Free Trixter by Alethea Kontis Page A

his shirt and collected scads more for Lizinia. The chipmunk also assisted with the location of a few root vegetables, while the squirrel showed Trix the path that led to a coven of wisps from whom they were able to steal fire without being detected.
    Lizinia had accomplished her mission successfully. Trix returned to a bounty of firewood of varying thickness and length (the cats’ blessing seemed to have made Lizinia at least as strong as Saturday, a useful asset). A pair of groundhogs made quick work of digging a pit, inside which Trix fashioned a square of larger wood full of twigs. He tilted three more sizable logs into a tower above the square, and then placed the wisps’ light inside with the kindling. The wind was with them and the fire lit quickly and successfully. Trix thanked the Four Winds and the Fire Angels and the God of Travelers, making a mental note to acquire some more flint at the first opportunity.
    The herd of deer they’d passed had told them it was but another day or so to the Abbey (given that humans were considerably slower than deer), but Trix had a history with this kind of excessive good fortune. It never lasted for long.
    Lizinia loved the berries, as Trix suspected she would, and the root vegetables cooked nicely in the embers. The squirrel, the chipmunk, the groundhogs, and several other small animals joined Trix and Lizinia for the meal and slept by the warm fire. Before they fell asleep, Lizinia and Trix swapped stories under the stars. Lizinia told Trix some of her mother's and sister's escapades, though it had been so long she didn’t recall much, nor did she want to. Trix regaled Lizinia with tales of life as a member of the legendary Woodcutter family and growing up in their towerhouse by the enchanted Wood.
    "So your birthmother left you in the branches at the top of a tree for your papa to find? A baby? In the winter? That sounds dubious, even to me. I suppose your mother might have been able to climb a tree as well as you...but what if your papa hadn't noticed you way up there? Aren’t those trees very old and terribly tall?”
    Lizinia’s questions were innocent, but the more she asked, the more the story Jack and Seven Woodcutter had told him all his life sounded a bit farfetched. "But Papa did notice me. Or, at least, I think he did. I don't know. I didn't even know who my birthmother was until a few months ago.”
    “But she was your foster mother’s sister. If she knew her, why leave you in a tree? Why not just hand the baby over? Did your Mama hate her sister so much that she would have said no to her baby?”
    Trix furrowed his brow and was forced to concede the issue. “Okay. Maybe it didn't really happen that way.”
    “Or maybe it did,” Lizinia said kindly. “It sounds more like something’s missing. Maybe you just don’t have the whole story. The true story. Regardless, it is a good story."
    That would have been just like Papa, making up a wonderful tale for Trix to tell instead of the tragic story of his abandonment. Perhaps that had been Papa's first gift to him.
    "And you're traveling all this way to say farewell to a woman who didn't even know you? I may be kindhearted, Trix Woodcutter, but you're the purest soul I've ever known.”
    "I'm not so innocent," he said. "I've done terrible things."
    Lizinia petted the fur of a mottled brown rabbit who had nuzzled into her stomach and fallen asleep there. "I have no doubt that your terrible things are still leagues better than most people's terrible things."
    Trix thought about the terrible things that had been done to Lizinia in her life. Even the "gift" her Papa Gatto had given her seemed as much of a burden as a blessing. The two of them had this much in common—they had both been cast out of their original birthfamilies in favor of households who loved and valued them. "We're both very lucky," said Trix. Lizinia gave a small hum in what Trix assumed was agreement.
    "Trix," she asked, "do you believe in