And everything changed again.
One moment she was a girl, sitting in a chair by a fire, the next she was a kitten, standing outside in the marsh with the tall dead pine rearing up above her. The only thing that didn’t change was that Old Mother Possum was present in both places. But whereas a moment ago Lillian had looked down at the woman from her taller height, now she was looking up because she was a kitten again.
“Is—is everything back to normal?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing ever changed here,” the possum witch told her. “I just let you have a look-see at one of the other paths that run alongside this world of ours. Other possibilities, if you will.”
Lillian looked at her, confusion plain in her kitten eyes.
“My bottles catch and hold the winds,” Old Mother Possum explained. “Not just from this world, but from all worlds—ones that were, ones that might could be. I wanted you to see that small choices can have large consequences. So I had the bottles sing a song that opened a portal to one of those other possibilities. You ran through that portal thinking of yourself as a little girl, so that was the shape you wore on that particular journey. But as I say, it was merely one of many possibilities.”
“Do you mean it wasn’t real? That I was still a kitten here the whole time I thought I was a girl again?”
The possum witch nodded. “Nothing changed here while you were gone. The only place something might have been changed for you is in here.” She laid a palm on her chest. “In your heart. In how you see the world.”
“So it was… some kind of lesson?”
She supposed she had learned a thing or two. She now knew something about looking after a farm, and standing up for herself, and how true friends will stand by you, and the senselessness of holding on to old quarrels. She’d even learned that sometimes a thing was just going to happen—like if one person weren’t bitten by a snake, then maybe somebody else would be.
Old Mother Possum shrugged. “What’s important to remember is that one thing leads to another. Trouble is, it’s hard to see ahead sometimes, so I gave you a chance to do just that.”
“I know it’s hard to understand, but there are possibilities and consequences with every choice you make. For now, just think of it like a dream, where a lot of things happened, but you were only asleep for a moment.”
“But—”
“I’m not God, kitten. I can’t turn back time.”
“Is there really a whole cottage inside that dead tree?” Lillian asked.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know how it can be, but I think there is.”
Old Mother Possum tapped a bottle tied to a nearby branch. It clinked against another.
“There is magic,” she said.
Lillian nodded. “But you don’t have enough magic to change me back into a girl?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not.”
“And if I do find someone to help me… does that mean the dream I had about Aunt dying and everything… will that come true?”
“That was another road from the one you’re on now, kitten. Nobody can tell where this one will take you.”
Lillian nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “I won’t forget what you’ve shown me.”
“Don’t make a promise you can’t keep,” the possum witch said.
“What do you mean?”
“Folks in your situation… Well, let’s just say it doesn’t tend to stick. The farther away you get from marvels, the harder it is to remember them. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times before.”
Lillian shook her head. “I could never forget all of this. I don’t want to forget any of it.”
“That’s as may be, but I will still give you the gift of memory, so that one day you will remember it all again. I can’t say when it will happen, but happen it will.”
Lillian didn’t bother to argue. She knew how impossible it would be to forget.
Old Mother Possum bent down and gave her a pat.
“Run along now,” she said. “And be careful. A kitten can seem a tasty snack to a hungry predator.”
“I’ll be careful. But I won’t give up trying to find a way to change back.”
The old woman nodded. “I understand. But consider—it might seem like a terrible thing to be trapped in a kitten’s body, but there are worse fates.”
Then she stepped back into the tree and was gone.
Lillian stared at the bottle tree for a long moment. Old Mother Possum was right about that. She’d already seen one of those worse fates.
She made her way back to where she’d left T.H., being careful not to set the bottles clinking against one another. Her paws got wet and mud-caked again, but she didn’t care. She was trapped as a kitten, but she didn’t care about that, either. Aunt was alive. That was all that mattered.
As she came to the tree line, T.H. rose up from the ferns where he’d been lying, startling her.
“So she wasn’t able to help?” he asked.
“What do you mean? She changed everything back.”
“Back to what? You still look like a kitten to me.”
“But—”
Except then Lillian realized that, so far as T.H. was concerned, the kitten she was again had simply wandered down to the pine, had a conversation with the possum witch, and then come back. He knew nothing of the months she’d spent as a girl, mourning the loss of Aunt, the journey to LaOursville, their escape, or anything.
“I know it seems like not much happened,” she said, “but the little while you’ve been waiting here has been months for me, and for you, too.”
“Ha, ha.”
“No, it’s true.”
“How can it be true?” he asked.
So as they walked away from Black Pine Hollow, the kitten following the trail the fox took so that she didn’t fall into the water, Lillian told him all the things that had happened from when she found herself back in the body of the little girl again.
“That’s impossible,” he said when she was done.
“I was a girl, and now I’m a kitten,” Lillian said. “I can talk to animals and birds. I was supposed to die from the snakebite but I didn’t. That should all be impossible, too.”
“If any of that happened.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t know what to think. The only reason your story makes any sense is that you don’t act like the same little kitten I met earlier tonight. Sometime between your seeing the witch and coming back, you’ve changed. You seem older. You don’t even talk exactly the same.”
“I learned some important things, but I’m still Lillian the girl, even though I’m a cat, too.”
The fox shrugged. “I don’t understand how you can be both a girl and a cat.”
“Here,” Lillian said, stopping at a pool of water. “Look at this.”
T.H. looked over her shoulder to see the reflection of a redheaded girl where there should have been one of a calico kitten.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said.
“Now do you believe me?”
“I have to, don’t I? But I’m still pretty sure people can’t just wander back and forth in time. What if you met your parents and convinced them not to marry? Then you wouldn’t be born. And if that’s the case, how could you go back and convince them not to marry? You see what I mean? Just thinking about it makes my head hurt.”
“I didn’t really go back in time. It was just, sort of, a dream.”
“And I was in it.”
Lillian nodded. “You were. You’ve been a good friend to me all along.”
“And you returned that favor by telling the possum witch I ate her husband?”
“Of course not. She already knew.”
“She’s a witch,” she said.
He gave a slow nod. “That, at least, makes sense—so much as anything can on a night like this.”
They crossed the stream, hopping from one stone to another. Lillian managed not to slip this time. She paused on the last rock to dip one paw after another into the water to rinse off the mud.
“What will you do now?” T.H. asked.
“Go back to the farm. What else can I do?”
“But you said that your aunt doesn’t recognize you.”
“I know. But at least she’s alive. And I’ll still try to find a way to become a girl again.”
“Well, barnyards and foxes don’t mix well,” T.H. said. “People get the wrong impression when we come by for a visit.”
“Like how you might get into the chicken coop?”
He shrugged. “Everyone gets a little peckish.”
“Then it’s probably a good idea that you don’t come. Aunt wouldn’t like it, and I don’t think the chickens would, either.” She paused a moment, then added, “Does that mean I won’t see you again?”
“Come into the woods and call for me. If I’m near enough to hear you, I’ll come.”
“I’ll bring you a snack,” Lillian told him.
“You don’t have to, though I wouldn’t say no.”
Lillian laughed. “Thanks for being my friend, T.H. I think your mama named you well.”
The fox slipped away, a chuckle lingering in the air behind him.
Lillian lifted a paw and studied it in the moonlight. She’d liked having fingers again, but being a kitten was a small price to pay to make things right.