The Cats of Tanglewood Forest

by Charles de Lint

  The tray had clearly been untouched and forgotten for a very long time. Each little bottle had a label on it, but they were too covered in dust to read. When she blew the dust away she still couldn’t read the labels because they weren’t written in English. The only thing she could tell was that they all seemed to say the same thing. She felt she’d seen a bottle like this somewhere else in Mother Manan’s house, but she couldn’t remember where.

  It wasn’t until after dinner, when she was turning down Mother Manan’s bed, that she remembered where she’d seen the tincture bottle. She stood with her back to the bed and looked at the long tapestry that ran from one end of the wall to the other.

  It told a story, but she didn’t understand what the story was.

  But there was the tincture bottle. On the left side of the tapestry, a bear, standing upright, was looking at a man dressed in what looked like Kickaha hunting leathers. In the next section he was giving the man a small brown bottle. In the last section the man stood in a meadow with his arms held out straight from his sides. Birds were sitting on his head and all along his arms, with still more fluttering around him.

  Mother Manan came in while she was still looking at it.

  “We don’t have stories like this,” Lillian said. “Not back where I’m from.”

  “Why would you? To your kind the animal people are only good for their fur and their meat.”

  Lillian didn’t bother to correct her, but she knew hunting and farming weren’t so black and white for everybody. And didn’t the bear people keep chickens and pigs and cows?

  “So what’s happening in the story?” Lillian asked.

  For a moment she didn’t think Mother Manan would answer.

  “That happened a long time ago,” she finally said. “At the beginning of time, all the people could talk to each other—animals, and even people like you. But the years went by and your people forgot the old language and started hunting the animal people. There was a long war in these hills between the bears and the Kickaha that didn’t end until one of my ancestors made a potion, which he gave to the medicine man you see in the tapestry. Once he tasted the potion the growls of the bear became words that he could understand. He could understand the language of every animal. That was when he finally began to respect animals and animal people. He took his knowledge back to the chiefs of his tribe, and the war came to an end.”

  She looked away from the tapestry to scowl at Lillian.

  “But your people still hunt us,” she said.

  Lillian shook her head. “I don’t. Aunt and I never hunted anything.”

  Mother Manan’s eyes narrowed further. “Your Aunt Nancy is another matter altogether.”

  “She’s not my aunt,” Lillian said. “My aunt’s name was Fran Kindred. We never hurt anybody.”

  “Then maybe that’s why you’re still alive, girl.”

  Lillian lay awake for a long time that night, thinking of Mother Manan’s story and the tray of ancient tincture bottles she’d found in the cold storage.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Bottle Magic

  The next morning, when Lillian was putting the eggs in the cold storage, she paused in the doorway and listened hard. She could hear Mother Manan in the parlor with her friend Sebastian—not what they were saying, exactly, but the steady ebb and flow of conversation.

  Stepping into the cold storage, she set the basket of eggs on a shelf, then stood on a stool and reached way back to the tray of tincture bottles. Were they really a magic potion that would let a body understand the language of the animals?

  She climbed down and went to the door again to listen, but the murmur of conversation continued in the parlor. She held one of the bottles to her chest and worked the stopper free. Raising it up to her nose, she gave it a sniff.

  It smelled foul, but then potions almost always smelled bad. Harlene made one from some kind of fish oil that Lillian and Aunt took all the winter long. When Lillian complained about the taste, Aunt just smiled and said, “That’s how you know it’s working.”

  If she could understand the language of the animals, she could learn things without having to wait for Mother Manan to interpret her dream—that is, if she ever even intended to. That seemed more doubtful with every passing hour.

  Perhaps the cats around here might know why the cats back home stared at her all the time. Maybe the chickens or pigs or cows could tell her something—like were the bear people really planning to eat her? She could track down that fox and ask why he was following her. At the very least, she might be able to make a friend or two.

  But taking some of the potion was as good as stealing. Aunt hadn’t raised her like that. She could well argue that she’d earned the right to take a sip of the potion with all the hard work she’d been doing. It wasn’t as though anybody had told her she shouldn’t give it a taste.

  Oh, that? she could say, if she were asked. I had a tickle in my throat, and I thought it was some kind of cold medicine like my neighbor Harlene makes.

  But who was to say it wasn’t some kind of poison? Then they’d just find her lying dead here in the cold storage.

  She replaced the stopper and almost put the little brown bottle back, but then she thought of Joen and the mean way he looked at her. The bear people acted like she wasn’t even a person. She was just like a slave to them.

  Shooting a guilty glance at the door, she pulled the stopper out again. Before she could lose her nerve, she lifted the bottle to her mouth and took a sip. She gagged on the bitter taste but managed to swallow. The awful liquid burned as it went down her throat.

  Fingers shaking, she stopped the bottle again and waited.

  After a few moments she decided she wasn’t going to die. But she didn’t feel any different, either, except she was a little sick to her stomach.

  Served her right for stealing. Didn’t matter how mean the bear people were.

  She put the empty bottle in her pocket, then climbed back up on the stool and replaced the tray in its original spot. Putting away the eggs, she closed the door of the cold storage. She hurried to her room and hid the bottle at the bottom of her food pouch.

  “Girl!” Mother Manan called from the parlor. “We’ll be needing some more tea in here.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” she called back, and put the kettle on.

  “Don’t you dawdle.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  While she waited for the water to boil, she decided she didn’t feel so bad after all for stealing that potion.

  After she’d brought Mother Manan and her guest their tea and a platter of cookies, she got the wheelbarrow from the side of the house and went to the woodpile to fetch more firewood for the stove. A couple of the barn cats were sitting on the woodpile when she arrived, basking in the sun. One was a big old tom that Lillian called Rufus. He had a torn ear, and she’d seen him face off against a couple of the other cats, but he was always gentle around her. The other was a skinny black cat with a white spot in the middle of her brow. Lillian called her Star.

  “Hey, Rufus,” she said. “Hey, Star. Catching a little sun?”

  Rufus meowed back at her the way he always did, but this time Lillian heard: “Heh. Looks like you’ve been sampling potions.”

  Lillian dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow and stared at the pair, scarcely believing her ears. “I—I can understand you,” she said.

  “Well, now,” Rufus said, “of course you can. You must have known that would happen, elsewise you wouldn’t have taken the potion. So why are you so surprised?”

  “I didn’t think it would really work.”

  “Maybe it didn’t,” Rufus said.

  That made Star giggle.

  Lillian’s gaze darted from one cat to the other. “But how did you know I drank the potion?”

  “That kind of thing puts a glow on a human.”

  Oh, no, Lillian thought. Did that mean Mother Manan would be able to tell, too? But she’d just seen her in the parlor, and she hadn�
�t said a thing.

  “Don’t worry,” Star said, noticing Lillian’s worried look. “They’re not cats. We see everything.”

  “I’ve got so much I want to ask you,” Lillian started to say.

  The two cats jumped down from the woodpile and ran off before she could finish.

  That was just rude, Lillian thought, until she heard the footsteps coming up behind her.

  “What are you doing out here?” Joen demanded.

  “Getting some wood for the stove,” Lillian said. “What does it look like?”

  “Don’t you smart-mouth me. Who were you talking to?”

  Lillian sighed. “No one, sir. Well, maybe myself.”

  Joen studied her for a long moment with that withering gaze of his, then went on about his business. Lillian picked up the ax and split some kindling, imagining every log she hit was Joen’s head.

  She had no time to track the cats down once she finished carrying in the wood. There were other chores that needed to be done first. When they were finished, she made some bread dough and left it to rise while she went off to the berry patch. She wanted to test her new ability to understand animals, but she walked all the way to the berry patch without seeing a single one, not even a bird. There was no one around at all except for Joen, sitting on a fence way back at the edge of town, looking in her direction.

  She knew why he was there. He’d taken to following her around these past few days, probably hoping she’d make a break for the woods just so he could run her down. Why did bullies enjoy being mean? She turned her back on his distant figure and concentrated on filling her bucket.

  When she was half done, she stood up to stretch her back and caught a glimpse of russet fur disappearing into the underbrush on the far side of the berry patch. She lowered her hands to her hips and looked at the spot where she’d seen the fox disappear. Foxes weren’t as sly as they might think themselves to be.

  Lillian crouched back down, pretending to pick more berries. “Hey, you, Mr. Fox,” she called softly. “Or maybe your name’s T. H. Reynolds. I know you’re there. I can understand you now, so tell me, why are you following me?”

  At first there was no response. Then, slowly, a long nose poked into sight, followed a moment later by the rest of the fox. He sat on his haunches in the long grass at the edge of the woods and casually licked a forepaw.

  “Stay out of sight. Someone’s watching me.”

  “Have we met?” he asked.

  “Only in a dream—if you’re the fox who calls himself T. H. Reynolds. Otherwise you’re just a stranger who’s been skulking along behind me through the mountains since I left the Creek homesteads.”

  “Skulking is rather harsh. Maybe we were just going in the same direction?”

  “Except I walked along with nothing to hide, while you most certainly skulked.”

  “Where did we meet before?”

  “You came along with me in my dream, when I was on my way to see Old Mother Possum, though you wouldn’t come all the way since you ate her husband and you were afraid she’d turn you into something nasty.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You told me.”

  “Why don’t I remember?”

  “Because it was my dream, silly,” Lillian said. “How could you know? Now, if you’re not going to tell me why you’ve been following me, you can go back into the forest and leave me be. I’m very busy.”

  “Hold on,” the fox said. “I want to know more about this dream of yours.”

  “Well, you and I are the only ones who do. Mother Manan was supposed to interpret it for me—I’ve been working like her slave to pay for it—but she hasn’t asked me one thing about it yet.”

  “So tell me. I’m good at figuring things out.”

  “I have to keep picking berries while I do it,” Lillian said.

  The fox nodded and started to edge out of the grass.

  “Stay low,” she said. “There’s an eagle-eyed bear man watching me back by those buildings. Best he didn’t spy you.”

  The fox nodded again and made his careful way to where Lillian was working. He lay in a space between the bushes while Lillian picked berries and told him her story.

  “What do you think?” Lillian asked when her bucket was full and the story was done.

  There was no reply. She looked to where the fox had been lying to see that he was gone. He must have slipped away through the long grass of the meadow and back into the forest.

  That figured. Of course he’d go and skulk off someplace else. From the little she knew of him, that seemed to be what he did best. Except when she turned around to go back to the town she saw that Joen was halfway between the buildings and the berry patch.

  The fox, she realized, was being smart, just as the cats had been earlier in the day.

  Hefting her bucket onto her hip, she sashayed toward Joen and gave him a syrupy-sweet smile when she passed him by that they both knew she didn’t mean. She heard him fall in silently behind her. He didn’t say anything, but she could feel that suspicious gaze of his making the hairs stand up at the nape of her neck.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Friends

  It occurred to Lillian that with winter coming on, the bear people were getting ready to hibernate. That would explain both their tendency to remain indoors and the vast quantities of food they ate.

  They all seemed to be getting lazier, except for Joen. These past few days he always seemed to be someplace near to wherever Lillian was. But this morning when she went to the barn she didn’t see him anywhere. That put her in such a good mood that she was humming under her breath as she stepped inside the barn.

  “Oh, sing that one about the boy who liked to crack corn,” one of the cows said. “I declare, that’s my favorite.”

  Another cow chuckled. “That’s a good one, but I like the one about the ladies singing at the races.”

  Lillian laughed. “I’ll sing them both,” she said, “and anything else you want to hear.”

  She’d been looking forward to coming to the barn all morning. The bears might be a cranky bunch, but now she was finally making some friends.

  Rufus jumped down from a rafter onto some bales of hay. He watched Lillian fetch a stool and a bucket for the milk and began to lick his lips.

  “This is my favorite part of the day,” he said.

  Lillian grinned at him and began to milk the first cow, singing “Jimmy Crack Corn” and then “Camptown Races” as she’d promised. After a few more songs, she turned to Rufus.

  “Yesterday Star said that cats see everything.”

  He looked up, his whiskers white with milk.

  “It’s true,” he told her. “That’s because we pay attention.”

  Lillian wanted to ask him about the cats back home—what were they paying attention to when they looked at her?—but the cows wanted more songs, so she sang to them while she finished milking. Then there were the chickens to see to—as gossipy a bunch as she’d ever heard—and the pigs to feed, always intent on filling their bellies.

  She’d brought a honey and cheese sandwich for her breakfast and went and sat down on a bench outside the back door of the barn to eat it. The other cats had scattered after she’d given them their milk, but Rufus followed her outside.

  “Do you want some?” she asked him.

  “I wouldn’t say no to a bit of that cheese.”

  But before he could take a bite he crouched down low, ears flat, gaze fixed on something that seemed to be moving toward them.

  “Don’t move, Lillian,” he said in a soft voice. “There’s danger approaching.”

  But saying “don’t move” to Lillian was like saying “move right now.” She had to turn. When she saw who it was slinking through the nearby brush, she smiled and gave a wave.

  “Don’t run off,” she told Rufus.

  “But that fox…”

  “It’s all right. It’s only T.H. He’s a friend of mine.”

  “You’re frien
ds with a fox?”

  “You really don’t have to worry. He would never eat a cat.” She called over to T.H., “You don’t eat cats, do you?”

  T.H. trotted up to the barn.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  Lillian frowned at him.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he went on. “That’s just the way my friend the Russian fox says no. He says nyet.”

  Lillian pursed her lips. “Where would you meet a Russian fox?”

  T.H. shrugged. “You go here and there and sooner or later you meet everyone.”

  He sat beside Lillian and studied Rufus. “How do, Mr. Cat,” he said. “Don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure before today.”

  Rufus gave the fox a suspicious look. “What does the T.H. stand for?” he asked.

  “Truthful and Handsome. But don’t go blaming me for being full of myself or anything. My mama gave me that name. Said it was something to grow into.”

  “You seem an unlikely pair to be friends.”

  T.H. nodded. “And we were an even more unlikely pair when we first met. Apparently, back then Lillian was still a kitten.”

  “A kitten?” Rufus said at the same time as Lillian said, “That was just a dream.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” T.H. said. “But I’ve been thinking on that. What if it wasn’t a dream?”

  “But it has to have been. There were magical cats and talking cows and crows and…”

  “Foxes?” T.H. asked with a lift of one brow. “Like me? You know a lot about me from one dream.”

  “I don’t understand that part. I just know that I can understand you today because… well…”

  “You drank some magical potion.”

  Lillian nodded. “So you see, it’s not the same at all.”

  “I think it’s exactly the same. The cats changed a snakebit girl into a kitten, and the kitten got the possum witch to make it all as though it had never happened. It’s all magic, Lillian. Doesn’t matter if you go at it frontward or back.”