The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (23 page)
Read The Cats of Tanglewood Forest Online
Authors: Charles de Lint
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction / Fantasy & Magic, #Juvenile Fiction / Fairy Tales & Folklore - General, #Juvenile Fiction / Animals - Cats
Fairies
W
hen she woke again, she and the Apple Tree Man were alone under the beech tree. But she was a girl once more. She sat up, hugging herself, and grinned at him.
“I’m me again,” she said.
He smiled. “You were always you. Now you just look more familiar, that’s all.” He hesitated, then added, “The Father of Cats said he had one word for you, and it was
remember
. Do you understand what he meant?”
Lillian nodded. “It’s the payment I owe him. I
have to always carry a debt, never knowing when he might ask for it to be paid. And he said if I don’t pay it, then the debt will carry on to my children, or my children’s children.”
“Does that trouble you?”
Lillian thought about it.
“I don’t think so. I made him promise that I’d only help if no one was to be hurt by my help.”
The Apple Tree Man smiled. “That was wise of you.”
“Do you think he’s the devil?” Lillian asked.
That made her companion laugh. “Hardly. The Father of Cats was here before there was such a word as
devil
.”
She looked at his wrinkly face and his gnarly limbs.
“Are you a fairy man?” she had to ask. She remembered him stepping into the tree and then back out again with the white madstone in his twisty fingers. But the whole rest of the night had begun to take on the quality of a story she’d been told when she was only half-awake, and it was hard to remember now.
He shook his head. “I’m only what you see: the spirit of an old tree.” He looked up into the branches of the beech and laid his hand upon its bark. “Though not so old as this grandfather.”
“Do you think the cats will get into trouble?” she asked.
“I hope not. Perhaps your bargain will cover it. It was a good thing they did.”
Lillian smiled. “Well, I sure think so.”
The Apple Tree Man stood up and took her hand. “Come,” he said. “We should go.”
“I would like to see the fairies sometime,” Lillian said after they’d been walking for a few minutes, already beginning to forget all the wonders she’d seen and experienced.
Everything seemed odd and a little hazy, even this
walk back from the beech tree. She didn’t remember crossing the creek, but suddenly here they were, in familiar fields with the orchard nearby.
The Apple Tree Man laughed. “You have only to open your eyes,” he said.
“But I do. I run here and there and everywhere with my eyes wide open, but I never see anything. Fairy-like, I mean.”
He sat down on the grass and she sat beside him.
“Try looking from the corner of your eye,” he said. He lifted a hand and pointed down the hill. “What do you see there?”
She saw the bobbing of Aunt’s lantern as she returned from her fruitless search. She saw dark fields, dotted with apple trees and beehives. She didn’t see even one fairy.
“Give it a sidelong glance,” the Apple Tree Man told her.
So she turned her head and looked at the bob of Aunt’s lantern from the corner of her eye.
“I still don’t see…”
Anything, she was going to say. But it wasn’t true. The slope was now filled with small, dancing lights, flickering like fireflies. Only these weren’t magical
bugs—they were magical people. Tiny glowing people with dragonfly wings who swooped and spun through the air, leaving behind a trail of laughter and snatches of song.
“Oh, thank you for showing them to me,” Lillian said, turning back to her companion.
But the Apple Tree Man was gone.
Lillian reached forward and touched the ground where he’d been sitting. The grass was still pressed flat.
“Good-bye good-bye,” she said softly. “Tomorrow I’ll bring you a whole plate of biscuits for your breakfast.”
Then she jumped to her feet and ran down the slope to where her Aunt walked with slumping shoulders, her gaze on the ground, all unaware of the troops of fairies that filled the air around her.
CHAPTER ONE: The Awful, Dreadful Snake
CHAPTER TWO: The Girl Who Woke Up as a Cat
CHAPTER FIVE: Old Mother Possum
CHAPTER SIX: The Cat Who Woke Up as a Girl
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Holes in the Sky
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Mother Manan
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: The Big Black Spider
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Back to Black Pine Hollow
CHAPTER TWENTY: The Girl Who Was a Kitten Again
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: The Apple Tree Man
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Text copyright © 2013 by Charles de Lint
Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Charles Vess
Book design by Saho Fujii
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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