The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (6 page)

“I don’t know any stories about possum witches,” Lillian said. “I don’t know any about possums at all, except for the one about why they have hairless tails.”

That one she got from one of the many Creek aunts by way of John Creek. He was always bribing her to help him when he was chopping and stacking wood, and a story was the best bribe—especially if it came from the aunts.

The Creek aunts weren’t at all like her aunt. They were tall and a little scary—especially Aunt Nancy, maybe because she was a medicine woman, and everybody knew to be careful around bottle witches
and medicine women. The Creek aunts had long memories that held all the tribal memories and herb lore of the Kickaha. Aunt got her own herb lore from them, and Lillian got their stories through John or one of the other Creek boys.

In the old days, this story went, Possum had a glorious tail that he never tired of parading in front of Rabbit. This was just meanness on Possum’s part, because until Bear pulled it off in a fight, Rabbit’s tail had been just as glorious. But after the fight, all he had left was a fluffy tuft.

Still, with the help of Cricket, who cut the hair from Possum’s tail when he was supposed to be grooming it, Rabbit got some retribution. Possum was so embarrassed when the other animals saw him with his hairless tail that he fainted dead away—something possums still do to this day.

Of course it was just a story, but when Lillian thought about all that had happened to her since she’d fallen asleep under the beech tree, she supposed it could be true.

“Do you think it’s true?” she asked the fox.

T.H. laughed. “Who knows? But I sure wouldn’t go repeating it in front of her.”

“She’s really so dangerous?”

“Only one way to find out,” T.H. told her. “If you’re feeling up to it…”

“I have to go. It’s that, or be a kitten forever.”

“It’s your choice.”

“Jack Crow said I should bring a present—to show my respect.”

“You mentioned that,” T.H. said. “Did he say what kind of present?”

“He seemed to think a mouse or a vole.”

“Wouldn’t hurt,” T.H. said, “but I don’t know as it would help much, either. Might seem like a bribe, and not a very fancy one.”

“But I want her to like me.”

“No, you don’t. Possum witches are a whole different thing from folks like you and me. You might as well try to make friends with a stone or a tree.”

“I like stones and trees.”

T.H. smiled. “Sure you do. But you can’t go running in the fields with them, or play ball, or have any kind of a decent conversation, so what’s the point?”

“I don’t know. Stones are good to sit on, and I like sleeping under trees—except for when snakes sneak up and bite me.”

“I think you’re stalling.”

“I guess I am,” Lillian admitted. “But not anymore.”

So off they went, the tall fox with a kitten trotting at his side, down the treed slopes to where the creek split.

L
illian had only ever caught glimpses of foxes before this—quick flashes of their russet fur across a meadow, or a half-hidden shape in some distant trees. She’d never realized how sleek they were, how delicate and graceful, the economy of their movement. T.H. moved through the forest like the melody of a well-known song, in perfect harmony with his surroundings.

She kept stealing glances at him while she bounded along, trying to keep up. Handsome was a good name for him, and Truthful, too, it seemed. When they got
to the creek, he jumped easily from stone to stone to reach the other side. Lillian followed in his wake.

She’d crossed by these stepping-stones a hundred times—but that was always in her human form, with her longer legs. Even with her agile cat body, she slipped on the last rock and would have fallen into the creek if T.H. hadn’t snapped her up by the nape of her neck. She shivered for a moment, imagining the worst as she hung dangling from his teeth, but he only set her down on the ground, safe and dry.

“You’re a feisty little thing,” he said, “no question. But you need to pay more attention to your size. Your legs aren’t as long as mine.”

“They used to be,” she told him. “They were even longer.”

He smiled. “That’s as may be, but you’re stuck at this size now.”

“Only until I get some help from Old Mother Possum.”

His smile faded.

“We’ll see about that,” he said, and set off again.

“You don’t have to be so grouchy,” Lillian said.

But she worried about T.H.’s sudden change of mood. If the possum witch made him this uneasy,
how dangerous
was
she? Maybe she should have caught a vole after all.

The ground soon grew marshy underfoot. T.H. didn’t seem to like having wet feet any more than Lillian did. He took a winding way through the marsh, avoiding the soggy ground wherever he could. Lillian hopped along after him, but the limitations of her smaller shape meant she was soon soaked to her belly.

It seemed to take a long time before they finally saw the tall dead pine rising from a small hillock ahead of them. Lillian hesitated. Lit only by the light of a three-quarter moon that had just topped the rim of the hollow, it seemed an ominous place. She could hear the almost inaudible
clink
of small bottles tapping against one another.

“I didn’t know she was a bottle witch,” Lillian whispered.

“She’s not quite possum, not quite human,” T.H. said. “Truth is, I don’t know what she is.”

You never went to a bottle witch with a trivial concern—that’s what Aunt always said. Well, being
changed from a dying girl into a kitten wasn’t trivial any way you might stretch it. Still…

Lillian swallowed, her mouth dry.

“We’ve come this far,” she said, trying to keep the reluctance from her voice. “No point in stopping here.”

T.H. nodded. “Except you go on from here on your own.”

“W-what? Why?”

She was going to add, You’re not scared, are you? But she didn’t suppose he’d appreciate that. Being changed into a kitten was her predicament, not his, and she couldn’t very well expect him to put himself in danger for her.

“Old Mother Possum and I—we have some history,” T.H. said. “I ate her husband, and I don’t think she took too kindly to that.”

“You
ate
her husband?”

T.H. shrugged. “He was just lying there in the middle of a game trail one evening. What was I supposed to do?”

“Not eat him?”

“I’m a fox. It’s what we do.”

“I suppose. But I can see why she’d be mad at you.”

“She’s not,” T.H. said. “I’m still standing here,
aren’t I? She doesn’t
know
that I ate him. But if I get any closer, I’ll bet she’ll smell it on me, and then there’ll be trouble.”

“So I have to go on… alone?”

T.H. gave her shoulder a nudge with his muzzle.

“Come on now,” he said. “I thought nothing scared you.”

“I-I’m not scared. It’s just… maybe I should wait until morning.”

“An old witch like that,” T.H. said, “she’ll be fast asleep during the day. Probably won’t take it well, being woken up and all.”

Lillian shuddered, and then she squared her small shoulders. “Wish me luck,” she said.

“I do.”

“Thanks for coming this far with me—and for catching me back at the creek.”

“My pleasure. Like I said, I was bored. Now I’m anything but. I’ll wait here for you.”

“You will?”

T.H. smiled. “Sure. I want to see where your story goes next.”

Lillian was about to tell him that he was nothing like she thought a fox would be, except she realized
that she was only stalling again—putting off what she didn’t want to do. Aunt used to say, “There’s those that talk, and those that do. Which do you think gets the thing done?”

It wasn’t a question that Aunt ever expected an answer to.

“I’ll see you later,” Lillian told T.H.

Without T.H. leading the way, she had a harder time judging where the ground was solid and where it would turn to mush under her paws. By the time she reached the hillock where the big dead pine stood, she was caked with mud and soaked right through. She shook herself, spraying mud and smelly marsh water in all directions, making the bottles on the tree clink and rattle even louder.

There were dozens of the little bottles—dark blue and brown glass, the kind used for medicines and tinctures. They banged and clinked against each other in an eerie chorus while Lillian froze, holding her breath until they stopped moving. But she knew it was too late. The noise would have already warned the possum witch that she was here.

What if the witch wouldn’t listen to her? She was just a bedraggled kitten. What if the witch just turned her into something even less appealing than a cat? A frog, maybe. Or a mosquito. A clump of weeds.

She looked back the way she’d come. Should she try to escape while she could? There was no sign of T.H. No sound except for the cries of the peepers and the hum of insects. She turned back to the dead pine and her heart caught in her throat.

Old Mother Possum was standing under its bare branches, among the bottles.

Lillian hadn’t expected her to fit her name as well as she did—neither a woman nor a possum, she was rather some odd combination of the two. She stood just under three feet—tall for a possum, short for a woman, but much bigger than the kitten Lillian was. Her eyes were so dark they didn’t seem to have pupils. There was a long possum shape to her face, and her dark gray hair was pulled back in a wispy bun. Even her skin seemed gray, but that was only because of a thin covering of fine possum fur. She wore a deerskin dress decorated with quills and cowrie shells and intricate beaded patterns. Her thin feet—vaguely human-foot-shaped—were bare but still furry.