away into the forest. They crossed the creek by way of a series of wide stepping-stones, and then they were on the packed dirt in front of the houses.

  The man made a deep hooting sound that seemed to come from somewhere low in his chest. In response a dozen or so hairy faces peered out from various windows and doors. The only difference Lillian could see among them was that the women had shorter hair on their faces, while the men had beards as big and bushy as her companion’s.

  Bear people, she thought. They were big and hairy, but still people, so that was good. Surely they couldn’t all be as grouchy as this one.

  An older woman came slowly from one of the buildings, leaning on a staff topped with a spill of colored ribbons. Small bone carvings of bears dangled from the ends of the ribbons. Her hair had probably once been the same reddish brown as Lillian’s companion’s, but now it was almost completely gray. Over her raggedy clothes she wore a woven wool shawl with patterns of bears. It was edged with more bright ribbons and carvings. By contrast, the bear woman’s features were stern—like Harlene in a bad mood. She stared at Lillian, then looked at the man.

  “Joen,” she said with a frown. “What is this you have brought?”

  “Found her in the woods,” Joen said. “She says Nancy Creek sent her.”

  The old woman spat in the dirt and Lillian’s hopes drained away, along with the color in her cheeks.

  “Did she say why?”

  Lillian straightened her back. Maybe they were going to eat her after all, but she wasn’t going to stand around and let them talk about her as though she were some cow in a pasture.

  “I can talk for myself, ma’am,” she said.

  The woman’s dark gaze settled on her. “Can you now. And what do you have to say about Nancy Creek?”

  “I don’t know her well enough to say one thing or the other.”

  “Hmm. There’s something about you, girl. I’m sure enough getting a queer feeling just looking at you.”

  “That’s what your son said.”

  “My son?”

  “Him. Joen.”

  “What makes you think he’s my son?”

  “Aren’t you Mother Manan?”

  “Mother is a title, girl.”

  “My name’s Lillian, not girl.”

  “Well, you’ve got spunk, I’ll give you that. Why were you sent here?”

/>   “Aunt Nancy said you might be able to interpret a dream I had.”

  Mother Manan spat again at the use of Aunt Nancy’s name.

  “And why,” she asked, “would the spider woman think we’d help her?”

  “It’s to help me, not her. And why do you call her that?” Lillian began, but then she remembered all those webs up in the rafters of Aunt Nancy’s cabin, and John’s joke. At least she’d thought it was a joke.

  “Because it’s in her blood,” Mother Manan said. “She’s from away—a place so far away that my kin have never set foot there.”

  “But being from somewhere else doesn’t mean you’re bad. Did she ever do anything to you?”

  The bear woman spat again. “Her kind hunt us for our flesh and skins.”

  Lillian shivered. “That was long ago, ma’am,” she said. “They haven’t done that for years and years. And I don’t think they even knew you were people when they did.”

  Mother Manan banged the end of her staff on the ground, jangling the bone bears in a noisy clatter.

  “Maybe not,” the old woman said. “But she knew. She was there!”

  The other bear people nodded. They made an odd sound, which Lillian realized was growling, and she shivered again.

  “I… don’t know anything about that,” Lillian said. “I don’t even really know Aunt Nancy. I just went to her for advice.”

  “About a dream.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lillian said.

  “What kind of scheme is this?” Mother Manan demanded. “I don’t interpret dreams for strangers.”

  “But it wasn’t really her who sent me,” Lillian said, correcting herself. “It was actually the spirits who sent me here.”

  “So now you’re changing your story. How dare you try to frighten me with the notion of spirits! What kind of fool do you take me for? I’ve half a notion of my own to send you back to Nancy Creek as a bag of bones.”

  Lillian gulped. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, ma’am,” she said. “I’ll just go.”

  “Did I say you could go?”

  “Um, no…”

  “You didn’t let me finish. Live with us for a time, look after my house. Cook and clean, and do it all without complaint. And then—when you have provided enough service in exchange for my own—then we will see.”

  “See what, ma’am?”

  “If I will help you.”

  “I…”

  It was like there was a wave just under the surface of everything, rolling under her feet, making everyone and everything slightly off balance. Having the dream interpreted was the only chance Lillian had to make things right again. If she went back now, Harlene would cart her off to school, and the Kindred farm would fall to ruin.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” she told Mother Manan. “I’ll do the best I can.”

  “We’ll see about that,” the old woman said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LaOursville

  The first week was awful, the second week worse. Only Lillian’s stubborn determination kept her at her tasks instead of flinging a broom or mop into the bear woman’s face.

  Mother Manan made Lillian clean the house from top to bottom, as she had no patience for even the smallest bit of dirt. Lillian worked from dawn to dusk, dusting every surface and sweeping under beds and behind dressers. Heavy cupboards had to be pulled away from the walls with no one to help. She scrubbed stone floors and walls on her knees with a bucket and brush, carrying the water back and forth from the well. She cleaned the chimney, hearth, and woodstove. She emptied and rinsed the chamber pot, a task that utterly disgusted her, but she did it without complaint.

  If Mother Manan found anything Lillian had missed, she would insist that Lillian begin all over again. It was an impossible task, not helped by the endless parade of visitors who came to pay their respects to Mother Manan, none of whom bothered to wipe their feet.

  Lillian also saw to Mother Manan’s meals and hospitality. Paying homage to Mother Manan seemed to be the bear people’s only pastime. They all had voracious appetites, so Lillian had to bake cakes and berry pies and pastries for the many visitors who came calling. She brewed tea or coffee and had to clean up everything after they were gone, only to have new guests arrive as soon as she’d finished.

  When darkness fell she collapsed onto the pallet Mother Manan had provided in a small windowless room beside the pantry. She always knew when morning had come because at dawn Mother Manan would pound on the floor with her staff, summoning Lillian to another day’s labor.

  But she had her small rebellions.

  The bear people, she discovered, hoarded food and resented sharing beyond their own clan, so she took great pleasure in throwing extra seeds to the wild birds when she was feeding Mother Manan’s chickens in the nearby communal barn. After she cleaned the coop and collected the eggs, she’d milk the cows and put out saucers for the cats that lived in the barn or came soft-stepping from the forest. These cats twined around her legs and butted up against her—like the cats back on Aunt’s farm once had.

  Every morning she brought a biscuit and left it under what appeared to be the most gnarled and ancient tree in the orchard. “That’s for you, Mr. Apple Tree Man,” she’d say before returning to her endless circle of chores.

  The biscuits were always gone the next day. Lillian pretended that the Apple Tree Man stepped out of his tree to eat them until the day she spied a fox darting out of the orchard with a biscuit in its mouth. That made her smile.

  “You enjoy that, Mr. Fox!” she called after the thief, but the next day she put out another biscuit all the same.

  The only chore that she found herself truly enjoying came late in the afternoon, when she was sent out to the berry patches to fill a bucket. Whenever she was outside, she dawdled, taking time to talk to the birds and appreciate the beauties of the valley and LaOursville, all of which seemed so at odds with how the townsfolk lived their lives, mostly indoors with all the windows shuttered against… well, Lillian didn’t know what. And when she went berry-picking, she went so slow that snails could have raced her to the patch and won.

  At the beginning of her third week in LaOursville, Lillian started her day as always, making her way to Mother Manan’s bedroom with a tray of biscuits smothered in honey and a steaming-hot mug of tea. She set it down on the night table and opened the heavy curtains. She stood there for a moment, still able to appreciate the beautiful view, before turning back to the foot of the bed to await Mother Manan’s orders for the day.

  The bear woman sat up and leaned back against the headboard. Her gaze held Lillian’s, measuring and dark.

  “You’re doing better than I expected,” she finally said. “You work well, and without a word of complaint.”

  Lillian shrugged. “We made an agreement. I expect you’ll soon be wanting to hear about my dream.”

  “Not yet. Joen tells me the barn needs cleaning. When you’ve finished dusting in the parlor, see to it.”

  What about your side of our bargain? Lillian wanted to demand, but she knew that part of the bargain was for her to work without complaint.

  She left the bedroom, closing the door quietly behind her. It was all she could do to not slam it in frustration.

  She’d begun to suspect that the bear people were taking out on her the bitterness they felt toward Aunt Nancy. Maybe Aunt Nancy really had eaten some of their kind when she was a little girl. Not like in John’s story, but the way folks in the hills would shoot game for their dinner.

  Because stars were stars—not holes left in some magic blanket of the night from when a bunch of spider spirits came dropping down on their silky threads to rescue a little girl. Though the bear people did appear to have a powerful fear of spiders and their webs. She’d often seen one of them shriek and jump out of the way of a spider spied on a step, or hanging from the roof of a porch.

  She couldn’t fathom why the spirits had told Aunt Nancy to send her here. She knew how in stories a body could be
tested with all kinds of things, but this working like a slave didn’t make a lick of sense.

  Unless Mother Manan had never had any intention of helping her at all. Unless she was just a slave that the bear people were going to use until…

  John’s story about how the bears had planned to eat the little girl they’d put in the bottom of the well popped back into her head. Maybe they were just going to work her until she couldn’t do any more. Then they’d probably eat her.

  Maybe it was time she got herself out of this place.

  It didn’t take her long to tidy up the parlor since she’d just cleaned the whole room the day before. Taking a mop and a bucket, she filled the bucket at the well and walked down to the barn. Before she entered, she leaned on the mop and looked up into the hills surrounding LaOursville.

  “I know that look.”

  She turned around when Joen spoke. There was that belligerent glower he always wore.

  “What look is that?” she asked, hoping she didn’t look as guilty as she felt.

  “You’re thinking of taking off into the hills.”

  “I’m thinking no such thing. I’m just admiring the trees and all their fancy colors.”

  Joen nodded. “Sure you are. But make no mistake, girl. If you run, I’ll be right behind you. I’ll chase you from one end of these hills to the other until I run you down. Don’t think I won’t.”

  “I’m not running anywhere,” she told him. “I’ve got too much work to do. Wasn’t it you who told Mother Manan that the barn needs cleaning?”

  Then she picked up the bucket and mop and went into the barn. She could feel his gaze on her back, but he didn’t follow. She let out a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding.

  That afternoon while she was cleaning out the cold storage—because Mother Manan was convinced she’d seen a spider scurry under its door—Lillian found a tray of small tincture bottles. The tray was on the top shelf and had been pushed all the way to the back. Lillian would never have noticed it at all if she hadn’t been chasing that errant spider.