Cocot spent the morning staring at the same page in a cookbook. She wanted to make some tea, but she was trapped in the passages of her mind. She couldn't figure out how to escape.

She was still standing over the book when a small fairy flew up to the window and knocked timidly on the glass. He cupped his hands around his face to look in, then flew off, only to reappear through a crack in the ceiling to the attic.

"Coquelicot?" he asked.

"Hello," she replied. "Can I help you?"

"Help me?"

"I don't.... Do I know you?"

"Coquelicot, I'm Soufflé. I'm Soufflé," the fairy repeated. "What has happened to you?"

"What happened to me? I don't think anything.... That is, I don't remember—" Cocot broke off in the middle of her sentence. With a jolt of fear, she was certain that she was forgetting something important. It was the same sensation as suddenly walking on a hidden patch of ice, the ground sliding out from underneath her feet and the world tipping sideways as she fell. She had forgotten everything. "I don't remember!"

"What is your name?" the fairy asked.

"You called me Coquelicot."

"But do you remember it? And what about your mother?" He flew up and around in agitation.

"My mother?" No, she did not remember any mother. The nick-name Cocot came back to her, though. "I am Cocot. She called me Cocot. Is that right?"

He sucked in his breath sharply and kept flitting about. Suddenly, he dove for the table, landing on the cookbook.

"The tea, yes, of course. You wanted to make this tea the other day. Today it might save you. I will find you an empty snail shell to use a cup...that is the way to prepare this tea." He rubbed his hands over his scraggly face and tugged on the ends of his grey beard. "Yes, it might do the trick."

"All right," she gasped. "But I don't know how to make tea. I don't know how to do anything." The emptiness in her mind spiraled on and on, and her heart raced at the thought of falling into that nothing.

Souffle's wings fluttered with blinding speed and he was instantly level with her face. His bushy eyebrows pinched together and his hairy, pointy ears wiggled anxiously. "Who cast this spell on you? Was it that great fairy, that pompous donkey who styles himself a prince and rightful ruler of these hills? He'll be put in his place soon enough, I tell you. Now, sit down, child. Here, sit on the chair. I will be back quick as a bat catching a bug with the shell. I will help you make the tea. No, don't cry, I'll be right back."

The fairy disappeared, leaving Cocot sitting on a chair. The pages of the cookbook blurred from her tears.

By the time Soufflé returned, she was crouched in the middle of the floor, crying.

"Oh, please don't cry, little Coquelicot, we will clear this curse and if not, I'll fly straight into that hill through the East Gate invited or not. There will be a terrible price to pay for whoever did this. No tears, now. No tears. Did you eat?"

"Eat?"

"Well, I'll bring in some berries and oh, look what we have here: a bit of dried cake. Crunch on this, while you put the water on. Fill the pot with water first, there you go. And we'll have to start the fire...." Soufflé was a blur, zipping around, telling her exactly what to do and how to do it. Forty minutes later, she was at the table with a snail shell full of steaming tea and a napkin piled high with raspberries in front of her. She took a cautious sip.

The ghost of memory faded in and out of focus in her mind. "Soufflé, why do the raspberry brambles need the moonlight?"

"What did you say?"

She repeated the question.

"They don't," he said, shaking his head. "Why do you ask?"

"Because the fountain tried to swallow the moon and there was once a great fairy who called me a black huntress, but I couldn't really understand him."

"Child, drink your tea. You must drink the whole pot this morning. I'll wait here until you're done."

One snail shell full after the other, Cocot downed the entire pot. She would have gone out to see what was beyond the chalet, but Soufflé sent her to bed.

"I'm afraid to sleep. The roots were holding me down."

"Sleep is the greatest restorative magic that exists. Ask the mother of any youngling," he said and would not allow her to argue. "Go on and sleep. I will stay nearby."

She pulled the covers over her head, and he whispered, "We will see if Fanchon's magic can counteract a curse set with pixie dust."

***

Cocot sat up. She was in the rocking crib. It was dark and her mother was painting a page in the cookbook by candlelight. A finished portrait of a young boy was propped up in the nearby easel.

"Go back to sleep, Coquelicot. I have to get these pictures done before my memory fades and falls away like autumn leaves."

Cocot started to cry and fuss.

"Hush, hush, sweet baby. There's my little darling." Her mother picked her up and carried her to the table to sit on her knees. "One day, this book will be yours. Your magic is not like mine, or how mine used to be. I think these spells will work with your magic, though. They depend on the earth and plants and the moon and the sun. You will create your spells from the strength of the woods and heat of the day instead of the flowing magic in your veins as normal fairy creatures use."

Cocot tried to put her mother's thick braid in her mouth and chew on it, making her mother laugh. "Ah, I know you are too young to understand or remember, but I am forgetting." She stopped laughing or even smiling. "I am finally as I wished to be all those years ago when I first shed my fairy life for a human one. Two drops of fairy magic kept me forever different from my love. Now that they are gone, I am fully human and slowly forgetting every memory of the fairy life I once had. It is hard to lose yourself and know you are losing yourself, but to not know what it is you have lost."

Fanchon stood to put Cocot back in the crib. She sat on the bed to rock the baby to sleep.

"One drop to transform you. And my very last drop changed to crystal, hard as stone and useless." Fanchon held up a silver locket at her neck. "Fortunately, I know some witchcraft that uses the Earth's magic. It helps me. I am writing all I remember in letters and leaving them in the armoire for you to read later, when you are able. You will have my keys—every key opens a different door. This cookbook will contain all the spells I can still remember, but most important of all; you must never abandon the chalet. Always lock the doors and say the charms. Lock the doors and say the charms every night and every time you leave. This is your home, forever."

Her mother rocked the crib gently and sang a tuneless lullaby until Cocot drifted off to sleep.

Cocot woke up with a sudden jerk. She was alone and confused. What was real and what was a dream? There was the faint, musty odor of autumn leaves and also lavender soap in the chalet; the perfume of her mother's hands and freshly washed hair.

Letters in the armoire! In one swift movement, Cocot jumped from the bed and was pulling out the drawers in the armoire. There were stacks and stacks of yellowing letters and receipts for or from Jean-Baptist and her mother. The writing was too faded to read, though; the ink had turned invisible with time. These papers couldn't be the letters from her dream.

What was real?

Cocot crouched on the floor. The windows were shuttered tight and sense of uneasy watchfulness emanated from that side of the small building.

As she hugged herself for warmth, she remembered. Her earliest days were coming up from the hidden depths of her psyche, memories from when she was an infant were hers. Little games, long stories, chores and tasks around the chalet, learning to do the simplest things like weeding or drawing with charcoal. Walks through the forest for berries and mushrooms, and her mother's vin cuit pie.

Although the memories from the deepest roots of her tree came strongest, others came, too. she knew her mother had died a few months ago. She knew the chalet was her home and that the vines growing from the wooden chest over the door had started dying within the last few days. She knew she wanted to run away because something was watching her, but she could not make herself leave. A force stronger than her own will kept her there.

She found the courage to go outside to the yard.

A huge, black horse snuffed at her and wandered along the garden, eating greens. She shuddered in horror at the sight of it—covered in sores and scars, and old age was battering through his hide as though his bones could not wait to escape. He was heavy and slow, though, and waited patiently while she pumped fresh water in the trough for them both.

An ache spread through her chest. He was a monster. She could see it in him. But he was also as lonely as she, and she was going to save him. Hector. Her hero.

Days passed. For hours on end, she sat on the braided rug next to her bed, her only companions were ghostly whispers in her mind, chittering mice in the attic and a cloud of field fairies floating in the room.

Often they would simply hover, stationary, but other times, they would circle slowly in sinuous formations. Their wings created a low droning that padded the air.

She was finally remembering everything her mother had told or taught her, before her mother had forgotten too much. She had to stay and obey all her mother's orders.

At night, Cocot would crack open the windows and push the shutters aside. The moon was sometimes visible through a couple of branches. It fattened from a fingernail sliver to a lop-sided pumpkin.

The time was getting close to something. She imagined a great hall in a cavern with fantastical dancers and banquet tables—had she seen this? Did she know these strange people? Did she know anyone besides Soufflé and Hector?

Daniel.

Daniel had asked, "If I knock, will you open the door?"

Three knocks hit the inner door and she jumped up. The field fairies vanished. The last remnants of the dead vines clinging to it fell to the floor and the two nests rolled to her feet. They were empty.

Only a moment later, a banging hammer echoed from the workshop. Jean-Baptist was building something.

She had to leave this place. It was closing in on her; smothering her and hating her more and more every day. She would take Hector and go as far as she could. Except she had to stay and protect something.

She heard a hissing voice in her head. "I will weed it from you by killing off everything and everyone you love, one by one."

Cocot leaned against the chalet wall for support. Had her mother said that? It was a recent memory and not everything from the last few weeks was clear. No, it was someone else. Someone in this room said it recently.

"You must never abandon the chalet, little Poppy," her mother was saying. "You must always set the charms and lock the doors. Keep my keys, all of them, but never go into the dark places the doors open. You will guard the last one. You must. You were changed by my magic and you are only one who can keep it contained. You must never break the seal."

"I can't stay here, Mother," Cocot moaned, dropping her head in her hands. "Jean-Baptist is trying to break through your charms and something is coming for me when the moon is full. Something terrible—"

"Something went terribly wrong at the fountain, something I had to take care of," her mother's voice drowned out her thoughts. "But I fixed it with magic. I fixed it with love. You must never abandon the chalet."

There was something else preventing her from leaving. But she could not remember what it was. Something else was overpowering Cocot's resistance.

"As soon as Hector is healed, I will leave." It was decided. And it was time to heal Hector. Whether her whole memory was restored or not, she had to find a way to leave.

*** Her memory came up from the deepest roots of the tree in her mind. ***