The Cats of Tanglewood Forest by Charles De Lint

collapsed onto the pallet Mother Manan had provided in a small windowless room beside the pantry. She always knew when morning had come because at dawn Mother Manan would pound on the floor with her staff, summoning Lillian to another day’s labor.
    But she had her small rebellions.
    The bear people, she discovered, hoarded food and resented sharing beyond their own clan, so she took great pleasure in throwing extra seeds to the wild birds when she was feeding Mother Manan’s chickens in the nearby communal barn. After she cleaned the coop and collected the eggs, she’d milk the cows and put out saucers for the cats that lived in the barn or came soft-stepping from the forest. These cats twined around her legs and butted up against her—like the cats back on Aunt’s farm once had.
    Every morning she brought a biscuit and left it under what appeared to be the most gnarled and ancient tree in the orchard. “That’s for you, Mr. Apple Tree Man,” she’d say before returning to her endless circle of chores.
    The biscuits were always gone the next day. Lillian pretended that the Apple Tree Man stepped out of his tree to eat them until the day she spied a fox darting out of the orchard with a biscuit in its mouth. That made her smile.
    “You enjoy that, Mr. Fox!” she called after the thief, but the next day she put out another biscuit all the same.
    The only chore that she found herself truly enjoyingcame late in the afternoon, when she was sent out to the berry patches to fill a bucket. Whenever she was outside, she dawdled, taking time to talk to the birds and appreciate the beauties of the valley and LaOursville, all of which seemed so at odds with how the townsfolk lived their lives, mostly indoors with all the windows shuttered against… well, Lillian didn’t know what. And when she went berry-picking, she went so slow that snails could have raced her to the patch and won.

    At the beginning of her third week in LaOursville, Lillian started her day as always, making her way to Mother Manan’s bedroom with a tray of biscuits smothered in honey and a steaming-hot mug of tea. She set it down on the night table and opened the heavy curtains. She stood there for a moment, still able to appreciate the beautiful view, before turning back to the foot of the bed to await Mother Manan’s orders for the day.
    The bear woman sat up and leaned back against the headboard. Her gaze held Lillian’s, measuring and dark.
    “You’re doing better than I expected,” she finallysaid. “You work well, and without a word of complaint.”
    Lillian shrugged. “We made an agreement. I expect you’ll soon be wanting to hear about my dream.”
    “Not yet. Joen tells me the barn needs cleaning. When you’ve finished dusting in the parlor, see to it.”
    What about your side of our bargain? Lillian wanted to demand, but she knew that part of the bargain was for her to work without complaint.
    She left the bedroom, closing the door quietly behind her. It was all she could do to not slam it in frustration.
    She’d begun to suspect that the bear people were taking out on her the bitterness they felt toward Aunt Nancy. Maybe Aunt Nancy really
had
eaten some of their kind when she was a little girl. Not like in John’s story, but the way folks in the hills would shoot game for their dinner.
    Because stars were stars—not holes left in some magic blanket of the night from when a bunch of spider spirits came dropping down on their silky threads to rescue a little girl. Though the bear people did appear to have a powerful fear of spiders and their webs. She’d often seen one of them shriek and jump out ofthe way of a spider spied on a step, or hanging from the roof of a porch.
    She couldn’t fathom why the spirits had told Aunt Nancy to send her here. She knew how in stories a body could be tested with all kinds of things, but this working like a slave didn’t make a lick of sense.
    Unless Mother Manan had never had any intention of