The Cats of Tanglewood Forest Read Free Page B

respect.”
    “What kind of something?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. It doesn’t have to be big. Amouse, or a vole. Something tasty, with crunchy bones.”
    Lillian thought of the squirrel she’d met, and now this crow.
    “Do they talk?” she asked.
    “Does who talk?”
    “The mice and voles.”
    The crow laughed. “Of course they talk. Everything talks. Just everybody doesn’t take the time to listen.”
    “I couldn’t kill a talking mouse.”
    The crow looked at her in astonishment. “Then how will you eat?”
    “I don’t know. Do trees and plants talk, too?”
    “Pretty much, though it’s not so easy to understand them unless they have a spirit living inside to do the translating. Otherwise their conversations are too slow for us to follow.” He chuckled. “But if you think a tree is slow, you should try talking to a stone. They can take a year just to tell you their names.”
    “What’s your name?” Lillian asked the crow.
    “Well, now,” he replied, “there’s some that call me Jack, and I’ll answer to that.”
    “Jack Crow,” Lillian repeated. “I’m—”
    “Lillian. I know.”
    “Because you know everything that happens in these hills.”
    The crow preened a feather. “That I do. Now a word of warning, little cat girl,” he added. “I know you like those hound dogs at the Welches’ farm, but you need to steer clear of them so long as you’re walking around in the skin of a cat. You see a dog sniffing around, you just go up a tree and stay there until it’s gone. Hounds and foxes and coyotes… none of them’s your friend—not any longer. There’s more than one critter living in these woods that would enjoy the morsel a little cat girl might provide.”
    “I’m not scared,” Lillian said.
    “I can see that. But you should be. You’re in a dangerous world now.”
    Lillian thought her own world hadn’t been so safe if you could die from a snakebite when all you were doing was minding your own business.
    She had a hundred more questions for the crow, but just then the belling sound of Aunt’s big iron triangle came ringing down from the farmhouse. Suppertime. The crow flew off and Lillian jumpedfrom stone to stone across the creek and ran up the hill.
    She was hungry, but that wasn’t why she hurried home. She realized that Aunt would help her, because Aunt always knew what to do. She’d know some cure, or Harlene Welch would. And if neither of them did, one of them would know some old witchy woman with a bottle tree outside her house and magic in her fingers. Aunt might not put much store in spending time looking for fairies, but like most folks in these hills, she was a firm believer in cures and potions, and she knew where to get them.

CHAPTER THREE
Annabelle
    N ow, what have we here?” Aunt said as Lillian came running up to her.
    “It’s me, it’s me!” she cried. “Lillian.”
    But unlike the squirrel and the crow, Aunt didn’t hear words, only a plaintive mewling. She smiled and picked Lillian up, scratching her under her chin. Lillian couldn’t help herself—she immediately started to purr.

    “Where did you come from?” Aunt said. She looked off across the fields. “And where
is
that girl?”
    “I’m here, I’m here,” Lillian cried from her arms.
    But Aunt still couldn’t understand her. She carried her inside and gave her a saucer of milk, which Lillian immediately began to lap up because, as much as she didn’t want to be a cat, it was suppertime and she was hungry from the long day’s activities.
    When she was done, she wove in and out between Aunt’s legs, but while Aunt would bend down to pat her, she was plainly worried and stood at the doorway looking out at where the dusk was drawing long shadows across the hillside.

    They had no phone. They had no close neighbors. So eventually Aunt took the lantern and went out looking for her niece.

    She made her way down to the creek first, Lillian trailing after her, still a kitten rather than a