The Cats of Tanglewood Forest by Charles De Lint

do what she says or she’ll tan your hide.”
    “That’s all right,” Lillian told them. “Thanks for taking me this far.”
    John nodded. “Keep going north till you come to a rocky ridge, then follow it down to the creek below. If you stay near the creek, it’ll take you back up into the hills again. You’ll see caves under a big overhang, and I guess that’s as good a place as any to start looking for bears.”
    “It’ll probably take you most of the day to get there,” Davy added, “so you’ll maybe want to hole up somewhere before the sun sets. If you’re going to meet a bear, I expect it’ll be more comfortable in the morning than at night.”
    “I expect it will,” Lillian said with a tremor in her voice.
    She thanked them again, then set off before she lost her nerve completely. When she looked back a little later, the boys and dogs were gone. In their place was a row of cats, sitting on deadfalls and stumps and the ground, watching her.

CHAPTER TWELVE
The Hunter
    A t any other time Lillian would have been delighted to be exploring a new stretch of woods. But today she was aimed right smack up against something that she felt was maybe too big for her. Bear people. The very idea made her tummy flutter, but she couldn’t help feeling a little excited at the same time, never mind John’s stupid story.
    She followed a deer trail through the autumn woods, admiring the colorful foliage and thinking about having crafted grapevine-and-leaf wreathswith Aunt last fall. She hoped that the bear people would be able to set things right.
    It felt good to have a sense of purpose. It had been a long stretch of whenever since she’d felt she was doing more than just getting through a day. Maybe she ought to have gone to see Aunt Nancy a lot sooner.
    The land rose slowly toward to the ridge that John had told her to look for. Oak and beech gave way to sprucy-pine. Under their tall spreading boughs there was less undergrowth, and her lone footsteps crunched noisily on the carpet of needles. Mushrooms sprouted from deadfalls, alone and in clusters: red and white, bright yellow, mustard yellow. The bare granite bones of the land pushed up out of the ground in ever-larger formations.



It was only when she reached the top of the ridge that she realized she was being followed.
    At first she thought it was one of the Creek boys, planning to play another trick on her. Davy or John, or maybe both of them. She kept turning casually, hoping to catch them at their game, but they were good at hiding. Then she thought it was the cats again, except they never bothered to hide from her. When she finally did catch a glimpse of her pursuer,it was a flash of russet fur darting behind a stone outcrop.
    She stopped in her tracks, staring at the place where the fox had disappeared. A memory popped into her mind, and for a moment she couldn’t remember if it was a real memory or if it had come from the strange dream she’d had the day Aunt died. But then she had to laugh at herself.
    T. H. Reynolds, the
talking
fox? Of
course
he was from her dream. But it was confusing the way the idea of impossible things kept tumbling into the real world. Once upon a time she would have been delighted with the idea of talking foxes or bear people, but she wasn’t the little girl chasing fairies in the meadow anymore. And never mind what Aunt Nancy had told her, she suspected that the bear people would just be some hermit clan living deep in the hills. Strange, to be sure, but quite human.
    She set off again, following the ridge, picking her way around the stone outcrops and tree roots. And while it made little sense, she kept catching glimpses of the red fox sneaking along behind her. She knew that sometimes wild critters just got curious. And sometimes they were sick. Rabies could make even asquirrel do things it would never do otherwise—like follow a girl much bigger than itself.
    Whyever this fox was following her, it was creepy. And she was