Cats of Tanglewood Forest (9780316215527) by De Lint Charles; Vess Charles (ILT)

Author:De Lint, Charles; Vess, Charles (ILT) [DE LINT, CHARLES/VESS, CHARLES]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction / Animals - Cats, Juvenile Fiction / Fantasy & Magic, Juvenile Fiction / Fairy Tales & Folklore - General
ISBN: 9780316215510
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA
Published: 2013-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

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 a squirrel 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 fed up with it.

Picking up a good-sized stick, she held it in a tight grip and glared at the last place she’d seen the fox dart out of sight.

“All right, Mr. Fox,” she called out to it. “Or maybe you really are T. H. Reynolds. I don’t know and I don’t care. But you need to either stop following me or step out where I can see you.”

She wasn’t actually expecting a response, so when a voice spoke to her from the branches of the tree above her, she thought her heart would stop.

“Hey, little missy. Think you could keep it down?”

She felt as though she’d fallen back into her dream again, where creatures kept talking to her from trees. Looking up, she half expected to see the fox sitting up there on a branch—or at least Jack Crow.

The foliage was thick, and at first she didn’t see anyone. Then a shadow shifted, moving into a shaft of light, and she saw that there was a man up in the tree. He had a long face with a raggedy beard and a wrinkled brown hat pushing down on top of a mass of straggly hair.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.