Aunt Lillian and I fairly jumped out of our skins. We looked up and saw what we thought was a cat sitting up there on a branch, looking back down at us. Except it wasn’t really a cat. It was more like a strange little cat man with a long tail and all covered with black fur and catlike features. It had fingers like me, but a cat’s retracting claws that were protruding at the moment as he cleaned them with a bright pink tongue.

“How come fairy creatures like to talk to me from out of trees?” Aunt Lillian said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s an old story.”

The cat man stretched out along his branch, head propped up on one hand. He looked to be about twice the height of our little unconscious ’sangman, but that still only made him a couple of feet tall.

“Oh, do tell,” he said.

But Aunt Lillian had already looked away, her attention now on the Apple Tree Man.

“He called you Applejack,” she said. “Is that your real name—the one you never told me?”

“It’s a name,” the Apple Tree Man said. “The one by which I’m known in this place, just like I’m the Apple Tree Man in your world.”

“So what is your name?” I asked.

“Well, when he’s drunk,” the cat man said, “we call him Billy Cider.”

“We don’t have names the way you do,” the Apple Tree Man said. “We don’t have any need for them. All we have are what people call us.”

“Like sometimes,” the cat man said, “people call me Li’l Pater.” He waited a beat, then added, “You know, because I could be a smaller version of the Father of Cats.”

Aunt Lillian looked back up at him and smiled. “A much smaller version,” she said. “And not nearly as fierce.”

He shrugged, then continued grooming his claws. “It’s just what some people call me.”

I got the feeling that this was something he tried out on every new person he met, hoping that they’d think maybe he really was kin to that big old black panther that Aunt Lillian had met when she was younger than me.

“We can call you that,” I said.

“What are you doing here?” the Apple Tree Man asked.

Li’l Pater smiled. “I came to see the fireworks, and oh my, they should be something.”

“Fireworks?” I asked.

“He doesn’t mean actual fireworks,” the Apple Tree Man explained.

“You do know that the bee queen’s really unhappy with you?” Li’l Pater asked.

The Apple Tree Man sighed, then glanced at Aunt Lillian. “She’d better get in line.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Aunt Lillian told him. “Just disappointed you never took the chance.”

“Why’s the bee queen mad?” I asked.

“When isn’t she mad?” Li’l Pater replied. “But this time it’s because that little ’sangman you’ve got stowed away in that basket stole away her daughter, and you got in the middle of her settling her debt with him.”

I looked at the Apple Tree Man. “I thought that happened ages ago.”

“It did,” Li’l Pater said before the Apple Tree Man could speak. “The first time. But this is the seventh daughter of hers that’s gone off and wed a ’sangman. She was sure the sixth would be the last. But for good measure she kept this one in a hive as tall as a tree, locked up in a little room way up top with only a window to look out of.”

“Like Rapunzel.”

“Don’t know her. What court is she from?”

“It’s a tale in a storybook.”

“This isn’t a story,” Li’l Pater said.

“What I don’t understand,” Aunt Lillian said, “is why these daughters of hers keep running off to marry ’sangmen. You say there’ve been seven now?”

“Just like me and my sisters,” I said.

“You’ve all married ’sangmen?” Li’l Pater asked.

“No, I just meant there’s seven of us, too.”

Li’l Pater nodded. “Lucky number. ’Specially when you add in the red hair.”

“What’s so special about red hair?”

“Everything. A fairy can’t hardly resist a red-haired human. It’s as much a reason for them to be kidnapping your sisters as to make a bargain with you.”

“Wait a minute. What do you mean, ‘kidnapping’ my sisters?”

Li’l Pater regarded us all with surprise. “You didn’t know? The ’sangmen have two, and the bee court has the other four.”

I thought my heart would stop in my chest. I gave Aunt Lillian and the Apple Tree Man an anguished look, but they only shook their heads in sympathy.

“Why… why are they doing this?” I asked the cat man.

“For barter,” Li’l Pater said. “They want to trade your sisters for the ’sangman in your basket.”

“But we were already bringing him back.”

“They don’t know that.”

“And if both sides have my… my sisters… what am I supposed to do? Choose between who I’ll save and who I’ll sacrifice?” I looked down at the unconscious ’sangman. “For this little man that I don’t even know?”

“Should have thought of that before you got involved,” Li’l Pater said.

I nodded glumly. Aunt Lillian had warned me often enough. The one sure road to trouble, she’d say, is to get mixed up in the middle of a fairy quarrel.

“That doesn’t matter now,” I said. “All that’s important is that we rescue my sisters, and for that, we need a plan.”

“This should be good,” Li’l Pater said, a distinctive purr in his voice.

“And to start with,” I went on, “I don’t want you around when I’m making it.”

The purr stopped. “What did I ever—”

“I don’t know you,” I told him. “And right now I can’t take the chance of trusting you.” I turned to the Apple Tree Man. “And come to think of it, who’s to say that I can trust you, either?”

“Now, Sarah Jane,” Aunt Lillian said, “the Apple Tree Man might be a lot of things, but—”

I shook my head, not letting her finish. “He may be your friend, but I wouldn’t call him a very good one. And he certainly hasn’t said or done anything to prove that he’s mine. I won’t take the chance of trusting any fairy—not with my sisters’ lives at stake.”

Before anyone could protest, I stepped over to where the Apple Tree Man had set down the basket with the ’sangman still sleeping in it. I picked up the basket.

“I may have my own disappointments with the Apple Tree Man,” Aunt Lillian said, “but I’d trust him with my very life.”

“What about the lives of my sisters?”

She regarded me for a long moment, then shook her head.

“I’ve told you what’s true for me,” she said, “but only you can decide who you should trust.”

I didn’t know where this fierce feeling had come from—probably some protective reflex locked in the Dillard genes. We were the kind of folks who depended on ourselves. But blind panic also coursed through my veins, born out of the shock of learning that my sisters were in danger and it was my fault. My fault, but fairies were caught up in every which part of it.

The Apple Tree Man was a fairy being. Could he really be trusted?

The thing that finally swayed me was how the Apple Tree Man didn’t try to change my mind. Li’l Pater sat up on his branch, obviously insulted and muttering to himself. I wasn’t listening to him. But the Apple Tree Man stood calmly waiting for me to make up my own mind.

And I guess the other thing that swayed me was that I didn’t have the first clue as to how to proceed. I didn’t know where the ’sangmen lived—leastways, not in this world. I didn’t know what to do when I found them. I also knew nothing about these bee fairies or how to go about rescuing my sisters from them. I was pretty much stuck.

So I took a breath and looked at the Apple Tree Man.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “If Aunt Lillian trusts you that much, I should be able to do the same. I’m just so worried about my sisters.”

“I understand,” he said.

“And what about me?” Li’l Pater asked, grumblings forgotten. “Are you going to let me help?” He grinned and spread his fingers and his cat claws popped out from the end of each of them. “I can be fierce as the Father himself.”

Having accepted the Apple Tree Man’s help, I looked to him for guidance on this. He gave Li’l Pater a stern look.

“Promise you’ll only help?” he asked. “No tricks, no jokes?”

Li’l Pater stretched and nodded.

“You swear on the fangs of the Father?”

The cat man’s eyes opened wider and he nodded again.

The Apple Tree Man turned back to me.

“By that oath,” he said, “you can trust him.”

“So what do we do?” I asked.

I was anxious. I didn’t know what the fairies were doing to my sisters, but every moment they were with them was far too long for me.

“First we’ll follow our original plan,” the Apple Tree Man said. “We’ll visit the ’sangmen and free the sisters they have. When they realize that we’re returning their little prince, they’ll be honor-bound to let your sisters go and help us.”

“And the bee fairies?” Aunt Lillian asked.

“I have an idea about how to deal with them, though it will depend on Sarah Jane’s courage.”

The very idea of bees made my knees knock, but I resolved to try whatever needed to be done.