“This is as far as I go,” T.H. said.

“I know. Because you ate her husband.”

He gave her a sour look. “He was already dead.”

“So you said.”

“Well, he was. Truthful and Handsome, remember?”

Lillian nodded. She stood there looking at the dead pine. Even though she’d already met Old Mother Possum, or maybe just dreamed they’d met—it was all a bit confusing—she was still nervous.

“I wonder what will happen,” she said. “What if I’m wrong? What if she can’t help me? What if it was just a dream?”

“I don’t know,” T.H. said. “I just know there’s only one way to find out.”

Lillian nodded. Shouldering her blanket and pack, she picked her way through the soggy marsh to where the tall dead pine rose from a small hillock ahead of her. As twilight turned into night she could see all the little medicine and tincture bottles tied to the branches of the pine. When she reached the hillock the ground firmed under her feet.

She stood for a moment, remembering the last time she’d been here. It couldn’t have been a dream. How could she remember it all so clearly?

She cleared her throat, then called into the deepening shadows that surrounded the pine.

“Hello hello? Are you there, Mrs. Possum?”

The tincture bottles clanged lightly in a discordant song as Lillian waited for an endless moment.

The figure that finally stepped quietly out of the tree’s shadows was just as she recalled. Old Mother Possum was still some strange combination of woman and possum, but whereas before she’d towered over the kitten Lillian had been, now she was a good head and a half shorter.

She leaned on a staff that reminded Lillian of Mother Manan’s. Braided strips of leather encased the top, then longer strands with tiny bottles tied to their ends swung freely. The bottles on the staff echoed the song of the tree, and the possum witch’s small black eyes studied Lillian intensely.

“This is interesting,” she said. “I don’t get many human visitors, and never one so young as you. Have you come for a potion, girl? Something to make some boy love you? Or maybe you’re looking for wealth or power—a piece of magic that can take you out of these hollows and into the wide world beyond?”

Lillian shook her head. “I’m the kitten you met at the beginning of the summer.”

“I see. And the reason we met was?”

“I was a kitten. You turned me back into a girl.”

“That seems unlikely. I can’t stop the tales they tell of me, but the truth is I don’t have the kind of mojo something like that would take. And if I did find a way to do it, I’m fairly certain I’d remember it.”

Lillian shook her head. “I’m not saying this right. You didn’t so much change me from a kitten to a girl as send me back in time so that it didn’t happen in the first place—my being changed from a girl into a kitten, I mean. By the cats.”

“You’d think I’d remember that as well.”

“Well, it’s true.”

But even as she spoke the words Lillian realized that she hadn’t thought this through. When she’d gone back to that time before the snake bit her, not only had she not been bitten by the snake anymore, but so far as Old Mother Possum was concerned, Lillian had never met her before, either.

Old Mother Possum nodded. “I can see that you believe what you’re telling me, but it’s not so clear for me.”

She studied Lillian again for so long that Lillian began to fidget. Old Mother Possum tapped her staff lightly on the ground and the bottles sang once more. The old woman listened intently, then appeared to come to a decision.

“My bottles sense some familiarity about you, otherwise I’d send you on your way. Come inside,” she said. “Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of this.”

Lillian gave the tree a dubious look. She didn’t see anything that looked like a window, never mind a door.

“You didn’t come inside the last time?” Old Mother Possum asked.

Lillian shook her head. She wasn’t one bit sure about this, but at least the possum witch was starting to believe her.

Old Mother Possum motioned toward the dead pine. “The trick,” she said, “is to simply walk forward and expect there to be a door to let you in.”

“Really?”

“Just do what I do.”

Lillian watched as the old woman walked forward. Just when she was about to walk smack into the tree, she vanished.

Lillian stared at the tree. She didn’t think she could do that. But then she thought of Aunt, remembered her still, gray features the last time she’d seen her, lying in her coffin before they nailed the lid on. Straightening her shoulders, she took a breath and walked toward the tree.

There’s a door, there’s a door, there’s a door….

She flinched as she was about to walk into the tree, but then the tree wasn’t there and she stumbled forward. A bony hand caught her and helped her regain her balance. She blinked in the light, though it wasn’t bright, then looked around in wonder.

Where there should have been, at most, a hollow tree, was instead the interior of a cozy cottage with a stone floor and wooden walls. A small fire burned in a hearth with two chairs in front of it and a carpet under the chairs. There were candles on the mantel, and more on the wooden table in the center of the room. She spied a small bed in a corner with a chest at its foot. On the opposite wall, a cluttered counter ran the length of the room, filled with all kinds of little jars and boxes and bottles. Drying herbs hung from the rafters above.